by R. J. Noonan
Until she made it out to the clearing and saw the third grave.
Three patches of dirt. The soil on the newest area was darker than the others, newly turned. Weeds and leaves had begun to mask the older areas of soil, but the lines of demarcation were still clear.
Three graves. Three girls.
The clearing became a touchstone of terror—nightmares, scary movies, and ugly memories of Mom at her worst. Lucy saw the specters of her friends rising from the graves. Lovely silken images drifted up from the ground and begged her to come closer, to help them, to give strength to their dead whispers.
“No! Get away!” she yelled at them as she stumbled back and quickly fled.
Lucy avoided the clearing after that. She told herself that she had just imagined things, that soil shifted on its own, that some large animal was digging for wild onions. In some ways it was easy to forget because of her increasing involvement with the Prince and the urchins in Stafford Woods. When Maya became her friend, Lucy thought about the little nook in the woods with the three holes, but she was convinced that she’d made too much of a simple coincidence.
“You’re always twisting things to suit your needs,” Martha told her time and again. Maybe the bitch was right.
But the curse was not broken. Within a few months of their friendship, Maya left, leaving behind some of her personal things at the camp and breaking Light’s heart. Even Lucy could see that the frail girl was hurting. And when Lucy hiked up to check the clearing, the fourth grave stretched out before her, a gaping wound in the earth.
Lucy was convinced that evil was following her like a dark shadow. Was it a real killer or just a bubble from her imagination? Dark thoughts soaked her soul, dragging her down.
Then one morning as she’d been tromping through the woods, she had a change of heart. While passing between two trees, her foot had landed on something squishy and soft. The odd sensation underfoot had set her off balance and made her shudder.
An animal?
A dead shrew. Very dead, though she could still make out its pointy little nose and tiny paws with needle nails. Actually, it was cute. It would have fit with the other stuffed animals on her bed.
But the shrew was a rotting corpse. Probably smelly, though you didn’t notice in the earthy smell of the woods where everything on the ground was molding and decomposing . . .
* * *
Like a diver coming up for air, Lucy emerged from her storytelling and sucked in a deep breath of earthen scents: pine and wood smoke and molding leaves. Laura the cop walked alongside her, taking in every word. The listener.
“Everything is dying and decaying,” Lucy said. “Everything and everyone.”
“Yes, but if there’s a secret graveyard hidden in the state park, chances are that the bodies buried there did not die of natural causes.”
“If there actually are bodies buried there. I mean, I never dug anything up. That would be so gross. But to me, it looks like a graveyard.”
“Okay. Let’s go see this secret cemetery.”
* * *
“Five graves?” Lucy’s eyes searched the clearing yet again, as if her first two counts were incorrect. “How can there be five now? No one else died.” She seemed genuinely surprised.
“No one else that we know of,” I said, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach that something had happened to one of the girls in the woods while we were off interviewing the wrong people.
“That one.” Lucy pointed to a low mound of darker soil carved out of the ground—a wobbly oval that touched another grave at the top, creating the impression of insect wings. “That one is new.” She stared but made no attempt to go near the newly turned earth.
Although Lucy had explained her suspicions on the way here, I felt unprepared to process what this hidden graveyard might contain. Walking in measured steps across the clearing, I moved with a reverence appropriate in a final resting place. In the cemeteries I’d visited—Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, the Pioneer Cemetery in Sunrise Lake, and a marble mausoleum that contained the ashes of my grandfather in the suburbs of the Bay Area—the sober, quiet atmosphere had been palpable. Respect the dead. Walk with knowledge that someday your path will lead to the same destination.
I felt the same vibrations here in the clearing.
Of course, we would not know for sure until a team of forensic scientists was able to delicately excavate these covered holes, but I sensed that Lucy was correct in assuming there were bodies buried in this clearing. Lost souls who had disappeared without answers or closure for their loved ones.
A few feet away, Lucy made a sour face and hugged herself. She had shown me this grave site in an attempt to avoid arrest, and I was convinced that she believed her friends were buried here. “You’re leaving something out,” I said. “You told me how you came upon this place and how you watched it change over the past few years. But someone dug these holes. He or she probably buried bodies here. Who do you think did all this?”
Her eyes grew wide and froze in panic. “I can’t tell you that. And the truth is, I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea. A theory.” I tilted my head to one side, softening toward her. “Who do you think did this?”
Of course, “this” was a broad reference, but she knew what I meant.
“I think . . . I shouldn’t say anything. It’s just a feeling, and for a long time, I’ve tried to put it out of my mind. Ahh! I don’t want to believe it, but I can’t help it. I think my father killed them all.”
27
“We have equipment that can give us an idea if there are human remains buried here without disturbing anything. A device that uses ground-penetrating radar.” Rex Burns looked more like a British rocker than a forensic scientist strutting through the clearing in his leather jacket and boots, his sculpted gold hair gleaming in the autumn sunshine. “I already put in the call. God, I hope the rest of the team can get the radar equipment up here this afternoon. The sooner, the better. With this weather, if we find bodies, we could begin excavation immediately.” He seemed giddy at the possibility.
