“CoraBeth was born more than fifty years ago,” Lou finally said. “Her daddy was a farmhand who worked the cotton fields north of Apalach one summer. He was a wild one, but he had him a smooth way with words. Charmed me and the bees.” Her cracked lips lifted in a faded smile. “Like her daddy, CoraBeth was a wild one. Didn’t like staying cooped up inside. Didn’t like goin’ to school. Spent her days wandering the swamp and dreaming of the day when she could fly away.”
“And?” Grace asked.
“And one day she got her wings. She came home all aflutter and said she’d found the man of her dreams, that he was going to pull her out of the swamp and build her a castle fit for a queen. I never heard from her again.”
Grace placed her fingers on Lou’s, and she stopped destroying the flower. “I’m sorry.”
“I did my grieving sixteen years ago when CoraBeth died.”
“Wait a minute,” Hatch said. “How did you know she died sixteen years ago?”
The old beekeeper threw the mutilated flower on the ground. “The bees told me.”
“The bees told you your daughter was dead?” Hatch asked with a rise in his voice.
“Yep, they told me she was buried in the ground, giving back to the earth because the earth gave her life. That’s the way of the land.”
“The woman you saw with Lia Grant, the one being buried near your place, she looked like your daughter, right?” Grace grabbed the old woman’s trembling hand and held it between hers. “That’s why you called her a ghost, because you thought she was CoraBeth, who had died a number of years ago.”
“Wrong, it looked wrong. After being dead so long, she should have been bones, just bones.”
“But she wasn’t,” Grace said with a calm she didn’t feel. “The person with Lia Grant was a real person, someone who looked exactly like your daughter.”
“Bones. She should have been bones,” Lou said as she extricated her hand and plucked at the gray hair sticking out from the bandana across her forehead.
“Someone like—”
“A daughter,” Hatch finished for her. “That’s why Berkley’s sketch and facial reconstruction look so much alike.” He turned to Lou. “The woman buried on this property is your daughter, CoraBeth Poole, which means the young woman you saw in the boat with Lia Grant and who worked on the cleaning crew in Port St. Joe could be your granddaughter.”
Lou tugged on the gray wisp of hair.
“Talk to me, Miz Poole. Did CoraBeth have a daughter?”
She pulled on the hair, as if trying to tug something from her brain. “I…I don’t know.” Her mouth trembled, the saggy skin of her neck quivering. “The bees never told me. Usually the bees tell me the important things. They should have told me. They would have told me.”
He took her hands in his, their fingers interlaced. “Think, Lou, think back. Did you ever receive a call, a note, a visit from a young girl who looked like CoraBeth?”
Lou stared at the bridge of their arms with longing. She wanted to cross over, to admit she had a granddaughter. The old woman’s thin arms grew as stiff and still as sun-brittled twigs before she threw off his hands. “She’s dead. The queen is dead!” Tucking the wisp of gray under her bandana, Lou Poole stomped off into the swamp.
“It’s her,” Grace said. “The killer is Lou Poole’s granddaughter. It’s all connected and it starts with this land, the highest point on Cypress Bend.”
Hatch turned his face to the night sky, which had slipped from plum to gray and was now bleeding to black. “The more important question isn’t who she is but where she is.”
* * *
Sometimes luck, not skill, separated the winners from the losers, and tonight she had both. She watched the two boys sneaking down the alley. The authorities were expecting the next pawn to be another young woman. Oh, this was good. Another game changer. One of these two noisy little boys would be just the right size. But two was one too many.
She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Think. Think. Think.
Divide and conquer. That’s what she needed to do. She searched around the alley and found an aluminum can on the ground. Extra points for picking up litter. She tossed the can at a metal trashcan, the clank jarring the night. The boys jumped and took off. At the mouth of the alley, the boys split.
Silent and invisible, she took off after the one who turned right.
When she reached the boy, she grabbed him and swung the stun gun at his neck. The boy, small and scrappy, like a vicious little dog, slipped out of her hands. She lunged, flying through the air and slamming into him.
