The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  I deleted CLEAR LAKE and DARK HAIR, and broadened the search, looking for any white female missing from the Houston area that year. This time twenty-six photos appeared, and I slowly worked my way through the list, comparing the photographs to my drawing.

  As many times as I’d repeated this drill over the years, I still felt dismayed to see how many people disappeared. I knew some left voluntarily. They fled abusive partners or bad debts. Some simply wanted to escape to start new lives. Families and friends reported their disappearances, and their faces were entered into our database. Others, perhaps, wandered off and committed suicide, their bodies never found. Then there were those taken, like this woman. Some could still be alive, held captive, but my belief was that most shared Victim Thirteen’s tragic fate.

  Halfway down the list, I happened upon Jennifer Allen, twenty-six-years-old, married, the mother of a little girl. The date Kneehoff gave me was a month off, but the family lived not far from Clear Lake, on Galveston Bay in Seabrook.

  “Could be,” I mumbled.

  In the photo, Jennifer’s dark brown hair ended at her chin, and she wore black framed eyeglasses. Kneehoff didn’t mention glasses, but, then, maybe she didn’t have them on that day. Or perhaps he consciously left them off. I thought again about how he enjoyed toying with me. Jennifer’s eyes resembled my drawing, one slightly larger than the other, and her features, while not an exact match, looked close.

  I skimmed the report.

  Four hours after she failed to return from working as a secretary in a downtown Houston insurance office, Jennifer’s husband called in the missing person’s report. He was investigated and found to be at home at the time of the disappearance, caring for their child. By all reports, the Allens had a good marriage – no one reported any problems. No other suspects emerged. At the bottom, of the summary I read:

  DENTAL RECORDS ON FILE

  FAMILIAL DNA IN DATABASE.

  That’s all wonderful, but it didn’t help unless we had remains with teeth and a jaw bone to compare the dental records to, or a skeleton to get DNA.

  “Okay, so now we have a possible,” I whispered, so tired I talked to myself to stay awake. A potential ID in my hands, it seemed even more important to find whatever endured of Victim Thirteen. Without her skeleton, we would never be certain of her identity.

  I clicked onto my state e-mail account. I had routine correspondence from the captain, a few other folks at the office inquiring about cases, and the fifth e-mail on the list, something from Sam Overton, Death Row’s warden. I opened the e-mail and clicked on the attachment. Kneehoff’s hand-drawn map filled the screen. I hit print.

  I laid the map out on my desk in front of the computer monitor. It depicted a field near an intersection north of Houston, near Intercontinental Airport. Kneehoff had written STABLE over a rectangle that made a triangle with the cross streets. A circle close by was designated as a corral. Stick trees signified woods or simply trees set back a distance from the stable. There he placed a red X in amongst the trees. The X marked Victim Thirteen’s gravesite.

  Energized by my success, I forgot about being tired.

  I pulled up Google Maps and keyed in the intersection. Then I used the 360-degree search function to look at the area. Cyber-traveling the streets, I saw wooded areas and an open field not far from an industrial park. There stood what could be a stable and a corral. Like the settings where we found the remains of Kneehoff’s seven other victims, it looked relatively deserted.

  I logged back onto my e-mail account:

  CAPTAIN:

  KNEEHOFF’S MAP AND MY DRAWING ATTACHED. LINK BELOW IS TO A POSSIBLE IDENTIFICATION OF VICTIM, ONE JENNIFER ALLEN. TIME FRAME RIGHT AND FACIAL STRUCTURE LOOKS CLOSE. PLEASE HAVE TEAM ON SITE PER THE MAP ASAP TO START DIG. I’ll BE IN EARLY TO GET STARTED.

  SARAH

  Finished for the night, I headed to the house. The moon nearly full, it glowed like a gold disk in the smoky gray sky, hovering over the trees. The timer had clicked the small white lights off on Maggie’s fledgling elm tree, but Mom left the back porch lamp on for me. I opened the screen door and found her alone at the kitchen table.

  “Oh, you’re home,” she said, her voice sounding strangely hollow. “I didn’t realize.”

