The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  “What about the map?”

  “Ah, the map,” he said. “I’m hazy on that. For some reason, I’m rather unsure. You see, I don’t remember this victim as clearly as the others.”

  “Where did you pick her up?”

  Like so many of his others, he said she was in a store parking lot. He’d used one of his more common ploys, puncturing her tire and then offering help. Eventually, she took his offer of a ride. All he could remember about this one was that she talked about her mother in the car, how her mother would miss her, and that she couldn’t leave her mother alone.

  “And then you took her where?”

  “I’m sure it will come to me,” he said. “I just need to concentrate a bit.”

  “We need the map, Liam.”

  “You have her face,” he said. “Consider it a work in progress.”

  “When did you take her?”

  “Near the end,” he said. “Not long before my arrest.”

  I put my hand up and ran my fingers across my eyes, trying to wipe away the weariness. The room felt as if it closed in around me. I simply couldn’t stay any longer.

  “You’re tired, Sarah. I think you’re pushing too hard.” When I looked up, he had an amused look, as if I were the one behind bars, a specimen in a cage.

  Thirty-five

  “You better skedaddle!” Edith Mae said on the phone. “They’re pushing me hard, Beau. Asking where you’re hiding. All I could think of was the old folks’ house on the river and there you are. Eventually, those cops’ll figure it out, too. And if they find you, son, you’ll be dead or spending your life in a prison cell.”

  “Mom, I didn’t…”

  “I know you done it, Beau. All of it,” she said. She sounded more worried than mad, but he heard the anger there, too. “You gotta leave, boy. Run! As fast as you can.”

  “You didn’t tell them about this place though, right?”

  “I ain’t that damn whore you’ve been living with. She told them everything,” Edith Mae said proud of her loyalty. “I admit I clued them into the fire pit. But I didn’t think you’d go back there. When I figured out the river house, I kept it to myself. Didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Mom, I –”

  “Don’t talk no more to me, Beau! You just get yourself out of there, get on the road, before they find you!”

  “But, Ma, I can’t leave yet. I’ve got something to do. Then I’ll be on my way. I can’t tell you what. Promise me you won’t tell them about this place. Not until I’m gone.”

  Beau heard a deep, drawn-out sigh, and then Edith Mae said, “Okay, I promise. But make it quick. Make it damn quick!”

  Two hours later, Beau pulled the Taurus onto the long driveway and again parked behind the house in Kristilynn’s neighborhood. The place still looked deserted, the family away. He wondered where they were. Probably Disneyland or some tropical island, maybe on the Texas coast fishing.

  He thought about his own childhood, scarce vacations camping in the woods on the land where he had the fire pit. No fancy theme park rides or happy dinners out for Beau Whittle. But maybe his mother did love him. When it came down to it, she was willing to lie for him.

  He put his shoulder to the door on the side of the garage and it popped open. Inside, he found a black Toyota Camry with a white pinstripe. That solved one problem, but he wanted the key.

  To get inside the house, Beau wrapped his hand in his shirt and knocked out the glass in a window next to the backdoor. Once he climbed through the opening, he was in the kitchen. Tiny black flies buzzed around a bowl of rotting fruit on the counter near the sink. He searched for fifteen minutes and found a ring of house and car keys on a peg in the back hall.

  Beau hit the button and the garage door went up. Before long, he had the Taurus in the garage, and he was backing down the driveway in the Camry. As he drove off, a woman walking to her mailbox waved at him. Wearing the old man’s MADE IN AMERICA bill cap and sunglasses, Beau smiled and waved back.

  For the next hour, he scouted the block behind Willoughbee Lane, concentrating on houses he thought might back up to Kristilynn’s. Garbage day, big vinyl bins on wheels lined the street. Emptied, they waited for the homeowners to roll them away. One house didn’t have a can outside, and Beau decided they, too, were most likely on vacation.

  Beau parked the Camry a block away and walked back to the house, up the driveway, and slipped into the backyard.

