Free Steel Breeze by Douglas Wynne Page A

partner
and I are going to need a tour of the grounds. Will you ride with us?”
    “Of
course.”
    “Sheriff,
did your men check the barracks replica for evidence?”
    “Clean
as a whistle. The beheading wasn’t done here. And if the head belongs to your
victim, then my understanding is there aren’t any other missing parts…are there?”
    “No,”
Drelick said, “but whoever put the head on the tower wanted to frame it for presentation,
to send a message or make a symbol out of it. And unless you’ve combed this
entire square mile, there may be more to the message that we’ve yet to find.”
    “I’ll
get a team together with some dogs,” the sheriff said.
    “Mr.
Abath, have you or your fellow rangers found any foreign items in the park this
morning?”
    “Beg
pardon? Foreign? ”
    Pasco
said, “A machete would be good, but she means anything . A hankie, a food
wrapper…litter.”
    “No
sir, but people do leave offerings at the graveyard all the time. We don’t keep
track of what’s left there from one day to the next.”
    “Take
us there first,” Drelick said.
    The
cemetery was at the southwestern edge of the site, beyond the gardens and the
signs marking where the hospital and children’s village had once stood. It was stark,
little more than a barren lot corralled by a fence of bark-stripped tree limbs
in an X pattern. A few small circles of stones were the only indicators that
six bodies were buried there. The desolate, snow-dusted Sierras dominated the
horizon like a decaying animal jawbone under the cobalt sky. In the foreground,
flanked on three sides by squat, rope-threaded posts, a three-tiered white
marble base culminated in an obelisk with black-painted kanji characters
carved into its face. Clusters of origami cranes hung from strings and huddled
in the shelter of the monument, their bright colors incongruous with the somber
desolation.
    “What
does it say?” Drelick asked, pointing at the kanji characters.
    “ To
Console the Spirits, ” Abath replied. Gesturing at the cranes, he said, “These
are the offerings. People leave the origami birds, coins, rocks…all sorts of
little trinkets. Hmm…. Haven’t seen that before.” He bent down to pick
up a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from the marble base, but Drelick seized
his arm.
    “Could
have fingerprints,” she said. She snapped a couple of photos with her phone
while Pasco produced a latex glove and a Ziploc bag from his coat pocket. Drelick
scanned the horizon and said, “The glasses were facing east, toward the watchtower.”
    “What
do you think that means?” asked Pasco, zipping the bag shut.
    “Maybe
nothing. But Lamprey’s driver’s license says he wore glasses. We should find
out if they’re his.” She circled the obelisk, and when she came around the
south side, her jaw went slack. “Ranger Abath, do you speak Japanese?”
    “That’s
why I got the job.”
    “Can
you read it, too, or do you just have that inscription memorized?”
    “Both.
I mean, yeah; I can read kanji,” he said, following her around the side of the
stone slab and seeing the scarlet brushstrokes there. “Holy shit, is that
blood?”
    “What
does it say?”
    His
Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “ Shikata ga nai .”
    “And
that means?”
    “It’s
kind of a famous saying around here. It means, it cannot be helped .”
    “What
can’t be helped?”
    “Anything.
Everything. The internees used to say it to express their resignation. A more
literal translation might be, ‘It must be done.’”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 7
     
     
     
     
     
    Desmond put on
the Beatles CD as soon as they got in the car so he wouldn’t have to spend the
entire drive answering questions about where they were going and what it would
be like. He usually flipped the rearview mirror down so he could glance up and
see if Lucas was getting into the music or nodding off to sleep, but today the
mirror stayed up and he found himself looking