  “I thought you’d be long asleep.” She looked worried, her hair disheveled. “What’s wrong? Is Maggie okay?”

  “Of course,” she said, vaguely annoyed. “I would have called if…”

  “Of course you would have,” I agreed. “So what’s wrong? You look upset.”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” she said, dismissing my concerns. I noticed she’d been baking again. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon.

  “Let’s have a little tea,” I suggested. Mom sat quietly while I boiled water. Trying not wake Maggie, I grabbed the pot before it hissed. Two bags of chamomile steeped in cups, and I cut us each a small piece of coffee cake, still warm from the oven. I grabbed napkins, two forks, and then sat across from her watching her swirl the tea, not drinking, not eating, and not acting at all like my mother.

  “Okay, I want to know what’s wrong.”

  Mom gave me a wane smile. “With the wedding coming, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. You know, love can be complicated.”

  I snickered a bit. “You think?” I thought that should be my slogan, tattooed on my arm. My husband died at a young age. David, the only other man I loved, left me. I once believed life gave second chances, but I had my doubts. Mom’s romance with Bobby renewed my hope, but something was wrong. Then I remembered her doctor appointment that afternoon. “Are you okay? Healthy? The doc visit went all right?”

  “Oh, sure, Sarah,” she said, a pained expression. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m fine.”

  “Then what? Because from where I stand, you hit the jackpot. You have a great guy who adores you. What could be wrong?”

  Eight

  Breakfast the next morning, Maggie and I plotted over bowls of cereal with blueberries. “I think I figured it out,” she said, our heads together, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “So, what does this robot do?” I cherish moments like this, the quiet times when I’m free to be a mom kibitzing with my daughter. They’re too brief, swallowed up in work and the crush of the day. So I lingered, knowing I should rush to the office.

  “I’m not going to tell you, Mom,” Maggie said, her expression confident and perhaps a bit smug. “I want you to be surprised.”

  Just then, Mom walked in the room. Maggie and I pulled apart and concentrated on our cereal.

  “What’s up in here?” Mom asked. I shrugged.

  “Not much. Eating Cheerios,” Maggie said.

  “With all this coffeecake?” Mom looked forlornly around the kitchen, shook her head and said, “You know, I’m going to take some of these baked goods to Alba for their church pot luck tonight. There’s no way we’ll eat all these cakes and cookies.”

  At that, Maggie rolled with laughter, and I grinned wider than I had in days, maybe weeks. “I think that’s probably a good idea,” I said. “It’s all delicious, but we need to be able to fit into our clothes.”

  Mom laughed until Maggie said, “Yeah, like my new dress for your wedding.”

  On the drive to the office, I thought about the hour before I finally hit the bed the night before. Mom and I had held hands across the table, both of us with tears in our eyes.

  “I just don’t know, Sarah,” she said. “The doctor appointment is part of this. It got me thinking about me and Bobby, about getting married at our ages.”

  At that, she teared up. “I love Bobby. But I’m just not sure I can do this, to be married, to take care of Bobby, knowing I could lose him like your dad to that heart attack. Like you lost Bill. I’m closing in on seventy. Bobby is already in his seventies. He’s a solid man, healthy, but how many years will we have?”

  “No one can predict, Mom. Maybe one, maybe twenty.”

  “I know no one can say, but�
��,” Mom let out a painful exhale, the kind that comes from deep inside where we store the worries that wake us up at night and won’t let us fall back to sleep. “Sarah, I’m afraid of the pain if I outlive Bobby. I don’t know that I can live through burying another husband.”

  I didn’t know what to tell her, couldn’t even figure out what to say. I’d had those same thoughts after Bill died. Then David came into my life, and I thought I could try. Instead, we parted. Loving someone, losing someone did that to a person, made us realize how all-consuming grief can be. There was no way to pretend it couldn’t happen again.

  “Would it be any better to walk away from the wedding and lose Bobby?”

