Excerpt - Unearthed

PROLOGUE

During her last moments, she did not watch as the memories of her life slid past her mind’s eye, nor did she take the time to say goodbye to those she loved. During her last moments, nothing passed through her mind or body but the terror of dying, and that dying terror took hold of her as forcefully as she had unknowingly taken hold of the crucifix around her neck.

It would have comforted her to know that her death would eventually be the key, but it was a comfort she was not granted.

She was not his first victim, but in killing her, he had made his first mistake, and because of his error, the hole he dug became a dual grave.

CHAPTER ONE

Audrey Jones wondered for the millionth time why people couldn’t do her the favor of killing one another during the day. The misguided notion shared by criminals that the cover of darkness provided some respite from capture was just silly, and if she had her way, she’d hold a press conference to let the bad guys in on that little secret.

She took a final look in the bathroom mirror, and in an effort to mask the appearance of having just rolled out of bed, she tied her dark hair into a ponytail, grabbed her baseball cap from the doorknob, pushed the cap onto her head, and let the tail of her hair hang out of the hole in the back. She had long ago altered the saying look good—feel good to hide the hair—hide the harried. The ball cap also helped her cope with a team of male coworkers, most of whom shaved their heads because it was in and they could. Those bastards could roll out of anything, throw on a fresh pair of pants, grab a shirt from the closet, and appear to have been expecting a 2 a.m. call to a crime scene.

Audrey Jones was many things, but she was not a middle-of-the-night person. The first thirty minutes after getting a call to respond to an A.M. crime scene, she was as bitter as the coffee in the thermos she took along with her. As she headed for the north end of town, she took a cautious sip of her freshly made brew, turned up the volume on her car stereo, and hoped the caffeine and music could work their necessary magic in the fifteen minutes she had between where she was and where she needed to be.

* * *

Nearing the crime scene, Audrey noted that the sidewalks on either side of the street were lined with pajama-clad people, some of whom were wandering to and fro in the street with little regard for the police and emergency vehicles that were heading to the location of the crime or back to the station. Audrey snapped off her stereo, secured her cup of coffee in the cup holder of her vehicle’s center console, and transitioned smoothly from recently awakened off-duty cop to totally focused investigator. She drove cautiously through the crowd, taking mental note of the gawkers while keeping her eyes peeled for the personnel who should be taking photographs and video of the lookie loos for later examination.

The crime scene tape came into view, and Audrey slowed her car, pulled to the side of the road as best she could, and exited her vehicle carrying a small black bag that held the things she typically needed at a crime scene. The crowd of people had been moved back a good fifty feet, but she still heard the murmur that passed through them as neighbors speculated about who she was and what had happened. She also heard a dog barking incessantly.

Flashing her badge at the officer protecting the area, Audrey passed under the yellow tape and walked up the driveway to the front door of the home. Walking inside, she was directed by another officer out into the home's backyard.

The first thing she noticed was the number of people who were peering over the fence lines right into the crime scene. She looked at the personnel gathered in the yard, spotted a set of sergeant’s stripes, and headed in their direction.

As she began to introduce herself, the sergeant turned, and she realized it was Hal Baker.

“Goddamn, Hal, how much weight have you lost?”

“Nearly 50 pounds since you saw me last.”

“You look fantastic. How do you feel?”

“Great—better than I did when I was twenty.”

“You were never twenty, my friend, but you do look good.”

“Thanks. You look like shit. That cap isn’t hiding the circles under your eyes, you know.”

“I love you too, Hal. Always have. So, why am I here?”

“Unofficially, I’d say it’s because I miss seeing you hard at work in the middle of the night with the real cops. Officially, it’s because that dog over there decided to do some night-shift work on that hole over there, and when the dog’s owner came outside to kick its madly barking ass, he realized there was a decomposing body in the hole.”

“Man’s best friend strikes again.”

“So it seems.”

“Who took the initial call?”

“Actually, I was close, so I got here just before Officer Hall.”

“Officer Hall, as in Jess Hall?”

“You betcha.”

“Shit, Hal, are you trying to rebuild the old team?”

“I am—at least the good parts. Want in?”

“I’d say yes, but no team is big enough for two sergeants. Besides, the last time we worked together, you got shot, remember?”

“I have a vague recollection of that, yes. I also seem to remember you coming to my rescue and saving my life.”

“You took a bullet in the ass, Hal. The only danger you were in had to do with the shit you took from the rest of us.”

“So kissing your ass isn’t going to get you to give up the suits and the day shift and drag you back to a uniform and a patrol car, eh?”

