Buried

by Ellison Cooper

  Sayer grabbed her cell phone and stormed into the kitchen for coffee. She was going to call that damned reporter as soon as she was sufficiently caffeinated.

  She lifted the still-warm and very empty coffeepot. With a grumble, she reached for the coffee tin and shook it.

  “Did you finish the last of the coffee?” Sayer called out to Adi.

  “Oops, sorry.”

  Sayer looked down at her empty mug and took a deep breath. She pointedly stared at Adi as she walked through the living room and out the front door. Her downstairs neighbor and Vesper’s coparent, Tino de la Vega, sat outside in their shared garden. Vesper bounded down to greet his other human.

  “It’s my favorite creature in the world!” The stocky man with wire-rimmed glasses and a bristly mustache smiled brightly, ruffling Vesper’s ears. “How are you doing this fine…” He trailed off at the sight of Sayer stalking down the stairs in her red flannel pajamas and wild pouf of brown curls.

  “Coffee?” Sayer thrust her empty mug at Tino.

  He laughed. “Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine this morning.”

  Sayer scowled. “The devil’s spawn that I took into my home out of the kindness of my heart has just finished the last of my coffee without even mentioning that we were low. Can I murder her now or do I have to wait until I’ve actually had coffee?”

  “Pretty sure the order is supposed to be coffee and then murder. I’ve got a fresh pot on.”

  She retreated to Tino’s homey downstairs apartment of their converted colonial town house and sloshed her mug full. She carefully cradled it as she flopped down at the garden table. The crisp fall air and dewy morning light made their garden look like something straight out of a fairy tale.

  Between that and the deep nutty aroma of coffee, Sayer felt slightly less murderous.

  She looked across the table at her neighbor. After leaving the Army, he had become a high-powered chef. But when he realized that he was gay, Tino got a divorce and quit his job. Sayer was fairly sure he was in the middle of a full-blown midlife crisis, spending his days gardening, playing with Vesper, and reading, while casting about for something meaningful to do.

  “You interviewing another wack job this morning?” Tino asked with slight disdain.

  Sayer shook her head. “Not this morning, but I do have one scheduled late this evening.” She was about to elaborate when her cell phone rang.

  She ignored it.

  “You going to get that?”

  “It’s just another reporter,” Sayer said, hunching over her mug.

  The phone stopped, but then buzzed again.

  “Could be your nana,” Tino said, eyebrows up. Even the ex–Army interrogator knew better than to cross Sayer’s nana.

  With a sigh, Sayer pulled out her phone.

  “Shit, it’s Holt!” She fumbled to answer. Vesper jumped up at the tension in her voice.

  “Sayer,” Assistant Director Janice Holt barked in her usual sharp tone. As head of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group in charge of Quantico, Janice Holt was as no-nonsense as they came. The powerful woman gleefully lived up to her reputation as an old battle-ax.

  Sayer smiled at the familiar bark. “Assistant Director Holt.”

  “You’ve got a case.”

  “Already? I thought I was off until next week.”

  “Nope, we’re short-staffed as hell with all the congressional-hearing nonsense and I have a form sitting here on my desk that says you’re officially field-certified. Time to get your ass back to work. One of our agents fell into a sinkhole full of human remains down in Shenandoah National Park. Looks like a possible dump site. The National Park Service called us in and I’ve already got an Evidence Response Team and medical examiner on the way. It’ll take a while for them to exhume all the skeletal remains, but I want you to head down now and take the helm.”

  “Skeletons.… Any details on how many bodies or how long they’ve been there?”

  “Not yet. Our agent, Maxwell Cho, is waiting for you at the south entrance to the park. He’ll take you to the scene and fill you in on the way.”

  Sayer tried not to sound disappointed. “Cold case, you think?”

  “Could be.” The assistant director sighed. “Listen, I know you’re itching to dive into something active, but I want you to ease back into a case where no one will be shooting at you. I’ll have the data team send you the files. All eyes are on us right now, so don’t fuck up.” Holt hung up.