“If we have bodies, as in plural, we’re going to need to notify the FBI,” Omak said soberly. He and I were trailing along behind Rex while Z strung crime scene tape across trees at the edge of the alley of graves. “And five bodies? Five homicides would be a record breaker for Sunrise Lake.”
“And in poshy posh Stafford Woods. There goes the neighborhood,” Burns quipped cavalierly.
“Mr. Burns, you of all people should show some respect for the dead—and for the town we are trying to protect.” Omak’s voice rang with reproach. “Let me assure you that death brings pain to people in all socioeconomic backgrounds, rich and poor.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” The forensic scientist winced. “It’s such a surprise. The last thing I expected when I accepted a job in Evergreen County was the possibility that I’d work on an excavation site in Sunrise Lake. And this is my specialty. I spent nearly every summer in college on archeological digs, brushing and blowing granules of sand away from any small protrusion in the earth. Those were good times.”
“But you were digging up relics,” I pointed out. “This is different. Well, it will be different if there are bodies buried here. This isn’t an ancient dig site.”
“I stand corrected.” Rex took out a tape measure and handed me one end. “Let’s get a measurement of the plot. That will dictate how much equipment we’ll need.”
Following Rex’s instructions, I carried the end of the tape to the back of the clearing.
“Who do we think is buried here?” Rex asked. “Do you have any idea? It’s always most expedient if we have a hypothesis that we’re trying to verify.”
“The bodies of teenage girls. I’ll give you a list of four of them,” I said, thinking of Lucy’s missing friends. “Two of them are in the Lost Girls database, so we have some dental information and medical records.”
“E-mail your list to me as soon as pos
sible.” Rex and Omak discussed the logistics of bringing equipment in. Omak would try to get permission to access the park trail from the Jamesons’ property to save the forensic team from walking the three miles from the park’s trailhead.
I went over to help Z finish up with the crime scene tape. “Did you hear Burns talking like an event planner?” he said under his breath. “Shit. We’re talking about dead bodies here.”
“A little overenthusiastic,” I agreed.
“Not that it isn’t a huge find. How’d you get Lucy to bring you here?”
“I think she acted out of self-preservation. She thought we were going to arrest her for Kyra Miller’s murder.”
“Right. So to prove she’s innocent, she takes you to five more bodies? The girl’s not the sharpest pencil in the box.”
“She’s scared,” I said, realizing that I was defending Lucy, but the girl clearly needed someone to look out for her. I had sensed her composure unraveling while we were walking back to the compound. I told her to call me if she ever felt threatened. “I’ll be fine,” she had said in that immortal manner of teens. “I’m a survivor.”
Right now I hoped she wasn’t overestimating her skills.
Although Z and I wanted to stay at the grave site, Omak sent us away. “Go. Work your cases, which you’ve been doing a splendid job with. You’re not welcome at the Jameson place right now, and the forensic team has enough workers. You can come back and check in later when we have more information. This whole thing could be a dud, anyway. If there’s a God in heaven, let these holes be empty. I’d be happy with a ruse.”
* * *
The lieutenant’s prayers were not answered.
I had just returned to the precinct from visiting Ellie and her sister, Morgan, at a youth facility, having left Z to file the paperwork on the gruesome discovery. What I had learned from the sisters was burning a hole in my mind, but my phone rang as I got to my desk. Omak was calling to let Z and me know they had confirmation. “We have bodies.”
The surprise was that the most recent mound of dirt showed no human mass beneath the surface. “There are four bodies,” Omak said. “The forensic team is already staging for an excavation. We’re hoping to have lights and equipment in place so that they can dig through the night.”
I ended the call with Omak and turned to Z. “Bodies. This is a serial killer who doesn’t mess around. I’m really scared for Lucy Jameson. What if that fifth hole was meant for her?”
“Not likely if she was diggin’ the holes.”
“I don’t think she was.”
“Mori, look, there are bodies up there, and she knew exactly where to find them. If she killed these girls, she’s going to jail.”
“But I’m not sure she killed anyone. I know, I was hot on her trail a few hours ago, but hearing her talk about her friends, these runaways that she embraced, I don’t see her turning on them so completely. Especially since she sees the pattern of them leaving her as a series of rejections. She believes that her former friends ended up in those graves, and I’m afraid she’s right. And unless she’s a terrific storyteller, someone else killed those girls.”
“She’s the daughter of a bestselling storyteller,” Z pointed out.
“And what if his storytelling skills have helped him get away with murder all these years?”
Z considered this. “Possible, but where’s our evidence? And what’s the motive?”
“Sexual abuse,” I said.
“Reasonable, but we can’t speak to his victims to verify it.”