“Sorry, Hal. Not a chance.”

“Okay, then. I guess all I have for you is the routine stuff. The dog’s been caged by animal control, and we’ve got a vet standing by to collect any evidence the dog might have acquired. She says she’ll need to knock him out and pump his stomach, too—Fido had a taste or two before his owner dragged him away from the hole. The vet needs you to try to get the owners’ consent. If you can’t, one of your guys will need to get a warrant—and, yes, the vet assured me no harm would come to the dog. I’ve got a tent en route to cover up the yard, and six officers standing by to question the people who’ve been watching all of this over the fences. I’ve also got three teams of two uniforms working door-to-door, but they aren’t having a lot of luck: most of the folks are outside milling around.”

“You see, Hal, we are working together—besides, who else would know to do everything I’d ask for before I got to ask to have it done?”

“Not a soul, AJ, not a single soul.”

“How long ago did you order the tent?”

“Nearly an hour ago, I’d guess. It should be here anytime.”

“Okay, until it gets here, let’s work on getting the people out front and along the street back into their homes so the canvassing officers actually have something productive to do. And send your guys in to get these folks along the fence lines downtown for interviews. Keep them separate as best you can.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

“Shut up, Hal.”

The two shared a smile before heading off in their respective directions, and Audrey realized just how much she missed having Hal as a partner.

Shaking her head to clear the memories, she took another look around the backyard and decided to head back into the house to talk to the owner about collecting evidence from his dog.

Kitty Haiku

12 am
They settle at last
My fitful sleep returns then
The short lived calm expires

3 am
Slicing through the night
A mixture of soft and sharp
Kitty claws my nose

6 am
Tiny bodies hide
Tightly wedged beneath box springs
Laughter in their eyes

As Yet Untitled (WIP)

The first time I saw Sunny Glade, she was arguing with the postmaster in my father’s store. I was seven, and what my uncle, the postmaster, always called precocious. When he said that word, there was just a hint of a snarl in his voice, the outside corner of his left eye pinched up in his face, and he pronounced it with three distinct syllables: pre-CO-shuss.

When you’re seven, the world passes you over with little more than a glance. Counters are too tall, conversations are too adult, and your opinions are of no consequence. So when I heard Sunny growl,

“Ah shit Roy, even Janey could do better than that,”

I waited for the trouble that was sure to come my way—somehow, I’d been unwillingly placed right in the middle of Grown-Up-Things. The store got very quiet as Sunny looked at me, nodded her head, and winked.

For some reason that I can’t really explain, Sunny’s voice was the sweetest thing I had ever heard, even if the words that came out of her that day (and most others) were the same ones I got a mouth full of soap for saying. Uncle Roy shot a glance in my direction, his left eye beginning to pinch, and then he muttered something under his breath to my father. Both men disappeared into the back of the store, and I tried desperately to make myself as small as possible while they were gone. After several minutes, I was beginning to think I had believed myself into to being the size of an ant, and that when my pa and uncle returned, they wouldn’t even notice me. The voice in my head was chanting “go on now—get smaller, go on, go on now—get smaller,” and as I began to shrink, you can understand why I jumped a full foot in the air when Sunny’s big hand landed on my (dwindling) shoulder.

“My goodness Janey Bell, you really have grown up.”

All I could manage was a squeaky “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you remember me?”

The voice in my head was part way through a sentence about everyone knowing who Sunny Glade was when I realized that using her first name wasn’t polite, and admitting that I listened to gossip would be even worse.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

As the words rolled out of my mouth, I silently hoped that it was better to forget meeting a person than to admit to only knowing her by what I overheard in the store.

“It’s okay, Janey. When we met, you were much younger.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, then. Let me reintroduce myself. I’m Sunny Glade.”

The large hand that had been on my shoulder moved and floated in the air before me, but I stood motionless and in silent wonder of the woman who was before me.

“Young lady, how about a proper handshake?”

She was not at all what people said. She was tall and pretty, and though I couldn’t have named it then, there was a toughness about her that was powerful and compelling. My mother would have called her an example of nature’s elegance. It was a term she only used in reference to women, and only to those who clearly held their own in the company of men.

As I began to reach out to put my small hand into hers, my father and uncle came back to the front of the store. Before I had time to shake hands, Sunny’s arm was back at her side. She had moved to the front of the store, and I thought I saw her face change. As she stood at the counter, it seemed to me that she became a bit more like the woman I had heard described, and a bit less like the woman I had just met.

