The Loch Ness Legacy tl-4 Page 12

  The woman strode up to Tyler and shook his hand warmly.

  “Sorry to see you again so soon, Tyler,” the woman said.

  “Likewise,” Tyler said.

  The woman turned to Brielle and held out her hand. “Special Agent Melanie Harris.”

  Brielle took the proffered hand. “Looks like you know each other.”

  “Tyler and I have worked together before.”

  Brielle made a mental note to ask about that later.

  “The FBI certainly got here quickly,” she said. “Maybe somebody believes it was Victor Zim after all.”

  “There’s more to this than I’ve had time to explain,” Tyler said cryptically, “so I thought it would be a smart idea to bring Agent Harris up here.”

  “It’s good you did, too,” Harris said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the secondary crime scene. I want you to see something.”

  Brielle thought the agent meant the Blazer crash, so she sighed and got into the back of the SUV next to Tyler, ready to go over her story one more time. But other than a few direct questions, the FBI agent remained silent. She had obviously been briefed about the incident on the way up.

  They drove the same fire road on the west side of the lake, and Brielle’s mind flashed back through her earlier ride. But when they reached the scene of the crash they didn’t stop. Brielle could make out the blackened frame of the Blazer surrounded by crime scene investigators collecting evidence.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “There was an explosion and fire reported about two hours ago,” Harris said.

  “I know. We heard it and saw the smoke. I assumed it was the Blazer.”

  “They happened around the same time. The other fire was at a compound about ten minutes from here.”

  “It might be Zim’s base,” Brielle said. “Where they were taking me.”

  “That’s what we’re hoping Tyler can tell us.”

  The SUV wound through the woods until it approached a gaggle of fire trucks and police cars, their flashing lights splashing the forest with blue and red. A state trooper waved them down and then let them pass after checking IDs.

  They continued down a gravel road to a clearing in the trees. Brielle could see firemen hosing down several structures. The blazes were out but wisps of smoke were still visible. Three of the structures seemed to be the remnants of large wooden buildings that had been burned to the ground. The fourth had the footprint of a trailer home scattered across a huge swath of grass. Thousands of pieces of steel, glass, and melted plastic littered the ground.

  They got out of the SUV and Harris led them toward the pile of debris.

  “What do you think that is?”

  Now Brielle understood why the agent had wanted Tyler’s expertise.

  Tyler squinted at the wreckage and walked around it to get a look from several angles. Finally, he said, “Well, they did a pretty good job at blowing it apart, which means they didn’t want anyone to know what it was.”

  “Any ideas?” Harris asked.

  Tyler shook his head. “It’s too jumbled. We’ll need to get the pieces back to our facility and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I’ll get a team up here to collect it all, which will take a while. We could find pieces up to a quarter mile away, depending on how powerful the blast was.”

  Brielle looked at the twisted wreckage and then at Tyler. “You’ll reconstruct this like you did with the metal rig in Norway?”

  Tyler nodded. “We do it all the time with downed airliners. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle.”

  “Except you’re missing the picture on the box.”

  “That’s what makes it a challenge.”

  Harris pointed at the wooden buildings, now reduced to ashes. “It might be more than we get from those.”

  “Agent Harris,” Brielle said. “I think Zim and his men abducted Wade Plymouth, a friend of mine. We work together.”

  Harris referred to a notebook. “Yes, I got a short briefing about you on my drive here. Can you tell me more about your investigation?”

  “Wade and I were hired to discover the location of a small crate found in Germany that may have been related to the Holocaust. Using the information provided to us, Wade tracked the owners of the crate here. The last text I got from him was from a bar in Lyman, and he had learned that Carl Zim was planning an attack from a base near Oslo. That’s how we found Carl’s compound in Norway.” Fanatical right-wing sentiments had been growing in Scandinavia over the last few years, so Norway wasn’t an unlikely place to find extremists.

  Harris glanced at the burned-out buildings and said, “We’ll do what we can to find Mr. Plymouth. Let’s hope he can tell us more.”

  Brielle could see the agent was going through the motions. She didn’t think Wade was still alive.

  A yell came from across the clearing. “We’ve got a body!”

  Brielle swallowed hard. They hurried over to the site, where policemen had gathered around two firemen kneeling to examine the corpse. All Brielle could see was that the clothes had not been burned. Her heart raced, knowing that there was only one person Zim would leave behind in his mad scramble to vacate the compound.

  “Where did you find it?” Harris asked.

  One of the firemen looked up. “It fell out of the tree. Practically landed on top of me. Must have been caught in the explosion and got tossed into the branches. A leg and arm are missing.”

  “Turn him over. Brielle, this might be difficult, but we need to know if this is Plymouth.”

  Tyler took her gently by the arm and guided her forward.

  The firemen turned the body face up, and Brielle gasped when she saw the face of an elderly man, his skin wrinkled and blotchy. She had to blink and look a second time, but she’d recognize the features anywhere. The scar across the bridge of his nose confirmed it.

  “Is that him?” Tyler asked.

  Brielle nodded in a stupor.

  “Are you sure? This man has to be over eighty. He was an investigator with your company?”

