Chapter Thirty-Five: Discovery
A faint tinge of green along the horizon was all that indicated the coming dawn. A person would have to look carefully, to even see it.
Cho always looked carefully. He scanned the ground with his small Maglite, noticing spider web cracks in the dry earth. Too dry for footprints. There had been blood, early on, but now the soil was clean.
Cho walked swiftly, striding with the speed of someone much taller. Rigsby crunched along beside him – gangly, awkward and familiar.
They didn't say much.
When the sky began to bleed pale grey light, Cho took out his pocket-sized binoculars.
Far off to the right, something caught his eye. "I see something." He handed the binoculars to Rigsby and pointed. "Over there."
Rigsby squinted through the lenses. "I think that's just a rock…"
"The tall thing's a rock. There's something else underneath it."
"Oh, yeah, I see it…Can't tell what it is, though. Weeds, maybe?" Rigsby lowered the binoculars and glanced at Cho.
"Maybe." Cho was still gazing at the distant, unknown object.
"Could be a cactus," Rigsby offered.
Cho said nothing.
"Think we should go – " Rigsby started to ask, but Cho was already moving forward. Rigsby trotted to catch up. "Probably should check it out, yeah," he said, more to himself than anyone.
The closer they got, the more certain Cho became: It wasn't weeds. Or a cactus. The shape was dark, its uneven lumps oddly familiar. Years as an agent and a soldier had shown Cho many similar shapes – dead bodies, taped up inside plastic or carpet; human remains, shallowly buried in dirt or leaves, or else left out in plain sight, bloody and mauled.
Rigsby must have picked up on it, too, because at the exact same moment, both agents began to jog. By the time they could see the black of congealed blood, they were running.
"Jane!" Rigsby called out, his voice cracking on the word. It echoed through the desert along with their crashing feet as they arrived next to the body.
Rigsby took one look and immediately turned away. "Aw, God…"
Cho stood motionless and stared at the shredded mess. His heart was beating very fast.
"Is it – is it him?" Rigsby managed to choke out, still not looking.
Cho swallowed hard. "I don't know." He made himself look closer. The body was lying stiffly on its side. It was an adult male. Completely nude. The face had been mutilated…badly. Nose and lips carved off, eyes stabbed to pulp, scalp sliced away to reveal the white of skull. The teeth had been pulled out, and each finger had been cut off. Cho swallowed again.
Behind the dead man's ear, something fluttered. Cho leaned in, squinting. A tiny tuft of hair flapped back and forth in the breeze. Glossy, raven-black hair…
Cho exhaled shakily. "It's not him," he announced.
"Y-you sure?" Rigsby asked.
"Positive."
Rigsby turned around. His face had the same green tinge as the morning sky. "Thank God…" he breathed.
Cho nodded. "Yeah." Then he took out his phone to call in the gruesome discovery.
XxXxXxX
Agent Lisbon was good company – sharp as a brand-new hunting knife, and feisty, too.
Nick was glad he hadn't shot her on sight.
If she had ever met Officer Ryan Kelly face-to-face, there would have been no choice – just a quick squeeze of the trigger, a hole in that pretty forehead, and lady-agent brains, sprayed all over the dirt.
But, by her own admission, Agent Lisbon had only talked to Kelly over the phone. She didn't know that Ryan Kelly had beetle-black hair and the round, rosy cheeks of someone too young – and too happy – to be a cop. She didn't know that Officer Ryan Kelly didn't have a mustache.
These things had saved Agent Lisbon…for now. And she'd been useful:
It was Lisbon who'd given Nick the tip about Northeast, when he'd been going the wrong way. It was Lisbon who'd given him chips when his gut was aching, and warned him that the helicopters and dogs were coming.
It was Lisbon who would help him find Blowtorch and the kid. Then, Nick would kill all three of them, and finally be done with this pig's ass of an assignment.
Thinking of pigs and their asses made Nick think of Buck Hoskins. This whole bloody, charred, mutilated mess was Hoskins' fault – even more than it was Brody's.
Hoskins, the boss' best friend. Hoskins, the CEO who didn't even know how to delete a fucking file. Hoskins, the paranoid, sackless prick who kept insisting more people had to die to protect his filthy little secret.
If Nick ever heard that man's name again after today, he would spit on the ground.
Hopefully, some of it would hit Hoskins' shoes.
The job had started out simple enough: Put the fear of God in a man named Paul Jorsten. Make sure he never opened his mouth to anyone about some defective part.
So, Nick had followed Paul from work one day, cornered him behind a BP gas station, and put a knife to his throat. Nick told Paul every sloppy detail of what would be done to his wife and daughter, if he ever talked. Nick told Paul how he would be tied to a chair, with his eyes taped open, forced to watch as these sloppy details unfolded.
Paul took the warning to heart. He sobbed like a six-year-old girl, begging and promising. A wet stain darkened his khaki pants as he literally peed himself.
Mission accomplished.
When Nick said someone wasn't going to talk, the person wasn't going to talk. Period. It was good enough for the boss. But not for Hoskins – no, he kept calling at all hours, moaning about how Paul had fallen off the wagon, how he might let something slip, if he was plastered enough.