  A swing set stood in the center under a large oak tree, but the rest of the yard had only a few flower beds. A sandbox near the swing set appeared to double as a litter box for neighborhood cats. Beau flipped it, spilled the sand out, and dragged it to the fence, constructed of six-foot pine pickets. Standing on top of the sandbox, he peered into the yard behind and saw the back of Kristilynn’s house.

  Beau grinned as if he’d pulled a winning lottery ticket.

  Figuring he had a few hours before she arrived home from work, he grabbed what tools he could find in the garage. He enjoyed the feel of the saw in his hand as he sliced through the rails anchoring the section of fence that backed up to Kristilynn’s yard.

  At first, he worried a neighbor would hear him and investigate. As he worked, he came up with a cover story, that he’d been hired to fix a damaged section of the fence. But he never had to use it. Most of the houses unoccupied during the day, no one interrupted him. It took less than half-an-hour to cut through a section of fence large enough to walk through. Once it fell free, he propped it back up and secured it with rope.

  Then he drove away, to wait for dark.

  Thirty-six

  At the office, I scanned the sketch of Number Fourteen onto a thumb drive and transferred it onto my computer. On my laptop, I logged onto the department’s website and clicked the link to the records on missing persons.

  The woman was white, and Kneehoff said she had brown hair and eyes, five-foot-one, approximate age thirty-five. I keyed in the Houston-area as the most likely location. Hardly anything came up. I tried again, deleting a few parameters, like her approximate age. Three entries filled the screen, an ex-model who disappeared while traveling to a friend’s house, a teenager who went missing from her bedroom in the middle of the night, and a woman who worked as a prostitute out of a motel near Hobby Airport.

  One-by-one I held up the sketch and compared it to their faces. My drawing didn’t resemble any of them.

  I looked at the sketch again. It still seemed incomplete.

  Exhaustion toyed with me. Perhaps Kneehoff was right, and I was simply too tired to see anything clearly. Only a few hours of sleep in the Suburban the night before had left me frayed. I got up, closed the door, and collapsed on a small couch pushed up against my office wall. Within minutes I drifted off.

  Two hours later, the captain’s secretary, Sheila, knocked. She peeked in, her grey hair in tight curls, wearing her usual polyester slacks and a bright tropical blouse. “Lieutenant, the captain would like to see you.”

  I sat up slowly, wiped off my eyes with the backs of my fingers, and wished I’d had even half-an-hour more to nap.

  “We’ve got Kneehoff’s map,” the captain said, when I walked in. “It just came over from the warden on e-mail.”

  “Where are we digging this time?”

  He had a sour look on his face. “In the middle of a subdivision.”

  On his desktop, the captain had Google Maps open, and on the screen he’d blown up the 360 feature, showing the intersection and street after street of newly built homes. Again, something felt very wrong.

  “I can call Tim Miller,” the captain offered. “But this isn’t promising.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” I said.

  Once I arrived, the situation was worse than I’d feared. Every street in the area was packed tight with two-story homes on small yards, a neat, clean, middle-class neighborhood of brick houses and stick trees, flowerbeds, and cement driveways.

  “There’s no sense in calling Tim,” I told the c
aptain on the phone. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in a Texas summer that we’ll find her. She’s gone.”

  The afternoon melted away, one filled with frustration and disappointment. I kept thinking of the woman buried in what was now a subdivision. Perhaps the construction workers found the bones when they excavated the roads or put in a foundation? If so, they kept quiet, maybe to not delay their work with an investigation. I checked the records, but nothing popped up about an unidentified body being found in that area. I thought of the lost woman, her family. I could think of nothing to do, no way to help any of them.

  This one would remain lost, unless I identified her on the data base. I pulled together photos to show Kneehoff, to see if he might recognize the woman. To get more possibilities, I mixed in missing women from other parts of Texas. I ended up with two displays, six photos each.

  Again, I sat across from Liam Kneehoff in the visitor’s area, separated from him by the thick glass. I held up the first sheet of photos and gave him time to digest it. “Anyone look familiar?”