Missing Pieces

I was looking at myself in the mirror and assessing the damage when the doorbell rang. Startled, I dropped the bloody towel I’d been holding to my lip into the sink and stood for a moment frozen and unsure what to do. Picking up the towel, I started for the front door when I heard a steady and persistent knocking. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and my neighborhood wasn’t the I-was-in-the-area-so-I-thought-I’d-stop-by type. Part of me grew tense while the rest of me badgered that part for being paranoid.

As I rounded the hallway and entered the foyer, I could see the outline of a large figure through the frosted glass of my front door. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the silhouette’s stance, and the paranoid side of me registered a victory as I stopped in my tracks.

The sound of radio chatter and the visitor’s voice hit me in unison, and I fought the urge to run out my backdoor and into the woods that were only a few hundred yards away.

“Sheriff’s department.”

You live in the middle of nowhere. It can’t be anyone who knows you. My mind struggled to accept this and regain control over my body.

“Look, I can see you standing there, please open up.”

Well, that sounded polite enough. It’s not as if guns are being drawn, and he is alone.

Convinced that I had no rational alternative, I stepped forward and opened the door. Standing on my front porch was a tall, solidly-built deputy sheriff who looked barely old enough to drive let alone carry a gun. With his thumbs tucked into the front of his gun belt and his flat-footed stance, he seemed more a danger to himself than a threat to me, so I began to relax.

“Ma’am?”

“Deputy?”

“Are you alright?”

As he spoke, the deputy took a defensive stance and moved his right hand from its tucked-into-his-gun-belt position to hovering just above his holster, and my desire to flee reintroduced itself with an even greater degree of urgency.

As my panic mounted, I realized that the deputy’s gaze wasn’t trained on me but darting around over my shoulder at the interior of my house. It came to rest on the bloody towel that was in my hand, and once again, I relaxed.

A nervous laugh escaped me as I answered him. “I’m fine. This is nothing” I said, as I held the towel up and used it to point to my swollen lip.

The deputy relaxed a bit, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.

“I fell, but really, I’m okay.”

“Would you mind if I came in and checked the house?”

“I don’t mind if you come in, but I can assure you there’s no one else here.”

The deputy stepped around me and entered the house. I watched him perform a visual check of the areas he could see from the cover of the foyer.

“I was running on my treadmill, and the power cut out on me. I took a pretty good dive.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I knew from experience that his answer translated to look lady, I don’t much care what happened because right now I have to make sure that there ain’t a guy somewhere in here who was beating the crap out of you before I knocked on your door, and if that guy is here, then I’m gonna to have to worry about whether or not you’ll fight me when I arrest his sorry ass.

Indelible

It wasn’t a best thing—it was far from it, but it certainly had come in a small package.

That afternoon, Hate came wrapped in a spring dress topped with bouncing blond curls and a pugish little nose that on an adult wouldn’t have been nearly as cute as it was on the little girl.

The bouncing bundle of Hate had pulled away from her mother and clop-clop-clopped her way across the nondescript tile floor over to my left leg. She came up about mid-waist on me, and I’m not a very tall woman. Craning her neck up to where my eyes were, she cocked her head sideways, a movement that set her curls into a part rippling, part bouncing frenzy. Seeing that she had my attention, her little-girl lips gave way to her little girl voice which rang out in a clear, confident, and matter-of-fact tone,

“My mommy told me you’re gonna burn in Hell. Aren’t you afraid it’s gonna hurt when you’re in all that fire?”

The words settled on me, leaving me dirty and exposed. If it weren’t such a cliché, I’d call it The Day of the Dragon. The searing brand of that little girl’s words reverberated through the room and entered me as nothing had before. The mark would come later, but the scar that moment caused had already begun to form.

Over the Fence

The fat one held one of the two babies close to her as she looked through the fence at me. The other baby lay on the blanket beside the fat one. It was crying and twisting back and forth while reaching upward with its two chubby little hands. The fat one kept clutching at the baby in her arms and staring at me. She paid no attention to the other child. I couldn’t really make out the fat one’s face, but I could tell she was afraid of me. It might have been the way she sat: one shoulder rolled toward me and over her baby as if to protect it from the monster on the other side of the fence. It might have been the way the fat one just stared: I had smiled as soon as I saw her sitting on the blanket with the children, but she had only clutched at the child in her arms and stared. A small boy ran between us cutting an angled path in the tall grass on the other side of the fence. Startled by the running boy, the fat one’s eyes suddenly darted away from mine. After the running boy had passed, I noticed the fat one looking down at the second child: she looked up at me and back at the child—up and down, up and down. Several minutes passed, and I stared at the fat one as she looked up at me and down at the second child. She seemed surprised that it was there. The running boy returned retracing the angled path he had cut in the grass; this time he was screaming.