So, the boss had ordered a hit. Still, a pretty easy paycheck: Nick and Brode had tailed Paul to a bar called "Lucky's," hauled his drunken ass out into a nearby alley, and shot him in the head. No problem.
And yet, Hoskins still wasn't satisfied. Because how could they be sure Paul hadn't mentioned something to his wife, before he'd been killed? How could they be certain he hadn't left her a letter, or a note somewhere?
It wasn't long before Nick and his partner had a new assignment: Snuff the wife, and search the house.
It was overkill, and Nick knew it. If the lady knew anything, she would've already been singing. To the cops, to the media, to lawyers and anyone else who would listen. Eliminating her would draw unnecessary attention. He pointed these things out to the boss. The boss agreed. And yet…
"Could you just take care of it anyway, Nicky? As a favor to me?"
So, Nick went along with it. You didn't say "no" to the boss.
Now, twenty hours later, Brody's head was a pile of ash, two live witnesses were on the loose, and Nick was freezing his dick off in the middle of the desert. But all of that wasn't what made Nick want to shove a salad fork through Buck Hoskins' left eye socket.
No, the very last straw, that tiny little plant fiber that made the camel's spine go SNAP, had been the text. A simple, one-word message, sent from Hoskins' phone to Nick's:
"ABORT."
Scrap the mission. Screw the job. Cut the losses.
Nick's lips peeled back as he thought of his reply:
"LIKE HELL."
Nick didn't take orders from pigs' asses. Only from the boss.
Lisbon's phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. She answered, and Nick saw her face grow tense in the grey morning light. He couldn't hear who was on the other end, but he had an idea what the call was about.
After a brief, clipped conversation, Agent Lisbon instructed someone named "Cho" to keep her informed. Then she hung up and turned to Nick. "Two of my agents found a body, somewhere East of the Jorsten property. They haven't been able to make an ID yet, due to extensive mutilation of the face and hands…But they did determine that it isn't Jane…" Lisbon sighed shakily.
Nick stumbled over a rock in the sand. He quickly regained his balance. "How'd they figure that?" he asked, remembering to do the accent just right.
"There was a small amount of hair left on the scalp that doesn't match Jane's hair color."
Damn, Nick thought. Missed a spot.
"Well, that's darn good news," he said out loud. "I'm awful glad it's not him…Wonder who it could be, though..."
"Me, too," Lisbon agreed.
"Do you think there was a third perp, instead of just two?" Nick offered. "Like, maybe one of them turned on the other?"
Agent Lisbon looked uncertain. "Maybe…"
"I bet it was. It's just like those mafia gutter rats to stab each other in the back…" Nick was trying to think fast, now – throwing wet crap against the wall and hoping some of it would stick.
He hadn't expected them to rule out Blowtorch so soon. Based on Brody's description, Nick knew Mr. Jane was white and blonde. Nick had tried to cut off all the parts that didn't match: face and hair, fingers which could be printed and teeth which could be compared to old x-rays. Only DNA should've been left. DNA, which took forever to test.
But Nick had gotten careless, and now they knew the corpse couldn't possibly be Blowtorch. Plus, the body had been found to the East – the same direction Nick was heading when Lisbon first spotted him. She wasn't a moron. She had never met Kelly in person. If she asked Nick for a picture ID right now…
He searched her face for any hint, any sign that she was starting to catch on. Her green eyes were dark and serious, studying the landscape ahead. Nick didn't see suspicion in them, not yet, but it was coming. Like a black, rumbling cloud on the horizon, it was coming…
He started to reach for his gun…
"Look," Lisbon said suddenly, pointing into the distance. "Do you see that?"
Nick glanced up, and saw a distant silhouette, fuzzy and indistinct in the morning mist. Too large for a human. Too oddly-shaped for a building. "Probably just a rock formation," he told her.
"No," she insisted. "There's something else…"
Nick squinted. A thin, curved protrusion extended from one side of the rock like the archway over a gate, or the neck of a brontosaurus. Directly underneath, a smaller shape was huddled. A smaller, moving shape. Nick's heart quickened. "You're right. There's definitely something." And it wasn't a damn cactus, this time.
Agent Lisbon broke into a jog. "Jane?" she called out hopefully. "Jane!"
Nick trotted after her, careful to stay a little ways behind as he slipped Kelly's service weapon from its holster. The shape under the rock started to move more vigorously.
Lisbon ran even faster. "Jane!"
Nick lagged back, letting the gap between them grow. By now, he could make out two distinct shapes under the rock – one big, one small. Cool, swirling fog melted into solid detail, and Nick knew for sure: He'd found his long-lost witnesses at last…
Agent Lisbon didn't even seem to notice that Nick was no longer by her side. She had eyes for one, and one alone. The man on the ground waved at her. He was smaller than Nick had imagined. Frailer, somehow. Dark blood stained the man's hip and hand. There was a little bit crusted around one of his ears, and his face was white as bone.
He was smiling broadly.
A little redheaded girl was balled up next to him.
Nick watched Agent Lisbon drop to her knees beside them. She leaned in close and spoke in gentle tones, her hand going first to the man's hip, then his blood-black palm. Even from behind, Nick could see the tenderness in every motion.
Silently, he clicked off the safety and raised his gun.
So long, Agent Lisbon. It's been real…