The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  Hidden in the shadows, Beau steadied his breathing and wrapped his index finger around the trigger. “Keep driving,” he mumbled. “Don’t stop. Go on!”

  Suddenly the Suburban inched forward again. Beau waited. He gave it time. At the end of the cul-de-sac, the SUV turned and drove back, hesitating again at the end of the driveway. For a moment, the Suburban came to a dead stop. Beau held his breath.

  The woman continued on.

  Relieved, Beau gave her enough time to move on. Then he walked forward, hiding behind a row of bushes. When he reached the front of the house, he peeked up and down the street.

  Deserted.

  He went back and sat in the car, waited another half-an-hour, then backed up and drove away. Before he left the neighborhood, Beau took a chance and pulled over a block from Kristilynn’s house. He left the car and walked. The cop car remained parked on Willoughbee Lane.

  “Not tonight,” Beau said, as he hurried back to the Taurus. “Not tonight.”

  Twenty-five

  “Dumb rookie mistake,” I murmured. “Getting out of his car that way.”

  The local cops had a second-year patrol officer watching Kristilynn’s house, on his first stakeout. The police chief hadn’t taken the situation seriously or he would have assigned someone with more know-how. Surveillance rule one: Make the car look empty. Don’t get out and stretch. Don’t let anyone see you. Be invisible.

  Instead, this kid jumped out to talk to me.

  It’s not like he thought I was a criminal and had to check me out. He knew who I was. I’d informed his dispatch I was on my way, told them when I arrived. He saw Kristilynn open the door for me, and watched me go inside. Why approach me as I left? For what, to introduce himself? Anyone watching the house would have seen that kid cop get out of his car, and anyone with any experience would have recognized a stakeout.

  Maybe exactly that happened.

  Who was in that dark sedan with the white bumper sticker? Too far away, I couldn’t see the license number or read the bumper sticker, but I didn’t see anyone walk from a house and get into the car. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention? Or maybe someone was already inside, waiting, watching Kristilynn’s house?

  That car pulled out fast. Maybe the sedan had nothing to do with Kristilynn. Maybe it was just a coincidence? How could I know?

  “Damn!”

  For nearly an hour I circulated through the surrounding streets looking for the sedan, for anything out of place. I saw nothing suspicious.

  Finally giving up, I called the local cops. I asked them to radio the rookie in the car and order him to look out for the car. “If he sees it, tell him to request back up,” I instructed. “Tell him not to intercept the driver on his own unless the guy gets out of the car and heads toward Ms. Cavanaugh’s house. Once backup arrives, they should question the driver and get identification.”

  “Will do,” the sergeant on duty responded. “But you don’t have a better description, just a dark sedan with a bumper sticker?”

  “It looked like a Ford Taurus or an old Mercury Sable.”

  “And it wasn’t parked near Ms. Cavanaugh’s house?”

  “Down the block.”

  “So, we don’t know that whoever was inside the car intended her any harm? No reason to think that?”

  I hesitated. I knew where this was going.

  “That’s right. But the driver could have seen the officer on the stakeout when he got out of his car. And that sedan took off fast.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, Lieutenant. I’ll tell our man.”

  “How about a canvass tomorrow? We could find out if anyone knows who was in the car, why it was out there.”

  “That could be tough with such a sketchy description, and we’re shorthanded. It being the end of summer vacations, lots of our guys took off. But I’ll run it by the chief. It’ll be up to him to decide.”

  On the drive to the ranch, I wondered if I over-reacted. It was probably just some teenager in his mother’s car, a heavy foot on the gas pedal. Shouting at the rookie to get back to his car, I wasn’t watching the street. If the sedan’s horn hadn’t honked, I might not have even noticed it.

  I’m just upset about Kristilynn.

  I thought about that evening, how it unfolded.

  I’d called Kristilynn from the road and told her to expect me. It was the same house I remembered, the one she lived in with her mother when Kneehoff abducted her.

