The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  The others chewed on his words, but didn’t appear ready to digest them.

  “I told my wife there was something strange about that fire as soon as she heard about it,” a rail-thin man with a toupee insisted. An assistant pastor at Lord’s Acre, he shook his finger at Del, and I wondered if he did that to followers from the pulpit. “Sheriff Delgado, y’all should have done a more thorough investigation after the first fire, certainly after the second, not wait to talk about arson until our church was reduced to a burned out shell!”

  Del squirmed a bit, uncomfortable. I considered jumping in to help him, but I wasn’t involved in the earlier investigations. I couldn’t defend what I didn’t know. “All I can say is that we’re now doing all we can to look into all three fires,” I said. “We’ll need your complete cooperation and support to do that.”

  At that, the door swung open and a woman rushed into the room. Twenty-something with long dark blond hair, her green eyes looked puffy from crying. Along with the men, I turned toward her.

  “Sheriff Delgado, I’m Rebecca Wilson. Pastor Wilson’s daughter,” she said, walking up to Del, easy to spot in his khaki uniform and wearing his badge. “They said at the desk that this is a meeting about the church fires.”

  The room erupted into condolences, the pastors and churchmen pulling Rebecca from one to the other offering their prayers. The whole time she fought back tears. At one point, she sat and held her hands up, begging them to stand back. “I appreciate the sympathy, but I’m really here to talk to the sheriff. I want to know who killed my father.”

  We told Rebecca what we could, including that we were still waiting on an official ID of the person who died in the fire. She shook her head. She didn’t need our confirmation.

  “If my father was alive, he would have called me. He wouldn’t let me worry like this,” she said. “You can wait for your coroner’s report. I know he’s dead.”

  Neither Del nor I argued with her. It made no sense to disagree, not when we believed the same. Instead we turned the conversation back to the investigation, and she joined the others, listening to our plans.

  The state fire marshal’s office would spearhead the forensic investigation. While our meeting was going on, Ernie and his crew were gathering evidence at St. Theresa’s. Later today, they would do the same at Pathway to Salvation. Meanwhile, Del would head the criminal investigation with my assistance.

  “We’re taking this dead-straight serious,” Del assured them. “You’ve gotta understand. We’re not only looking for an arsonist. We need to find a murderer.”

  More murmurs in the group, and I heard someone let out a long sigh. I knew we’d tried their patience talking about what we’re going to do when they were upset about what hadn’t been done. I thought of the abysmal clearance rates for arson cases and worried about their expectations. No reason not to be honest.

  “The sheriff and I will do our very best,” I said. “But I don’t want to give you false hope. Arson investigations are tough. Fire destroys a lot of evidence.”

  More scoffing, but then the finger-pointer announced, “You’ll have our help, anything we can do, we’ll do.” He lowered his voice, looked at Del and said, “But that doesn’t mean come the next election we won’t be asking why we weren’t warned of the danger sooner.”

  “That’s fair,” Del said, eyeing the man.

  For the next hour, Del and I circulated asking questions. Was anyone at the individual churches angry for any reason? Were there any threats? Did anyone see anything unusual? Was anyone hanging around the church property? What about the pastors? Did they have enemies? We came up dry. No one admitted to knowing anything that could give us direction. It was as if this arsonist picked the churches at random.

  Making my way to the door, I stopped and talked to Del. We made plans to meet a few hours later to work on the case. I asked him to draw up a list of what he knew about the churches, the communities, and the fires, especially any similarities beyond that the churches were all small and rural.

  “Sure. I’ll get right on it. And I could use a profile, Sarah, to help find this guy. Right now, I have no clue what type of lowlife we’re looking for.”

  “I’ll start on it ASAP. Then we’ll add in your info once you have it organized,” I said, as I checked my watch. Near noon, I needed to get back to the dig site, to find out what was going on with the excavation. “I’m happy to do that.”

  Just then my cell rang, and I saw the Houston coroner’s number. I glanced over at Rebecca Wilson, surrounded by the churchmen, talking, telling stories about her father.