  Mom paused, perhaps considering her answer. “Maybe it would be easier. Being married? Maybe that makes the grief even harder.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked as we sat together pondering our pasts and Mom’s future. “The wedding is in just a few weeks.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  I was still thinking about Mom and Bobby when I arrived at our headquarters in Houston just after nine. I found the captain waiting. It was obvious he’d had his eye on the door, waiting for me to walk in.

  “I thought you were coming in early?”

  “It turned out to be a late night,” I explained.

  “Well, we’ve got everything worked out. Come look!”

  I followed him to his office, where he had Kneehoff’s latest map displayed next to a large map of Houston. In his hand, he held a list of contacts and a proposed schedule for the dig. The first entry read: “Eight A.M. – Heavy equipment drop off.”

  A red checkmark indicated that step had been accomplished.

  “Now that the backhoe is on site, Texas Equusearch should be arriving with the radar equipment and a dozen searchers.”

  Working on recovering the bodies of Kneehoff’s victims, Equusearch had become our best resource. A band of dedicated volunteers, they brought experts and equipment, supplied what we didn’t have readily available. They had ground-penetrating radar equipment. We used it to look for disturbances in the subsurface that could be a grave. Then, once we located the likely spot, they did the actual digging.

  “The map’s fairly detailed,” I said, pointing at the stable and the corral. “Some of Kneehoff’s drawings consisted mainly of fields and woods. This one looks easier to follow.”

  Looking back, perhaps that was my mistake, suggesting anything involving Liam Kneehoff could be easy.

  At that moment, the captain’s phone rang. He answered and put it on speaker. I recognized Tim Miller, Equusearch’s founder. His own daughter died at the hands of an unknown serial killer. For seventeen months, Tim searched for Laura. Her body was finally found in a wooded field. Inspired by her death, Tim dedicated his life to searching for the missing, never wanting another family to suffer such agony.

  “The equipment’s here, but we’ve got a problem.” Miller’s raspy, whisky voice carried through the captain’s office. “Have you looked at this site?”

  “On the Net last night,” I said. “Looked a lot like Kneehoff’s map. What’s wrong?”

  “Well, it sure doesn’t look like that now. You better come take a look at this.”

  When I arrived at the site, I expected to see the open field, the stable and corral. Instead I found a large, one-story metal building on the corner, maybe ten-thousand square feet, surrounded by a concrete parking lot. The sign above the front door read: CRAMER CRAFTS: DIY HOME DÉCOR.

  A wiry build, deep tan from years working construction in the Texas sun, Tim Miller waited when I got out of the Suburban. In his seventies, he had greying brown hair and heavy wrinkles around expressive blue eyes. “See what I mean?” he asked, as he inhaled the last smokable inch of a cigarette.

  Of course, I didn’t need to answer. The dump truck and backhoe the captain ordered sat in the parking lot, not moving. “How long’s this building been here?”

  “The owner said they finished construction six months ago,” Tim said. “It looks like we’re just a little late.”

  “Damn,” I muttered, thinking this was one of those moments when I’d really like to say something stronger. “But this might be okay. The stable was farther back, and the body’s supposed to be in the trees behind this lot.”

  “Come on. I’ll show you,” he said, his expression signaling that this, too, wasn’t good news.

  We walked around to the back of the building, and cleared land went on for acre after acre. Someone had cut down all the trees and dragged off the stumps. Off to the side, a billboard that faced the side street announced Bridgewater Gate, a housing development scheduled to open in a little more than a year. A diagram showed plots for two-hundred homes. Off in the distance, at the edge of the clearing, sat a grader waiting to put in roads.

  “Geez. What do we do?” I asked. “We’ve lost all the landmarks.”

  Miller took off his ball cap, perspiration collecting around the brim, and scratched the top of his head. Stifling hot at ten a.m., a drop of sweat trailed down the small of my back. It would be a sizzler of a day.

  “We can try to get an aerial photo of the land before they tore down the shed, so we can locate it. Maybe estimate where the edge of the woods started,” he said. “But the radar won’t help.”