“I just did.” I showed him a copy of a report I had taken from Morgan Watson at the hospital. “You know I’ve been working with the psychologists at the Children’s Fort to cull information from the runaways. It turns out Morgan and her little sister visited the Jameson mansion one weekend as Lucy’s prospective ‘friends.’ Morgan says that Jameson came into Lucy’s room at night and lured her to his studio to supposedly come up with a surprise for her sister. Morgan said she became ill in Kent’s workspace. When she awoke before dawn, she felt sick and sore, and her underwear was gone. The girls grabbed their stuff and made their way back to camp. Lucy was there all night, but she appeared to sleep through the incident.”
Z’s eyes were dark with rue. “And Martha? She slept through all this, too?”
“She was out of town. Apparently on location for one of Kent’s novels being made into a movie.”
“Shit.” Z scowled.
“When I asked Morgan if she had had anything to drink, she said Kent gave her a Pepsi. She loves soda.”
“Okay, you got me.” He reached for his jacket. “I think it’s time to visit the lieutenant”—he made air quotes—“‘on location.’”
* * *
Dusk approached as we drove up the ridge toward Stafford Hill, turning the wispy clouds in the sky punch bowl shades of orange, cherry, and grape. Autumn skies in Oregon always held a heaviness, as if bracing for winter. As Z drove, I couldn’t help but think of those four girls who would never glimpse the sky again.
In the gathering darkness, the grave site cast a ghostly light so bright it could be seen from a mile away. From up close, the white glare of construction-site lights that turned night into a stark facsimile of day cast an eerie pallor over everything. It would have been creepy even without knowing bodies were buried there.
Omak was on the phone, but Rex Burns noticed our arrival and seemed eager to explain the process. They had reached the eggplant-dark rotting skin of the first corpse—a foot with lime-green toenail polish—and the sight seemed more tragic than gruesome. Z took one look and walked away, but I stayed and listened as Rex described how every bit of soil was sifted through, how they brushed the soil away from the remains grain by grain, how they photographed every stage. Burns was a true forensic aficionado.
Decaying flesh and bone seemed at odds with the girls in the profiles that I’d been reading about on the Lost Girls database. Not Maya, the tall, star basketball player and aspiring model. Or Darcy, who loved digging in the dirt and wanted to work on a farm in Hawaii. I would probably cry over these girls once they were identified, but for now, these earthen shapes seemed more geologic than human.
And then Omak was there beside me, frowning. “I thought I told you two not to come.”
“We were finishing out the shift and had a few things to discuss,” Z said.
“You could have called.” Omak gestured for us to move away from the open grave. “This is nightmare material. Remember those girls the way they appear in photos. Happy. Smiling. Whole.”
“It’s all part of the process.” I told the lieutenant about Morgan’s statement. “All signs point to Kent Jameson being behind these killings.”
Omak nodded. “I’ve been wondering when we’d get to him. After the daughter brought you up here and showed you these bodies, I figured it couldn’t be her. Even raving lunatics don’t usually give themselves up that way.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to dig back further into Jameson’s background, see what I can find.” I looked around the site. The forensic team was working slowly but steadily. “Do you want me to stay here, Lou? The site needs to be secured.”
“You’ve got bigger fish to fry tomorrow. You’re coming with me to break the news to the Jamesons. We’ve got Rivers assigned to guard the site through the night, and the forensic team is going to work twenty-four-seven until these graves are uncovered. Go home. Sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.” Although I was tired. Exhausted and discouraged.
“Got insomnia now? Is Jameson’s condition contagious?”
“He is so stinking guilty. And a pervert. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before this.”
“That’s your gut instinct, and it may be right. But for now, we need to make it look like we’re backing off the Jamesons. Sometimes when you give a suspect a little rope, he hangs himself.”
“He’s too narcissistic for that.”
“Just keep your c
ool. When we meet with the Jamesons in the morning, I’ll conduct the interview, and you can listen and observe. I’m afraid that if you engage with Kent, your disapproval might burn through. We don’t want to tip our hand just yet,” Omak pointed out.
“I’m fine with that,” I said. “But now, knowing what we know about Kent, I worry about Lucy spending the night in that house. He presumably has never targeted her before, but I would feel better if I knew that she was safe. She’s not answering my texts, and we know her support system in Stafford Woods is gone.”
Omak frowned. “Do you think her father would hurt her?”
“I don’t, but what if I’m wrong?”
“I think you’re right. And legally, we can hardly go down to the ranch and demand that Kent Jameson produce his seventeen-year-old daughter because of a bad feeling.”
Logic could be difficult to digest. I would sit on my hands and keep my lips sealed shut. Anything to get this killer behind bars.
28
Two porcelain pots of tea sat on a table in the living room when we arrived for our meeting Friday morning. “We have Darjeeling and Oolong,” Martha said, refusing to meet my gaze as she gathered cups for us. “What’s your preference, Lt. Omak?”
I chose Darjeeling with honey and was grateful for something to keep my hands and mouth busy. Better to sip tea than verbally attack Kent Jameson, whose wild hair and hooded eyes made it clear that he was not a morning person, nor did he welcome us being back in his home.
Omak drank his tea quickly and then started the meeting by thanking the Jamesons for the use of their property to access the trails to the dig site.