  Sayer blinked at the sudden silence.

  “Sounds like you’re back in the field?” Tino asked, clearly not thrilled.

  “Agent Altair, back in action.” Sayer chugged the last of her coffee and sprinted upstairs to get dressed.

  SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA

  Sayer leaned her vintage motorcycle into the turn off Highway 64 onto Skyline Drive. She rumbled a few miles up the narrow road to the entrance of Shenandoah National Park. Late morning sun shone through the fall foliage, making it look like the sky was aflame.

  She rolled the Matchless Silver Hawk to a stop next to a low stone wall running alongside the ranger station and pulled off her helmet to enjoy the cool mountain air. After being cooped up in her office for so long, it felt good to be back out in the field.

  A man of medium height dressed in hiking gear sat casually on the wall, a large black dog curled at his feet. “Ah, Senior Special Agent Altair, I recognize you from TV.” He strode over, smiling warmly, and held out his hand. Everything from his sun-worn cheeks to his broad shoulders to his cropped black hair screamed ex-military.

  Sayer gave a strained smile as they shook. Her face had been on heavy media rotation over the past few months and she was beginning to wonder if she would ever be anonymous again. The only benefit to being on TV was that at least no one was surprised anymore when the FBI agent turned out to be a thirty-something brown-skinned woman.

  “And you must be the agent who found us a crime scene,” Sayer said.

  “I think crashed into a crime scene might be more accurate. I’m Max Cho, K9 Unit.” The wolfish dog stood at attention at his side. “This’s Kona, my Human Remains Detection dog. She should really get the credit for finding the bodies.” He put a gentle hand on Kona’s head. “Why don’t you park your bike here? We can ride up to the scene in my truck.”

  The American flag flying above the ranger station whipped in a sudden gust of wind. Sayer glanced over her shoulder and was surprised to see a wall of gray clouds overtaking the clear blue sky. As she climbed into Max’s truck she felt a trickle of unease at the coming storm.

  “So, Assistant Director Holt said you’re assigned to the D.C. office. What were you and Kona doing out here this morning?” Sayer asked as they drove farther into the mountains.

  “This was supposed to be my day off. My plan was to take a nice morning hike up to Turk Mountain, then head down to Rockfish Gap to visit with my mom for the afternoon.”

  “So much for a day off.” Sayer tried giving Kona an ear scratch that would have turned Vesper into a puddle of wiggling dog. Kona didn’t move, attention forward, barrel chest rigid.

  Max chuckled. “Sorry, she doesn’t really do normal dog stuff. She’s the most serious creature I’ve ever worked with.”

  They turned off Skyline Drive onto something that Sayer would only politely call a road, and she was rarely polite. Max kept his eyes straight ahead, expertly wrangling the steering wheel to keep the bucking truck from sliding sideways on the gravelly track. Sayer almost laughed out loud at Max and Kona’s matching intense looks.

  “So, you grew up around here?” she asked.

  “Born and bred. I grew up in Rockfish Gap, which you just drove through on your way here.”

  “I drove through a town?”

  Max nodded. “Exactly. It’s more a barnacle on the side of the mountain than a town.”

  “You know of any missing people nearby who could be our victims?”

  “There’ve been a few missing people in th
e park over the years, but nothing like this.”

  “How old could the bones be? I mean, could Kona smell ten-year-old remains? Or even older?” Sayer asked.

  Max glanced fondly at his dog. “During her final qualification, Kona found a single thirty-year-old human vertebra buried two feet deep. But I’ve heard of dogs finding remains that are two, even three hundred years old.”

  “Damn, that’s impressive.”

  They hit a bump that threw them all into the roof of the truck. Sayer rubbed her head where it bounced off the hard metal.

  “Sorry. These are old mining roads. I’ll ask a park ranger to send a grader up this afternoon to level out the road.”

  Sayer grunted approval.

  Max grinned, clearly enjoying the challenge of wrestling two tons of steel as they bounced their way up the mountain.