  Brielle nodded again more firmly. “I’ve known Wade for fourteen years. That’s him, but…” She trailed off, not quite believing her eyes.

  Tyler looked at Harris and then back to Brielle. “But what?”

  “I met Wade when we were in the same class at university,” Brielle said, the words struggling to emerge from her suddenly parched throat. “He’s thirty-four years old.”

  TWENTY

  Alexa sat next to Grant in the passenger seat of his Tahoe as they crawled along with the traffic on the I-90 floating bridge toward Mercer Island. She didn’t fidget, cry, rant, or moan. The most vocal she got during the ride was a couple of sighs. She had shed some tears of relief and shock on his shoulder at the crime scene before the police arrived, but she had composed herself and delivered a detailed account of events to the investigators.

  Grant was surprised at how well she had recovered from nearly being kidnapped, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. After all, her brother had gone through much worse without blinking. It had to be a Locke family trait.

  “How are you doing?” Grant said, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. They were still sore from the fight.

  Alexa sighed again. “Oh, I’m okay, but I’m worried about Mike. He’s crazy, but he’s a good guy. They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?”

  If they haven’t already, Grant didn’t say out loud. “They must have followed him to the market, to get one of you.”

  “And if you hadn’t come to find me, they would have taken both of us.”

  “You can thank Tyler for that. He’s the one who figured out that Zim is still alive.”

  “Zim wasn’t there, was he?”

  “No, but those had to be his men.”

  “How could he have men working for him? He just broke out of prison. And why would they be interested in Mike or our search for the Loch Ness monster?”

  “You said Dillman thought someone
broke into his computer and downloaded his files on Nessie.” Every time they mentioned the Loch Ness monster, Grant had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.

  “That’s what he told me,” Alexa said, “but I can’t guess why Victor Zim would want them.”

  “Maybe Zim thought your connection to Laroche could lead back to him. You said Laroche sent you an email a few days ago. Could it be related?”

  “The FBI didn’t seem to think so. I sent them all my correspondence with André, so I guess they might find some clue. But the last email I got from him was odd. Well, odder than usual.”

  “In what way?”

  “It was really rambling, like he was drunk or something.” She pulled out her phone. “Here. I’ll read it to you. Even the subject line is weird. It says, ‘Play the opening of the Fifth,’ with ‘Fifth’ capitalized. He’s a fan of classical music, so I was surprised when the email wasn’t about Beethoven.”

  She started reading.

  Subject: Play the opening of the Fifth

  Dear Alexa,

  You must continue our search no matter the obstacles. You of all people should know that doubling the degree to which you work is important to reaching our goal.

  At times the creature has been said to resemble a sea serpent, a water horse, a kraken, or a plesiosaur. Dinosaurs are extinct, so the key is in the cells of animals still living.

  Hydrophis spiralis, hippopotamus amphibius, and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni are all good candidates, but it can’t be any single one of those.

  However, if you add the structures of these creatures together, that is how you’ll find the Loch Ness monster.

  I wish you good luck and Godspeed.

  André

  “What’s all the Latin about?” Grant asked.

  “Those are species. Hippopotamus amphibius is just what it sounds like, a hippo. Hydrophis spiralis is the largest species of sea snake. And Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni is the scientific nomenclature for a colossal squid.”

  “Colossal squid? Is that the same as a giant squid?”

  “Different species, and even bigger than Architeuthis. Only a few specimens of Mesonychoteuthis have ever been caught, but the speculation is that they can grow to at least forty-five feet long.”

  “The Kraken.”

  “Exactly. These squid rarely venture near the surface, but when they did, imagine a fifteenth-century sailor’s reaction to seeing one of those floating next to their ship. Remember that Columbus’s vessels were only fifty-five feet long.”

  “They’d be quaking in their boots that it would pull their dinghy to the bottom.”

  “Right. So together that’s a water horse — the ancient Greek translation of hippopotamus is “river horse”—a sea serpent, and a kraken.”

  “You mean that Laroche thinks the Loch Ness monster is some unholy mashup of those three animals?”

  “I don’t know. He’s certainly eccentric, with his unwavering belief in Bigfoot and Nessie. But he also took a very scientific approach to finding them. That’s why he said he hired me. I’m beginning to think he’s onto something.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe in the Loch Ness monster now.” Despite the video evidence, Grant just couldn’t buy that there was a dinosaur living in present-day Scotland.

  “Unless some elaborate hoax was played on me, I can’t dismiss what I saw.”

  “But how can that kind of animal live in Loch Ness all this time with no one ever getting a good look at it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that ever since we captured that video,” Alexa said. “I have some ideas. First, the lake is rich in peat moss runoff from the surrounding countryside, so it’s virtually impossible to see more than a couple of feet deep. Even sonar has trouble resolving echo signatures. Anything swimming under the water is essentially invisible, and it’s a big lake.”

  “How big?”

  “It’s twenty-three miles long, a mile wide, and up to seven hundred and fifty feet deep. It contains more freshwater than all the lakes of England and Wales combined.”

  Grant nodded. “That sounds big enough to hide a monster if it wants to stay hidden. What’s another reason for the spotty visual record?”

  “I don’t think Nessie is an air breather.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would have to come to the surface so often that it would be spotted regularly.”

  “So that rules out a dinosaur,” Grant said.

  Alexa patted him on the shoulder. “That’s right! I’m impressed.”

  “That I know reptiles breathe air?”

  “Some people think plesiosaurs are fish. You’re a man who knows his biology. That makes you even hotter.”

  She chuckled, and now Grant didn’t know if she was teasing him or not.

  “What else?” he said.

  Alexa got a faraway look in her eye, as if she were picturing the creature in her mind. “I’d also bet Nessie is nocturnal, spending most of its time foraging at night.”

  “But you saw it during the day.”

  “At dusk. We might have caught it just as it was beginning to feed.”

  “On what?”

  “That’s a tougher question. The loch isn’t exactly rich with fish. There’s an annual salmon migration, but during the rest of the year, some biologists have calculated that there’s simply not enough biomass to support a breeding population of large creatures in the loch. If my size calculations are correct, Nessie could weigh two tons or more. Multiple creatures would empty the loch of food in months and starve to death.”

  “So it doesn’t exist? I’m confused.”

  “I tend to agree with a theory espoused by some other Nessie hunters. It could be a single animal. Specifically, a sturgeon.”

  “As in beluga caviar?”

  “Right. Most photographic evidence of the creature is completely false. The famous surgeon’s photograph from 1934—you know, the one showing what looks like a plesiosaur rearing its head next to Urquhart Castle? — most analyses show that to be a hoax, which was corroborated by someone claiming to be in on the prank.”

  “I’m shocked,” Grant deadpanned.

  “But the sheer number of sightings is hard to dismiss, and a sturgeon fits all of the parameters I’ve named. It’s a bottom feeder, so it would rarely be seen at the surface, especially during the daytime. They can grow to well over four thousand pounds. And they are called the Methuselah of fishes because they can live a hundred years or longer.”

  “It’s not a native species, is it?”

  “Not in Scotland, no.”

  “So how did it get there?”

  “Who knows? Maybe some visitor to Russia brought breeding stock back with him and dumped it in the loch. André would be so disappointed if it turns out to be something that mundane.” She looked down at the mysterious message on her phone. “It’s as if he were trying to tell me something but had a few too many before he wrote the message.”

  Grant had Alexa read the odd email again as he exited the highway onto Island Crest Way on Mercer Island, one of Seattle’s wealthiest suburbs. They were on the way to Laroche’s lakeside estate, where Tyler, Brielle, and Harris were planning to meet them.

  “I’m worried about him going missing like this,” Alexa said.

  “I hate to tell you, but Laroche might be one of the bad guys.” Since Alexa was now caught up in the aftermath of the Eiffel Tower plot, Grant explained that Laroche was the prime suspect responsible for funding the attack. He left out the part about his exposure to the chemical weapon.

  “That can’t be true,” Alexa said, shell-shocked by the news. “He may be an odd duck, but he’s not a mass murderer.”

  “His mother was Jewish. The Muslim countries think he’s in league with the Mossad to assassinate their leaders.”

  “And what do the Israelis say?”

  “They deny it, which is exactly what the Muslim countries would expect them to say.”

  “Maybe he was kidnapped like Mike
was.”

  “Or he’s gone to ground because he knows he’s been implicated in the attack. He’s got enough money to make it happen.”

  Alexa shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Not André.”

  The sadness in her voice made Grant’s heart sink, almost as if she were readying herself for the inevitable. She was a trusting soul. It was like he was watching innocence lost.

  “We’ll find out what happened to him,” he said. “I promise.”

  Alexa grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks.”

  Grant turned down a heavily wooded lane that took a steep decline toward the western side of the island. They wound through the twisting streets until the navigation system announced they’d arrived. All that was visible was a white iron gate with a speaker box. Grant pulled up and pushed the intercom button.

  A woman with elegant diction replied. “May I help you?”

  “Grant Westfield and Alexa Locke.”

  “Oh, yes. Please park to the right of the fountain. I’ll meet you at the door.”

  A buzz sounded, and the gate swung aside.

  Alexa crinkled her lips. “Fountain?”

  “You haven’t been here?”

  “No. Just to his office downtown.”

  The driveway curved as it descended. When the forest parted, it was as though they’d emerged through some kind of wormhole into the French countryside. Laroche’s mansion was built in the style of a French chateau, with ornate accents along the eaves, three cylindrical towers topped by needle-sharp spires, and a steeply pitched slate roof.

  “This is where Laroche lives?” Grant marveled.

  “Why? Have you been here before?”

  “No, but I’ve seen it. From the lake, every year when I come down to watch the hydroplane races from my boat. We call it the Disney Castle.”

  “It does look like where Cinderella might live,” Alexa said. “Of course, after she marries her Prince Charming.”

  A six-car garage sat to the left of the circular masonry driveway that wrapped around a twelve-foot-high fountain.

  Alexa peered at the geysers spouting from the waterworks. “I know I’ve seen that before.”

  “The fountain?”

  “Yes, but I can’t remember where.”