For a painfully long moment his partner simply stared at him with vacant eyes. George dared to shake him again, raising his voice. “Andi! Talk to me, man!”
Andi shook his head, put the palm of his right hand to his temple. “Sorry, I was frustrated because I didn’t get anything useful from the cabin, too many people and things in there, and I could sense something foreign out here.” He pointed to two cypress trees where George first couldn’t spot anything interesting. On closer inspection, though, he realized something was attached to both trees, something in camouflage to mimic the trees’ bark. Two little boxes, only visible once you knew they were there.
George went to the trees after he had made sure Andi was stable on his feet. He whistled. “Wow, it’s a wildlife camera. And I can see footprints. But they could be from the person who set the camera up.”
“We’ll have to find out who it belongs to and contact them. Perhaps there’s something on it.” Andi was coming closer, veering a bit left, to a small evergreen. He bent down to retrieve something from the ground, using one of the rubber gloves they had with them. When he held it up, a triumphant smile twisted his lips. “And we have a winner!”
George went over to him to inspect what Andi had found. It was a needle. A used needle.
“Let me guess, ketamine?”
Andi nodded. “It’s full of it.”
George got out one of the small evidence bags he always carried in one of his back pockets. Andi carefully dropped the needle in, sighing when George closed it. The glove he stuffed back into the front pocket of his jeans, where he would probably forget about it until he had reason to reach inside the cloth again. Chances were the glove would get a nice little adventure in Andi’s washing machine.
“That’s at least something.”
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. Nobody, least I, expects you to always find everything.”
“I know. It’s just, I’m kind of used to it.”
George patted Andi’s arm. “I understand, but you don’t have to always provide the solution. Leave some work for me. Now let’s take a picture of the sticker on the wildlife camera so we can get out of here.”
ON THEIRway back to Charleston, Andi called Theodora Miller, asking her who was responsible for preparing and maintaining the cabin. With a new address, George drove into the Goose Creek area where Pérez and Sons had their office. After the two men had gotten over their initial shock about the police knocking on their door, they had been very helpful. As it turned out, they had been at the cabin on Wednesday, stocking it up with groceries and beer they had gotten straight from the brewery, a small crafts beer producer who was located in Berkeley County. A call there confirmed the Pérezes’ story, establishing that the picking up was a pattern that had gone down whenever the three victims went hunting for the past two years.
“What do you think? Have Miguel and Santo Pérez suddenly decided to get rid of their employers?” George concentrated on the late-afternoon traffic, which was as thick as always.
“To be honest, I don’t think so. They were at the cabin, just like they said, but only for the preparations they claimed. Now that I know what they look like to other arthropods, I can distinguish them from the other unknown people in the cabin. And if they wanted to get rid of their employers, I think they wouldn’t have come up with such an elaborate scenario. They’re both strong men, and there’s easier ways to kill somebody than a trip to a lake in the middle of the night. Plus, they wouldn’t have lost a needle full of ketamine in the woods at the back of the cabin. They went in through the front.”
“And the cabin stood empty for at least ten hours after they prepared it and the victims arrived. Plenty of time to break in and doctor the beer.”
“Yes. I did sense five other people there, four female, one male. Plus, the victims being there for an entire day would make pretty sure that any evidence for the break-in would be destroyed….” Andi sighed. “This whole thing reeks of careful scheming.”
“It does. Which means not a crime of passion. Whoever did this had time to stew in their anger and plan every little detail. If you add the method of killing, it points toward the killer being female.” George had paid close attention to his courses in criminal psychology and knew that women had a statistical tendency to murder with poison and to plan their crimes thoroughly.
“Yes. It’s a high probability. The two people the arthropods sensed in the woods were definitely female, and they were inside the cabin as well. Question is, were they there on official business like the Perézs, or are they potential suspects? We should tell Shireen to look out for events in the victims’ pasts. This could stem from an old grudge.” Andi got his cell out and started typing.