  * * *

  A light rain began to fall as they pulled up next to a small phalanx of FBI SUVs, Park Service trucks, and an FBI medical examiner’s van.

  With a nod to the rain, Max handed Sayer a poncho and some gloves. “You probably don’t want your bike jacket to get muddy.”

  Sayer ruefully pulled off her burgundy leather jacket and yanked the thin plastic over her T-shirt, wishing she had thought to prepare for the damn woods. Nature girl she was not. At least she had her Vibram-soled boots.

  Max and Kona bounded from the truck, perfectly at home in the blustery weather. Unlike Sayer’s bright green extravaganza of poncho plastic, Max’s thick jacket looked cozy as could be. The dog moved at his side like an extension of his body.

  With a sigh, Sayer stepped out into the cold drizzle and the poncho immediately stuck to her skin, raising goose bumps. At least the gloves Max gave her felt warm. The weight of her belt with gun and flashlight felt heavier than she remembered. Six months was a long time to be away.

  “It’s only a few hundred yards this way,” Max called back to her with annoying enthusiasm. “The medical examiner and evidence techs are already there.”

  Sayer felt a pang of concern. Though most labs were open now, the actual Medical Examiner’s Office at Quantico was completely shut down while the FBI was under congressional investigation, and she had no idea who they had sent. Virginia had its own ME’s office, so maybe a local? The medical examiner could make or break a case, and Sayer definitely hoped she didn’t get stuck with a newbie.

  “So,” Sayer called up to Max, “what’s the surrounding area like? We close to anything?”

  Max and Kona slowed so they could all walk together. “You came up Skyline Drive, which runs along the ridge of the mountains for about a hundred miles, from Rockfish Gap up to Front Royal.” Max led Sayer through the thick underbrush. “Even though we’re only a few hours from D.C., it’s pretty wild up here. Especially farther along Skyline where you’re thirty or forty miles from any of the roads that can get you down to civilization.”

  “Pull!” a voice shouted up ahead, interrupting Max.

  Sayer’s hand instinctively went to her gun at the tension in the voice. Max glanced over at her, eyebrows up. She realized she was jumpy, first-day-back jitters or something. She dropped her hand and ignored Max’s look as they broke through the underbrush into a small clearing.

  Four uniformed park rangers struggled with a blue tarp above a ragged hole in the ground. The rangers fought to control the tarp, which pulled open like a sail in the brisk wind.

  A hulking woman in a rumpled park ranger uniform stood to the side and called out instructions. She was so big that her shoulders sloped slightly to the sides as if bending under their considerable mass. “Will, tie that off higher! Lydia, you need to pull that corner to your left!”

  One of the rangers holding the tarp shouted back, “Piper, if you’re not gonna help us, then just shut it!”

  Looking slightly sheepish at being chastised, the park ranger turned her attention to Max and Sayer. She hurried over, rain dripping off the edges of her brown wide-brimmed hat. With rounded cheeks, freckled pale skin, slightly shaggy strawberry-blond hair, and a stocky build, she looked like a linebacker stuffed inside the body of the Gerber Baby.

  The park ranger gave Max an affable wave. “Hiya, Max.” She turned to Sayer. “Piper MacLaughlin, at your service.” Her eyes crinkled with an easy smile. “I’ll be your park liaison. You must be SSA Altair.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ranger MacLaughlin.”

  The park ranger let out a short laugh. “Please, just call me Piper.”

  “Nice to meet you, Piper. You two know each other?” Sayer looked back and forth between the compact FBI agent and the massive park ranger.

  “Piper’s a fixture here in the park. You’ve worked here, what, twenty years?” Max asked.

  “Only sixteen,” Piper said.

  “Piper’s been working here longer than any other ranger, so she’s the old-timer.”

  “I just belong in these woods, is all.” Piper looked up at the trees with the kind of warmth usually reserved for loved ones.

  Between Piper and Max, Sayer wondered if everyone in the Virginia mountains was always so full of annoying enthusiasm. “So what can you two tell me?”

