Save the Manatee!
(June 7, 2015)
3: Trail of Death
And at about the same time that Mabel was writing her letter . . . .
Stanford Pines had kept his old lab beneath the Mystery Shack, partly out of sentiment—it had been his first privately-owned, self-funded laboratory—but mostly from inertia, laziness, and a tendency to become distracted. Though he thought that Dipper had more similarities to him than Mabel, he did share Mabel's butterfly trait of flying a zigzag mental course, one problem leading to something that took him off track to speculate about something interesting.
Still, when he wanted to focus his mind, he had learned to do that with the intensity of a large magnifying glass bringing the sun down to earth to light a campfire. And though he did not think of it as a lab, or as his own, Fiddleford McGucket, in moving the married Stanford and Stanley into the generous guest suites, had also told Ford to take over the former guest parlor, a nicely-appointed, paneled room, as his own if he wished.
He had so wished, and that morning he stood in front of a giant-sized corkboard, five feet tall and ten wide, that he had arranged to block the parlor's one window. This time he didn't want to be distracted, and too often looking out of a window in Gravity Falls could give you a glimpse of a soaring Pteranodon, a whizzing flying saucer, or—conceivably—a sinuous dragon flying upstream to spawn.
Ford stood studying the oversized map of the western USA. And the pushpins and the yarn connecting them to each other and to the notes off to the left side. These tended to be on the cryptic side:
San Diego, Jan 30—David Fortescue Mattson, 35. Throat slashed. Found floating in bay 4:00 AM (apprx). ID'd Feb 4 (FBI fingerprints). Reported missing Jan 29, did not return from road trip to Mex. Automobile still missing. Last seen crossing border from Mex. Had a passenger, ID'd as G.A. Friel, address Chicago. No leads.
Los Angeles, Feb 11—Aliete Manolo, 28. Stabbed, throat slashed. Found dead in National Forest, est. time of death Feb 3-4. Body damaged by scavengers. Last seen alive night of Feb 3. Worked as waitress in all-night diner, left job at midnight. One witness thought she had a man as passenger. Car found abandoned off Hwy 166 in Los Padres Natl. Forest, Feb 12.
May 3-6—Susan Flowers Blurchard, neé Susan Flores, dies in Sisters of Charity home, Palo Alto, CA, of lymphatic cancer, body claimed by priest. May 6, Washoe County NV, off Hwy 34, W. of Black Rock Desert: NV dep sheriff Tomas Machado investigates smoke column, finds burned-out hut or mobile home, 2 badly charred bodies inside, one male, one female. Female ID'd as Susan Flowers Blurchard. Male still unknown. Both bodies show signs of human-inflicted wounds. Some tire tracks in sand ¼ mile from house, not ID'd. Q: What the hell?
From the Journals of Ford Pines: Sunday, June 7. For some time now, I have been wondering whether the troubles are truly over, the ones that began (as far as I know) with the cursed CD cover that brought the T'klatlumodh to Gravity Falls, allowing the creature to prey on Wendy Corduroy.
I have the sick feeling that they are not, that the human monster behind the sending is somehow searching for Wendy, to what end I do not know. I have been tracking a series of brutal murders. Since January 1 I have collected accounts of nearly two dozen. Most of them obviously do not concern the case—they are murders of passion, or in one case evidently a Mob execution. But at least five, and possibly six, may have some connection to the T'klatlumodh and its unknown master.
The general pattern of these murders (or in the case of Susan Flowers, of the taking and mutilation of her dead body—why? Some magic ritual? NOTE TO SELF: Must research. Call Helving in London tomorrow morning.)
Where was I? The general geographical pattern seems to come up from San Diego to Los Angeles to the Bay Area and then east to Nevada. However, my latest information seems to indicate that the perpetrator—if indeed one person is behind these horrors—is coming northward, toward Oregon or Washington State and may even be near already.
I am torn about whether to warn the family. Stanley, of course, must be told. But Mason and Mabel? Wendy? In a way she certainly has a right to know if she is in fact still in danger. However, I don't want to involve the young people before I am sure.
I must be sure.
Closing the Journal, Ford stood up and studied the map. He pushed one more pin in, this one in Las Vegas, where a woman's body had been found, throat cut, in a hotel room rented by a Mr. Friel. Of interest to Ford was the fact that the police team had found a sheet of hotel stationery that had slipped behind the wardrobe. Someone had drawn on it, with pencil and a red ballpoint, an odd sketched figure.
He scribbled a notation on a large yellow sticky note: May 23. Hotel maid discovered body of Gloria "Bee" Beedlebin, 24, in suite rented by "George Friel." She had been murdered, body nearly drained of blood. Friel's passport and driver's license found in a metal basin, burned almost beyond recovery. FBI reports they were undoubtedly forged. Contd.
On the second sheet of the note: L.V. police located a Mr. Franklyn, who said he had played poker with a man named "George Black," seems to be Friel under another alias. "Black" won a substantial amount of money, in cash. No trace of Friel/Black has been found. However, on May 22, body of Luís Cardova, truck driver, found in his rig, driven into desert and abandoned. Throat cut. Suspect same killer.
Higher on the map, Ford stuck another note: June 1: Sheriff Blubs obtained for me a copy of the drawing found in "Friel's" hotel room.
He turned to his desk and picked up that drawing. It was . . . a circle, divided into ten pie-wedges. A Futhark rune had been drawn—in red—inside each of the ten. Seven of them had been circled.
And, again in red, someone had written below the Zodiac a chilling note:
7 in Oregon.