He kicked, his small-person tennis shoes connecting with her side. The stun gun slipped from her hand, but she caught it. She blamed all those video games she played as a kid. Good for hand/eye coordination. Jamming the stun gun against the small person’s neck, she watched as his body jerked and froze. At last she dug the needle from her front pocket—it was amazing what a person could buy off the Internet—slipped off the protective cap and jabbed it into his neck.
“Aaargh!” he cried.
“Final level,” she said when the boy’s eyes finally closed. She turned her face toward Cypress Point, where Grace and her pretty pearls lived and said, “And may the best sister win.”
* * *
Something cold and wet nuzzled her hand. “Go away.” A long, soggy piece of sandpaper licked her neck. “Not now, Blue. I’ll get you some bacon later.”
She reached for her pillow to throw at the dog, but her pillow wasn’t beneath her head. Her fingers slid along something warm and firm but soft, something that smelled of salt and sun. Hatch. Her head was on Hatch’s lap.
That’s when she heard the ringing.
Her phone. Someone was calling her phone. She scrambled upright. She was in the SUV. Where was her phone? She’d been holding it and must have fallen asleep. Hatch, asleep in the driver’s seat with his head against the window, didn’t move.
She dug between the seats and under Hatch. The ringing continued.
“Where are you?” She fell to her knees and fumbled along the floorboard, banging her head on the console. “Dammit!”
“Who you talking to?” Hatch said with a yawn.
“My phone.”
Hatch’s eyes flew open. His seat squeaked as he lunged for the light switch on the dash. Light flooded the vehicle.
At last she found her phone. The display read RESTRICTED NUMBER. “Hello!” Grace said, her hand shaking. Was this it? Level Three? “Hello!”
“Who the hell is this?” The voice was more than a little irritated.
“Grace. My name’s Grace Courtemanche. Are you okay?”
“Not really.” The bravado wrapped around the words faded away. “I kind of need some help.”
“What’s your name? Where are you?”
“My name’s Linc.” A quiver rocked the voice followed by a soft sob. “I was out messing around tonight with my buddy Gabe and got into a little trouble.”
Sweat broke out along her neck. “Oh, God.”
“What is it?” Hatch dropped to the floor next to her.
She handed him the phone. “Level Three. She has one of Alex’s friends. The one called Linc.”
Hatch took the phone. “Linc, my name is Agent Hatcher and I’m with the FBI. Where are you?”
“I’m in a hole in the ground in a stinkin’ plastic tote, like the one my ma has in her laundry room to hold dirty laundry.”
Good. This kid was a fighter, one clearly not immobilized by fear.
“I’m going to ask you a set of questions,” Hatch said. “I need you to stay calm, and we’re going to get you out of there. You ready, pal?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Are you hurt or in any pain?” Hatch asked Linc, the Gravedigger’s third victim. A boy. She’d abducted a thirteen-year-old boy. He swallowed the curse swelling in his throat and forced himself to remember what he was trained to do.
Stay calm. Keep others around him calm.
“I…I…passed out for a while.” Linc’s voice cracked, but he cleared his throat. “But I’m okay now. No bleeding or anything.” The kid was holding it together, trying to be brave.
“Do you have fresh air?”
“Yeah. Got a few holes in the top of the plastic lid. I’m breathing good.”
Excellent. Good mental and physical health. Jim Breck of the local phone company and Lieutenant Lang were both tapped into the line and ready to go. Breck and his team were triangulating the call, and the lieutenant’s team was ready to dig as soon as they received coordinates. Grace and Allegheny Blue sat in the SUV with him on one of the many back roads snaking through Cypress Point.
“Be as still as you can, Linc. We don’t need any dirt jostling and obstructing those holes. Do you know where you are?”
“No clue.”
“Do you hear running water or cars or boats or birds?”
“It’s quiet. Don’t hear a thing.”
“What about smells? Do you smell fish or car exhaust?”
“I smell dirt.”