  For days after Kristilynn jumped out on the highway, we hadn’t known if she would live. Her spinal cord severed, the doctors fought to stabilize her. I happened to be at the hospital when the surgeon told her mother that Kristilynn would live but never walk again. Her mother cried in my arms, both in relief and grieving. Afterward, I drove to the Willoughbee Lane house off and on to get more details about her kidnapping, and later to help Kristilynn prepare for trial. She was so brave on the stand.

  Her mother passed away three years ago, and Kristilynn stayed, the house equipped for her chair. When I rang the doorbell, Kristilynn pressed a button that released the lock, and I went inside. She sat in her wheelchair staring at the TV screen. A Kleenex box on her lap, her cheeks were wet.

  “I was supposed to go out with friends, but I stayed home to watch the dig,” she said, wiping off the tears. “They had a breaking news report when they called in the medical examiner.”

  “Please don’t cry. This is good,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eyes. I smiled, but I didn’t appear to be making her feel any better. “We’ve found her. Once we have an official ID, we’ll be able to tell her family. They’ll finally be able to bury her.”

  Kristilynn nodded, but looked doubtful. “I think about it a lot.”

  “The kidnapping?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Once in a while, I still have the nightmares. I see the gun in his hand and hear his voice. I feel the Benz vibrate on the highway and my heart threatening to pound out of my chest as I reach for the door handle. It felt like an ice pick in my back when I hit the barrier.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I thought about the time I was shot, the pain of the bullet. Some nights I relived it alone in bed. Occasionally, I woke up picturing the gun. “I guess some things we don’t forget. We just learn to live with them.”

  “Yeah, but it’s more than that. What I’ve been thinking about today is something that bothered me when it happened. Something I never told anyone, not even Mom.”

  Kristilynn looked up at me, her tears falling faster. “You can tell me,” I whispered.

  “I wonder why I lived, when all the other women died.”

  “Kristilynn, I don’t think –”

  She sat up straighter, protesting. “Because I jumped? I bet they tried to jump, too. I bet they reached for that same door handle I did. But I was lucky. That day, he didn’t set the lock. He forgot. A simple mistake. I lived, and they died.”

  I gently rubbed her arm, took her hand and squeezed it. “Kristilynn, maybe there really is such a thing as fate. I don’t know. But I know that you were meant to live that day. And I know that you did nothing to cause their deaths. You’re not responsible for any of this.”

  She leaned toward me. “I know,” she said. “But it still hurts. And I still wonder why.”

  The lights were nearly all off at the ranch when I got home. I was making a habit of coming in late and leaving early, even on a Sunday. I’d missed church and dinner, and I didn’t have the energy to eat the plate Mom left for me. It had been too long a day.

  As I dressed for bed, I thought about Kristilynn and Jennifer Allen. Two women who’d done nothing wrong except take a ride from a man who appeared to be a Good Samaritan. Their stories would have been vastly different if they hadn’t crossed paths with Liam Kneehoff.

  Before I climbed into bed, I checked on Mom and Maggie, both asleep. I thought about Bobby and Mom’s pre-wedding jitters. Perhaps they were more than that. Mom’s wavering must have hurt Bobb
y. A good man, he deserved happiness.

  So did she.

  I closed my eyes. I thought about the day to come and what it would bring. No one knows. In life, no one ever truly knows.

  Twenty-six

  “This is our church, and it’s our decision,” Mike Murphy, a round-faced pastor of a little country Bible church said. “This is Texas. We know what to do when someone starts trouble. And we’re ready to do it!”

  Del called at daybreak to tell me the heads of the churches in the county had called a meeting to discuss posting 24-hour patrols of armed civilians. Worried about the potential complications, he asked me to come. He needed someone to back him up when he warned the locals of the dangers.

