Stone Groove Page 9

  Chapter 18

  Dale leaned toward the rock. There were tiny letters scratched in the corner, so small he couldn’t read them.

  He knelt down, getting closer. The letters were about half an inch tall. They read:

  Dale’s stomach sank. This couldn’t be good.

  He stepped away from the tree, tore off his sunglasses and looked upward. The brick wall of the building loomed over him. It was dizzying. He squinted in the sunlight and shaded his eyes with his hands. At first he saw nothing.

  Then he noticed something. Small shapes on the top of the building, peeking just over the edge. Barely visible. He narrowed his eyes but couldn’t make out what they were.

  He ran into the road. A pickup truck honked at him, and he skidded to a stop as it veered to miss him. The driver spat some colorful words as he regained speed. Dale went to the opposite sidewalk and looked to the top of the building again.

  Now he could tell what it was he’d seen. Feet. The feet of four people wearing Marshall Village attire. They were standing on the very tip of the building, their toes over the edge.

  “Oh my god.”

  Dale instantly went into a full sprint and crossed the road once more. He ran down the Jefferson Street sidewalk and burst through the front door of the building into a busy lobby. People in dress clothes were milling around, going about their business. Several of them stopped what they were doing and looked at him in frightened confusion.

  Dale came to an abrupt halt and scanned the lobby. At the far end of the room was a single set of elevator doors with a large group of people waiting. That wouldn’t do. He needed a staircase. There were some office doors, a set of restrooms, and a front desk with a receptionist, who stared at him suspiciously. Then he saw a door for a stairwell in the corner of the lobby.

  He bolted toward it.

  On the opposite side of the room, Dale saw someone moving toward him. It was a security guard. He was a tall black fella with muscles bulging through his dark, police-style shirt. Dale also noticed a set of killer sideburns that ran all the way down to the man’s jaw line. He was momentarily jealous.

  The guard threw himself in Dale’s path just as he was about to make it to the door. “Sir, is there something I can—”

  Dale pulled out his badge and pushed the guard down in one continuous motion. “Federal agent.”

  He threw open the door and rushed to the stairs.

  The security guard barked behind him. “Hey.”

  Dale bounded up the steps two at a time. His footsteps echoed loudly up and down the stairwell. As he made it to the second-floor landing, there was a banging of a door below him. He glanced down.

  The security guard had entered the stairwell. He looked up at Dale. “Stop!”

  Dale continued to race up the stairs. He was quickly to the third floor. Then the fourth.

  Below him, the security guard was still pursuing, a determined grimace on his sweat-covered face.

  By the fifth floor, Dale was winded. But he reminded himself of his purpose—the people on the roof. He was nearing the top. The door to the rooftop entrance was within view.

  He grabbed onto the handrail and pulled himself up. Just as he reached the door, he was suddenly yanked backwards. A strong hand grabbed him by his shirt and threw him against the wall. A jolt of pain ran through Dale’s back. The guard stuck a forearm against Dale’s throat.

  “What exactly do you think you’re—”

  “I’m a federal agent,” Dale said. “You have people standing on the edge of your roof.”

  “Let’s see some I.D.”

  “There’s no time.” Dale moved for the door, but the guard yanked him back.

  “Get it out.”

  Dale frantically dug his badge out of his pocket, fumbling with it in his anxiousness.

  The security guard looked at it. His eyes lit with recognition. “Department of Justice,” he said before his voice turned suspicious. “But what the hell is the Bureau of Esoteric Investigation?” The guard lessened his grip on Dale.

  Dale snatched the badge back. “Will you just unlock the goddamn door? There are people out there.”

  The security guard looked uncertain for a moment before conceding. “Okay.” He turned around to face the door and grabbed a six-inch key ring from his belt—then stopped abruptly. “Uh-oh.”

  “What’s wrong?” Dale said.

  “I have the key to the door lock, but I don’t have a key to that.” The guard pointed to a chain and padlock wrapped around the push bar. “We didn’t put that there.”

  Goddammit, it was another little ploy from the kidnapper. These creeps always liked to make their situations as elaborate as possible.

  For about two seconds, Dale was at a loss for what to do next. Then he pushed the security guard behind him. “Stand back.”

  Dale pulled his Smith from its holster, aimed at the door—

  “No!”

  —and fired. There was a terrific roar from the shot. Both men ducked instinctively to avoid a ricochet.

  The security guard opened and closed his jaw, trying to pop his ears.

  Dale looked at the chain. The bullet had shorn a shiny groove into one of the links. Nearly severed but not quite. A tiny bridge of metal, less than a sixteenth of an inch thick, held the link together. “Let me see the door key.”

  The security guard searched through the keys on his key ring and found the right one. He handed it to Dale. The ring was still attached to the guard’s belt via a retractable cord, and the guard stumbled as Dale pulled toward the door.

  Dale unlocked the door and disengaged the push bar so that the chain was the only thing holding the door shut. He took a step back and gave the door a strong kick. A jolt of vibration went through the sole of his boot and all the way up his leg. But the door didn’t open.

  He looked at the guard. “Little help?”