  “This is a hell of a thing we’ve got here, isn’t it?” Piper led them under the tarp as the other rangers managed to finish tying it off. “We’re still setting up. Should have a few canopies erected soon. Your evidence team is already down in the cave.” She pointed to the ragged-edged hole.

  Sayer leaned forward to take a look and could just make out a rope ladder descending into the darkness.

  Max held out an arm in front of her. “You don’t want to get too close or you might trigger another cave-in.”

  Sayer took half a step back and eyed the rocky ground they stood on. “It feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. Not the kind of place you stumble on casually. Think it’s likely that whoever dumped these bodies is from around here?”

  Piper looked thoughtful for a bit. “Could be. Here, let me show you how the skeletons got in the cave in the first place.” She led them toward a low ridge.

  Twenty feet from the sinkhole, Piper stopped at a small rock ledge and jumped down, equipment belt clattering when she landed. “Here, you’ve got to come on this side to see it.”

  Sayer jumped down as well. At the very base of the ledge, a horizontal slit cut into the rock.

  “See”—Piper shone her flashlight into the hole—“whoever dumped the bodies just slid ’em in here.”

  Max leaned forward and whistled. “I saw where it comes out at the bottom when I was in the cave. It’s like the book return at the library, a perfect little slot to slide your murder victims into.”

  Sayer frowned as she looked around at nothing but rocks and trees. She pulled her string of amber worry beads from her pocket to fidget with while she contemplated the scene. Originally a gift from her father, the beads helped her focus while she thought.

  “Are these kind of caves common around here?” Sayer asked.

  “Oh, for sure,” Piper answered with a mischievous smile. “These mountains here are a manifestation of the divine.…” She threw her arms wide, gesturing to everything around them.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What I mean to say is, this area is holy. Get it? Holy, like divine … but also holey like full of holes.…”

  Max snorted.

  Sayer raised her eyebrows.

  “Sorry.” Piper cleared her throat. “Yeah, the whole area is karst, porous limestone with some granite outcroppings. Over time, water eats away the softer rock, which is why this whole region is full of caverns, some as big as cathedrals underground. We’ve got your underground rivers, underground pools, underground everything.”

  Sayer turned a full circle. “This entrance can’t be more than thirty feet from the mining road. How many people would know about that?”

  Piper shrugged. “Used to be a ton of mines along the western edge of the mountains. Most roads are overgrown now, but they aren’t hard to clear. Towni
e kids use them to party up here, so anyone living nearby would know about ’em.”

  “So our killer was probably a local. And someone could’ve just driven the bodies up here?” Sayer looked around. “I mean, this feels pretty isolated to me.”

  “Yeah, it might feel isolated, but, like you said, we’re just off the old road and we’re only a few hundred yards from the main trail. Anyone hiking around up here could’ve stumbled on this cave. Plus we’re close to the edge of the park, so it wouldn’t be too hard to come up from the valley.” She pointed down the gentle slope. “There’s a few little towns about fifteen miles west of here as the crow flies.”

  “Okay, Piper, since you’re the park liaison, why don’t you notify all the local police departments what we’ve got here? And I’ll need a map of the area, one with the old mine roads, if possible.”

  “I already called all the locals. In this area, word travels fast, best to stay in front of the news. And no one makes a map with all the old mine roads, but between me and a few of the other locals, we could mark up all the roads on a topographic map,” Piper offered.

  “Great.” Sayer nodded and turned her attention back to the narrow opening, rubbing her worry beads. About three feet tall and seven feet long, it really was the perfect size for a human body.

  “So, this crack leads down to the cavern?” She leaned in close. The opening gently exhaled stale, warm air.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Piper said. “It’s a flat little chute, like one of those covered waterslides but with rock a few inches from your face. You could probably lie down and slide through, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “We’re going to need someone to go down, just to make sure no more remains are caught in the chute.”

  Piper nodded slowly. “I can send one of our rangers down.”