They weren’t going to get a quick fix on him. Time to backpedal. “Where were you when you were taken?”
“The alley behind Robson’s Grocery Store off Main Street.”
“What time?”
“Midnight or so.”
“How did you end up in the box?”
“A girl popped out of nowhere and came at me. A freakin’ girl. I almost got away but she hit me with some kind of stun gun and jabbed a needle in my neck. That’s when I passed out.”
“When and where did you wake up?”
“Don’t know how long I was out, but I woke up in this stupid laundry tote. I kind of went all sissy until I found the holes and realized I could breathe.” A sob caught in Linc’s throat.
Nope, he wasn’t letting the boy slip into panic like Janis Jaffee had. “Then what did you do, Linc?”
“Then I screamed and punched the box. Really pissed me off.”
Linc needed to hang on to that anger. That fighting-mad spirit would keep him in the game longer. “When you woke up, were you already in the ground?”
“No. I was outside and moving. I felt the wind kind of beating on the tote, and I could hear the road below.”
If Linc felt the wind, he must have been in the bed of a truck. Most likely a white four by four with wide tires with a cross-hatch pattern. “Asphalt, like on a highway or city street?”
“First asphalt. Then we must have turned down a dirt road because it got bumpy.”
“How long were you on the asphalt?”
“Don’t have a clue. She took my cell phone. That pissed me off, too.”
“Did you hear anything while you were on the asphalt? See anything through the holes?”
“Nah, nothing.” The kid’s voice wavered. “This…this isn’t good, is it?”
“You’re doin’ great, pal. You need to just keep talking to me because my buddies at the phone company are figuring out where you’re at.”
“Yeah, that’s right. They can do that, can’t they?”
“You bet they can. So the truck turned onto a bumpy road. What happened next?”
Next to him, Grace wrapped her fingers around the pearls at her neck. She’d spent her childhood playing the What Happens Next Game, but never with these kinds of stakes.
“Made lots of turns,” Linc continued. “Not sure how many, and I have no idea how long we were on the dirt road. Box slid around. Thought I was going to puke.”
“And when you stopped?”
“She pulled the tote from the truck, right off the end, and I crashed to the ground. I bit my freakin’ tongue.”
“One person? Same person who nabbed you behind the grocery store?”
Pause. “Yeah, just one. Probably the same chick. I let a stupid girl nab my ass. A stupid girl!” A series of sharp smacks sounded.
“And we’re going to catch her.” He needed to de-escalate the search. “Do you hear me, Linc? We’re going to get you out and nab her ass.”
“Yeah, that’s what I want. Her ass in a box like this one.”
“Okay, pal, so what happened next?”
“She dragged the box on the ground.”
“Were you on pavement? Grass? Gravel? Shells?”
“Not gravel or shells, but there must have been some rocks. Tore a hole in the bottom of the tote. Small. Can fit two fingers through it.”
“Did you see, smell or hear anything as you were being dragged?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened next?”
“She slid me and the tote into a hole. Got banged around but landed upright. Then I heard and smelled dirt clods dumping on top of me.”
“Think hard, Linc. During this time did you see anything through the holes?”
“No. Too dark.”
“Hear anything? Dogs or birds or boats? How about smells? The ocean or fish or car exhaust?”
“No, noth—” He sucked in a fast breath. “Smoke. At one point I smelled smoke, the campfire kind. I swear at one point it smelled like roasting marshmallows. That’s stupid, huh?”
“Marshmallows definitely aren’t stupid.” Lieutenant Lang was probably mobilizing one of her search teams to head into local campgrounds to scout around for marshmallow roasting sticks. “Anything else? Other smells or sounds? Maybe people talking or even singing?”
“Nothing.”
He checked his watch. “What about your attacker, what do you remember about her?”
“Short. My size. Skinny, too. Dark, long hair. Curly.”
“Anything else?”
“Big eyes. And she had a tattoo on her wrist. Saw that when she jammed the stun gun on my neck. A bee. A freakin’ bumblebee. A pansy ass girl with a freakin’ bumblebee.”
