Karin Slaughter - Faithless

Less than two feet away from her, he was muttering something under his breath. He had called in pretty much every cop on the force, ordering them to the woods to check for other gravesites. The search was exhausting, like combing the ocean for a particular grain of sand, and throughout the day, the temperature in the woods had kept going from one extreme to the other, the hot sun pouring through one minute, the cool shadows of the trees turning her sweat into a chill the next. As night was settling, it became even colder, but Lena had known better than to go back and get her jacket. Jeffrey was acting like a man possessed. She knew he was shouldering the blame for this, just like she knew there was nothing she could say that would help him.

“We should’ve done this Sunday,” Jeffrey said, as if he could have miraculously guessed that one coffin in the forest meant there would be at least another. Lena didn’t bother pointing this out; she had tried and failed several times before. Instead, she kept her eyes on the ground, the leaves and pine needles turning into a melted mess as her thoughts went elsewhere and her vision blurred with the threat of tears.

After nearly eight hours of searching and only getting through half of the more than two hundred acres, she doubted she would be able to find a neon sign with a big arrow pointing down, let alone a small metal pipe sticking out of the ground. Not to mention they were losing light fast. The sun was already dipping down low, threatening to disappear behind the horizon at any moment. They had pulled out their flashlights ten minutes ago, but the beams did little to aid the search.

Jeffrey looked up at the trees, rubbing his neck. They had taken one break around lunch, barely pausing to chew the sandwiches Frank had ordered from the local deli.

“Why would someone send that letter to Sara?” Jeffrey asked. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Everyone knows y’all are together,” Lena pointed out, wishing she could sit down somewhere. She wanted just ten minutes to herself, time enough to figure out how to get back in touch with Terri. There was the added problem of Dale. How would she explain why she needed to talk to his wife again?

“I don’t like Sara mixed up in this,” Jeffrey said, and she understood that one of the things driving his anger was the fact that Sara’s involvement might put her in jeopardy. “The postmark was local,” he said. “It’s somebody in the county, in Grant.”

“Could be someone from the farm knew better than to mail it from Catoogah,” she pointed out, thinking anyone could’ve dropped a letter by the Grant post office.

“It was sent Monday,” he said. “So whoever did it knew what was going on and wanted to warn us.” His flashlight beam flickered and he shook it to no avail. “This is fucking ridiculous.”

He held his portable radio to his hand, clicking the mic. “Frank?”

A few seconds passed before Frank asked, “Yeah?”

“We’ll have to get lights out here,” he said. “Call the hardware store and see if we can borrow anything.”

“Will do.”

Lena waited until Frank had signed off before trying to reason with Jeffrey. “There’s no way we’ll be able to cover the whole area tonight.”

“You want to come out here tomorrow morning and realize some girl could have been saved tonight if we hadn’t knocked off early?”

“It’s late,” she told him. “We could walk right past it and not even know.”

“Or we could find it,” he told her. “Whatever happens, we’re back here tomorrow looking again. I don’t care if we have to get bulldozers out here and dig up every fucking square inch. You got me?”

She looked down, continuing to hunt for something she wasn’t even sure was there.

Jeffrey followed suit, but he didn’t give up. “I should’ve done this Sunday. We should’ve been out in full force, gotten volunteers.” Jeffrey stopped. “What was going on with you and Terri Stanley?”

Her attempt at a casual “What do you mean?” sounded pathetic even to Lena.

“Don’t dick me around,” he warned. “Something’s going on.”

Lena licked her lips, feeling like a trapped animal. “She had too much to drink at the picnic last year,” Lena lied. “I found her in the bathroom with her head in the toilet.”

“She’s an alcoholic?” Jeffrey asked, obviously ready to condemn the woman.

Lena knew this was one of his buttons, and not knowing what else to do, she pressed it hard. “Yeah,” she said, thinking Terri Stanley could live with Jeffrey thinking she was a drunk as long as her husband didn’t find out what she was doing in Atlanta last week.

Jeffrey asked, “You think she makes a habit of it?”

“Don’t know.”

“She was sick?” he asked. “Throwing up?”

Lena felt a cold sweat as she forced herself to lie, knowing even as she did it that she was making the best choice given the circumstances. “I told her she’d better straighten out,” she said. “I think she’s got it under control.”

“I’ll talk to Sara,” he said, and her heart sank. “She’ll call Child Services.”

“No,” Lena said, trying not to sound desperate. It was one thing to lie, quite another to get Terri into trouble. “I told you she’s got it under control. She’s going to meetings and everything.” She racked her brain for some of Hank’s AA talk, feeling like a spider caught in its own web. “Got her chip last month.”

He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to decide if she was being honest or not.

“Chief?” his radio crackled. “West corner near the college. We’ve got something.”

Jeffrey took off, and Lena found herself running after him, the beam from her flashlight bobbing as she pumped her arms. Jeffrey had at least ten years on her, but he was a hell of a lot faster than she was. When he made it to the crowd of uniformed patrolmen standing in the clearing, she was still a good twenty feet behind him.

By the time she caught up, Jeffrey was kneeling beside an indentation in the earth. A rusted metal pipe was sticking up about two inches into the air. Whoever had spotted the site must have done so out of sheer luck. Even knowing what to look for, Lena was having trouble keeping her focus on the pipe.

Brad Stephens came running from behind her. He was holding two shovels and a crowbar. Jeffrey grabbed one of the shovels and they both started digging. The night air was cool, but they were both sweating by the time the first shovel thumped against wood. The hollow sound stayed in Lena ’s ears as Jeffrey knelt down to brush away the last of the dirt with his hands. He must have done this same thing with Sara on Sunday. She couldn’t imagine what the anticipation had been like for him, the dread when he realized what he was uncovering. Even now, Lena was having a hard time accepting that someone in Grant was capable of doing such a horrible thing.

Brad jammed the crowbar into the edge of the box, and together he and Jeffrey worked to pry away the wood. One slat came up, flashlights shining eagerly into the opening. A foul odor escaped- not of rotting flesh, but of mustiness and decay. Jeffrey put his shoulder into the crowbar as he pried another board, the wood bending back on itself like a folded sheet of paper. The pulp was soaking wet, dirt staining it a dark black. Obviously, the box had been buried in the earth for a long time. In the crime scene photos of the grave by the lake, the grave had looked new, the green pressure-treated wood doing its job of holding back the elements even as it held in the girl.

Using his bare hands, Jeffrey pulled up the sixth board. Flashlights illuminated the interior of the stained box. He sat back on his heels, his shoulders sagging either from relief or disappointment. Lena felt her own mixture of both emotions.