The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  The Buried

  Also by Kathryn Casey

  The Sarah Armstrong Mysteries:

  Singularity

  Blood Lines

  The Killing Storm

  The Buried

  True Crime:

  In Plain Sight

  Deliver Us

  Deadly Little Secrets

  Shattered

  She Wanted It All

  Evil Beside Her

  Possessed

  Murder, I write

  A Descent into Hell

  Die, My Love

  A Warrant to Kill

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE BURIED. Copyright © 2018 by Kathryn Casey.

  EPUB Edition

  All rights reserved.

  For information contact: kc@kathryncasey.com

  www.kathryncasey.com

  First Edition: November 2018

  In honor of Tim Miller and the Equusearch volunteers who dedicate their lives to finding the missing.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Half-Title

  Also by Kathryn Casey

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  The Buried

  KATHRYN CASEY

  One

  Concealed in the shadows, the man and woman waited impatiently outside the quaint white clapboard church. From inside, the strains of a muffled hymn filtered out, a familiar verse that recalled a simpler era. “Yes, we’ll gather at the river. The beautiful, the beautiful river. Gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God…”

  “Some of ’em need singing lessons, bad,” the man mumbled. Tall and angular, his jaw thrust forward, his dark, deep-set eyes cold. Threadbare overalls drooped at the knees, and black grease streaked the front of his torn white cotton T-shirt. The diminishing end of an unfiltered cigarette dangled from his mouth, the ashes glowing each time he sucked in a breath.

  “What they need is a new song. My great-granny used to sing that one,” the woman responded. Bobbing her head and throwing her arms about, mimicking a conductor leading an invisible choir, she hummed a muted and off-key rendition of the spiritual’s chorus. Ten years older than the man, the woman was in her late thirties. Her scruffy brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail, pockets of skin bagged under washed-out blue eyes ringed in fine wrinkles, more than one would expect at her age.

  The man rewarded her with a rueful grin, then grew worried and waved at her to stop. “Shush now. We better hunker down.” With that, he dropped his cigarette on the dirt and mashed the stub with his foot. “Dry out here. Wouldn’t want to start a fire,” he said, followed by a short series of muffled puffs, a stifled laugh.

  Inside the church the singing ended, and the congregation milled about as they reclaimed their belongings. The nearly empty bowls and platters once held potato salad, three bean salad, a glazed ham, a bright red gelatin mold with strawberries and whipped cream, and a golden baked pecan pie.

  As the others prepared to leave, Pastor J.T. Wilson, tall and balding, stood off in a corner with Edith Mae Whittle. Round in a flowered cotton dress, in her mid-seventies, her dull gray hair was anchored in a stern bun. Edith Mae’s eyes washed with tears as she confided her troubles.

  “I understand your concerns,” Pastor Wilson whispered too quietly for the others to overhear. “But you can’t change other people. Beau is what Beau is, and he’s not going to change. Not until he accepts the Lord, focuses on earning a throne in the hereafter.”

  “I know, Pastor Wilson, but –” the woman protested. She stopped when Wilson gently placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “Let’s do what we can, Edith Mae. Let’s ask the Lord for help for your boy.”

  The old woman wearily nodded. They dropped their heads and closed their eyes, as Pastor Wilson murmured a prayer. The others took notice and headed toward the door to give them privacy. They’d nearly all done it themselves over the years, singled out the pastor after or before services, shared their woes, and relied on him for support.

  In a clearing surrounded by towering pines, Lord’s Acre Baptist sat on a squat hill, and the women in their sensible shoes filed out the front door and picked their way down the loose gravel parking lot as they departed Wednesday evening services. Their husbands followed, and the families chatted like old friends. In small groups, they shared their week’s triumphs and worries – a recent layoff, a newly diagnosed heart ailment, and concerns over an elderly parent’s failing health.

  “Oh, I know that’s hard! If you need any help…” one woman could be heard saying.

  “I think we’re okay, but thank you,” another responded. “Always so good to have folks to rely on.”

  Watching the scene from behind a thick-trunked oak, the intruders lurked. “You’d think they’d wanna get home, turn on the TV or somethin’,” the man whispered. “They must’a had enough holy rollin’ by now.”

  The woman gave him a lopsided smirk. “Some people never run out of stuff to prattle on about.”

  As they talked, one of the churchgoers turned toward them. John Anderson heard something, and worry bunched his forehead into a tight knot.

  The two in the woods saw Anderson move forward, and they drew back behind the tree trunk, concealed in the nascent darkness. Just after sunset on a stifling hot August evening, their surroundings hummed with the buzzing of insects, the gentle rustling of leaves in the breeze. The oxygen-heavy air carried the scent of pine. In their hiding place, the couple stayed quiet.