  I readily agreed. It wasn’t hard to envision townsfolk shooting by mistake, guns going off in the middle of the night. It’s not that Murphy, his fellow churchmen and women weren’t responsible gun owners. It’s different when there’s a real threat, the possibility that someone will throw a firebomb at you in the middle of the night. Even cops get twitchy trigger fingers under pressure. Civilian vigilantes patrolling churches through the night? That sounded like a recipe for a tragic mistake.

  “Okay, we’ve got it. You’re worried, and you’re armed, and I don’t blame you for being both. But we’ve got to be careful not to turn this thing into a powder keg. Innocent people can get hurt,” Sheriff Delgado said. He’d looked progressively worse as each day passed. We were six days out from the Lord’s Acre fire, and we knew who we were looking for, Beau Whittle. The guy’s photo was everywhere, on television and in all the newspapers in this slice of the state as far north as Dallas.

  If there’d been any question we were after the right guy, that disappeared early this morning. We no longer had only Jimi Jo’s signed confession naming Beau as the arsonist. We had lab results. The cigarette butt found next to the big oak in the woods near Lord’s Acre, the ones out of Beau’s ashtray at the ranch where he fixed the tractor, and the one from the fire pit all had DNA from the same source. The fingerprint fragment found on the glass shard at Lord’s Acre was consistent with prints on record with the state, ones Beau gave when he renewed his driver’s license.

  Beau Whittle was our guy. All we needed was the opportunity to find him, handcuff him, and get him in front of a judge.

  Meanwhile, who could blame the folks in the small towns and rural churches north of Houston for being outright scared? They had reason to be. The day before, a fourth church had nearly gone up in flames, this one with people inside.

  “It’s only by the grace of God that some of those folks didn’t die in St. Pete’s yesterday,” Pastor Murphy said. Behind him the others chimed in, agreeing. There was talk all around Del and me, clutches of mostly men but a few women, church elders, priests and pastors, the lone rabbi. Not all wanted armed patrols protecting their houses of worship, but some did, and they didn’t seem to be as worried as Del and I that it could backfire.

  “We’re not disputing that this is a dangerous situation,” I said. “The sheriff and I do understand. But it’s risky to have armed patrols. People get shot by mistake. In the dark, a sudden noise –”

  “Well, y’all aren’t protecting us,” a woman called out, and a sampling of the others jeered in accord.

  “We all need to remain calm,” the rabbi advised. “Let’s take a moment and –”

  “There’s a time for that, and this isn’t it.” Pastor Murphy dismissed the advice with a sweep of his arm. “We need to take action. We’re not going to lose ten churches like we did back in 2010. We’re not going to let that happen.”

  Del looked at me, grimaced and shook his head.

  I gave up.

  They were right. We didn’t have enough available deputies and troopers to guard all the churches and the synagogue, and Beau Whittle was hell bent on driving up the number of churches he burned and, it appeared, adding to the body count. During her interview, Jimi Jo said she thought Beau originally had six or seven on his hit list. He’d burned four. That meant he had at least two or three to go.

  Maybe the civilian patrols weren’t a bad idea.

  “How are you organizing and controlling this? Deciding who to assign?” I asked Pastor Murphy. “Will you stick with former military or law enforcement, people who’ve had training? My guess is that some of your church members served at one point or another.”

  It seemed that Pastor Murphy hadn’t really thought about that. My impression was that he considered a rotating schedule of good old boys with guns sufficient planning.

  “Okay, well, let’s lay this out,” I suggested. “I think Del and I would feel more comfortable if you worked within some guidelines. I’d recommend…”

  An hour later, Del and I left the meeting with some trepidation, but convinced we could do nothing more. “Del, you need to find Beau Whittle,” I said. “Only that ends this.”

  “We’re doing our best. I’ve got all my men out looking for him,” he said. “You have other cases. I’ll keep this one working. And I promise to get in touch if anything breaks.”

  “If you’re sure…” I said, and he nodded.

