Grace pictured what the universe had sent her way: a sun-soaked sailor who would never put down roots and give her forever and a speckled hound with bleeding feet. She laughed. “The universe must have mixed up a few deliveries lately.”
Berkley patted her arm. “The universe usually gets these things right.”
So much about Hatch was right. She loved his passion for life, his dedication to fighting the evils of this world, and the way he made her feel like she wasn’t alone anymore, like she was part of something bigger and better. Here she was walking arm and arm with one of Hatch’s teammates. She’d held hands with Ricky and Raymond and invited Alex out for a boat ride. Her life was no longer all about whorehouse kings and baby killers named Helena Ring. And the crazy thing? It wasn’t bothering her. Her father might be turning over in his grave, but she was the happiest she’d been in years, in a decade. She raised her face to the sky and laughed.
When she and Berkley reached the shack, the artist glided on her beaded sandals to the back porch while Grace lingered in her kitchen, where Agent Jon MacGregor had set up a command center complete with three computers and four phones at her kitchen table.
“Anything yet from the final number?” Agent MacGregor asked the RF engineer from the phone company.
“Nothing, but the minute anyone turns on the phone, we’ll jump on it. We’re assuming that once again mobile positioning will be unavailable,” the engineer said. “But we can begin triangulation of the signal as soon as the phone’s turned on.”
“And the cell sites on wheels?” Jon asked.
“We put four COWs in place, all in remote areas. Concentration of base station cells is low because the area’s so desolate. The COWs should help us pinpoint location more accurately.”
Grace didn’t understand this language, but she was grateful for the crew at her kitchen table. She strolled into the living room and searched for Blue. With all the people, he must have slinked off to find a quiet place to nap.
She stepped onto the front porch and immediately her skin prickled. Someone was watching her. She spun and found Hayden Reed, the SCIU’s criminal profiler, sitting in the corner on the porch swing.
Hayden motioned to Blue, who was stretched out on his back in the middle of the porch, showing his belly to the sun. The skin around the dog’s mouth sagged, exposing his gums and teeth. “He looks like he’s smiling,” Hayden said.
Grace sat on the top porch step and rested her back against the post. “Most upside down dogs look like they’re smiling.” Blue had every reason to smile. He’d had a long life, a full life, a life doing what he loved on land he couldn’t leave. Right now he was making the most of the time he had left. She stretched out her leg and rubbed her foot along his belly.
Hayden closed his laptop and Grace noticed a pair of wicked scratches down the back of his hand. “What happened?”
“Ellie the Devil Cat,” he said. “She’s not quite as docile as your friend Blue here. On my way to the airport, I dropped Ellie off at the boarding kennel because my fiancée is out of town helping an old friend who’s having some problems, and the cat from hell let me know of her displeasure.”
The screen door opened and Hatch stepped onto the front porch with Agent MacGregor. “The teams are heading out,” Agent MacGregor said. “Lieutenant Lang is putting extra patrols on the rivers, local police departments are on high alert, and the media is working with us to alert the public to be ultra watchful, particularly young women walking alone. The sun’s going down in a few hours, and I want everyone ready.”
Because at night the Gravedigger comes out to play.
The peace she’d found at the grave of the mother and child flitted away on the wind. It could be tonight, tomorrow night, or a week from next Tuesday. The only thing they were sure of was that she’d strike at night.
Hatch took a seat on the step below her, his shoulder brushing against her knee. He might not be saying much, but she welcomed his solid, steady presence, two words she never thought she’d use to describe Theodore Hatcher.
“Professor, what do you have on our gal?” Jon asked.
Grace shook her head. “I still struggle with the idea of the killer being a woman. In general, men are much more competitive.”
“Really?” Hatch asked with a lift of both brows. “You’re the most competitive person I know.”
Finally, Hatch said something. His absolute silence unnerved her, but the accusatory look on his face only made her smile. She had a deep, wide competitive streak that colored almost everything she did, and she’d never apologize about that.
Hayden straightened his cuffs. “Grace is right. Men are traditionally more competitive, but we have a victim who claimed to have heard a woman. The evidence backs that up. The wading boot prints found at the first victim’s grave are size eight, too small for most men. Given the depth of the impression and the relatively constant moisture level, we’re looking at an individual around one hundred pounds. As for the actual abductions, they were far from physical attacks. According to our second victim, she was hit with a stun gun and incapacitated long enough for the unsub to inject her with a substance to render her unconscious. A needle mark on the first victim’s upper shoulder points to a similar situation. Our unsub is not a person with brute physical strength, but she is agile and in relatively good health.”
Grace shuddered. No, the Gravedigger was sick, twisted sick. No one could do what she did and be called healthy.
“Good physical health,” Hayden amended with a smile in her direction, as if he could read her mind.
“So we’re looking at a woman,” Hayden continued. “Age twenty to thirty-five, around five feet tall and one hundred pounds. She’s local or has spent a considerable amount of time studying the area, but she doesn’t like the water or the outdoors in general. As a child, she was a loner and never played team sports, but she’s extremely competitive. She played computer games as a kid for hours on end, the kind with complex and fully-developed worlds. She isn’t gainfully employed but has access to money, either family money or ill-gotten. She may be a computer hacker. She’s not involved in any committed relationship and hated her mother.”
