by Lisa Gardner
“About what?”
“Plenty of things. Their niece for one thing.”
“That poor girl—”
“That poor girl understands plenty.”
The sheriff frowned, caught her arm. “Did you talk to her? That why you grabbed her for the ladies’ room?”
“She can’t speak. That part seems true. But that doesn’t mean she can’t communicate. And she hears just fine. When you were running the Counsels through the round of questioning, I asked her to participate as well. One finger for yes, two fingers for no.”
The sheriff stared at her. “She could do that?”
“Yep. And get this, when you showed the picture of Jacob Ness—”
“Hang on. Ness died seven years ago. Even if he’d been around right before then, that girl would’ve been only a little kid herself.”
“Little girls have eyes and ears. Especially ones who get to spend their lives standing at the edge of a room, waiting to serve more tea.”
The sheriff still appeared uncertain. “She answered? When I showed the picture of Jacob, she answered?”
“She held up three fingers.”
“Three fingers? I thought you said it was one or two?”
“I know. Which proves just how smart she is. Her answer wasn’t yes or no. I think she made up a new code on the spot: three fingers for maybe.”
“That doesn’t tell us anything.”
“It tells us she knows more than the Counsels believe she knows. And it tells me I’m going to find a way to speak to her again. Alone. That girl needs us, Sheriff. I don’t know exactly what’s going on around here, but the discovery of these remains, it’s a beginning, not an end. And we’d better catch up fast, because you know what happens when old skeletons suddenly come to light? People get scared. Then new bodies have a tendency to drop. Something happened here. Something very bad. Real question is, is it over yet?”
CHAPTER 16
FLORA
IEXPECTED A KID AT THE ATV rental company. Instead it’s an old guy in a green flannel shirt, worn jeans, and sturdy hiking boots. He glances up when Keith and I walk through the door, takes in Keith’s obviously upscale urban wardrobe, and appears to do some quick math. Probably doubling the rental price for the cute tourist couple.
I thought Keith would start with the subject of maps. Instead, he smiles, lays on the charm, and plays the part of naïve out-of-towner with more money than common sense.
First question from owner-operator Bill Benson: Have we ever driven a four-wheeler before? We both shake our heads.
Okay, one ATV or two? Bill eyes me dubiously. He appears old school, as in women should be seen not heard, and definitely have no place operating any kind of motorized vehicle.
Keith wants to know about the ATVs first. Sizes, models, how comfortable for two. Hey, if we wanted to bring blankets, a picnic basket, does Bill have anything with storage, that sort of thing.
Bill takes us out back to peruse his inventory. A standard ATV can definitely hold two of us just fine. Or, given the scenarios both Keith and I are running through our minds, one driver plus one body strapped behind the driver. Three bodies seems a stretch to me, and I have no idea where you’d put a shovel, but then I see a compact trailer parked to the side, obviously meant to be attached to the rear of one of the ATVs. Probably intended for hauling leaves, lawn clippings, that sort of thing. But also perfect for dark deeds done at midnight. I can tell by the look on Keith’s face that he’s thinking the same.
Keith inspects each four-wheeler. He settles on one that looks exactly like all the others to me. And finally we get to the matter of where to ride.
Bill walks us back inside, where he unfolds a map of the surrounding area. There aren’t just ATV trails, there are hiking trails. Dozens, if not hundreds, looping all over the place. The myriad of dashed and solid lines reminds me of the subway map in Boston, except much more complicated.
“Now then,” Bill is saying, “these dashed lines are hiking only. Stay clear, not just because you don’t want to be running anyone over, but because most are too narrow. You could a hit a tree, really ruin your day.”
“The ATVs look pretty hardy to me,” Keith says. “What if we wanted to do a little off-trail exploration?”
“Oh, the machines are tough, all right. And this time of year, you don’t have to worry about mud. But you get off the trails and you start destroying plant life. People don’t take kindly to that. Besides, underbrush is dense in these parts. Bushes, mountain laurel, smaller trees. You can get stuck or lost plenty easy.”
“We’re actually staying over by Niche, but I didn’t notice any rental companies over there.”
“No, sir, we’re the only providers in the area.”
“So, if we wanted to rent the ATV for the day, explore closer to our hotel?”
Bill eyes Keith suspiciously. I stay quiet, studying the map and wishing it made more sense. I may have grown up in the woods, but I never used any kind of guide to roam my own backyard. I simply headed out, following deer paths, animal trails. I never knew where I was going, and yet I never felt lost. The more I roamed, the more the woods were my home.
By contrast, this overhead view of a mountain range, with solid lines for ATVs and dashed lines for hikers and curved lines for grade, seems like an overly complicated maze, designed not to show the way, but to get everyone hopelessly lost. I finally pinpoint Niche, then identify the dashed line indicating the trail we’d hiked up yesterday to the first body. How far up the dashed line we’d gone, how far off the trail the first body was, let alone the others, causes me a second round of confusion.
“What is this ATV trail?” I ask abruptly. I’d found a solid line that seems to be following some ridge above where we’d found the bodies. I study the map’s scale again, trying to understand distance from one point to another.
