Chapter LX
CHAPTER LX
Seeley made the call from the Swishers’ back porch, and within minutes a van was pulling into the Swishers’ yard. Seeley and the driver, Harry Acrement, were old associates. The two men had familiarized themselves with the storage equipment, but this was the first opportunity they’d had to put that knowledge to use. The cases were lighter than anticipated, as the children didn’t weigh very much. La Senora shadowed them every step of the way: from the basement to the van with the boy, then again with the girl, all the time whispering to them in a language unknown to Seeley, though he didn’t have to understand it to know what she was saying.
“You’re safe now. I’m here.”
AFTER THE VAN WAS loaded, now carrying two children in addition to a pair of mutilated human hearts in Ziploc bags, Seeley returned to the Marauder, la Senora beside him. He was tired but could get by on a few hours of sleep, and la Senora’s work wasn’t yet done. Also, it made sense to finish this part before Donnie Ray Dolfe became aware that the children had been seized.
They drove for twenty minutes—giving a wide berth to the roads around the barn, which were crawling with police—and arrived at a point a mile northeast of the Dolfe house. La Senora got out of the car, the tumi wrapped in an oilcloth, and started walking. Seeley lowered his seatback and prepared to close his eyes. Should the police stop to investigate, he was a businessman taking a nap to avoid crashing from tiredness, his car filled only with religious publications. If the Dolfes came knocking, he’d bluff them. If that didn’t work, he’d kill them.
Seeley tried to descry the woman, but she was already lost from sight.
Seeley dozed.
HE WAS WOKEN BY a tapping at the glass. Beneath his coat, his right hand rested on the butt of a Heckler when he did, he liked to be sure that whatever he hit was, unlike Christ, destined not to rise again. In addition, the H&K had suppressor-height factory sights, making it an ideal weapon to be fitted with a can, as now. If there was anything better than killing someone quickly, it was killing them quickly and quietly.
But he had no need of the gun, because it was la Senora returned. Even in the gloom, Seeley could see that her mouth was stained. He unlocked the door to admit her. In her left hand she carried one of the ever-useful Ziploc bags, this one containing a chunk of flesh. The heart, Seeley noted, appeared to have been gnawed, and the Marauder’s interior light revealed that the smudging on la Senora’s face was dark red. Seeley handed her a wet wipe and invited her to use the rearview mirror to clean herself. What was left of the heart he placed in a cooler box behind the passenger seat.
“How many did you have to kill?” he asked.
“Only him.”
Seeley was impressed. The Dolfes would have been on high alert after what had been done to Lucas, yet the woman had managed to enter and exit the house unseen, killing Donnie Ray Dolfe in the interim and extracting his heart. On the downside, they were leaving a chain of corpses in different states linked by the excision of an organ, and were about to add more to the tally. It wouldn’t just be Devin Vaughn and his associates trying to track them, or the police either, because the feds would soon become involved. It was too late to do anything about the remains of Emmett Lucas and Donnie Ray Dolfe, but Seeley decided it might still be wise to throw some smoke across the trail, both literally and metaphorically.
“We have to revisit the Swisher property,” he told the woman.
“Why?”
Seeley started the car.
“I want to burn their bodies.”