  “Yes,” I said into the phone. “Lieutenant Armstrong here.”

  I didn’t want to give Rebecca the news in front of the others, so Del and I pulled her into a small interview room, austere with just a table and a couple of chairs.

  “You might want to sit down,” Del suggested.

  “You know,” she said, making no movement toward the chair. She shook her head. She didn’t wait for us to confirm her conviction. “My dad was the best guy. He called me every day. Every day. When Mom got sick, he took care of her. Besides being a pastor, Dad sold insurance. He took a leave to be with her at the end. I came home and lived with them. Those last days, he took care of both of us.”

  At that, she stopped trying to hold it together.

  In that small room with its blank walls, with two people who were little more than strangers, she bowed her head, put her hands to her face and let loose a soul-shattering cry that had to have carried through the building.

  Del put his hand on her shoulder. Tears welled in his eyes. “You know, Rebecca, I think your dad called you Becky, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Becky, your dad talked about you every time we ran into each other in town. Told me how you were such a strong woman. He was so proud. Proud of you, of your life.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice quaking. “Dad had that way with things. He never left the important things unsaid. I know he loved me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her, and she moved toward me. I gave her a small hug, and she dissolved in my arms. Her head on my shoulder, she wept.

  A while later I waved goodbye to Rebecca Wilson, who stood praying with a few of the men as I walked out the door. Even though she’d said she accepted her father’s death, she grieved hard when she heard the news. She had a sliver of hope, destroyed by the autopsy report’s official identification. I thought of the suffering the fires caused. Rebecca and the men I left behind in the meeting were devastated by their losses. Soon other congregations across Texas would hear about the fires and fear their churches could be next.

  Once the news leaked out, there would be panic.

  As I opened the Suburban’s door, my cell phone rang. “Sarah, we have aerial shots of the property, some off Google Maps and others from the taxing authority. But we can’t figure out the scale to place the buildings. Too much has changed,” the captain said. “Tim Miller wants to bring Kneehoff out to the site, to see if he can show us where he buried the body.”

  Just the thought gave me a sinking feeling.

  “Captain, that’s not a good idea. You know Kneehoff. You know how manipulative he is. How smart.”

  “I do. But if we’re going to recover that woman’s bones, we’re either going to have to pray for God’s hand to come out of the sky and point at the spot or we need Kneehoff’s help.”

  “I already did that,” I said. When the captain asked what I meant, I explained, “I asked for a sign from heaven. So far, no response.”

  Silence.

  I assumed the captain wasn’t sure if he should laugh or bring me in for a psych eval.

  “Okay, Sarah. Tim Miller says we need Kneehoff. The rest of the equipment and a full crew will be in place within the hour. It’s your job to figure out how to get this done.”

  “We can’t do this. Not with Kneehoff,” Sam Overton announced the moment I explained what we wanted. Death Row’s warden was un
derstandably unhappy with my call. “Don’t ask us to do this, Lieutenant.”

  I found it difficult to mount an argument that he was wrong, because I’d say the same thing if he came to me with this proposal. Still, Tim Miller was right, too. The more I considered the situation, the more I realized that we had no possibility of recovering the bones without Kneehoff. And I did want to recover Victim Thirteen’s body. We needed to find out if I was right, if that was Jennifer Allen buried out in that field. If not her, what other missing woman? And we had to recover what remained of the woman before a road or house was built on top of her bones.

  “We have no choice. How do we do this safely?”

  Overton sounded exasperated, but he said, “I’ll send him in the van we use to transport inmates to the death chamber. Kneehoff will be shackled, handcuffed, and chained inside the vehicle. And there’ll be guards. Lots of guards.”

  Ten

  An hour later, I stood with Tim Miller next to his white dually pickup poring over the aerial shots. As Tim said, because of the angles of the shots, we had no way to judge distances. A civil engineer he consulted had tried, but along with the unfortunate perspectives, the photos were grainy and the construction in the area hadn’t left any landmarks.

