‘‘Bones?’’ Boldt asked.
‘‘Necrosearch has been burying pigs for years.’’
‘‘Pigs!’’ LaMoia blurted out.
‘‘Pigs,’’ she answered. ‘‘And working on imaging systems to identify bone mass. They’re still a long way off from anything close to perfect. About the best we can do is make educated guesses based on some of these trial experiments.’’ She waited for another LaMoia exclamation, but he withheld his comments. She continued, ‘‘Typically, bodies are buried about two feet down, and that’s the depth of the experiments. This is much trickier—six to eight feet in depth. But these shadings here, and these returns here,’’ she said, fingertip to the screen, ‘‘are your best bets. The coffin registers here: This sharp straight line and these unexplained returns are most certainly below that line. They’re not rock. Sticks, maybe. Bone, maybe.’’
‘‘Am I picking up reservations?’’ Boldt asked.
LaMoia fired off, ‘‘You don’t need reservations to book this room!’’ The joke fell flat.
Heidi Mack answered Boldt. ‘‘Yes, I suppose you are. Definite reservations. My problem is this. I’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of GPR returns on all sorts of experimental burials. You learn to spot the anomalies.’’ Again, she indicated the screen. ‘‘The problem here? The problem you’ve got? We’ve got way too many returns, and they’re layered. You see this? One . . . two . . . maybe three different strata.’’
‘‘Three?’’ Boldt whispered.
‘‘What the hell’s going on?’’ LaMoia blurted out.
Boldt turned to him and said, ‘‘Ms. Mack?’’
‘‘If I’m right,’’ Heidi Mack explained to LaMoia, ‘‘you don’t have one, you have three other bodies buried down there.’’
‘‘We have indications the tissue has been frozen!’’ Doc Dixon called up from the bottom of the open grave. 2:00 A.M., Saturday morning. Day twelve. Another bank of halogens to combat the multiple shadows so deep. Heidi Mack had stuck around at Boldt’s invitation—every piece of data collected would be added to the Necrosearch database in Denver. ‘‘Moderate decomposition. When was this grave dug?’’
‘‘Five weeks ago,’’ LaMoia answered.
‘‘That fits.’’
‘‘The bottom of their feet?’’ Boldt asked.
‘‘What feet? There’s little to nothing left,’’ Dixon replied. ‘‘SID will have to sift this soil for debris. You’re hoping for fish scales?’’
‘‘Be nice to find,’’ Boldt admitted.
‘‘Fish scales?’’ Mack asked.
‘‘You didn’t hear that,’’ Boldt told her, having warned her that some of what they would discover would be off-limits for a while. She nodded.
‘‘Can we have someone dig at this end?’’ Mack said, pointing on her screen to the area that lay away from the headstone. ‘‘Into that dirt wall there?’’
‘‘What’s up?’’ Boldt asked her.
‘‘Another anomaly I’d like to verify for the sake of the software. Could be anything.’’
‘‘Dixie? You mind working a shovel for a minute?’’
‘‘It’s not in the job description!’’ the medical examiner complained from the bottom of the hole.
Boldt handed him down a shovel.
‘‘Where?’’ Dixon asked.
Mack returned to her equipment, walked over to the open hole and pointed out an area in the very corner. ‘‘It should only be a few inches lower than the grade where you’re standing. A foot at most.’’
Dixon planted the shovel into the mud and began digging. He stuck something on his second attempt. ‘‘You’re good!’’ he called up to Mack, his gloved hand reaching down and extricating the treasure. ‘‘It’s a rope,’’ he called out. ‘‘Check that,’’ he said, studying it more closely. ‘‘It’s a chain!’’ He knocked off some of the dirt and held it up for all to see.
But Boldt didn’t need to look. He’d seen it already in the digital videotape—a chain used to bind an ankle to a sewing machine.
‘‘Might have been attached to the bottommost victim,’’ Dixon hollered up, fighting the roar of the generator. ‘‘Know what I think?’’
‘‘What?’’ Boldt called down, excitement pulsing through him with the find. The three bodies were most certainly linked to both Jane Doe and the importation of illegals. Coughlie would have to be notified. SID were already on their way.
‘‘I think we were wrong before.’’
‘‘Wrong?’’ Boldt shouted back down.
Dixon looked up, still holding the chain. ‘‘I’d say we have a new candidate for our first victim.’’
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29
12 DAYS MISSING
CHAPTER 43
s. McNeal?’’ a woman’s trembling voice inquired.
Stevie recognized that voice immediately. ‘‘Ms. Klein?’’
‘‘I saw you on TV. The reward and all.’’
Klein sounded nervous. Stevie took that to be in her favor.
‘‘I didn’t have anything to do with a woman going missing. I want you to know that. But . . . what I was wondering . . . about that reward. If I could help you out, where would that leave me in terms of that reward?’’
‘‘If you—’’
Klein interrupted. ‘‘You’re gonna get me killed. You understand? Those people would kill me in a heartbeat.’’ She added, ‘‘So we gotta work this out, you and me.’’
‘‘I’ve tried to work this out—’’
‘‘I know, I know. My husband says I’m gonna bring a world of hurt down on this family, and my family’s everything to me, absolutely everything, and if there’s ten thousand dollars in it for me, then maybe I’m better off talking to you, on account I’m already involved with these people and all and they’ve got me scared half to death.’’
Stevie felt as if she’d swallowed a bubble of air, or eaten ice cream too fast. She spoke a little too quickly for the professional she was trying to be. ‘‘My sources are protected by the First Amendment. Better you talk to me than call the police. We can work this out. I think we should talk, Ms. Klein. Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me everything you know?’’
‘‘I’m standing at a pay phone in a mobile home park. You want to talk, you gotta come to me, on account I don’t want to be seen in my car.’’
‘‘Who is it you’re afraid of? Give me a name, Ms. . . . Gwen. I need something, anything, in order to know you’re telling the truth. You understand?’’ You could be setting a trap, she was thinking.
‘‘Forget it. I’m not doing this over the phone.’’
‘‘Then where?’’ Stevie asked. ‘‘Tell me where you are.’’
Klein described a mobile home park east of Avondale. She would be waiting.
Just before cradling the receiver, Stevie heard a click on the line. At the time, she thought it was nothing more than Klein hanging up.
One of the sports teams had played. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper at a complete standstill. Stevie took the floating bridge to Bellevue, a fifteen-minute drive that took forty-five. She drove north toward Redmond, home of the Microsoft campus, still caught in traffic. Well over an hour since Klein had called. Residential communities had popped up everywhere in an area once predominantly second-growth forest. Condominiums, co-ops, single-family homes—cul-de-sac neighborhoods where dinner conversations centered around ‘‘bandwidth’’ and ‘‘port speed.’’ She drove through the surviving forest on Avondale Road, twilight glimpses of Bear Creek to her right, consternation mounting as she became suspicious of the constant stream of headlights behind her. An hour and a half. Any of these cars might have been following her. She pushed against her own paranoia and stuck to the job at hand: The key witness in the case had just agreed to talk. An hour forty-five.