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Two
The Blue Ridge Mountains and the valleys surrounding them were beautiful. Mark and Colleen traveled through an area where trees rustled in a gentle breeze; the forest floor was soft and redolent and rich with wild brush and earth. Birds always chirped, and not too far away, hikers enjoyed the natural beauty of the forest.
They had started off mostly in silence as they drove. While Mark believed the killer would pick a different place to bury the body of a new victim, he had initially tried the areas where the first two young women had been found. But Red hadn’t reacted. He started in the southwest and stopped the car every five miles. They would leave the car and walk for a few minutes, and then try again.
On the one hand, it was awkward.
His new partner didn’t talk a lot.
On the other hand, it was a blessing. He was lost in his own thoughts. At headquarters, and on the streets, other Krewe agents were searching down anything that had resembled a lead. They were talking with Dierdre’s boyfriend, school friends, friends and associates of her parents—anyone who might have seen or heard anything that would suggest she had been followed previously, who might tell them about anyone with whom she might have had a run-in.
Jackson and Angela had gone to the hospital in hopes they might be able to speak with Sally Smithson, and Ragnar had gone to interrogate Carver.
Mark glanced at his new partner as he carefully drove over rough roads that were off the beaten path. She might have been twenty-five, five-five in height, and a hundred and ten pounds. She was a green-eyed redhead with her hair tied back in a severe braid, almost as if she feared she might not be taken seriously if it were free around her face.
She studied the road as they traveled, pausing now and then to stroke Red.
The dog liked her. And Mark usually considered Red to be a good judge of character. He realized he was jaded on this case.
But he had been the one to dig up the last victim, with Red’s help, of course. And now...
He wanted it stopped; he wanted the woman to be found alive, and he wanted the killer—or killers—locked away for life.
He wanted to find Dierdre Ayers as they had so thankfully found Sally Smithson.
Quickly.
Still alive.
Colleen Law was raw. A beginner. And he didn’t feel this was a case in which he should be teaching a rookie the ropes.
They were almost due west of Richmond, and he was barely traveling at three miles an hour when she suddenly said, “Stop!”
He glanced at her, frowning. She set a hand on his arm and repeated her command.
“Stop!”
He braked the car and looked at her. He’d been glad she hadn’t been a chatterbox, but a little more than one word repeated was sometimes good too.
The road here was paved but poorly kept. Few people traveled this way as the road led to nothing but forest trails used by bird-watchers and nature lovers.
There was a little clearing to one side of the road, overgrown—a lightly used access entrance to the forest.
“I’ve stopped,” Mark said.
Colleen looked at him. “I heard her,” she said seriously.
The dog hadn’t reacted.
“If you want to look here, we can look here,” he said. “But Red—”
He’d barely said the dog’s name before the animal started to bark.
Mark opened his door and got out of the car. Red hopped out after him, barking and staring into the dense growth of brush and trees.
Colleen Law was already out, looking southward from the clearing.
Red took off in that direction.
“Follow him!” Mark said, reaching into the back seat of his car for the shovel he’d been keeping there.
Colleen took off.
She could move, he thought. At least she was agile and swift.
He hurried after the dog and Colleen. Red had paused about twenty feet in. Tangled vines covered a lot of the floor. Colleen, he was glad to see, had no trouble weaving her way over them.
“Hurry! I can hear her!” she called back to him.
He hurried. He thought they would burst into a clearing and maybe see where the earth had been disturbed.
But Red and Colleen stopped in the middle of a narrow trail strewn with pebbles and debris.
He stopped too.
Twilight was upon them, the sky torn apart by streaks of deep mauve and navy with the yellow of the sunlight fading quickly.
It was still a beautiful place, perhaps more so in the eerie light.
Red barked, standing in the path, whining then pawing at the earth.
After drawing out his phone and hitting the powerful flashlight beam on the path, Mark could see the earth had been disturbed. Vines and leaves and broken branches had been pulled back over it.
He set his phone on the ground with the beam expanding to light the area where Red pawed at the earth. He carefully dug with the shovel. And he wondered if a young woman would be in a pine box beneath the earth, and if so, was there enough air left in that box to allow the possibility that she might be alive?
As if she had read his mind, Colleen said with certainty, “She is alive!”
He didn’t glance her way. He was beginning to doubt anyone could be alive beneath the earth here. The boxes the killer had used had been crude; pine barely nailed together. No one could live long if the wood had broken, if dirt had rushed in, if their airways had been filled with earth.
Mark hit something with the shovel.
He dropped the shovel and fell to the ground, clawing at the dirt and leaves, aware his new young partner was doing the same.
They saw a broken piece of wood first, jutting out of the earth.