  Red traffic cones blocked the entrance, and the parking lot crawled with law enforcement – police, deputies, state troopers, members of a SWAT team. The relentless sun beat down, and my skin itched hot. We’d ordered the home décor manufacturer closed while Kneehoff was on the property. While unhappy, the owner complied, not wanting to put his workers in any jeopardy.

  One of the deputies picked up two of the cones and let the prison van in. As soon as it passed through, the deputy replaced the cones to keep everyone else out.

  The unmarked black and gray van with wire mesh over the windows parked at the far end of the lot. I walked up to greet it along with Tim and two heavily armed SWAT officers. The backdoors popped open, and two guards unchained Kneehoff from metal tie-offs inside the van. They then handed him down to the SWAT officers on the ground. Along with the handcuffs, shackles and chains, the warden had Kneehoff further incapacitated by cinching the leather belt around his arms and chest, like the one they anchored him to the chair with during our sessions.

  “Hi, Liam,” I said. “Glad you agreed to join us.”

  Kneehoff blinked at the sun. The shackles kept him from taking long steps, and he shuffled forward then stopped, looked around at the building, the scene, and then at the sky. “I never thought I’d see the outside world again. The air smells different here than it does in the prison courtyard. There everything reeks of cement and metal, of death.”

  One of the guards urged him on, but I held Kneehoff back. “Let him take a moment.”

  As in the prison, I needed to get Kneehoff to cooperate, to give him as much leeway as I could without relinquishing control. We all waited until Kneehoff said, “So what do I have to do to justify this rare opportunity?”

  “We want you to eye the field for us, figure out where we need to dig,” I said. “We’re hoping you have some idea, even with the landscape so changed, of distances and where you buried Thirteen’s body.”

  “Hmm, let me think,” he said. For moments, no one moved. The workers stayed back in the field with their equipment, waiting for orders, far enough away not to be in danger. Tim fidgeted beside me, and I knew he was eager to get busy. He’d never been much for downtime.

  “How about we walk it?” Tim suggested. “Mr. Kneehoff could step it out, see how it feels.”

  “I don’t think…,” I started. “We just need direction and distance. It’s better if he eyes it from here, gives us an estimate. Liam is an engineer. He can do that.”

  Ignoring me, Kneehoff’s face twisted into a Jim Carrey grin. “Mr. Miller, I recognize you from your newspaper photos. Such incredible work you do. And what a good idea. Walking the field would help.”

  “Liam, we can’t…” I interrupted.

  “Sarah, you haven’t brought me all this way to fail, have you?” he asked. “I can’t accurately gauge the distance standing here.”

  I took a deep breath. “Stay right with us,” I ordered the guards, loud enough for Kneehoff to hear. “The slightest unexpected move, take him down and march him back to the van.”

  The guards nodded at me, while Liam blinked again at the sun. “I’d like to start back next to the road, in the corner,” he said, that ear-to-ear smile still cutting through his face. “That way maybe I can visualize that night.”

  We did as he requested.

  Mimicking his pace, we inched forward as if we all, like Kneehoff, wore shackles. He stopped at the corner, scanned the building and paused as if thoughtful. “I came in by driving on a dirt and rock road that led to the stable,” he said. I pictured that day: the rain falling, Kneehoff in the black Mercedes SUV driving onto the gravel road, seeing the trees up ahead. Next to him, a woman only known as Victim Thirteen cowered.

  “I think the road might have been about a hundred feet ahead,” he said.

  Kneehoff took the lead, and we followed. Slow going, but he made his way to a spot then stopped. “I’m trying to picture it without that building,” he mused. “It’s hard, but I think that if we walk toward the left side of the building, then circle around it, I’ll be able to estimate the distance.”

  “Okay. Let’s try it,” I said. When he reached the building, Kneehoff veered left, and the guards surrounded him. As a unit, we skirted the building, and he trailed to the right once we passed it, and then stopped again. Standing quietly, he took in the field.

