Jodi Compton - The 37th Hour

There was probably a way to get through to the dormitory where the agents-in-training lived. Getting that number wouldn’t be easy, though, at this hour. Dealing with the FBI often meant multiple calls and phone tag, even on official business. Even during office hours. This was only personal business, and it was after hours. In Virginia it was already eight.

I had the phone number of an FBI agent, the one who’d worked closely with Shiloh on the Annelise Eliot case. It might be helpful to call Agent Thompson first, explain the situation, and ask him to run interference for me with his peers.

It took several minutes of hunting around in the disorganized entries in our phone book, but I found Thompson’s phone number. My hand was on the phone when something else came to mind.

Two months ago, Shiloh and I had watched a cable-channel documentary on the making of FBI agents. From it, I’d gotten an idea of what life at Quantico would be like for Shiloh. From the very first day there was a demanding round of training: baseline testing on physical conditioning, classroom instruction on procedure and law and ethics. At night, the agents-in-training lived like college students, studying at small desks with snapshots of spouses and children hanging over them, going to each other’s rooms briefly to talk, decompressing after a hard day.

After years as an outsider, Shiloh was probably in his element at last, surrounded by people as single-minded and driven as he was. He was spending his small amount of free time getting to know others in his agent class, looking at the photos over the desks. Most likely many of them were doing that, getting to know each other, trading stories about the diverse career paths that had led them to Quantico. And I was about to make Shiloh the only one who had to go to the phone to take a call from his needy wife, who was worried because it had been over twenty-four hours and he hadn’t called home.

I turned on ESPN and put it out of my mind.

“… killed two soldiers at a bus stop last year. No party has claimed responsibility for this year’s bombing… In Blue Earth, the search intensifies for 67-year-old Thomas Hall, the apparent victim of a single-vehicle accident. His truck was found early Sunday outside town, where it had crashed into a tree off the eastbound lane. Search-and-rescue teams are widening the scope of their hunt, but have not been successful in locating Hall. WMNN news time, six fifty-nine.”

It was Tuesday morning, and the clock radio had awakened me, but I wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet. When the phone rang several minutes later, I was still half asleep. I picked it up and had to clear my throat before speaking.

“I woke you up, sorry,” the voice on the other end said.

“Shiloh?” He sounded strange.

Vang laughed. “I really did wake you,” he said. He sounded very chipper. I sat up, a little embarrassed. He went on, “There’s a grave out in Wayzata we’ve got to look at.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the story?” I asked.

“They don’t know yet. A woman called this morning. She lives in the same neighborhood-I mean, the same area-with a released sex offender, a child molester. Last night she saw him out with a flashlight, digging, his car parked nearby.”

“And she knew it was a grave how?”

“Well, she said the hole looked about the right size to be a grave. She didn’t see him put anything in it. He was filling it in, actually. I guess she lives on a hill, has a pretty good view of the area, so she could watch awhile.”

“Is she part of a neighborhood watch?”

“Not officially, but this guy-his name’s Bonney-makes everyone out there nervous. They all got the flyer about him being a released sex offender. This woman woke up at four A.M. worrying about what she’d seen and finally decided to call us. So now we’re digging.”

I sat up, feeling more awake. “We’ve really got a warrant to dig on his property? Probable cause seems pretty weak. Didn’t anyone suggest we just talk to this guy first?”

“They sent a patrolman to do that,” Vang said. “He’s not home, and he’s not at work, either, even though he’s on the schedule. Nobody likes it. But here’s the good part: He didn’t actually dig on his own property. The lot on the other side of his back fence is undeveloped county land. That’s where he was digging.”

“Ah,” I said.

“So, no warrant needed,” Vang confirmed. “Should I pick you up? I’m at home right now, but I could come straight over.”

I pushed the blanket off my legs with my free hand. “Yeah, that’d be good,” I said. “I can be ready in fifteen minutes.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Vang and I were standing on an acre of peaceful countryside near Wayzata Bay. Despite its proximity to the city, this was a place more rural than suburban in its flavor, with plenty of land between houses; I could see why Vang had called it an “area” rather than a “neighborhood” on the phone.

The crime-scene unit van was parked at the edge of the road, and two officers were digging. Amateur graves are usually shallow, and exhuming them is work too delicate for a backhoe.

Marijuana farmers sometimes cultivate their crop deep in isolated public lands. The obvious advantage is that the growers have to be caught on-site for the crop to be linked to them, as opposed to having the incriminating plant on their own property. If Bonney had in fact killed someone, he had a similar incentive not to bury on his own property. He hadn’t gone very far, but perhaps he’d felt it wiser not to travel with a body in his car.

Vang and I had just finished reading through the new missing-persons reports and be-on-the-lookouts for the last forty-eight hours; in addition, Vang had a printout of Bonney’s criminal record.

“I don’t get a vibe off any of these missing persons,” I said. “All adults or late teens.”

“They don’t seem like Bonney’s type, do they?” Vang agreed.

“No. Besides, you read his record, right? Sexual battery, child molestation. But he’s never killed anyone, or even come close.”

Vang listened but said nothing.

“Sometimes sexual predators progress to worse crimes, like homicide,” I said. “But there just hasn’t been a disappearance in the last forty-eight hours that seems to match up with this guy burying someone in a field near his house.” I watched one of the officers pause and gingerly scrape aside some wet soil. Vang and I were keeping our distance for now, letting them do their work with a minimum of disturbance to the ground and surroundings. “Usually, you’ll have a pretty good idea about these things. You’ll get a call that someone’s found a body and you’ll know right away, ‘We found Jane.’ I don’t get that feeling here.” I sighed. “You know what I think? I think Bonney burned a damn casserole until the pot was beyond salvaging and took the whole mess out and buried it. His neighbor up the hill saw it, lay awake until a little hole became a yawning grave, and called us. Sometimes I think this whole sex-offender thing, with disclosure and flyers and neighborhood meetings, has gotten way out of hand.”

I cut myself off. Shiloh had only been gone two days and already I was channeling him, spreading his unpopular liberal views to my new partner. “If they find something bad, maybe we’ll ask for a warrant for the house,” I said, backpedaling. “If not, let the parole officer make the surprise visits to look for a violation. It’s his job.”

“If I’d known it was going to take this long for them to disinter, I’d have stopped for coffee,” Vang said.

“When they make you go out to the sticks at seven-thirty in the morning on a situation like this,” I agreed, “coffee may be the highlight of the trip.”