  Finished praying with the pastor, Edith Mae sauntered outside.

  “Looks like she’s the last one out of the church,” the woman behind the tree murmured, and the man beside her responded by placing his right index finger across his lips to shush her.

  Unaware anyone watched, Edith Mae clambered into a green pickup, its paint riddled with dirt-brown rust. The engine turned hard, belched smoke like a broken furnace, but then caught.
Slowly she eased forward and drove toward the road.

  “Something wrong?” another of the churchmen asked Anderson, who stood motionless gazing out into the woods.

  “I thought I heard something,” he muttered, pointing at the trees. “Voices, like someone talking out there.” With that, he shuffled cautiously toward the edge of the clearing, approaching where the dense vegetation crowded together, and massive pines and oaks rose out of thick brush. The second man followed, and they listened for a moment, perhaps two.

  Others in the congregation departed the lot, first one car full, then another, a languid parade crushing over gravel that pinged at the undercarriages of their SUVs and pickup trucks. Finally only four remained standing outside the church, Anderson and his friend at the edge of the clearing staring into the murky woods, and their wives. Glancing off and on at their husbands, the women leaned together and talked.

  Behind the trees, the concealed man and woman grew anxious, sweating in the searing heat undiminished by the absence of the sun. Occasionally the man craned his neck around the oak. He leered at Anderson and his friend, eager for them to leave.

  Never good at quiet, the woman beside him started to whisper, but the man shook his head.

  In the near silence, Ebba Anderson called out to her husband. “John, we should get home. We’ve both got work tomorrow.”

  “What do you think they’re doing?” the other woman asked Ebba, gesturing at their husbands.

  “Lord knows,” Ebba said with a sigh. “Men. Never can understand them.” With that, both women chuckled as if members of a secret club.

  Hesitating but a moment, Anderson snickered and let out a huff. Looking sheepishly over at his friend, he said, “You know, I don’t see anything, hear anything. It could have been my imagination.”

  “Maybe a raccoon or possum?”

  “Maybe, I guess.”

  The men rejoined their wives. The couples bid each other goodbye and shuffled off toward their trucks. Moments later they drove toward the deserted country road bordered by uninterrupted forest.

  On the edge of the church driveway, John Anderson hesitated and focused on his rearview mirror, considering again what, if anything, he heard. Seeing nothing unusual, he pulled out onto the worn asphalt road.

  In the woods, the hidden couple tarried, the man signaling the woman to lay low. “They might be fooling us and circling back,” he said. “We got time.”

  Minutes passed, two or three, at the most five, and he grew anxious. “Okay. Let’s have at it,” he announced.

  Angling through the brush and trees, she swatted at a fly that pricked her arm. “You got everything?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I got my stuff. You got your can?”

  “Yeah.”

  Once in the parking lot, their shoes scraped over the gravel. The sound carried, echoing softly through the surrounding woods, accompanied by the rhythmic sloshing of the liquid inside the battered red cans. They stood together, and the man put his arm around the woman. Smiling down at her. “It’s time.”

  She knew he didn’t like to dawdle.

  “Get to work and get it done,” he repeatedly told her. “Stand back far enough to run if someone comes, but close enough to watch the show.”

  If ranchers, farmers, or passersby saw the flames or smelled the smoke, the man and woman would have to high-tail it through the woods to escape. But the church was remote. If they were lucky, no one would notice the fires until morning.

  “You know, there’s a light on in there,” the woman said, motioning up at the church. “You don’t think there’s someone inside, do you?”

  The man thought about that. “Nah. No cars. The lot’s empty.”

  That satisfied her.

  “Let’s get to it,” he said. With that, they unscrewed the caps from the cans’ long snouts and then circled in opposite directions around the building, pouring the gasoline on the wood above the cement block foundation. Vapors escaped into the night air, as the liquid soaked into the thirsty siding and the parched earth. Little rain for months, a drought left the land dry, and it drew the liquid in.

  Their five-gallon cans empty, they met again in front of the church.

  A satisfied grin, the man grabbed one of two bottles he’d brought with him, both with liquid inside and rag stoppers. He flicked on a lighter, igniting the crude wick. For a moment, he turned the bottle, watching the scrap of cloth burn. Then he threw it. Shattering glass. A whoosh, as if the air was sucked into a vacuum. Fire crawled up the church’s front door. Immediately, he lit the second bottle and threw it hard against a window near the church door. The window crashed, the bottle barreling inside.

  Microseconds later flames erupted inside the church.

  The fire flared ever higher, while outside the firestorm spread until it encompassed the building. Yellow-hot fingers reached up and out. They turned the wood a crusty black and sent up billows of dense smoke.