While the men on the porch mulled Hayden’s profile, Grace shook her head in awe. She’d worked with criminal profilers before, but never one who made such detailed claims with such confidence. “Amazing.”
Before anyone could say anything, Berkley opened the screen door and popped her head out. “Camellia’s ready.”
While the woman found at her construction site had nothing to do with the Gravedigger, Grace was anxious to put a name to the mother’s face. The bones were real and visible, unlike the invisible woman they were chasing.
On the back porch, late afternoon sun flooded the air, and Grace let her eyes adjust to the brightness. Once she did, her mouth fell open. “That can’t be right,” Grace said. Maybe the Apostles weren’t miracle workers, or maybe Berkley Rowe was having a bad day.
“This is her,” Berkley insisted. “This is Camellia.”
The clay skull had a narrow face, thin lips, and big eyes with lush lashes that looked uncomfortably familiar. Berkley had outfitted her with a thick black-haired wig and chocolaty brown eyes. “She looks like your sketch of the Gravedigger,” Grace said. “Are you sure you aren’t getting the two projects confused?”
Shaking her head, Berkley packed clay and tools and slipped them into a large silver suitcase.
“I agree with Grace, Berk,” Hatch said. “The two could pass for sisters. You haven’t gotten any sleep in the past forty-eight hours. Maybe you’re a little fuzzy.”
Berkley shook her head as if she were dealing with young children. “This is Camellia.”
“But—” Hatch started.
“What’s wrong with you, Hatch?” Berkley asked. “You know how this works. I relied on tissue depth markers tied to age, sex, and race. The bony substrate of the skull told me what kind of nose, mouth, and ears to make. This is science.
”
Maybe Black Jack was wrong. Maybe there was a place in death for science.
“She’s beautiful, in a wild, earthy sort of way,” Grace said. “Why did you give her dark, curly hair?”
“That was just a hunch. Same thing with the eye color. The blackish-brown felt right with a strong face like this.”
“And the Ronnie Alderman/Gravedigger sketch?” Grace asked. The coincidences in appearance were too hard to swallow. “Were the dark curly hair and brown eyes just a hunch?”
“No. Direct observation. In separate interviews both members of the cleaning crew reported with a fair degree of certainty that the woman calling herself Ronnie had brown eyes and dark, curly hair.”
Hayden, who’d joined them on the porch, crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d be shocked if they’re not related.”
Berkley shrugged. “Very well could be. They could be mother-daughter, aunt-niece, even sister-sister.”
“That makes for quite a coincidence,” Grace said.
“Or does it?” Hatch paced along the railing, his hands in the back pockets of his long shorts. “When did you talk to Lia Grant?”
Eons ago, long before Hatch and bacon and old buried bones, when all that mattered was putting a whorehouse king in jail and notching another win. “On Wednesday,” Grace said. The day would be forever imprinted in her brain.
“And when was construction slated to begin?” Hatch continued, walking faster, so fast his hair fanned back from his forehead.
“Thursday.”
“So maybe the Gravedigger wanted to distract you. Maybe she didn’t want construction to begin because digging here would disturb what was essentially a sacred burial ground.”
“I’m all for positive thinking, Hatch,” Jon said. “But there are much easier ways to derail a construction project.”
Grace turned to the land beyond the porch, to the construction site with the silent machines.
“What is it, Grace?”
“The land. When Lamar Giroux put this land up for sale, there were six initial bidders, including me. Four of them dropped out quickly, but one was a serious contender, beating my four initial offers. I had to scrape together every dollar I could find to make that final bid.”
“But in the end you won,” Hatch said in a tone that was anything but victorious.
Every hair on Grace’s body stood on end. “And the other bidder lost.”
“Get the name of the real estate agent who brokered the deal, Grace. We need to find out about the other person who desperately wanted this land.”
* * *
Hayden tucked the name of the real estate agent into his jacket pocket and motioned Hatch to follow him to his rental car.
“Who is she?” Hayden asked when they reached the driveway.
Hatch slipped his hands through his hair. He could pretend he didn’t know what his teammate was talking about, but it was hard to bullshit a man like Hayden who saw everything. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”
“Who is she?” Hayden asked again.
“An old girlfriend.”
“And I love cats,” Hayden deadpanned.
Hatch thwacked his teammate on the shoulder. “You know, I like this lighter side of you, Professor. I think you should have hooked up with Kate years ago.”
“Who is she?” Hayden insisted.
Hatch stretched his neck. “My ex-wife.”
Hayden, unshakable, solid Hayden, let loose a low whistle. “You were married?”
“I had a head injury at the time. The plates below my feet collided after a few nights of incredible sex.”
“Does Parker know?” Hayden asked, then immediately waved off the words. Parker knew everything.
When they reached Hayden’s rental car, Hatch handed him a sheet of paper. “Here are the questions I want you to ask the real estate agent.”
Hayden ducked inside and laughed.
“What?” Hatch asked.
