She turned back to the trench. “All right,” she murmured. “Let’s bring her out properly.”
Scout looked down at the strip of fabric one more time.
Eight years.
And now, they’d finally found someone.
Riverbend had finally given up its dead.
44
Jackson County District Attorney’s Office
By the time the dogwood petals browned and fell and the Mystery Mountain banners came down off Main Street, Sylva had mostly stopped talking about the river festival. It had not stopped talking about Caroline Simms.
Reid Calloway flipped the lid closed on his takeout container and shoved it to the far edge of his desk. Cold lo mein glistened under the fluorescent lights, looking as unappealing as the pile of statements in front of him.
Simms, Caroline — 2017.
Mercer, David — State v.
The last three weeks flickered through his mind—Eleanor’s laugh by the river, her sharp, surgical texts about courthouse gossip. And now all of it sat beside these files.
A knock sounded at his door. “Come in.”
Sheriff Burke Scott stepped inside, a thick redwell folder in his hand. He dropped into the chair opposite the desk without being asked. The folder hit the wood with a soft thud.
“Well,” Burke said. “We’re out of easy answers.”
“Did we have any to start with?”
Burke’s mouth twitched. He flipped the redwell open. “Certified statement from Katie Martin. She dated Mercer a year after Caroline vanished. She claims during a fight, he told her:‘You keep pushin’ me, I’ll do to you what I did to her. I buried her.’”
Reid exhaled through his nose. “He’ll say he was trying to scare her. Not confess.”
“Maybe,” Burke agreed. “But look at the site maps.” He slid a map across the desk. Reid leaned over it, his pen tracing the edge of the greenway.
“Burke, the defense is going to hammer us on the timeline,” Reid said. “They’ll ask why your dogs missed a body fifty yards from a paved street for eight years.”
“They didn't miss it, Reid. They were blocked.” Burke tapped a specific date on the grading logs. “The night she went missing, this area was the designated waste-dirt zone. David’s crew pushed all the excess topsoil from the upper lots into a ten-foot berm right along that tree line. If Caroline was there, they sealed her under a mountain of red clay before the sun even came up. It was a perfect lid.”
“So what changed?” Reid asked.
“The final grade,” Burke explained. “Three years ago, the HOA finished the landscaping. They brought in graders to shave five feet of dirt off the top of those berms to level the greenway. They brought the remains within inches of the surface without ever knowing it. A few years of rain did the rest. The minute that lid was thinned, the clock started ticking.”
Reid looked up. “You’re sure no one else had access?”
“Pulled the permits myself,” Burke said. “Back then, if you wanted to get to that part of Riverbend, you either worked for David Mercer or knew somebody who did. And we’ve got a confirmed ID. Dental and DNA. It’s Caroline.”
“Alternate suspects?”
“Boyfriend’s alibi is ironclad. Cell pings, gas station cameras, twenty witnesses at a party.” Burke leaned back. “Everything ugly points back to David Mercer—or to nobody.”
Reid looked down at the file.
“And if we’re wrong,” he said quietly, “we don’t just ruin him. We bury Caroline all over again.”
Reid stood and paced once behind the desk.