“Or point toward the wives. Being married for so long gives you plenty of time to accumulate anger.” George glanced at the clock in his car. “Though I don’t want to dismiss the sons yet. None of them made the impression of being hands-on. I could definitely see them reverting to sneakiness.”
“Not to forget they, too, had time to steep in their anger. I wonder if it was enough to motivate them to work together? Because I don’t see one of them acting on his own and killing the other two respective victims as kind of a bonus. Too much hassle for one.”
This thought put a damper on the theory, as George very well knew. So far they had had no indication that either the wives or sons had been particularly close. Or at least close enough to plan cold-blooded murder. Then again, George had seen stranger things in his time as detective, and people’s motivations weren’t always logical. “I guess we have to wait and see what Shireen digs up.” He made the turn leading him to Stiles Point. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow as usual.”
“Thank you, George.” Andi rubbed his face, the stress lines around his eyes deepening as if his body had finally realized that rest was in reach.
“Take an aspirin and try to get some sleep. I’ll swing by the precinct to get the needle registered before I go home.” George said it matter-of-factly, mixing in the information about what he would be doing to make it even more casual, as if they were talking about the weather. He had learned by now this was the easiest and most probable way to get Andi to listen to him. His partner made a waving gesture.
“Yeah, yeah. I need some sleep.”
George stopped in front of Andi’s house, waited till his partner was out of the car and then until Andi was through his door. He didn’t like leaving Andi alone, probably as much as Andi didn’t like being babied. They were even in that regard. Once the front door had closed, George had no reason to linger any longer, so he turned the car and drove home.
7. Give Me a Lead
THANKS TOthe two aspirin he had taken, Andi had slept quite well, leaving him feeling almost refreshed. He still couldn’t believe he had folded in such a spectacular way the day before. The barrage of information from the insects around the cabin had overwhelmed him like an avalanche, made it hard for him to find his way back. George’s presence had helped a great deal, and Andi had been so glad, he had clung to his partner like a tick to a host. Since the Castain case, the amount of information he processed unconsciously had grown, which would have been a cause for celebration if the overall assault hadn’t been getting worse. It was a pure self-defense mechanism on the part of his mind to protect itself from overloading. Everything was getting sharper, more detailed, more linked to the individual insect, which made it harder to discern the useful bits. Until four months ago, Andi had been able to filter through the things he didn’t need with comparative ease. Now every piece of information was important, loaded, and finding what he needed without losing himself was getting harder and harder. He just hoped he would be able to get a grip on things soon. Or at least before George left him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t know what to do. He had no contingency plan for hisgeschenkgetting so out of control. Until now, the increases had come at a slow, manageable level with some intense months thrown in now and then. What he was experiencing at the moment was new and frightening, and he didn’t know how to get it under control. Alcohol was looking more and more tempting, the only reason Andi hadn’t reverted to it being that it brought another kind of loss of control. He sighed while he put on his jeans and T-shirt, shoved the gun in its holster, and clipped his badge to his belt—
There was a delicious scent of rotting meat in the air, a wonderful opportunity to give the larvae a perfect start into this world, the blossoms were rich, so much nectar for the hive, collecting bits of grass and tiny sticks to increase the nest, the fungi were doing great, growing fast enough to feed the colony, there was dung to be rolled, the humidity in the air whispering of rain to come, the scratching and munching and scraping of countless chitinous legs, like a symphony in his mind, telling of the worlds interwoven with his own, so close, so close, not at all far away like all the other blobs thought, he was there, all the time, knowing what was going on, getting lost in the sensations, no, he couldn’t do that, he had to get back, stay, the nectar is good, food everywhere, the blobs provide it in numerous ways, get back, Andi, George is going to pick you up, rattling, the ground shakes, it’s George, George is coming, Andi,get going!
Andi shook his head, trying to get his bearings. It was so strange, seeing himself through the eyes of the insects, feeling like one himself, talking to himself like an outside source. Wrapping his mind around this concept was headache-inducing.
