Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

'Was there any evidence that someone had broken in recently? Could someone have been inside and you didn't realize it?'

She heard him pause. 'Anything's possible, I guess. There are a lot of nooks and crannies in the place. I didn't see evidence of a break-in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.' 'OK.'

'You want me to go inside?' Nieman asked. 'Like I said, I'm outside the place right now.'

'Yeah, I do. Check it out carefully. We've got a missing person, and I think he's been at the school recently. It's possible he broke in, or tried to break in, and got hurt. Call me back when you've checked it out, OK?'

'Will do.'

Maggie heard him hesitate. 'Is something wrong?'

'Oh, no, I'm happy to do it. Anything for the boys and girls in blue, you know. I just thought, if something did happen to this guy inside, you might want to have a cop with me when I search the place. I know it's late, but I thought maybe you could get someone to join me here.'

Maggie thought about it. 'Sure, that's a good idea.'

'I'd leave it in your hands entirely, but I'm the guy with the keys,' he added.

'Understood.' 'I'll wait for the cavalry before I open the doors. Do you think it will be long?'

Maggie checked her watch. 'Tell you what, Mr Nieman. I'm just five minutes away from the school right now. I'll drive over there myself.'

Denise Sheridan slapped her phone shut. 'Still no answer,' she said.

'Are you going to drive over there?' Serena asked.

Denise shook her head. 'It's late. If Valerie's in bed, let her sleep.'

Serena didn't think Valerie was sleeping. If she was in bed, she was staring at the ceiling. If her phone was off, it was because she didn't want to hear the news about Callie.

The two women rejoined Stride among the scattered headstones of the cemetery. Behind him, one of the light towers set up by the crime scene technicians cast his shadow across the grass into the trees. He stopped in front of a line of graves that all bore the name GLENN.

Serena watched him. His arms were folded over his chest, and his face was dark and thoughtful. Snow flew sideways through the light, landing on him and turning him into a white statue. He wore the leather jacket he had owned for years. His hair looked as if he had just rolled out of bed. In his eyes, she saw the intensity of a man who never let go. She couldn't help herself, she was still in love with him. She couldn't imagine turning her back on what she felt, not when they had spent three years together. The easy thing for her was to whisper, I'm not going anywhere. See what he did. See how he reacted. See if he still felt the same things for her.

But she didn't do that. She said nothing at all.

'So what the hell does this mean, Stride?' Denise demanded. 'Who's the boy in the ground?'

Stride stared at the graves. 'I don't know yet.'

'What's the medical team saying?' Serena asked. 'How did the baby die?'

'There's no sign of foul play,' he replied. 'There's no trauma, no obvious evidence of injury or abuse, but we won't know until the autopsy is completed.'

'Recent death?' Denise asked.

'Based on the condition of the body, yes. We're talking days, not weeks.'

'But nothing to help with identification?'

'No.'

Serena took a long look at the cemetery and at the surrounding forest. She put herself in the shoes of someone who would carry a baby to the woods and dig its grave. There were so many places you could lay a body where it would never be found. Why so close to the cemetery?

'How was the body placed in the ground?' she asked Stride.

She wanted a sense of the kind of burial that had happened here, whether it was something sacred or profane. Their eyes met, and she knew he had been thinking the same thing. That was another part of their relationship she couldn't escape — their minds were connected.

'He was wrapped in a white sheet.'

'Carefully?'

Stride nodded. 'Someone took time to do it right. It was almost tender.'

'This doesn’t make sense,' Denise protested. 'Who takes the care to wrap up a dead child and then buries it in the woods like garbage?'

'Not like garbage,' Serena said, shaking her head. 'Whoever did this couldn't bury the baby in a cemetery where he might be discovered. But the baby was close to the cemetery. I think that's significant.'

'I agree,' Stride said. 'It feels ritualistic. Almost religious.'

'But what does it have to do with Callie and Marcus?' Denise asked.

'I don't know. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe we stumbled on to something unrelated to Callie's case.'

'Or maybe Micki's lying,' Denise suggested.

They heard a harsh, tired voice cut through the wind. 'I'm not lying.'

When they turned, they saw Migdalia Vega on the slope of the cemetery behind them. Her round face glistened with melting snow. Her feet were planted in the ground, and she had her hands on her hips. 'You hear me?' she continued. 'I'm not lying. I did what you asked. I showed you where I found the toy. Where Mama saw the light.'

'You knew we'd find a body,' Denise snapped, 'but we only have your word that you found the toy there at all. Who's the kid, Micki? Who did we find buried there?'

'I don't know. And I found the horn in the woods, just like I said.'

Stride put a hand gently on Denise's arm. He stepped closer to Micki, his voice calm. 'We don't think you're lying,' he told her.

'Tell that to her!' she retorted.

'We're all tired, Micki. It's been a long night. You've helped us a lot, and I appreciate it, OK? But I need to know if you have any idea who that little boy could be.'

'I already told you, I don't know. But it's not Callie, and that's good, right? I knew Dr Glenn wasn't involved. He couldn't do something like that to his daughter.'

'What if Callie wasn't his daughter?' Denise interjected.

Stride shot her a warning glare. He turned back to Micki. 'You told me that you lost your own son early in your pregnancy,' he said softly. 'I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Was that really true?'

'Yes! You know what happened to my baby!'

'OK. I know. And the light your mother saw in the woods, you're certain this was on the night that Callie disappeared?'

'Yes, she told me about it on Saturday, and that's when I went to search. That's when I found the toy.'

Stride nodded. 'OK, Micki. That's all for now. You can go home.'

The girl stamped past them up the slope. Serena watched her disappear between the trees as she headed for the lights of the mobile home. 'Where does that leave us?' she asked.

'Nowhere,' Stride said.

Denise reached for a cigarette and put it in her mouth without lighting it. 'Look, the toy horn was obviously intended to make us think there was a connection to Callie. Right?'

Stride thought about it but shook his head. 'No, that doesn’t make sense. As soon as we put a shovel in the ground, we were going to find out that it wasn't Callie buried there.'

Serena thought again about someone bringing a child's body to the woods in the darkness and how much the burial felt like a religious ceremony. Something private and painful. 'What if the toy is exactly what it looks like?' she suggested. 'A memorial.'

'What do you mean?' Stride asked.

'I mean that no one ever expected us to find that toy. It was put there the way you'd put flowers on a grave.'

'But whose grave?' Denise asked.

Serena retraced her conversations with Valerie. She realized that when Stride had told her about Micki's discovery of the toy horn, it had felt familiar to her. It had already been part of her consciousness about the case, because she had heard about it before. Valerie had told her about her night at the hospital on New Year's Eve, about the staff blowing toy horns when the clock turned to midnight.