The skinny one appeared from behind the small barn. The screams of the running boy had roused her from her work. While the boy screamed and the skinny one ran to him, the fat one began to rock back and forth with the baby that was in her arms. The second child was no longer reaching toward the sky with its chubby little hands. As soon as the running boy started screaming, the second child had begun crying. It might have been the crying that started the fat one rocking. It might have been the screaming. Or it might have been me—the monster on the other side of the fence.

The skinny one caught up to the running boy whose screams had begun to subside. She whispered something into his ear and he disappeared into the house. The skinny one went over to the blanket where the fat one sat rocking and clutching the baby. The skinny one whispered something onto the ear of the fat one. The fat one looked back at me with fear and panic in her eyes as she struggled to get to her feet. The second child had stopped crying and was making a gurgling sound and wiggling its legs. I could smell it from my side of the fence. The fat one had gotten to her feet. She looked at me and then at the skinny one. She clutched the baby in her arms and turned toward the house. For a second, I thought she might look down at the second child, but she didn’t. I heard the door slam and rattle shut as the fat one went inside. Then I heard her scream.

The skinny one looked at me, and I smiled. She was not afraid. She scooped the baby up off of the blanket, held it close to her, and walked toward me. The child had stopped gurgling, but its legs were still wiggling. The skinny one stopped a few feet from the fence. She looked down at the baby, and then up at me.

The baby sailed upward for a few moments, and then it began to fall through the air. It hit the ground just in front of me, and it began to cry. They always cried when they hit the ground. The skinny one looked at me for a moment before turning away. I had finished my meal before she got inside.

Past, Present, Future

Neither the steady hum of the overhead fluorescents, nor their rhythmic flickering had an effect on Detective Wilson as he sat alone, bent over, and intently studying the hand-written words in front of him. His surroundings were as familiar as his own home, and like the unique noises of the detective’s house, the idiosyncrasies of Interview Room #3 were ingrained in his subconscious.

Wilson turned another page in the diary that lay before him on the tabletop. Over the past twelve years, the pages on which Charles Douglas Lane had written had yellowed around the edges. Many were stiff, and most retained a fine coating of latent print powder.

Wednesday, 9 January, 1985


Three days ago, I opened my front door, coffee in hand, and I bent down to pick up my morning paper. As I stood up, a small envelope drifted to the ground in a slow, zigzagging motion. It came to a rest on the doormat revising the message to WE      ME. I guessed that the envelope had been slipped under the rubber band that held the folded newspaper, and for the second time that morning, I bent over while trying not to spill the contents of my coffee cup onto the porch. I thought it was an advertisement of some type and almost threw it away.

The envelope lay unopened on my kitchen table until after I’d finished reading the news. Then, before I really knew what I was doing, I opened it and removed a note card. Three words stared up at me:

FRIDAY YOU DIE.


The letters that made up the words hadn’t been cut from magazines and pasted to the card like in some horror movie. They were printed in large, neat, block letters. At the time, I thought it was a teaser for an ad campaign. I flipped the card over looking for a logo, a product name, or some further clue, but there was nothing.

Detective Wilson paused and stretched, and as he moved, the hard, wooden chair groaned. Satisfied, he rocked gently on the chair’s uneven legs as he rummaged through the pages of the case file that rested on the table beside the diary.

Three or four pages from the file’s top, he found the interview list he was looking for and scanned it. Near the bottom of the almost page-long list, he found the name he sought: Doctor E. Martin Duncan. The note “Lane’s psychiatrist” had been written in parentheses next to the doctor’s name. Wilson recognized the tight, clean cursive as his own handwriting.

The detective remembered that at the time of the murder, Lane had been under Dr. Duncan’s care for just over one month, and the diary entries from which he read were part of the doctor’s suggested therapy.

Detective Wilson turned his attention back to the diary.

Work in Progress: The Well

I was seventeen years old when my father murdered Rose Acres, and while I haven't yet decided if the term murder fits, that's the word my father used. A week after he'd done it, he'd driven his car off a cliff and was dead also. I was left alone to face a town that was still reeling from the events and divided over what was truth and what was fiction.

Since the fire destroyed almost everything I own, I can’t help but feel as if some of what my father said over the years is true. Perhaps he was as sane as anyone after all. But that's something I can’t decide for myself because it's no longer my father's sanity that's in question: it's mine, and a person shouldn’t try to decide on his own whether or not he’s crazy.

