Silent Scream Read online

  Soon Bradley Vance joined them for what must be the daily hot coffee and BB-decorated doughnut ritual.

  “Damn glad you’re on board!” he told her, shaking her hand with an overly firm grip that almost made her wince. He was an imposing man, with premature white hair over a broad forehead, sharp blue eyes and a healthy-looking tan. “We need to ID our precious finds from all sorts of angles, and psychology is one key way. More of our brand of great women’s intuition around here doesn’t hurt either,” he added with a nod at Andrea.

  “Which reminds me that I wanted to ask,” Claire said. “So far, what has been the percentage of men you’ve found in bog burials compared to women—or even children?”

  “No children,” Brad—Kris had said to call him either Brad or Senator—told her. “At least not easily discernible ones, depending on where you draw the line on children versus adolescents. I mean, no doubt by our standards, these people died young, but it seems to be an adult cemetery. One theory is that a burial bog was a magical place where people communicated with the dead, so young children weren’t allowed to be part of that. It was perhaps a frightening place, a netherworld, so they buried children elsewhere. That’s one reason you’re on the staff now, to look for clues, draw conclusions and present us with hypotheses.”

  “I understand. I can’t wait to get started.”

  Andrea said, “Then let’s begin with the final exhumation of the man we’ve dubbed ‘Hunter.’ And then follow that outstretched hand we’ve uncovered to see why someone would be interred so close to him—unusual. Black Bog’s secrets await, so let’s go.”

  * * *

  Nick had a ridiculously busy day ahead, but he’d scheduled Heck into a 9:00 a.m. appointment, or he figured he wouldn’t get to him at all. The guy had been invaluable over the years. He could find about anything online and stayed up with the huge tech curve for Nick and for the firm. After all they’d been through together, Heck was as much friend and family as employee.

  Waiting for the familiar knock on his door, Nick stared at the lengthy ME’s report which had been faxed to them this morning, since the firm was now on the record as attorneys for Dale Braun.

  Although the bruises on the female victim’s body, he read, skimming partway down, were consistent with the subject being manually restrained and possibly held down, there is no evidence of sexual activity, no rape, no bruising in the genital area. Nick looked even lower in the long report. It had been difficult to establish time of death because the timing for the frozen state of the corpse could interrupt and throw off the estimation of time for rigor mortis.

  There were no drugs in the subject’s system. There were, however, the remains of a steak dinner with salad and baked potato and red wine, but no unusually high alcohol readings.

  The open mouth and open eyes did not indicate the victim had been placed in the freezer alive. In the ME’s best estimate, the mouth and eyes had been deliberately opened before the body was frozen, though that assumption could be contested.

  Nick sighed. Everything could be—maybe would be—contested if it came to an arrest and a trial. But what had really caused the death of Cynthia Lindley, or, that is, what had led up to it? They knew how she had died. But the why, that was the thing. And, yes, Claire was right. He could use her help on this, as long as she was not taking risks.

  He heard Heck’s usual three quick raps on the open door. “Enter!”

  “Morning, boss.” He ambled in and sat down as if neither of them had a care in the world. “Word is you’re busy on a big case, so I can make this quick.”

  “First, how is Gina liking med school and living in Miami?” Nick asked about Heck’s girlfriend.

  “Likes it, especially the big Cuban population there, almost like home, she said. When I told her about this face recognition stuff, she said she’d recently considered being one of those artists who does facial reconstruction—you know, with clay after measuring a skull. I didn’t even know she had art talent. Crazy, huh?”

  “Maybe not. She’s been worried about the expense and length of med school, and that would mean she wouldn’t go after that medical degree. So explain a bit more about facial recognition technology in case I want to talk to the senior partners about possibly getting involved with your idea for a sideline career.”

  “Just learned the Russians are deploying it to spy on their own citizens, so it’s far-reaching, developing fast. Moscow has a network of around 170,000 surveillance cameras across the city to ID criminals and boost security. That’s way beyond what I was telling you about high-end stores using it. This facial recognition tech was designed by a Russian startup called N-Tech Lab, Ltd. It cross-references images from a database against those captured by cameras at entrances to buildings.”