  The radar would have found abnormalities in the earth, showed areas that might have been disturbed, suggesting locations that could be burial sites. When the developer uprooted the trees, he disturbed the entire tract, making the radar useless.

  “You know, Kneehoff didn’t bury the women too deep, a couple of feet at the most. Could the workers have found the remains when they cleared the field? Maybe they saw something that would help?” I asked.

  While Tim contacted his office to have his staff do an Internet search for an aerial view of the plat, I called the developer’s phone number on the billboard. It turned out to be a large residential real estate company with projects across the state. The woman who answered at their main office took a while to figure out who I needed to talk to, and then gave me a phone number. I put in a call, and the project manager called me back.

  “We didn’t find any human bones,” he said, sounding shocked at the thought. “If we had, we would have called police.”

  “Any bones at all? If no one saw a skull, they could have written them off as animal bones.”

  “Let me check,” he said.

  “Ask if your people have an aerial shot of the property, too,” I requested. “We’re trying to find one.”

  The prospect of any work being done that day up for grabs, Miller took off for a while to find breakfast. Once alone, I walked the chopped up field, kicking lumps of clay with my boot. The heat radiated off the dirt, and I kept looking at my phone waiting for the project manager to call. Then I stopped, backed up and stood looking out from behind the newly constructed building. I tried to visualize Kneehoff’s map superimposed on the field, figure out where the trees started and where the red X marking the body would be. I walked a few hundred yards in that direction. As I looked around, I saw only more clumps of upturned earth, no signs of the demolished stable or corral. Whatever was there had been carted away. Frustrated I stopped, hands on hips.

  “You out there, Jennifer?” I pleaded. “If you are, help us, so we can bring you home to your family.”

  Not that I expected one, but no voice emerged from the clouds above or whispered to me from an underground chamber. Then my phone rang.

  “We can’t help you, Lieutenant,” the project manager said. “We didn’t find any bones, and we don’t have an aerial shot of the area. Sorry.”

  “What about photos of the field with the structures you took down? The stable and the corral?”

  “Now, that’s possible. I’ll email to you whatever I have.”

  Moments later, another call. This time it was Sheriff Delgado.

  “Ernie put a rush on the lab results. Just like we thought, arson,” he said. “I
’m pulling together a meeting with the two pastors from the burned churches and elders from all three at my office. Any chance you can sit in?”

  Nine

  The county seat, an old Victorian courthouse dominated Staghorn’s main square. A granite obelisk next to the front door bore the names of a dozen local boys who gave their lives in WWII. Back then, nearly eight-thousand folks lived in Staghorn proper, more than thirty thousand in the county. Many of the men worked in the oil fields. Then the wells dried up, and the roughnecks moved on. These days a thousand lived in the town proper and not more than eighteen thousand in the county.

  Del’s offices were pigeon-holed at the back of the courthouse and reached by walking down a flight of cement stairs. I heard angry voices even before I entered the conference room.

  “How can you tell us to be calm?” A man with a hula-hoop waist and a receding hairline, his voice rose higher with each syllable. The pastor of a cowboy church called Pathway to Salvation, he wore jeans and a plaid shirt with pearl snaps down the front, a tooled brown leather belt with a rodeo buckle, and boots. “Our churches were burnt to the ground. To the ground! We were told our fire started with an electrical short. But now you think it was arson?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” I tried to get past their anger to make them understand. “We’re just beginning to investigate.”

  “We know that Lord’s Acre was arson. We don’t know about the other two churches,” Del said, his voice even, hoping to calm the half-dozen or so men in the room. “What we’re saying is that we’re going to review each case. Now that we know about Lord’s Acre, we’ll take a look at all three fires, see if there’s a pattern.”

  “This is late in the game,” the cowboy pastor grumbled. “Why are we just learning this now?” A moan of support traveled through the room.

  “Gentlemen, we need to listen to the sheriff and help him do his job,” Father Miguel Torres advised the others. His church, St. Theresa of the Flowers, was the first to burn. “Mistakes were made, that’s true. They blamed our fire on a candle left burning. But we can’t roll back time. We need to move forward.”