  “For the heathens who’ll take over the world!” the man shouted above the crackling, wood snapping as it burned.

  “For Momma!” the woman cried out, and then cackled with joy.

  It was then that they saw a figure framed in the window and heard the screams. “Help! Please, help!”

  “Someone’s in there!” the woman shouted, frantic. “What d’we do?”

  The man grabbed her hand and pulled her back, as the blaze built ever higher, the aged church’s brittle wood feeding the flames until they swelled into an inferno.

  More screams came as the man inside the church tried to push through the flames to reach the door. “Lord, help me!”

  “We gotta save him!” the woman shouted, but the man shook his head.

  “Too late.”

  She sized up the fire, the burning church, the intense heat radiating toward them, and she saw no openings, no way to pull the man out, no possible route for his escape. The woman grabbed the man’s arm. “We gotta go. Now! Or someone will see us!”

  The man didn’t fight her, but before he turned to leave, he looked back at the church and saw Pastor Wilson through the broken window, fire flaring on his back, his arms, licking at his legs.

  “Dear Lord!” the pastor screamed as he tottered and wove, overcome by the pain. One last agonized shriek and he collapsed and fell.

  Outside, the woman pulled at the man, but he ordered her to wait.

  “We gotta get out of here!” she urged above the roar of the flames, the popping of the burning wood, the fire greedily claiming ever more of the building’s tinder. “Damn it to hell! We gotta go!”

  Shrugging her off, the man remained statue still, feet planted on the unforgiving Texas clay. “No! No one’s coming. And that man’s gone. He won’t be telling anyone anything.”

  Frightened, the woman saw the look in her man’s eyes, the familiar joy the flames brought him – and something else. An intense excitement.

  She stopped urging him to leave. Instead, she stood beside him, just as mesmerized by the violence of the flames, watching the fire travel ever higher, toward the narrow steeple. She wondered about the dead man inside the church. Who was he? Why didn’t he leave with the others?

  No sirens interrupted the night. No one screamed, “Fire!”

  Time passed, the fire burned, the church collapsing blackened board by blackened board, and the man beamed. When he looked over, the woman beside him watched the fire, enraptured.

  Two

  “You’ve got the nose wrong. Make it a touch longer, and the nostrils should flare, but just slightly.”

  I tried not to smudge the rest of the face, and then blew off shreds of pink rubber the eraser left behind. On the newly cleaned surface, I employed the pencil’s edge lightly. In short strokes, I feathered in an additional eighth of an inch, extending the line farther down toward the lips. I refashioned the upturn, widening it a touch.

  “Like this?” I asked.

  The man across from me studied my work. I assumed he’d find fault, rethink how the
face should look. I’d come to realize that he was a perfectionist, insisting I record every nuance correctly.

  I didn’t mind. This drawing needed to be as accurate as possible. And I’m used to folks asking for changes, especially when recalling an event from years earlier. In this case, it had been a decade since the man looked into this young woman’s eyes, saw her profile as she waited at a bus stop outside of an office building on the outskirts of downtown Houston.

  In his chair, Liam Kneehoff sat back, his face relaxed. He appeared pleased by the memory of that day and the young woman at the bus stop.

  Rain pummeling down, she vainly tried to keep dry under an umbrella that tossed above her in a robust wind. Kneehoff pulled over and stopped near her in his black SUV, lowering the passenger side window.

  “Do you want a ride? I’m heading south.”

  The young woman appeared not to hear him and didn’t respond. When she realized he was talking to her, she turned toward him and pulled the umbrella lower, held it tighter, and peered inside the car. She had a lovely smile, but her lips drooped into a frown when he mentioned he’d be driving south on I-45 and getting off at Clear Lake.

  “How did you know I’m going there?”

  “I take this bus sometimes, and I saw you on it,” he explained. “I’ve noticed that we get off at the same stop. I drove today, and in this rain, I thought you might like a ride.”

  The young woman paused as if considering, but then rebuffed the proposal. “Thanks, but I’ll wait for the bus.”

  He shrugged. “Okay by me. Just thought I’d save you from getting wet. Good luck! In this monsoon, your bus could be really late.”

  He had no need to exaggerate. Interstate Forty-five perpetually ran bumper-to-bumper. Bad weather often bred accidents that brought it to a standstill.

  “I don’t think I should. I’m sorry. Not that I don’t trust you…”

  He waved her apology off. “You’re not hurting my feelings. I know ladies have to be careful.” Yet he did look wounded that she thought him untrustworthy, or was he disappointed? “After all, you don’t know me. It’s good that you’re careful.”