“That’s Laurel Lane. Some pretty views in the spring,” Bill offers. He looks at me, then Keith, then me again. There’s no way he hasn’t heard about the discovery of bodies in the woods yesterday. And given the location of the Laurel Lane trail in relation to the search efforts . . .
“We’re part of the taskforce,” I give up. “We came in with the FBI yesterday to assist with the search.”
Beside me, Keith nods.
“You don’t look like FBI.”
“I’m a computer analyst,” Keith volunteers. “I have experience calculating search areas.”
Bill grunts, seeming to accept Keith’s job description. Then his gaze goes back to me.
“I’m a victim advocate,” I say.
“A victim advocate? For bones?”
“Everyone needs a voice.”
Bill arches a brow.
I lean forward, whisper quietly. “As I’m sure you’ve heard, we found another grave yesterday.”
Bill appears intrigued in spite of himself.
“You ever travel Laurel Lane? Roar along on your ATV, enjoying a sunny day? Ever imagine what was in those woods? How close you might’ve passed to those poor dead bodies, each and every time?”
Bill swallows thickly.
“Hiking with a corpse is tough,” Keith speaks matter-of-factly. “The taskforce has been discussing it, and most likely the killer used some mode of transportation to haul the bodies to the burial sites.”
“How . . . how many girls?” Bill asks roughly. He drops his voice. “I heard a dozen.”
“Do you know this area?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am. Like you said, been on that trail many a time.”
“Could you get a truck on that path?” Keith asks.
“Too narrow. And like I said, the underbrush is thick along there. Not to mention, some times of the year, all rutted up. Be a risky trip.”
“How busy is this trail?” Keith points to Laurel Lane.
Bill shrugs.
“This time of year, weekends are our bread and butter. But weekdays are quieter. You never know, though. Daytime,” he ventures, “would be tricky for, um . . . well, what you’re talking about.”
“The ATVs have headlights for nighttime rides,” Keith says.
“Not the best, though. After dark, most riders wear headlamps, or you can clip on additional lighting. If you were going off trail, you’d definitely want some assistance.”
Keith takes the map. His gaze is thoughtful, as if all the squiggly lines speak to him. Clearly, he doesn’t want to give away too much information regarding the location of the graves, and yet there’s plenty the map alone can’t tell us.
“It looks like Laurel Lane is part of a whole network. You can access it from a number of different trails. How do locals do it? Trailer in the ATVs to one of these parking areas, then take off?” Keith asks.
“You can,” Bill agrees. “But plenty of folks just head out their front door. There are dirt roads not on this map, which connect with the ATV circuit. Some locals even have their own personal paths they’ve bushwhacked, leading to the network. Four-wheelers are popular around here. Lots of people own ’em, and they want to just take off, not be messing around with trailers.”
“You could trailer us in, though?” Keith asks.
“That’s generally what we do with groups. You pick the area, I take the ATVs, get you started. I can guide you, too, if you’d like.” Bill’s gravelly voice picks up. Talk of murder might make him uncomfortable, but clearly, the chance to be part of the action . . .
“Basically, you’re saying this map doesn’t show everything?” Keith presses. “There are dirt roads, personal paths, lots of other things going on which only the locals know about?”
“We don’t like to give away all our secrets,” Bill deadpans.
Keith doesn’t seem to know how to ask what he wants to know next. I don’t either. We’d walked the woods around the first burial site for hours yesterday, looking for animal dens and scattered bones. We’d never seen anything close to a trail.
“If there was a path, say, over a decade ago,” Keith muses finally, “but maybe it hadn’t been used for a while, how would we find it?”
“You don’t.”
“We don’t?”
“The mountain takes back its own. The woods don’t want to be cleared or groomed. Hell, it takes four different ATV clubs to keep these marked trails accessible. Work is constant and ongoing. Ask any landowner. You want to keep your yard, you gotta keep your yard.”
“So an old trail . . . would just return to the wild?”
“Yes, sir.”
In other words, Keith’s theory about an old, locals-only trail may be right. Or maybe even more personal than that—a trail once made by one person and known only by that person. Except this section of the Appalachian Trail was part of the Chattahoochee National Forest, not private property. So anyone who’d blazed a private path off the known byways would have to be someone with access. Maybe a park ranger, or local guide? It feels to me like the more we learn, the more the truth spins away.
“What do you think?” Keith asks me.
I understand the issue. We can’t keep asking questions without giving away too much. Were the graves accessible from the Laurel Lane trail on an ATV? There’s only one way to find out.
“I get to drive,” I say.
“Deal.” Keith pulls out his wallet. “We’d like to rent one ATV with transport to Niche. We’ll also need a map and helmets. Oh, and any kind of insurance you got. Maybe, make that double.”
CHAPTER 17
KIMBERLY
AS KIMBERLY QUICKLY LEARNED, EXCAVATING a mass grave was like emptying a bathtub one scoop of water at a time, keeping the water level even as you slowly brought it down.