“And we’ll get her. Did she have—”
“Hang tight, Agent Hatcher. I think I got another hole.” Shuffling sounded, along with a splash and a swear word.
Grace frowned. “Did he say hole?”
“Linc?” Hatch said. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, sorry ’bout that. I’m back. Yep. Got two holes, not one. I tore my shirt and got the new one plugged. Not too much water’s coming in.”
“You have water coming into the tote?”
“Yeah, almost an inch now.”
“Salt? Fresh?”
A soft swish sounded, and Linc said, “Salt, really muddy. But I don’t need to be worried about the water because you’re on your way, right? Your guys are triangulating the call, just like on all the cop shows on TV. You’ll be here and—”
Silence stretched over the phone. “Linc?” More silence, not even a hint of breath. “Linc!”
The phone light died, the face blackening and becoming one with the night. “Dammit!” Hatch’s hand tightened around the phone. “The call dropped.”
“He’ll call back.” Grace pressed against his side, staring at the black, silent hunk of metal in his hand. “Lia called nine times. Linc will call.”
Hatch willed the phone to ring. “Come on, pal. We’re not done talking. Call me.” When it remained silent, he shook it, as if trying to scare it into submission.
A phone rang, and Hatch’s heart slammed against his ribcage. He went to push the call button, but the face was still black.
Grace nudged him in the chest. “Your phone. It’s Jim Breck from the phone company.”
He took his phone from Grace. “What the hell happened?”
“Signal’s gone,” Jim said. “We lost the control channel completely. We’ll continue to monitor, but it looks like the battery may have died, the boy turned off the phone, or the phone malfunctioned.”
“Or more likely our killer programmed the damn thing to cut off after five minutes because we’re on Level Three.” Hatch’s hand shook as he handed Grace her phone. Linc wasn’t calling back. But they hadn’t lost him, not yet. This kid was strong and coherent. Hatch pulled solid information from him. “You got a locat
ion?”
“We’ve been on it since the boy turned on the phone,” Jim said. “We’re still working on coordinates, but we caught him roaming strongest on a tower near Tate’s Hell.”
He turned to Grace.
“A state forest with primitive campsites,” she said. “More than 200,000 acres.”
Hatch ran a hand along his face. That was some serious acreage. He cranked the motor. In the backseat of the SUV, Blue’s tail thumped. Dogs, like bees, could sense things, and old Blue knew he was going on a hunt.
* * *
“A kid?” Agent MacGregor slammed a fisted hand onto the hood of Hatch’s SUV, the bang echoing through the pre-dawn darkness. “I can’t believe she got a kid.”
“A thirteen-year-old boy named Lincoln Henderson,” Grace said. For the past fifteen minutes searchers, including Special Agent Jon MacGregor, had been pouring into the south parking lot at Tate’s Hell State Park.
“How’d the kid sound?” Agent MacGregor asked.
“I only had about five minutes with him before the call dropped, but he was in good shape. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how long that’ll last.” Hatch gave his teammate and the group of deputies and searchers a detailed description of his phone conversation with Linc ending with, “Water’s rising. So on this level, the victim could suffocate or drown.”
Level Three. Less time and more obstacles. The bitch. The sick, twisted, sadistic bitch. Allegheny Blue licked her hand, and she dug her fingers into the soft folds of skin at his neck.
Within thirty minutes, Agent MacGregor had a massive search underway. Dogs, a helicopter, searchers in boats and on wheels. The sun had broken the horizon, and deep plum with streaks of peach stretched across the sky.
“I want you and Hatch on the Cypress Bend River.” Jon tapped a map spread out on the hood of the SUV. “Go ahead and start here.”
Grace reached for Hatch’s hand, but he no longer stood at her side. She found him standing at the river’s edge, a tall, dark silhouette with rumpled hair, a man who couldn’t resist the siren’s song of moving water. Even now when minutes were crucial, Hatch needed a moment to find the strength that enabled him to do what he did so well.
The Buried (The Apostles) Page 25