  “You can’t do anything here. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  “The captain wants to see you,” Sheila said, the moment I walked through the door at headquarters.

  “Good news?” I asked.

  “No clue,” she said. “All I know is that he’s waiting for you.”

  I’d called early that morning and asked Captain Williams to contact the police chief. I wanted to make sure the stakeout at Kristilynn’s house continued for a few more days. The moment I saw the captain’s dour expression, I knew that wasn’t happening.

  “Decision’s final. They pulled the surveillance,” he said. “They haven’t seen evidence of a real threat and can’t spare the manpower.”

  I’d expected as much, but it still came as a disappointment. “Did they canvass for the sedan from last night, the dark one with the bumper sticker?”

  “They did. But none of the neighbors claimed to know anything about the car. No one was home at the house it was parked in front of, or the one next door. Both families are on vacation.”

  “Damn it.” I closed my eyes and tried not to say more. I had nothing to go on other than a gut feeling that the podcast put Kristilynn in danger. That wouldn’t convince anyone to strain a tight budget to pay overtime for a stakeout.

  Nothing left to argue, I moved on. “Have we heard from the ME’s office?” I asked. “Anything on the bones?”

  “They just called ten minutes ago with an official ID.”

  “Jennifer Allen,” I said, and he nodded.

  Sometimes sadness feels like being covered by a falling blanket, heavy and dark. I thought of what Tim Miller said the day before about the waste and pain, about how he wondered if it would ever end.

  “I’ve got Mrs. Allen’s file here, all her information,” the captain said, indicating a four-inch manila folder on his desk. “As closely as you’ve worked this case, I thought you might want to be the one to notify the family?”

  “Sure,” I said. The truth? I didn’t want to deliver the bad news. It’s a tough job telling someone a loved one is dead, even when people suspect it. But maybe I had to. I owed Jennifer that. “I’ll get right on it. Thanks.”

  “Good. I thought you might want to see it through.”

  “When will they release the remains?”

  “The M.E. has them processed. They’ve photographed and documented everything for the file. Of course, with Kneehoff already on death row, the DA’s office won’t pursue charges on this one. That would only delay his execution. If the family lets us know what funeral home to expect, the M.E.’s office can have everything ready for pick up as early as this afternoon.”

  In my office, I went through the case file and looked over photos of Jennifer her family supplied at the time of her disappearance, a decade earlier. At twenty-six, her dark brown hair in a ponytail, wearing round glasses
and holding her toddler daughter, Jennifer cuddled up to her husband. In another picture, she wore a cowboy hat and carried a guitar. A singer, I thought. Jennifer must have been a singer.

  The teenager who answered the door at the Seabrook townhouse, not far from Galveston Bay, looked a lot like the woman in the photographs. Josie Allen wore serious glasses with black rims and had her hair in a topknot. “My dad told me you were coming,” she said. “But I better tell him you’re here before you come inside.”

  With that she turned and shouted, “Dad, that Texas Ranger is here!”

  He called down, and she let me in. A guitar leaned up against a wall. “Yours?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It used to be my mom’s.”

  Hair cropped short, glasses with thick lenses over faded hazel eyes, Josh Allen looked like an accountant, which he was. He appeared anxious, even downright scared. I figured he guessed when my office called that I wouldn’t bring good news. “I’ve been watching them search for that body in the field,” he said, sitting on the couch with one arm resting across his daughter’s shoulders. “Is that what you’re here about?”

  Josie didn’t seem as apprehensive as her father. My guess was that throughout her short lifetime she’d endured a fair share of false alarms, reports of sightings of her mother, people who contacted her father to claim they had information, sometimes for a price. That happened in nearly all these cases, and the families grew hard shells they pulled up when someone knocked on their doors. Rarely did anything of value result.

  But here I was, and from the look in Josh’s eyes, even if his daughter didn’t believe this would be any different, he sensed something monumental would happen.