Dr. Jackson liked to talk while she worked. “Now, if this were an archeological site, we’d start at the edge and dig ourselves in. But when you work a burial, you need to protect the grave itself, including the walls of the original pit which may yield tool marks we’ll want for evidence later. So what we’re going to do is start right in the middle. We’ll scoop off shallow amounts of dirt into buckets. Buckets will then be poured through a coarse sieve, then a fine sieve. Hopefully that will yield some interesting tidbits—buttons, jewelry, bits of fabric. A shell casing would be nice. But we also want flora, fauna, seed pods. We don’t know what we don’t know, so at this stage, anything left in the sieve is considered evidence.”
Kimberly nodded obediently, organizing their small crew into the human chain. Dr. Jackson took the lead, patiently removing shallow slices of dirt. Kimberly came next, holding up the bucket to receive each scoopful. Full buckets were passed down for sifting. Empty buckets passed back for refill.
Maggie roamed around them. Setting up the Total Station in select spots. Shooting data before bringing the toy to the next site, different angle.
The work was tedious and hot. Before long Kimberly could feel the sweat beading along her brow. She had to take a break and tie a handkerchief around her hairline. Dripping bodily fluids into a crime scene would definitely be in poor form. She noticed the others having to stop to do the same.
This grave, like the first, was not especially deep. Nor did it turn out to be particularly wide. Within a matter of hours, Dr. Jackson had fully exposed a tangled riddle of bones. Without the skulls for reference, Kimberly wasn’t sure she would’ve known she was looking at three bodies. It might have been six, maybe a dozen.
It was . . . heartrending. Three people reduced to a single cluster of bones.
Dr. Jackson called for a water break. The woman had a kerchief around her head and her neck, both heavily stained with sweat. When the forensic anthropologist straightened, Kimberly could hear the woman’s back crack, could see her wince.
“Definitely not in the lab anymore,” the doc said grimly, extracting herself carefully from the grave.
“Have you worked a mass grave before?” Kimberly asked as they headed to the edge of the woods, where the rest of their team had already gathered in the shade and were greedily sucking down liquid.
“Too many times. Rwanda. Central America. Many forensic anthropologists donate time working international cases. The countries where some of the worst genocides have taken place don’t have the resources to process their own sites. They rely on the international community to lend a hand.”
“I thought . . . I thought it would be easier to make out each body,” Kimberly said. She noticed the others were eavesdropping shamelessly on their conversation.
Dr. Jackson shook her head. “Mass killers don’t like to work any harder than they have to. Some even make their victims dig their own graves. In this case, looks to me like one small ditch was carved into the earth. Which, given the amount of bushes and tree roots, couldn’t have been an easy task. Then, the bodies were dumped in. Over time, the skeletons collapsed into the jumbled pattern we’re seeing here.
“Now, there are a couple of factors we can already consider. We’ve removed most of the dirt from the grave, and there’s still no trace of clothing.”
“Like the first grave,” Kimberly said.
“Exactly. I’ve also noted the first pelvis. Definitely female. Based on a quick glance, I would guess they all are.” The forensic anthropologist sighed heavily.
Kimberly nodded, taking another swig of water and feeling those words like a weight in her chest. Four murdered girls. All dumped on one mountainside, and dead so long not even a memory of flesh remained. Good God, what had been going on around here?
“Can’t tell you time since death. That’ll take some quality time with my mass spec back in the lab. Clearly, we’re looking at older remains, but are these two sites five years apart, a few years apart, a few months apart . . . that’s going to take some analysis.”
“Three bodies in one burial site is unusual for a serial pr
edator.”
“Can’t say I’ve run across that before myself. We already got an interesting find in the first sieve, as well.”
Kimberly hadn’t worked the sifting process so she looked at the doctor.
“Appears to be a slender piece of plastic tubing,” Dr. Jackson explained. “The size and diameter reminds me of medical equipment, say a cannula used for an IV.”
“Seriously?”
“Again, this is premature. But we also found a dirt-covered strip of adhesive. Like the kind used to tape an IV to the back of a patient’s hand.”
“There are possible medical supplies in this grave? No clothes or signs of restraints but medical supplies?”
“Like I said, gotta get back to the lab.”
Kimberly stared at the doctor. She honestly didn’t know what to make of such findings. A mass grave had been strange enough. But a mass grave where one of the victims may have received medical treatment?
Kimberly heard a sound in the distance. A low splutter, turning into a throaty growl as it grew closer. Instantly, she and the rest of the team were on their feet.
Closer. Louder. Roaring. Clearly some kind of vehicle approaching where no vehicle should be.
Kimberly drew her sidearm.
An ATV came crashing through the bushes. Two riders, both wearing helmets, pitched forward as the vehicle careened sideways then lurched to a sudden stop. Kimberly lined up her Sig Sauer on the driver just as the person opened her visor and Kimberly found her gun pointed straight at Flora Dane’s forehead.
CHAPTER 18
D.D.
ARE YOU TELLING ME that didn’t bother you?” D.D. asked.
Sheriff Smithers had just pulled into Niche’s town office. Now he killed the engine, stared at her. “What?”
“That girl. The way the mayor and his wife treat her. She’s just a kid. She should be in school, not working as a maid.”