  “It looks so different. I’m not sure.” Kneehoff closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I figured he was stalling, enjoying the smell of the outside world, the touch of the hot, dry breeze and the sun on his face.

  “Just consider it for a while, envision where the stable was, where the corral would have been,” I suggested.

  “I am, but I’m not sure I can.” Moments passed. “I think up there,” he said, nodding straight ahead. Then, without waiting for us, he walked, lifting his feet in his thick rubber prison flip flops, slapping them down on the hard ground, holes from uprooted trees all around him, deep fissures cutting through the earth from the drought. As if taking an afternoon stroll, he sauntered forward in hopes of finding where he buried a young mother and wife.

  Our sad caravan followed, still mirroring Kneehoff’s pace, and I considered how he must enjoy being in control, all eyes on him. He nearly tripped on a clump of dirt, and a guard reached out to steady him. Kneehoff regained his footing. “Thanks.”

  We marched perhaps two-hundred feet into the field and again he stopped. He turned, looked back at the street on one side, the street on the other side. “The stable was here,” he said.

  “How sure are you?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure.” He tilted his head to his right. “The corral was over there, maybe sixty, seventy feet.”

  “And the woods where you buried her?”

  Again he scanned the landscape, paused, and I watched his mannerisms. I gauged his demeanor and expected him to make some move. I could feel his thoughts, the assessing of options, weighing the possibilities. He couldn’t run. How could he? But he wanted to, and the potential for escape, the hope that it was possible welled within him.

  Perhaps it was all my paranoia, for Liam Kneehoff did nothing, just grinned at me and said, “Where I buried her was a little to the left and a bit ahead.”

  “Show us,” I said.

  Tim Miller walked beside me carrying a wooden stake and a sledge hammer as if we were stalking a vampire he intended to send to eternal rest. We trailed Kneehoff and the guards, headed forward at a slight angle. A modest distance, maybe one-hundred-and-thirty feet, and he stopped again.

  “Right around here,” he said.

  “How certain are you? Fifty percent? A hundred percent?”

  It had been years since I studied and hunted Kneehoff, but I knew how his mind worked.
He compulsively computed statistics in any given situation, figured his odds. “Sixty-five, maybe seventy percent. It looks too different out here to be any more confident.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How deep?”

  “I buried this one deeper. Maybe three feet.”

  “Why would you do that?” I asked. “How was this one different?”

  Kneehoff grimaced. He didn’t like being challenged. “I’d been watching this location off and on for a while, assessing its viability. I saw people coming and going, tending to their horses at the stable. I didn’t want her to be discovered.”

  That made sense. “Good. Okay. Thank you.”

  Kneehoff said, “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

  “Lieutenant, are we done here?” one guard asked.

  “Yes, sergeant. Please, take Mr. Kneehoff back to the prison.”

  We gave them room, and they turned and started back to the truck. I followed the guards again while Tim Miller stayed behind to drive the wooden stake into the ground exactly where Liam Kneehoff stood moments earlier. The baked earth didn’t give way easily, and I heard the hollow echoes of the sledge hitting the stake as I rounded the corner of the building.

  We were halfway to the van, when I had a thought. “Just a minute,” I said to the guards. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Kneehoff.”

  They appeared confused.

  “You can wait,” I said. “Just stand back a few feet. Watch us. Any problem, you know what to do.”

  They moved warily away, and I was as alone as I’d ever been with Liam Kneehoff, standing perhaps three feet from him, every nerve in my body on alert. Logically, I knew he couldn’t do anything to me, shackled and chained, but I also knew that he’d like nothing more.

  “There’s this case I’m working on, Liam. I’d like to hear your thoughts.” I told him about the three church fires, when they happened, where. I knew he and the arsonist had much in common. I was counting on that. “No one died in the first two fires, but this last one, the pastor perished inside the church. The fire happened right after Wednesday evening services, and he’d stayed behind to clean up.”