Hayden shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Hayden, talk. Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours because you see things no one else sees.”
Hayden thumped Hatch on the shoulder and started the car. “I’m looking at you one year down the road, my friend, and I’m not seeing you on a boat.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hatch stood on the front porch of Grace’s house and waited for the green flash, that magical moment at sunset or sunrise when the sun slipped past the horizon line and an arc or ray of green slashed across the sky. According to an old Scottish sailing legend, the man who sees the green flash shall be blessed, for he shall be able to see closely into his own heart and within the hearts of other people.
In his ocean travels, Hatch had seen more than his fair share of green flashes, and he’d give anything to see one now and harness the power behind the legend, not because he wanted to see into his own heart, but because he desperately needed to get into a killer’s heart, a killer who wanted, ultimately, to kill Grace.
He pictured that stick figure in pearls with crossed out eyes. Who the hell wanted Grace dead? Who would orchestrate an evil game like this? And when would she strike next?
“She’s getting anxious,” Hayden had said before he went to track down the real estate agent who’d been representing a killer. “Our unsub’s been out in the open, out of her comfort zone too long, and she needs this game to end. I wouldn’t be surprised if she struck tonight.”
Tonight. The single word pounded Hatch like gale force winds. Tonight the Gravedigger could abduct the third and final victim. And what’s the worst thing that could happen?
The victim would die.
And then?
Grace would have three strikes.
And then?
Grace would die.
And then?
His own personal brand of nuclear annihilation.
He rested his knuckled hands on the porch railing with so much pressure, the gray, splintered wood creaked. He knew exactly what was in his own heart. He loved Grace and couldn’t imagine a life without her. How they were to manage a life together still needed to be worked out. Grace had accused him of being a free spirit, but that was far from the case. He was chained to Grace, and he had no desire to break those bonds.
The door opened and Grace stepped out with Blue shuffling behind her. “Land or sea?” she asked.
With the dark of night sliding in, the goal was to get as many bodies out in the swamp and marshes and beaches as possible. Jon had commandeered a high-powered fan boat and was already out on the Cypress Bend river.
“Land,” Hatch told Grace.
Blue hobbled behind them to the SUV. “Do you think we should make him stay home?”
“Do you think he’d let us?” Grace asked with a tilt of her eyebrow.
The old dog was like…like a dog with a bone. Hatch shook his head. Once he sunk his teeth into it, he wasn’t giving up, much like Grace. After that first phone conversation with Lia Grant, she’d thrown herself into the investigation, committed to see it through to the end. She climbed into the SUV, and he shut the door tightly behind her. His job was to keep her alive.
They drove away from the shack and into the deepening dusk. Their unsub could be anywhere, including Grace’s backyard. As they rounded the corner near the construction site, leaves on one of the camellia bushes rustled. Could be a deer, a black bear, or a killer.
He slowed, squinting into the graying night.
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“Not sure.”
He parked the SUV, and he and Grace walked across the recently cleared earth, circling the hole where Camellia and her child had been buried. A flash of silver glinted behind one of the camellia bushes. He grabbed Grace and lunged behind a wide sycamore.
The leaves shivered, and Hatch raised his Glock.
The bushes parted, and a woman stepped into the clearing.
“Lou?” Grace asked with a sharp intake of breath.
The old
beekeeper jumped, something sharp and shiny falling from one hand and a fistful of red falling from the other. “Saints alive!” Lou clasped her gnarled hands to her chest. “You scared the living daylights out of me.”
Hatch lowered the gun but didn’t put it away. He closed the distance between them and picked up the length of silver that had fallen to the ground. A knife. “What are you doing here?”
Lou whisked the dirt from her hands, stepped aside, and motioned to the bush. “Gathering flowers.” She bent slowly, and he could almost hear the creaking of her old spine as she picked up a half-dozen lengths of camellia blooms scattered on the ground. “For CoraBeth.”
“CoraBeth?”
“The one they’re calling Camellia.” Lou tottered to the edge of the hole. “I saw her picture on the news and heard she was buried here.”
“You knew her?”
Lou tossed a single spray of camellias into the hole, the deep red blooms tumbling along the damp chunks of earth until they splashed into a shallow pool of water that had collected at the bottom. One by one, she tossed the flowers into the grave. Tears trailed down her lined cheeks and splashed into the water. “She was my daughter.”
A whoosh of wind slipped across the swamp, silencing bullfrogs and crickets. According to Berkley, the Gravedigger and Camellia looked similar.
“Your daughter?” Grace asked. “I never knew you had a daughter.”
“She was long gone by the time you came along, little Gracie.” The old woman snipped another cluster of blooms from the camellia bush.
“Tell us about your daughter, Lou,” Grace said.
The old beekeeper plucked a petal from a flower.
“Please, Miz Poole, little Gracie’s life may be at stake.”
Lou looked at Grace out of the corner of her eye and plucked faster. What did those old eyes see? Little Gracie picking out a jar of honey? A grown woman who was in danger? Hatch jammed his hands in his pockets so he didn’t grab the old woman’s shoulders and shake the words from her.
The Buried (The Apostles) Page 24