He moved across the snow between the cabin and the wooden steps leading up to the observatory, feeling both excited and nervous about the imminent reunion with his former mentor. He suddenly felt vaguely ridiculous and ashamed that he had his gun in his hand. Professor Douglas wouldn’t know that his old student was an FBI agent now. His best approach would surely be as a friend and colleague. He reached the foot of the steps and slid the gun back into its holster.
“Professor Douglas?” he called up, his voice a little high and much too loud in the muted silence. “It’s Joseph Shepherd. Remember me? You brought me here once when I was a grad student.” His words echoed back from the surrounding trees then faded away. He listened for a response, a movement.
Nothing.
“I’m going to come up now, okay?” He took a step, making it a heavy one so it could be heard. “I just want to talk.” He continued upward, stamping the snow from his shoes as he went, his eyes fixed on the closed door at the top of the stairway. He could hear something now, low music from inside the shack, and Shepherd smiled as he recognized it. It was from The Planets suite by Holst. The professor had played it that long-ago summer, switching tracks depending on which planet they were observing. The track playing now was the final piece: “Neptune, the Mystic”—slow and mysterious, the tinkling harp and shivering violins a perfect sound track for the frigid night.
He reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto solid stone that was slick with ice. A breeze was blowing the snow from it and singing in the steel cables that anchored the corners of the cabin to the rock. It was on odd place to build a cabin, high and exposed like this, but the rock provided the perfect, solid platform for stargazing. Even ground vibration was hugely magnified by a telescope, so with the windbreak of the cabin and the high elevation and solid base of the rock, Douglas had created the perfect backyard observatory.
Shepherd moved carefully across the stone, the music getting louder with each step and building toward the climax, the eerie voices mixing with the instruments like a spectral choir. It was loud enough to explain why the professor might not have heard him approach.
“Professor.” He rapped a knuckle on the door. “It’s Joseph Shepherd, remember me?”
The ethereal voices were his only response, chilling him along with the cold then melting away as the track ended, leaving him alone with the whisper of the wind and his pounding heart. He leaned in close to the door, listening through it, willing it to open or a familiar voice to invite him in from the other side. He jumped as the music started again, loud and urgent, the ominous stabbing strings of “Mars, the Bringer of War” suggesting that whatever the music was playing on was set to repeat.
Shepherd reached out, twisted the handle and opened the door.
A large telescope dominated the space inside. It was set on a heavy-duty tripod with electric motors hooked to a laptop on a table beside it, the screen displaying the piece of sky it was currently pointing at. A cell phone was plugged into it as well as some small speakers from which The Planets suite was booming out. He took a step inside and the door started swinging shut behind him. Then he saw the figure from the corner of his eye.
He spun around. Douglas was in the shadows, his arms stretching out, his head hanging forward. Shepherd gasped and stumbled backward, reaching for his gun as his eyes adjusted and the shadows took form. Professor Douglas didn’t move. He couldn’t. His hands were pinned to the wooden walls, blood running thick from spikes in his hands and a deep gash in his neck, mouth bound, eyes open and staring at the floor. Shepherd hit the back wall with a sound that recalled the one he had heard from the road — like someone hammering nails into wood. Then he saw the writing scrawled in blood on the wall.
HERETIC
73
Shepherd fumbled for his phone, gun pointing at Douglas, “Mars, the Bringer of War” still booming from the speakers. Eyes wide, his adrenaline-sharpened senses sucked in everything: the curtains of blood from the hands and throat—so much blood—the slash and spatter of the writing on the wall, the slump of Douglas’s body, the way the weight of it pulled grotesquely at the flesh where the spikes had been driven in… steam rising up from the dark pool on the stone floor.
His numbed fingers closed around the phone in his pocket and he raised it to his face, not wanting to risk dropping his sight or the gun. His eyes flicked to the screen, found Franklin’s cell phone number and dialed. He held the phone to his ear, his breathing rapid, eyes scoping out the rest of the cabin from over the top of his gun.
Nothing was disturbed, there had been no struggle. The kill must have been fast and deliberate, efficient even.
He stared at the body, almost disbelieving the violence it spoke of.
The phone connected.
“It’s Shepherd.”
“You find him?”
“He’s dead. Throat cut. Nailed to the wall.”
“Jesus. What’s your situation?”
“Scared shitless.”
“Good. You in cover?”
“Yes. I think it only just happened.”
“Why?”
“The blood. There’s steam coming off it. I saw tracks in the snow. Thought they were his. Tracks leading into the forest. There was a car too. Parked on the road.”
“Did you get the plate?”
“No. I didn’t think it was anything. Just someone broken down.”
“What about make and model?”
“It was a station wagon, nothing fancy, an old Volvo, I think. It had a baby seat in the back.”
“Color?”
“Yellow, white. Hard to tell in the light.”
“Okay, that’s good. Don’t do anything. Stay in cover, do not try and be a hero. Hunker down, sit tight and I’ll send the local cops to you. Keep your phone on so they can follow the locator, okay?”
It clicked in his ear and Franklin was gone before Shepherd could reply.
He felt alone and scared, the loud and ominous strains of “Mars” not helping at all. He was shivering from cold and adrenaline, the open hatch in the roof letting the cold of the night pour in on top of him.
He stared at the body, forcing himself to breathe more steadily and see it through the eyes of a professional assessing a crime scene.
There was something very deliberate about it all. The spikes in the hands were large, not the sort of thing you would find lying around; the killer must have brought them with him.
Shepherd tried to picture him coming here through the snow, nails and a hammer jingling in a bag, knowing he was going to do this.
He was already building a profile. Had to be a man because of the strength required. Douglas wasn’t a big guy but he was big enough. And it looked like his throat had been cut last, while he was already pinned to the wall, the arterial spray and blood flow all centered on his current position. How much strength would you need to do that — nail a struggling guy to a wall? Too much for one person. Two people then, maybe more.
Shepherd squatted low and moved closer, heading for the middle of the floor where the telescope stood. Anyone out there watching would have seen his head pass by the window as he recoiled from his initial sight of Douglas. The thin wooden walls of the shack wouldn’t stop a bullet if one came, so he kept low and out of sight.
The music was frightening and oppressive now and he glanced at the laptop. He wanted to turn it off so he could listen for exterior sounds but knew if it suddenly cut out then anyone out there would know exactly where he was. He should wait for the track to end at least, then it wouldn’t be so obvious.