Jason Bull leaned against one of the angled walls, looking like he was about to collapse.
“Are you okay?” Amaia murmured as she passed him.
Bull looked down. “No. How could I be? Five girls, for Christ’s sake.”
Dupree turned to him. “Six, including the girl on the stairs. He was taking her somewhere. It looks like they were cleaning up.” He pointed to the male corpse by the door. The man was slumped against the wall in a sitting position and appeared to have been killed not long before. “They must have argued. Probably because the girls were dead. I think this one was killed by the one downstairs.”
Charbou examined the corpses one by one. “Is there any way to find out if Jacob’s sisters are here? Do you see any way to identify them?”
Johnson grunted. “They’re somebody’s sisters and daughters. Isn’t that enough? They’ve been dead for a couple of days at least. No way to tell exactly. They probably died of dehydration in this heat. They didn’t get food or water,” he said, looking around. “The temperature has been unbearable since the hurricane. Heat accelerates decomposition, so it’ll be difficult to determine time of death.”
“Since Katrina,” Dupree said, leaning over a body. He studied Johnson. “Step aside.”
Johnson moved back, and Dupree pulled a body across the floor so that it lay face up. She must have been about thirteen. Dark skin, shoulder-length curly black hair. She wore a pink blouse with red stripes tight against her pubescent breasts. With the greatest of care, Dupree put one of his hands over the other, positioned them over the child’s diaphragm, and pressed as if starting CPR. The little girl’s mouth opened and emitted a sort of sigh. A white-and-pink froth covered her lips.
Bull and Charbou covered their mouths and noses, reacting to the odor.
“They drowned,” Dupree said. “Right here.”
Charbou placed a hand on Johnson’s shoulder. His voice was rough, especially compared with the intimacy of the gesture. “I didn’t mean these victims aren’t important. But we have no way of knowing how long they’ve been here. But we know Jacob’s sisters were carried off from NOLA on the night of the hurricane. We got this far trying to track them down, so I’d really like a clue, any clue at all, that suggests they’re still alive.”
Johnson rose. “You’re right. Jacob told me Diana was grounded because she’d dyed her hair at a friend’s house without getting their parents’ permission. She put red highlights in it. All these girls, including the one downstairs, have black hair.”
“Thanks,” Charbou responded.
Johnson made a gesture that seemed almost an apology for what he was about to say. “But we don’t know how many girls our whistler already removed.”
Amaia had gone to the far end of the attic space. She squatted where the slanted roof met the floor to survey the room from that perspective. The waterlogged pallets along the walls seemed to have been hardly displaced at all, but the girls’ bodies were scattered. They weren’t grouped as if they’d huddled together in fright, which they surely must have. She returned to the center of the space and put up a hand to touch the marks showing the height the floodwaters had reached.
“They got up on the table,” she said, lifting it by the broken corner and holding the table balanced upright. “They must have been terrified when water started flowing under the door. It was pitch dark. There’s no fuel here for that lantern, so the whistler must have brought it with him. They got up on the tabletop. They heard the storm shaking the building, and meanwhile they were totally in the dark as the water rose, first to their ankles and then to their waists and then to their chests. Terrified prisoners taken from their homes and then battered by Katrina.”
She’s coming.
“A young girl has no idea who wants to hurt her and who wants to save her. How can she know?”
63
THE FOREST AND ITS MASTER
Elizondo
Ipar padded along beside the girl. She’d said nothing to him for a long time, and that was strange, because she usually spoke to him constantly. He saw her sluggishness and perceived her exhaustion, the way her little body was trembling and the gradual slowing of her heartbeat as her body temperature fell.
When they’d last stopped to rest, Ipar had come to her to offer his warmth. The girl had leaned against him, too drained even to embrace him. She’d stayed like that for a long time, drowsing, half roused by each thunderclap, only to fall again into that deadly lethargy. Ipar barked until she stirred at last. He insistently pushed his nose against her until he finally got her to rise.
Lightning filled the sky, revealing a twisting trail down the mountainside.
“Let’s go, Ipar,” Amaia managed to whisper.
They began to work their way down the steep slope, through the thick, low bushes that crowded the forest. Ipar again caught the scent of the lurking presence that seemed to have always been hovering just out of sight. That unseen figure had regularly moved ahead of them and holed up in the darkness to wait. Each time they got on the move again, so did their unknown watcher.
Ipar heard a soft whistling sound from the densest stretch of the woods. His ears perked up and he listened intently. It was calling him. The girl tried to stay on the path, but she was exhausted. Cloaked in darkness, Ipar nudged her onto a different course through the thicket.
If they’d thought they were in darkness before, unable to see anything, the wild foliage provided evidence they’d been mistaken. The forest closed about them with every step they took, blocking out even the intense flashes of lightning overhead but providing them an arboreal refuge, for the trees grew so close to one another that only an occasional drop of rain fell from their tops. Their unknown pursuer remained outside the forest proper for the time being. Ipar detected a couple of relatively dry, comfortable spots at the feet of the largest trees, and he guided the girl to one. She sank into her forest bed almost as if arriving home.
Ipar stationed himself at her side in the darkness. That’s when he caught the unmistakable scent. He was surprised not to have detected it earlier, although the place was rife with forest smells, including mushrooms, berries, earth, and leaf mold—a perfect symphony of odors.
Basajaun. He must have been there the whole time, for Ipar recognized his scent from distant memory, a revered spirit lost in time. Ipar, from a shepherding race and the offspring of working dogs, had spent his first seven years in the mountains. He knew he’d encountered this presence before. He had no way of determining if by direct experience or if—like so many things he knew and perceived—the knowledge had been transmitted to him in the genes of his race of proud shepherds.
Basajaun was there in the forest with them, and unlike the herald that stank of hunger and anxiety, basajaun was untroubled. He moved slowly, partly because of his size but even more because of his nature. His breathing was deep and cavernous, perfectly calm, just like his spirit. Ipar knew this viscerally, instinctively. Ipar was certain he’d heard those whistles before with their reassuring message that the lord of the forest was watching over all.
Amaia’s border collie settled down, calm for the first time since they’d wandered away from the hiking trail, for he sensed the master of the forest breathing serenely among the great trees. Ipar remained concerned, for the girl was far from well. Ipar pressed himself against her, trying to transmit his warmth, but especially to let her know he was still there, for even asleep she shuddered, agitated by a terror that denied her rest.