Блейк Пирс - Once Buried

Riley moved a few steps away from the group gathered at the scene. She glanced at Jenn and saw that her partner was watching her. Riley knew that Jenn was aware of her reputation for getting into killers’ minds. Riley nodded, and saw Jenn swing into action, asking questions of her own, distracting the others on the scene and giving Riley a few moments to concentrate her skills.

Riley closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene as it must have looked at the time of the murder.

Images and sounds came to her remarkably easily.

It was dim outside, and the beach was shadowy, but there were traces of light in the sky across the water from where the sun would later rise, and it wasn’t too dark to see.

The tide was up, and the water was probably only an easy stone’s throw away, so the sound of the surf was loud.

Loud enough so he could barely hear himself digging, Riley realized.

At that moment, Riley had no trouble stepping into a strange mind…

Yes, he was digging, and she could feel the strain of his muscles as he threw shovels of sand as far away as he could, feel the mixture of sweat and sea spray on his face.

The digging wasn’t easy. In fact, it was a bit frustrating.

It wasn’t easy to dig a hole in beach sand like this.

Sand had a way of trickling back in, partially refilling the space where he dug.

He was thinking…

It won’t be very deep. But it doesn’t have to be deep.

All the while he kept glancing up at the beach, looking for his prey. And sure enough, he soon appeared, jogging along contentedly not far away.

And at the perfect time, too – the hole was just as deep as it needed to be.

The killer pushed the shovel into the sand and raised up his hands and waved.

“Come over here!” he shouted to the jogger.

Not that it mattered what he shouted – over the sound of the surf, the jogger wouldn’t be able to pick out his actual words, just a muffled yell.

The jogger stopped at the sound and looked his way.

Then he walked over to the killer.

The jogger was smiling as he approached, and the killer was smiling back at him.

Soon they were within earshot of each other.

“What’s up?” the jogger yelled over the surf.

“Come here and I’ll show you,” the killer yelled back.

The jogger unwarily walked over to where the killer was standing.

“Look down there,” the killer said. “Look really close.”

The jogger bent over, and with a swift, deft movement, the killer picked up the shovel and hit him in the back of the head, knocking him into the hole…

Riley was yanked out of her reverie by the sound of Chief Belt’s voice.

“Agent Paige?”

Riley opened her eyes and saw that Belt was looking at her with a curious expression. He hadn’t been distracted long by Jenn’s questions.

He said, “You seemed to leave us for a few moments there.”

Riley heard Jenn chuckle from nearby.

“She does that sometimes,” Jenn told the chief. “Don’t worry, she’s hard at work.”

Riley quickly reviewed the impressions she’d just gotten – all very hypothetical, of course, and hardly a moment-by-moment sense of what had actually happened.

But she felt very sure of one detail – that the jogger had come over at the killer’s invitation – and had approached him without fear.

This gave her a small but crucial insight.

Riley said to the police chief, “The killer is charming, likeable. People trust him.”

The chief’s eyes widened.

“How do you know?” he asked.

Riley heard laughter from someone approaching behind her.

“Trust me, she knows what she’s doing.”

She whirled around at the sound of the voice.

Her spirits brightened at what she saw.

Chief Belt stepped toward the man who was approaching.

He said, “Mister, this area is closed. Couldn’t you see the barrier?”

“It’s OK,” Riley said. “This is Special Agent Bill Jeffreys. He’s with us.”

Riley hurried over to Bill and led him just far enough away so that they wouldn’t be heard by the others.

“What happened?” she said. “Why didn’t you answer my messages?”

Bill smiled sheepishly.

“I was just being an idiot. I…” His voice faded and he looked away.

Riley waited for his reply.

Then he finally said, “When I got your texts, I just didn’t know whether I was ready. I called Meredith for details, but I still didn’t know if I was ready. Hell, I didn’t know if I was ready when I started driving down here. I didn’t know if I was ready until just now when I saw…”

He pointed to the body.

He added, “Now I know. I’m ready to get back to work. Count me in.”

His voice was firm and his expression looked like he really meant it. Riley breathed a huge sigh of relief.

She led Bill back over to the officials clustered around the body in the hole. She introduced him to the chief and the medical examiner.

Jenn already knew Bill and she looked glad to see him, which pleased Riley. The last thing Riley needed was for Jenn to feel marginalized or resentful.

Riley and the others told Bill what little they knew so far. He listened with a look of keen interest.

Finally Bill said to the ME, “I think it’s OK to take away the body now. That is, if it’s OK with Agent Paige.”

“It’s fine with me,” Riley agreed. She was happy that Bill seemed like his old self now and eager to assert some authority.

As the ME’s team began to extract the body from the hole, Bill surveyed the area for a moment.

He asked Riley, “Have you checked out the site of the earlier murder?”

“Not yet,” she replied.

“Then we should do that,” he said.

Riley said to Chief Belt, “Let’s go have a look at your other crime scene.”

The chief agreed. “It’s a couple of miles into the nature preserve,” he added.

They all managed to push past the reporters again without commenting. Riley, Bill, and Jenn got into the FBI SUV, and Chief Belt and the ME took another car. The chief led them away from the beach, along a sandy road into a wooded area. When the road ended, they parked their cars. Riley and her colleagues followed the two officials on foot along a trail leading through the trees.

The chief kept the group to one side of the trail, pointing to some distinct footprints here in the firmer soil.

“Just your everyday sneakers,” Bill commented.

Riley nodded. She could see those prints going in both directions. But she felt sure they wouldn’t offer much information except for the killer’s shoe size.

However, some interesting marks were interspersed with the footprints. Two wobbly lines were dug into the soil.

“What do you make of these lines?” Riley asked Bill.

“Tracks from a wheelbarrow, coming and going,” Bill said. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the road and added, “My guess is the killer parked about where we’re parked now and brought his tools along this path.”

“That’s what we figured too,” Belt agreed. “And he left again this way.”

Soon they came to a spot where their path intersected a narrower one. In the middle of the smaller path was a long, deep hole. It was about the width of the path itself.

Chief Belt pointed to where the new path emerged from the surrounding trees. “The other victim seems to have come jogging along from that direction,” he said. “The hole was camouflaged, and she fell into it.”

Terzis added, “Her ankle was badly broken, probably from the fall. So she was helpless when the killer started piling dirt back in on her.”