  For a few minutes, he stared at their faces, six missing women. Then he shook his head. “None of them.”

  I put the second page up to the window and waited.

  “Tell me about the woman on the top row, center,” he said. “Where was she taken from?”

  For a moment I thought maybe we had her.

  I turned the paper around and looked to see which one he’d asked about. I pulled my notes from my pocket. “College student, twenty-two, disappeared after an evening with friends.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Black capris, a white T-shirt with sequins.”

  Kneehoff said nothing, just stared at the photo. “Is that her?” I asked.

  Slowly he shook his head. “No. It’s not her.”

  I sat back in my chair, disappointment flooding through me.

  “Liam, I still think the sketch is off. I can circulate it, but I don’t think there’s enough there for anyone to be certain of the woman’s identity. You need to give me more detail. Be more descriptive.”

  “The sketch is fine. I’ve given you plenty of clues to ID her,” he said. I started to object, and he interrupted me. “What about the map? You can find the bones and do DNA, check the data bases.”

  Liam Kneehoff kept up on the science, understood how we worked, what clues the bones held.

  “We can’t dig for this one. The area’s developed over the years and filled with homes. The section where you put the X is somewhere around a cul-de-sac covered with cement. If she was there, they would probably have found her when they put the road in, or dug a foundation for one of the homes. It makes me think you’re off on the location.”

  “You could bring in jackhammers to look for her, couldn’t you?” He enjoyed this, smiled at me knowing that would be impossible.

  “Not without an exact location. We can’t go in and tear up streets and people’s homes hoping to hit the right spot. It’s just not possible. Like I said, I don’t think she’s there. I think the map is off.”

  Kneehoff didn’t look at all upset at the news. Instead, he shrugged. “You know, Sarah, even you can’t win them all.”

  That evening, I switched cars with one of the other rangers, traded him my Suburban for the night and used his brown Tahoe. The guy in the burgundy Taurus, the one I’d chased for two nights, had certainly made me as a cop and my SUV as my ride. I needed to blend in if I was going to be able to take him.

  At eight, half-an-hour before dusk, I drove yet again to Willoughbee Lane. I pulled over a few houses away from where I’d parked the evening before but pointed in the other direction, to watch the intersection where I’d seen the Taurus. Exhausted, I ate my chicken sandwich, this one fried despite my mother’s warnings. I noshed on another supersized order of fries. I put the radio on, listened to some Country Western, and watched Kristilynn’s house.

  Slowly, one-by-one, the lights inside went dark.

  Thirty-seven

  Night replaced day. From his vantage point in the backyard behind Kristilynn’s, Beau saw her lights flick off. An hour later, just before ten, he judged she’d be sleeping. He slipped the ropes off the fence, the ones that kept it upright, and tried to muffle the noise as he lowered the panel. Prepared to make his move, the unforeseen happened. Someone walked up to the house where he hid, and he heard the backyard gate open.

  “Is someone here?” a woman shouted. “Anyone?”

  Worrying that she might wonder about the black Camry parked in the driveway, Beau shuffled behind a wax myrtle, the shotgun in his hand.

  “ANYONE HERE?” she yelled even louder.

  Nothing. Only silence.

  In her late seventies, grey hair, a body round and stooped at the shoulders, the woman had a key. She unlocked the back door and went inside. Hidden in the shadows, Beau moved closer and watched as she switched on a light. The kitchen lit up. She keyed in the code and silenced a whining alarm. She looked around, and he saw her shouting, as if checking to see if anyone was inside the house.

  The only one to respond, a calico cat sauntered into the kitchen and brushed against the woman’s legs. She filled its bowl and freshened its water, stroked its back. Beau saw her talk to the cat, and he wondered if she asked it about the car in the driveway, as if it could answer.

  Her task completed, she made her way to the wall to turn off the kitchen light, but she stopped.

