Part 90 (1/2)

”So that's why you have to involve a geneticist in an endangered animal trafficking ring,” Sanchez says, as she and Brown begin packing up the camp. He has more stuff than she does, but he is folding it all away exactly as if he intends to move on and never come back to this little clearing. ”Because it's not just trafficking in endangered animals. It's genetically engineering imaginary ones?”

”That's all I've got,” Brown says. ”Figure the octopus is an escapee. It might be as happy here as an invasive anaconda is in the Everglades.”

”But that's not illegal,” she says. ”I mean, people used to create unicorns by surgically altering goats, didn't they? What's to stop them from doing the same thing with an octopus? I bet plenty of people with more money than sense would buy one. So why do you keep it secret that you're making them?”

h.e.l.l, she thinks. I would buy one. If I had the dosh, because you know something like that doesn't come cheap.

From the expression crinkling his face, he's thinking the same thing. Maybe even word-for-word. ”Because some people will pay top dollar for something when they thing it's un.o.btainably rare.”

”But it's cryptozoology. Who's gonna believe in a tree octopus?”

”So,” he says. ”Do you know what all the weird animals that live in Malaysia are?”

”Oh.” She hadn't even thought of that. Whatever somebody will pay for a cool genetically engineered pet, there's some collector who would pay ten, twenty times more for an authentic wild-caught Pacific Tree Octopus. Klopft isn't just engineering a cool new pet. He's forging a criticallyendangered species. ”That's f.u.c.ked up.”

Brown smiles again, like he likes her. He reaches out and taps her shoulder, too. ”And you know it. Come on, Sanchez. Now that I have you for backup, there's something I want to try.”

He won't tell her where they're going, but as they stride along deer trails, having hidden the bulk of their gear, he does tell her to watch out for traps.

”Like punji sticks and tripwires?”

”Like wire loops and deadfalls to kill squirrels.” He points, carefully, leading her gaze to a flat rock balanced across a triangle of sticks. It's set just a little off the trail. ”They're tricky to set, and it would be rude to trigger them. Not to mention the potential damage to your toes.”

”Ow,” Sanchez says, feeling the tingle of imagined pain. ”So why was your guy setting traplines?”

”Not my guy,” he says. ”They started showing up about a week and a half ago. But I haven't had the chance to follow them back. Now that you're here-” He shrugs. ”Two are better than one.”

”I'm not armed,” she says.

He gives her a sideways glance. ”You've got eyes.”

Indeed she does. And because she's looking for traps, and still scanning the trees for signs of a murder scene, she spots the bright gouge in an umbertree-trunk, just a little above head height.

”Brown,” she hisses, instinctively dropping her voice.

He hears her and freezes. ”Yeah?”

”Look here.” She gestures to the tree.

His long face smooths out with surprise. ”That looks like a bullet hole.”

”I know,” she says. ”How about that?”

Sanchez doesn't have her camera anymore, but Brown is armed. He photographs everything she suggests, and a few other angles besides, while she examines the scene. There are, in point of fact, two bullet holes, though somebody has dug out one of them.

”Why only one?” Brown asks.

Sanchez holds up the second, pinched between a pair of pliers. ”Because we're supposed to figure out which gun this one came from.”

”And not the other?”

She drops the rifle bullet into a plastic baggy. ”Bingo.”

She examines the litter along the line between the two scars. Halfway through, she finds a spatter of blood, dark droplets that by chance struck a peeled branch and so stand out, even three weeks later. She calls Brown over.

”d.a.m.n,” he says. ”That looks like a crime scene to me.”

”I know,” Sanchez says. ”Just doesn't it?”

Some of the trails Brown leads Sanchez down are so narrow-so negligible-as to be more the concept of a trail than the actuality. They must be made by deer. The trails wind inconveniently through rhododendron stands, forcing Sanchez and Brown to duckwalk. They plunge down steep clay banks and scramble up mossy slopes. Deer apparently had not yet developed the technology of the switchback.

Leaf-mold compresses spongily under each footstep, except where bare wet earth wants to shed her footsteps entirely. Sanchez and Brown go single-file. She learns to watch where he places his feet and imitate him.

A half-day hike brings them to the edge of a clearing, or at least a gap between the trees. Sanchez's personal idea of clearing includes visible sky; perhaps this is more a glade by those standards. Whatever it is, the overhanging boughs bower and shade a little ramshackle cabin that-by virtue of its lack of straight lines and s.h.a.ggy lichen-covered exterior- almost vanishes among them.

Brown holds out an arm to stop her, but she's already paused, one foot still half-lifted, her right hand pressing aside a whippy branch.

”d.a.m.n,” says Brown. ”Do you suppose anybody lives here?”

The door of the cabin is wedged open, one home-made hinge broken so it droops to the ground on the outside corner. They approach cautiously, Sanchez taking point because she is unarmed except for her hiking stick, and if something jumps her Brown has a better chance of taking the a.s.sailant out. It's Sanchez's own plan-but that does nothing for the cold p.r.i.c.kles spidering up and down her neck-some of which have to do with the ease with which she has found herself trusting Brown.

For all the hammering of her heart, however, the cabin lies empty, humming with a cold abandoned air. An overturned pail beside the woodstove has spilled palm grubs across the rough concrete pad-but they are freshly dead, Sanchez judges, which means somebody brought them in here in the last day or so. A pair of small beds sit against one wall, the covers rucked up into dirty, damp-looking squirrel nests sized for big dogs or human children. There is no place in the cabin that anything bigger than a rabbit could hide.

”Clear?” Brown asks from the doorway.

”Clear,” she answers.

He enters, gives the room a once-over, and crouches by the door to examine something. For her part, Sanchez steps closer to the woodstove, drawn by a smear on the floor.

”Partial footprint,” she says. ”Somebody squashed a grub.”

”Pair of men's boots,” Brown says. ”I'm pretty sure I've seen these on Darwish. Look like they haven't been touched in a while.”

”There's a gunrack over the stove,” Sanchez says. ”There's no gun in it. It's less dusty than some of the other stuff over here. Also, this stove hasn't been well-cleaned in a while-”

”I think there should be a couple of kids here.” Brown rattles drawers and a chest. ”There's some toys, and kid-sized clothing. Say an eight year old girl and a ten year old boy?”

Sanchez turns. ”You have kids?”

”Grown now.” He sighs. ”Their mom and I split up when they were about this age.”

”I'm sorry.” She turns her head and studies the peeling bark on the rough and ready doorframe. ”I'm divorced, too. My ex is a cop.”

He straightens up, tight graying curls brus.h.i.+ng the crumbling boughthatched roof. ”Sorry to hear it,” he says-the low-key sympathy of somebody who's been there, and knows firsthand the ident.i.ty-shattering wreck of a failed marriage. ”How long?”

”About a year,” she lies.

”Any kids?”

She shakes her head.