In the hours before he committed the murder, my father filled the pages—front and back—of three spiral notebooks. The words in those books, written in my father's clumsy hand, served as the explanation behind what led my father to his sealing Rose Acres' fate.

***
The consensus was mixed: about half the population wanted Rose Acres eliminated as quickly and mercilessly as possible, while the other half was in favor of a stay of execution—provided it was followed by a carefully planned rehabilitation period. And this was not the first time Rose Acres had been on the verge of death. The last time, about forty years earlier, Rose Acres' identity hadn't been clearly established; in fact, most of her best-known features hadn't yet taken shape. But even then, she had straddled the precarious balance between life and death without seeming to care which direction fate swung.

The earlier decision to exonerate Rose Acres had hinged almost solely on her historical significance. The bronze dedication plaque, a wrought iron bench, and a small patch of more-yellow-than-green grass were all that separated her from any other undeveloped bit of land, but the plaque and bench had been installed to mark the town's establishment, and although the center of town had shifted away from the bench and plaque, the town council simply could not bring themselves to remove either of those land marks.

Since her first brush with death, Rose Acres had grown into a respectable, if small, park—due primarily to the addition of a wishing well, a swing set, another fifty square feet of grass, several strategically placed trees, and an automatic sprinkler system. The uneducated often wondered where the roses were and why the park wasn't several acres in size, but those who were observant would have caught that Rose Acres was the name of the first Mayor's mother—it said so on the bronze marker.

The issue that had the town in fits when my father intervened and sealed Rose Acres' fate had to do with money—at least on its surface. Rose Acres had grown out-of-place in a town that had become more city and less country. She remained the only real bit of nature among brick buildings, parking garages, and moderately-busy streets and stood as an oasis of sorts—a sad reminder to the older residents of the town of what they had lost in the name of modernization.

Work in Progress: Test Case

My name is Karen Deerborne. I am a prosecuting attorney, and as such, I am used to establishing things. I tell you this because I want to be clear: I am not a promiscuous woman. I am not a risk-taker. I have never been picked up by a stranger in a bar, and until last night, I had never had anonymous sex.

* * *

The digital clock on my desk flashed as 11:59 pm turned into 12:00 am. Exhausted and feeling the weight of the previous day settling on my shoulders, I closed the file I’d been reviewing, turned off my desk lamp, and left my office carrying nothing but my purse. Walking down the hallway, I mentally planned the next few hours of my life: home, quick shower, sleep until 4:00 am, shower again, dress, eat, be back in the office by 5:30. It was going to be another in a string of very long days that had turned into several very long weeks.

My mind raced around the events of the last few days: a mysterious man had been entering the homes of single women, catching them unaware, blindfolding them, and forcing them to undress and masturbate for him. He had done the victim’s no additional harm, and while each of the women expressed shame at the idea of being forced into such an intimate act while being observed by a stranger, they all noted their “attacker” had been polite and kind. The newspapers had dubbed the man Mr. Perfect after one female journalist commented about it being the perfect crime: the victim and the suspect each getting what they wanted, and proclaiming that if Mr. Perfect kept it up, Arlingtown would be filled with the happiest, most satisfied women on the planet.

Reaching the end of the hallway, I made a left turn, punched the elevator’s down button, and waited for the car to arrive on my floor. Moments later, the doors slide open, and I entered the ornate box while willing myself to let go of everything work-related as one-by-one the floors to the ground ticked by. The ride down thirty-six floors doesn’t take very long, but as I felt the elevator slow, my internal counter alerted me to an unplanned stop. Looking up at the numbers above the door, I saw the 26 light up, felt the slowing movement turn to a dead stop, and waited for the doors to open.

Expecting Charlie, the building’s janitor, I was taken aback when a man in a suit was waiting at the other side of the doors. The man seemed as startled as I was, and I immediately read his hesitation. Moving over, I tried to make clear to him I wasn’t a woman frightened by an unknown man getting into an elevator in the middle of the night. Of course, I was, but I didn’t need the man standing in front of me to know it. Moments after the man stepped in, the car’s doors slide silently closed, and with the touch of the lobby button, we were on the move.

The odd silence of elevators descended around us, and the relaxation I had tried to find before the man’s appearance had gone into hiding.

“Late night, for both of us, I guess.”

He spoke with a deeply melodic voice, and when I met his eyes to respond, I felt a sudden tingle run through me.

“So it seems.”

I waited for his next polite statement, but instead of speaking, he simply looked at me. Ordinarily, a gaze like his would bother me, yet his eyes and his stare seemed harmless—inviting even.