  Instead, she walked to a panel of switches on the back hall wall and flipped them one at a time. The first lit up the patio. The second the driveway. The third turned on lights around the perimeter of the backyard. The old woman walked over to the kitchen window and stood there, staring out, as if searching for anything that looked out of place. Beau followed her eyes and thought she saw the missing section of fence.

  The woman reached for the phone on the kitchen counter.

  Beau rushed toward the house, pushed the door open and stormed inside. The woman screamed as he put the shotgun up to her face. “Drop the phone!”

  Complying, it fell from her hand and landed on the tile, the battery cover breaking off with a cracking sound as it skidded under the table.

  This hadn’t been part of his plan, and Beau considered pulling the trigger to get rid of the woman and the unwanted complication. Then he realized that the sound would carry and could bring more intruders.

  “Get down, on your stomach, on the floor,” he ordered.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “If it’s money, my husband would –”

  “Shut up! Do what I told ya!”

  As instructed, she dropped to her knees and lay on the hard tile floor. He took one of the lengths of rope he’d just removed from the fence from his pocket and tied her hands. Then he grabbed a bright blue dishtowel. She turned away, fought him, attempted to bite him, but he overpowered her. Wedging the towel into her mouth, he tied the ends at the back.

  “Get the hell up!” He pulled her to her feet.

  The woman trembled so she had a difficult time walking, one knee nearly giving way as he marched her outside and to the driveway. He looked around, saw no one, and heard nothing but the hum of air conditioners and insects.

  Once they reached the trunk, he opened it and pushed her inside. On her side, she tried to kick him. He took the shotgun, yanked it high and came down swift and hard with the barrel, hitting her smack in the forehead. She stopped struggling. He pushed her legs inside and slammed the trunk.

  “I’m getting this done!” he whispered.

  The walk to Kristilynn’s house took mere seconds. He tried the backdoor, found it locked. Rearing back, he shouldered it, and the lock gave way. The door swung hard and hit the wall with a thud. He waited for an alarm to go off, wondering how much time he had after it started before someone came, but he heard none.

  Inside, the house smelled like Brussel sprouts and pork chops, Kristilynn’s dinner.

  As quickly and quietly as possible, Beau made his way to the far end of t
he first floor, where he thought the bedroom would be. The house dark, he heard nothing unusual, and he paused long enough in the dining room to look out a window, to check for the woman ranger in the white Suburban. That SUV wasn’t there, but he spotted a dark-colored Tahoe parked a couple of houses down the street. At that, he left the lights off, then rounded the corner from the hallway and walked into the bedroom.

  Awake, Kristilynn was reaching for the telephone.

  Beau raised the shotgun. “Put. That. Down.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m here for a friend,” he ordered. “Roll over!”

  Kristilynn considered screaming, but decided no one would hear her from inside the house. She did as he ordered, holding her hands out for him in fists, knuckles together. While he wrapped the rope around, she pulled against the binding, pleading, “Ouch, too tight! You’re hurting me! Not so tight!”

  Beau struggled, yanking on the rope to try to make it tighter, while Kristilynn twisted her wrists, fighting him.

  Finally, he had her hands tied, and he looked about for something to use as a gag. He grabbed a pillow and ripped the case off. He wedged it into her mouth and tied it. Then he rolled her back over and yanked her to her feet.

  She collapsed to the floor.

  “God damn it, get up!”

  He pulled her up a second time, shoved her onto the bed so that she sat up, and then pulled her to her feet only to have her again crumple to the floor.

  “I said stand up! Now!”

  As he attempted to stand her up a third time, she jerked her head to the right, and he looked over and saw the wheelchair.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He started over to the chair to get it, but then thought better of it. Instead, he pushed Kristilynn onto her back flat on the bed, raised up the shotgun and came down with the butt end bashing her face. She turned her head away, but he got her from the side and clobbered her nose, sending blood gushing onto the sheets. When she stared up at him, struggling to pull away, he battered her with the shotgun again and came down harder, this time on the side of her skull.