Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

The third victim had disappeared only six days ago. Another farm, barely a mile away. Barbara Berquist was a widow in her early fifties who didn't show up to her job at the Duluth Library. That was enough to trigger suspicion, given the two earlier disappearances, and Maggie and her team had checked out the farm without waiting forty-eight hours to see if Barbara showed up somewhere else, alive and well. They'd found blood again. Lots of it. But no body.

'What did you find inside the house?' Maggie asked.

'We think the perp came in through a basement window with a broken lock. It looks like Susan Krauss was awake and in her bathroom when this guy made his move. That's probably what bought her a few more minutes. There's blood and evidence of a struggle near the doorway. Looks like she got away from him and bolted outside.'

'OK, keep at it. Inside and out. This guy's plan got screwed up this time, so maybe he made a mistake during the chase.' She added, 'I better go talk to the redhead.'

'Hang on,' Guppo replied.

He peered over her shoulder at the whitewashed stone wall of the dairy. He crouched down with a heavy breath, studying the ground where Susan Krauss now lay in her body bag, and then his eyes traveled up to a high section of the dairy wall.

'Anyone got a step stool?' he called.

One of the evidence technicians produced a stool from the trunk of his car, and Guppo opened it next to the wall. He climbed up the two steps, and Maggie winced, hearing the metal joints groan under Guppo's weight.

'Shine a light up here, OK?'

Maggie obliged, illuminating a peeling section of white paint in front of his face. Guppo slid a magnifying glass out from his pants pocket and squinted through it. When he climbed down, his face was flushed, and he was smiling.

'Spatter,' he said.

'From the victim?' Maggie asked.

'Based on the angle and location? I don't think so. I think Kasey winged a piece of our killer after all.'

Kasey Kennedy looked young, which was a reminder to Maggie that she wasn't so young herself anymore. Kasey was twenty-six and had served on the force for three years. Maggie recalled seeing her in City Hall, but that was only because Kasey and her neon-red hair were hard to miss. They had never met. Kasey's features were plain, but she had fresh, freckled skin and a body that was skinny and toned, and the overall result was attractive. She was an odd combination of girlish and intense. Her blue eyes looked lost. Her left knee bounced up and down nervously, and her fingernails were cotton-candy pink. She looked like a naive kid in need of rescue, and yet this kid had nearly chased down a killer on her own in the middle of the fog. Maggie couldn't accuse her of lacking courage.

'Here,' she said, handing Kasey the badge that Guppo's team had found near the river.

'Oh, you found it. Thanks.'

'How are you doing, Kasey?' Maggie asked.

The young cop hung her head and squeezed her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. 'I'm sorry, Sergeant. I screwed everything up.'

'Call me Maggie. And you didn't screw up.'

Maggie told her about the blood trace that Guppo had found on the dairy wall. 'The best case is, we get a hit in the DNA database and we ID this guy. Even if he's not in the database, we can tie him directly to the murder scene when we do nail him. Thanks to you.'

'Except the real best case would have been for me to kill the bastard, right?' Kasey said. 'I let him get away.' Her voice had a lilting pitch that could have come from the mouth of a teenager. It sounded strange to hear her talking about killing someone. She should have been gossiping about boys and sharing make-up advice.

'Don't second-guess yourself,' Maggie told her. 'It took guts to do what you did. You could have been the one to wind up dead here. You know that, right? You took a hell of a risk.'

'I know.'

'Why didn't you call for backup?'

Kasey rolled her eyes. 'No cell phone.'

'Now that was stupid.'

'Yeah, I was charging the battery in my bathroom, and I forgot to grab it before I left. I had to drive home to call nine one one, and then I came right back here.'

'Do you live nearby?'

Kasey nodded. 'I'm just a couple miles away, but I could have been on the moon tonight. I had no idea where I was.'

Maggie leaned on the open door of the squad car. 'So how'd you wind up in the middle of this mess?'

'I got lost,' Kasey told her. 'I drove up to Hibbing after work to hang out with a girlfriend, and I got a late start coming home. I ran smack into the fog and made a wrong turn.'

'What can you tell me about the killer? You're the only one who's seen him.'

'I wish I could tell you more. I never saw his face. He was tall.'

'Tall as in how tall?'

'Over six feet, definitely. Not heavy. He was in good shape. He had dark eyes, too. Deep brown, almost black.'

'Caucasian?'

'Yes.'

'What about the mask?' Maggie pointed two fingers at her eyes. 'One eyehole across both eyes or two separate holes?'

'Just one hole for both eyes. There was no hole for the mouth.'

'So you could see the bridge of his nose, too?'

'I guess so.'

'Did you notice any other distinguishing features? Moles, freckles, scars, that sort of thing? Did you see any hair coming down from his forehead?'

'I'm sorry, it happened too fast. I didn't notice anything.'

'Would you recognize him without the mask if you saw him again?'

Kasey shook her head. 'I don't think so.'

'What else?' Maggie asked.

'That's all I saw.'

'What was he like?'

'I don't understand.'

'How did he behave? Was he scared? We need to get inside this guy's head.'

Kasey scrunched her pale lips together. Her chest swelled as she took a deep breath. 'He wasn't scared,' she said.

'No?'

'No, he was aggressive. Confident. When I looked at him through the car window, it was like he was smiling at me. Then later, by the dairy, he laughed. He didn't think I would shoot. He was sure of himself.'

'He spoke to you?' Maggie asked.

'Yeah, he did.'

'What did he say?'

'He said he would let the woman go if I dropped the gun. And he taunted me, you know, that I wouldn't shoot because I might hit her.'

'Describe his voice,' Maggie said.

'Uh, it was cocky. Arrogant.'

'Did he have any kind of accent? Was there anything distinguishing about his speech pattern?'

'No. Nothing like that.'

'Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?'

'I might,' Kasey told her. 'Yeah, I think I probably would.'

'That's excellent.' Maggie squeezed the young cop's shoulder. She could see Kasey's eyes blinking shut. 'Listen, why don't you go home now? Get some sleep.'

Maggie turned away, but Kasey grabbed her forearm. 'Sergeant? There's something else. I want to get in on this case.'

'What do you mean?'

'I want to help on the investigation.'

'I appreciate the offer, but this isn't your beat,' Maggie replied.

'I know that, but this guy murdered that woman right in front of my eyes.'

Maggie crouched down. Kasey stared back at her with fierce blue eyes. The cop's wet red hair was a curly mess on her head. She was definitely young. Way too young. Maggie had worked with cops like Kasey for years; they were full of enthusiasm, but they made immature mistakes. You had to take the bad with the good.

'Are you married, Kasey?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'What's your husband like?'

Kasey smiled. 'Oh, Bruce is a big bear of a guy. Looks like a blond lumberjack.'

'What does he do?'

'Right now? He's not working. We moved here when Bruce got a job in Two Harbors, but he got laid off. So mostly he does conspiracy research. That's his hobby.'

'What, like aliens shot down the space shuttle?'