  The guard stepped beside him.

  “Okay,” Dale said. “Three … two … one.”

  They both kicked, and the door flew open with a crash, smacking loudly against the wall outside. Their momentum carried them forward, and they stumbled out onto the gravel of the building’s roof.

  The bright sunshine was jarring, making Dale squint. Then he saw them. They were on the opposite end of the building, four people wearing Marshall Village clothing and standing on the very edge of the roof.

  Chapter 19

  The security guard stepped next to Dale.

  Two men and two women. Their backs were facing Dale as they stood on the parapet surrounding the roof, perfectly still with their arms at their sides. Up this high, the light breeze had become a wind. The woman on the end had waist-length hair, and it tossed around her violently, a light brown cocoon wrapping her small frame.

  Aside from the sound of the wind, Dale detected other noises coming from the ground below. Shouts, fearful screams. A crowd. The Marshallites had drawn gawkers.

  He slowly walked toward the people, about thirty feet away, trying to make as little noise as possible on the gravel covering the roof’s surface. He holstered his revolver.

  “Folks?” he said.

  The woman with the long hair turned around. Her feet wobbled for a moment as she moved. Dale grimaced and reached out feebly with his hand. His heart thumped in his chest.

  The other Marshallites remained motionless, looking out to the distance.

  The woman was in her mid-thirties. She looked through Dale with a blank, mile-long stare. Her arms remained at her side. As the hair whipped around her face, her blue eyes appeared for brief moments.

  “He told us someone would be coming,” she said. Her voice was flat.

  Dale continued to inch toward her. Slowly. He didn’t want to spook her. She and the other three had been brainwashed. Just like the girl back in the hospital, this woman’s mind was in someone else’s pocket.

  “Who told you this?” he said as he took another slow step toward her.

  “The Man in Black.”
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  The girl from the village had said the same thing. Over and over. The Man in Black. Father and the Man in Black. She had said that they were the only two who could speak. Back at the Collective Agricultural Experiment, Glenn Downey, the one who called himself Father, was the only one who was allowed to speak. The Marshallites, however, were under the influence of two men. Somehow that seemed even more sinister.

  Dale watched the woman’s face. It remained completely still, like the rest of her. She had the look of a waitress on the eighth hour of a nine-hour shift, but there was still strength to her face, though, a sort of resilient beauty.

  There was the wail of police sirens from below.

  “Why are you doing this?” Dale said.

  “He told us we must.”

  Dale was getting closer and closer. “I’m here to help you down.”

  “He told us you would say that.”

  Dale was within feet of her now. He reached out toward the woman. “Why don’t you just step down, okay? Take my han—”

  “STOP!” the woman screamed in a tone that rang in Dale’s ears. “You can come no further. The Man in Black wants you no closer than a yard from us.”

  Dale glanced back at the security guard, who looked just as confused as Dale was. He shrugged his big shoulders.

  “Why?” Dale said to the woman. “What did the Man in Black tell you to do?”

  “If you wish to stop our descent from the building, he wants you to decipher this.” She slowly raised her arm. In her hand was an index card.

  Somehow Dale knew there was going to be another riddle. As he took the card from her, it caught in the wind, nearly blowing away. He gasped.

  A single word was written on the card in black marker, and it was written in the same scratchy handwriting that had been on the stone and note back at the village:

  “You are to decipher that note,” the woman said. “If your answer is incorrect, we shall take the final descent.”

  “Decipher? I don’t understand.”

  The woman didn’t respond. She simply turned back around and faced the same direction as the other three people.

  From behind, the security guard yelled out. “Enough of this.”

  Dale looked back just in time to see the guard rush toward the people.

  Without turning around to look, the woman again shrieked. “STOP!” She stuck one leg out over the edge of the building.

  There was screaming from the crowd on the street below. Dale grabbed the guard by the arm as he ran by and yanked him back. The large man’s momentum nearly pulled both of them down. Dale gave him a vicious look.

  “Wait,” Dale said to the woman as he pushed the guard behind him. “Wait. Just please put both feet back on the ground.”

  “Decipher the note,” the woman said.

  “I will,” Dale said. “Put your foot down. Please.”

  The woman slowly lowered her leg back onto the parapet.

  There was a loud bang from behind, and Dale jumped. The door to the stairwell flew open, and three cops ran out onto the roof.

  “Go,” Dale said to the guard, motioning toward the cops.

  The guard nodded and ran to the door, his arms up, urging them to stop.

  The police wouldn’t be able to help. Dale knew just how deeply these people on the roof had been hoodwinked. Brainwashing was a powerful thing. The only way to get these folks down was to play the kidnapper’s game.

  He had one shot at saving them.

  ORCA. His mind went into frantic overdrive. Orca’s only use in the English language was for the whales. Orca whales. Killer whales. Death. But what was the damn connection?

  There had to be a tie to the Dare Stones and the Lost Colony. Dale was no marine biologist, but he figured that even though killer whales had a large range, sightings off the modern-day North Carolina coast would be rare. And, besides, if the Roanoke colonists had spotted one, it seemed the sort of thing they’d leave in the historical record.