  “Big brother is watching you, in other words. I’d like to think that’s just Russia, but it’s coming here, I’ll bet. I do know that even our more advanced allies are jumping in with both feet. I read that the UK uses so-called CCTV cameras too, maybe as many as 70,000 across their nation.”

  Heck nodded, scooting to the edge of his seat. “I knew that too. Boss, it’s as scary as it sounds, that a government can find and arrest criminals that way. So why not the good guys too, so-called enemies of the state, or just a guy who criticizes them? I’m sure the Russians don’t want us getting ahead of them in this or even catching up.”

  “You’re right. A different kind of terrorist, the ones running the country.”

  “There’s even an app called FindFace that was a big hit in Russia last year. Really accurate, this technology is going to take our world by storm, and this company that wants me will be in on that. Caramba, the competition is really cutthroat as well as cutting edge. It will be just to consult—kind of like Bronco said Claire’s agreed to do for some startup company. And like I said, they’re gonna need legal help ’cause there’s lots of folks gunning against this new invasion of privacy.”

  “So that’s where the firm would come in,” Nick said. “I’m all for this, Heck—someone like you involved who knows the possible dangers if this isn’t reined in, as long as—like I told Claire about her consulting—it’s safe, and you still have time for what you were hired for here. And by cutthroat, you don’t mean Russia could reach out here to try to harm American tech firms whom they see as competition in this software?”

  “I don’t think so,” Heck said with a shrug. “No one said that, and my work would be pretty hush-hush.”

  “Someone like that friend of Claire’s might be able to benefit from face recognition technology down the road, so keep that in mind.”

  His mind darted to last night with Claire in bed. His beautiful wife, under him, on him in the dark of their bedroom where he couldn’t see the expression on her face, but he knew what it was. Trust. Joy. Ecstasy, and—

  “So what do you think about someone from this startup company, FindFace, contacting you, boss? I’ll go ahead and sign on to work with them then.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Nick said, jumping back to reality. “Sounds good, at least to explore our options. Meanwhile, I need some help on this current murder case that involves Dale Braun. Look into anything you can find online about the victim, Cynthia Lindley from Atlanta. History, social media presence, whatever. Dig up anything you can.”

  * * *

  “It’s kind of funny that you call this walking the plank,” Claire told Kris as they followed Andrea out to the site where the team had uncovered “Hunter” yesterday. To Claire’s surprise, Brad Vance had not come along, so had he no curiosity about a new find, or did he just leave all of that up to Andrea? No doubt, there were business matters he must oversee here, but he’d given no indication he wouldn’t come out with them. She would ask Kris later, because she didn’t want to overstep or seem too curious in front of Andrea about the living here—just the dead.

  Kris tried to prep her for what she would see. She expl
ained they had slowly, carefully dug out more of Hunter’s body, then had placed plastic sheeting over the site until today, in case of rain, so she’d be there for the retrieval of the body.

  Everyone hovering at the site looked up and stood when she joined them. Andrea made introductions. “Just first names for now, and you can get to know each other later. Kind of like when we excavate a new grave site, right, gang, then figure out what we’ve found?”

  Claire nodded and said hello to the same team she had seen here yesterday. The two men—Doug and Aaron—seemed young, maybe grad students. Yi Ling was a beautiful woman with sleek black hair held back from her face by a cord. She had also covered it with a net, no doubt to keep from dropping foreign objects, even strands of hair, into the graves. They were all obviously anxious to keep at their work. After short greetings where Andrea introduced Claire as “part of the brain trust,” they eagerly bent back over the site.

  Claire steadied herself for the first glimpse of Hunter. Kris braced her by her upper arm as they and Andrea looked in over the heads of the excavation team.

  Although she’d seen the bog bodies in lab drawers inside, Claire jolted. Unreal, but so real. All tanned to a dark brown, yet amazingly preserved with chin-length hair, beard stubble, even a facial expression, which was one of grief or maybe pain. At being buried here? Alive? What had he been thinking when he died or was laid to rest? He hardly looked at peace—had violence been involved?

  She also noted the hand attached to a wrist from a nearby, still bog-covered corpse, indeed reaching out toward Hunter. Beseeching him for something? Begging? Could their closeness be just coincidence or was there some relationship, shared feelings or a unity in death? Andrea had said it was unusual for two bodies to be so close. Though not quite touching, they seemed connected somehow. After all, Hunter’s tormented face had been turned toward that other body for eons. And it was a small hand, a delicate hand. A woman, perhaps his wife. Claire hoped this wasn’t a culture where a wife was forcefully interred with her powerful mate before her time. As shriveled as Hunter looked, he evoked strength.

  Andrea, Kris and Claire stood back on the wooden platform which held the tools for excavation. The team struggled to slowly, carefully slide a plastic sheet down and under the man’s body.

  Claire whispered to Kris, “He won’t slip deeper, will he?”

  “They’ve already shored up the peat under him, or otherwise, yes. Everywhere off the platform and planks, it’s like a swamp that can swallow a person. That’s why we have to be careful where we walk, and never get off the supports. We found one modern body that seems to have fallen in and gotten sucked down, suffocated. A corpse maybe from the late 1800s or early 1900s. So never, never come out here alone. If you fall in, you can be gone in no time—I’m sure a terrible death.”

  Claire saw Andrea shudder. “When I was young,” she said quietly, still watching her team work, “I saw a movie set in Africa where the villain was horribly sucked down to his death in a swamp. It took me a lot of courage—and the desire to resurrect this people and their culture—to walk out here at first. Brad still avoids it, because he did fall in once, and I had to run for help to pull him out or I would have gone down too. I laid tree limbs for him to hang on to until I brought help. But, the truth is, he’s had claustrophobia from a young age, so that was double horrible for him.”

  That explained his absence, Claire thought. The three of them watched intently as the team lifted the man’s body by the plastic sheet, then laid him nearly at their feet in a space on the platform.

  Claire stared wide-eyed. Centuries old but he could have been disinterred from a merely historic, not prehistoric grave. Although not this close-up, she’d seen an exhumation of a murder victim once, but this...

  She could tell he had been an imposing man with big shoulders. His face was smashed a bit sideways by the long weight of water, mud and peat, but he still seemed—well, he must have been handsome with that strong nose, high cheekbones and firm chin. One foot was shod with a sort of laced leather shoe, the other bare. His toenails were visible. In his right hand, Hunter clenched a double-edged dagger as if he would never let it go.

  His only other garb besides the one crude shoe was the animal pelt wrapped around him—no, it was more than one. They were crudely stitched together to hide his body, chest to thighs.

  Andrea broke the awed silence. “I wonder how someone this strong, and apparently young, died. He looks—I know this sounds insane—healthy.”

  Claire cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure her voice would even come out at first. “I observe the same. Amazingly, he seems to evoke a personality. Have you seen others buried with a dagger?”

  Andrea answered, “Not like that one. Only scraping knives with plant residue still on their dull edges. But nothing this apparently special, this—commanding.”

  Claire noted they were all having trouble finding words. In a glint of light, she could see that Hunter’s dagger was etched with some sort of design, though peat now filled the cracks to make the surface one dark blur. It was not metal but some sort of stone.

  She asked, “Do we know what kind of animal pelts those are? If it’s a rare or special animal, that could mean high status, which his dagger suggests.”

  Without looking up, Doug answered, “Short hair. Probably white-tailed deer. Doubt if they had the means to kill bears or panthers.”

  When Claire finally glanced away, she noted that Kris had narrowed her eyes and kept frowning at Hunter’s face as if forcing herself to remember it. She had claimed to be able to recall ancient faces, but she could just be memorizing his build or clothes as she had in college days. Claire sensed something else was also bothering her, so she looked where Kris was staring—at the part of the pelt over his chest.

  “Is there blood on that deer skin?” Claire asked, getting carefully on her knees to lean closer to the body. “I know the pelt is dark because of bog and tanning acids, but I see blotches. Maybe blood on his garment is a status thing too, because blood means so much in many cultures, especially in sacred and spiritual matters. Wouldn’t it be something if we could figure out some of their religious beliefs—if they had any?”

  “Let’s get him inside and do our usual exams,” Andrea’s voice cut in. “I’m sure Brad is waiting to see what we found, and he oversees artifacts like that dagger.”

  When Kris stepped forward to take the fourth corner of the plastic and the team lifted the body, the pelt slipped off his chest. Despite the brown skin and curly hair, they saw where the blood had come from—much more of it.

  Everyone gasped. At first Claire thought Hunter had been stabbed, but then she saw his heart was missing and long-dried blood bathed his entire chest and torso. She cried out as though she’d been hit in the gut, but Kris’s scream drowned that out, echoing over Black Bog.

  8

  The circle of the living stared aghast at the murdered dead.

  “Never seen that before,” Aaron said, sounding breathless. “Man! A sacrifice or an execution? And he holds that dagger, though it could have been put in his hand after.”

  Andrea, her voice very quiet, said, “That may not be the murder weapon but a sort of marker of his occupation or even his social standing. Let’s get him inside, then the three of you come back out and work on whoever has—had—that hand that’s reaching out toward him. Careful now. Let’s go.”

  Claire followed the strange procession. She felt as if they were going to a funeral. Her thoughts came fast and hard. Were they in a section of the bog where criminals had been buried? What about the woman next to him—if it was a woman? As many people as she had advised, as many cases as she had worked to understand and help the living, this one was starting to obsess her.

  Inside, the team laid Hunter on a stainless steel table that reminded Claire of the one she’d seen in the Collier County morgue. They kept the pelt, now askew, over his hips
and, under bright lights, bent closer to examine his ravaged chest. Even now his hand had not released his dagger, as if he still needed it for protection.

  Andrea called Brad on an intercom system which Claire had noted as well as the various security cameras. Then Andrea put on some sort of protective glasses. They must magnify, because her eyes looked huge. “When you go out again, be certain Hunter’s heart wasn’t anywhere in the excavated site,” she told the team.

  “We’ll look again while we disinter the woman,” Yi Ling said, “unless it’s a small man or a child. Should we bring a surgeon in for an opinion of what—what was used to cut into Hunter like that?”

  “No outsiders!” Brad’s voice boomed from behind them as he came in. “Claire is the last of this team until I say otherwise.”

  His tone of voice and assumption of authority surprised Claire, who figured Andrea had the last word on excavations here. As if the dig team wanted no problems from Brad, the three of them hustled back outside, though Claire noted that Yi Ling turned to smile back at Brad.

  “Any further observations, Kris, Claire?” Andrea asked, pulling on latex gloves.

  Claire said, “You’ve found no other burials with people maimed, maybe punished or executed? And that dagger—you said nothing else but crude knives have been found.”

  Andrea nodded as she reached out with gloved hands to try to take the dagger from Hunter’s hand. Claire held her breath, almost wanting to ask Andrea to leave it alone. He’d held it all these centuries, and it had meant something to him.

  “There!” Andrea said, wresting it away and lifting it toward the overhead light to study it.

  “I can’t wait to clean this and see what it reveals—to hold it,” Brad said, making Claire want to speak out again to tell them it wasn’t really theirs. She not only pitied this ancient man, but, strangely, wanted to protect him.

  Kris’s gaze met Claire’s over the corpse as Andrea placed the dagger in a metal tray and handed it to Brad. “Bog and blood clings,” she said, “but the blood doesn’t mean he hurt himself. People don’t tear out their own hearts, except emotionally, and that’s where you’ll come in on this, Claire.”