  “Your time is running out,” the woman said, still not turning to face him. “Make your decision.” She extended her leg away from the building again.

  The crowd below screamed.

  The answer to the riddle would be subtle. Something to do with the word itself. Nearly all taxonomical names were derived from Latin, and though he didn’t have the scientific name in front of him, he could hazard a guess that orca derived from the whale’s genus name, which itself would have been derived from the name Orcus. This was a Roman god of the underworld, the one who dealt punishment for broken oaths. But the name Orcus—like that of the king of the underworld, Hades—could also be attributed as the name of the underworld itself.

  The death theme could be the kidnapper’s sick way of telling Dale what was planned for the rest of the hostages—reinforced by the four people prepared to jump from the roof.

  “We are to give you but a minute,” the woman said. “Your time is almost up.”

  The remaining three Marshallites stuck a leg out over the edge of the building.

  More screams from the crowd below. Dale heard footsteps approach from behind. The cops had seen enough.

  Orcus = death. Could it be that simple? Of course, the kidnapper wasn’t alluding to whales, but was a Roman god really the answer? Certainly death could be a connection—the potential death of the hostages and the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists—but was that a strong enough connection? It just wasn’t gelling in Dale’s mind. It felt off.

  He looked at the note. ORCA.

  “Ten seconds,” the woman said.

  Seconds. He had seconds left.

  The letters? Maybe it could be an acronym. Original Roanoke Colonists … Attacked? Yes, that fit. Being attacked by Indians was one of the possible fates of the original Roanoke colonists.

  Dale felt a tingle of hope. But in his last moments of remaining time, he had to double-check. Rearranging the letters, perhaps. If he put C first it might—

  There it was.

  Of course. CROA. The unfinished second CROATOAN message that the Roanoke colonists left behind. The colonists may well have fled to Croatoan Island.

  ORCA = death. CROA = survival.

  “C-R-O-A. Croatoan!” Dale shouted. “The unfinished second message of the Roanoke colonists!”

  There was an agonizing beat as the four people continued to stand with their legs extended. Finally, in unison, they all retracted their legs, turned around, and stepped down onto the roof.

  Dale released his breath, which came out choppy and hoarse. He hadn’t realized that he was holding it.

  A cheer came up from the crowd below.

  The cops rushed past Dale toward the Marshallites. Dale looked at the security guard and took another deep breath. The guard nodded at him respectfully.

  When you barge into a corporate headquarters, accost a security guard, fire your weapon within city limits, and talk four individuals out of suicide, there’s a lot of paperwork. If there was anything more loathsome in the world than paperwork, Dale had yet to encounter it.

  When he was done with that detestable task, he found himself back outside the Norfolk and Western headquarters. He looked down Jefferson Street, to the corner and the tree where he had been standing earlier. He saw the stone with the writing on it. All during the fiasco with the people on the roof, a thought was sitting in the back of his mind—there will be another riddle on the underside of that rock.

  A second stone. A second riddle. Back at the library, he’d learned that there had been forty-nine Dare Stones altogether. If the kidnapper decided to follow that pattern, this assignment could damn well kill him.

  He walked down to the tree. When he picked up the rock, he found that, unlike the one in the Marshall Village, it appeared to have been buried recently. The kidnapper would have known that he couldn’t count on a stone remaining buried for years under a tree in the middle of a big city.

  He ran his finger along the letters making the Look up ↑ message. The handwriting—or
would that be stone-chiseling?—was the same as that of the other messages so far. He turned it over and brushed the dirt from the bottom.

  As he expected, there was another riddle.

  The riddles were getting easier. He had seen this before. The creeps who left taunting riddles started by making them difficult for the police but, fearing they were going to completely confuse them and thus end the game, eventually panicked and made the clues easier.

  Thus far everything connected to the story of the Lost Colony and the Dare Stones. The only royalty involved in those tales were Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.

  And, conveniently enough, there was a city named for the latter. Raleigh, Virginia.

  A car skidded to a stop beside him. Dale grabbed the stone and stood up.

  Wilson hopped out of his station wagon and hurried over to him. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” Dale said, still looking at the stone.

  Wilson glanced at the chaos surrounding them. The crowd hadn’t entirely dissipated, and the police and firefighters were still loitering.

  “Can’t take you anywhere, can we?” Wilson said.

  Chapter 20

  Dale’s feet pounded into the pavement, and his legs burned as he took another one of Staunton’s steep hills. He sucked in a deep breath and cleared the top. He was in the downtown area, a picturesque region of pretty brick buildings, lampposts, and Southern charm by the bucketful.

  Staunton was one of the most offbeat places in his old stomping grounds. In 1902 it became an independent city, so despite still being the county seat, it was no longer a part of Augusta County. Unlike other Shenandoah Valley towns, Staunton came out of the Civil War relatively unscathed, and there were buildings in town dating back to the eighteenth century. Staunton had a dark side, too, as it was home to Western State Hospital, a one-time lunatic asylum that had been under the command of infamous eugenicist Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, a place of lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and forced sterilization. Staunton was also well known for being the birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson.