Once Buried

As Jenn drove the SUV south toward their destination, Riley kept eyeing the text messages she’d sent on her cell phone.

Minutes passed, and Bill still didn’t reply.

Finally she decided to give him a call.

She punched in his number. To her frustration, she got his voice mail.

At the sound of the beep, she simply said, “Bill, call me. Now.”

As Riley set the phone down in her lap, Jenn glanced over at her from behind the wheel.

“Is anything wrong?” Jenn asked.

“I don’t know,” Riley said. “I hope not.”

Her worry kept mounting during the drive. She remembered a text she’d received from Bill while she’d been working on her most recent case in Iowa…

Just so you know. Been sitting here with a gun in my mouth.

Riley shuddered at the memory of the desperate phone call that had followed, when she’d managed to talk him out of committing suicide.

Was it happening again?

If so, what could Riley do to help?

A sudden shrill, piercing noise chased these thoughts from Riley’s head. It took a second for her to realize that Jenn had turned on the siren upon running into a patch of slow traffic.

Riley took the siren as a stern reminder…

I’ve got to get my head in the game.

* * *

It was about ten-thirty when Riley and Jenn arrived in the Belle Terre Nature Preserve. They followed a road to the beach until they found a couple of parked police cars and a medical examiner’s van. Beyond the vehicles on a grassy rise was a barrier of police tape to keep the public away from the beach.

The beach wasn’t immediately visible as Riley and Jenn got out of the van. But Riley saw gulls flying overhead, felt a crisp breeze on her face, smelled salt in the air, and heard the sound of surf.

Riley was dismayed but hardly surprised that a small group of reporters had already gathered in the parking area beyond the crime scene. They crowded around Riley and Jenn, asking questions.

“We’ve had two murders in two days. Is there a serial killer at work?”

“You’ve released the name of yesterday’s victim. Have you identified this new victim?”

“Have you contacted the victim’s family?”

“Is it true that both victims were buried alive?”

Riley cringed at that last question. Of course, she wasn’t surprised that word had gotten out about how the victims had died. Reporters could have learned that much from listening to local police scanners. But she had no doubt that the media was going to sensationalize these murders for all they were worth.

Riley and Jenn pushed past the reporters without commenting. Then they were greeted by a couple of local cops, who escorted them past the police tape over the grassy rise onto the beach. Riley could feel sand seeping into her shoes as she walked.

In a moment, the murder scene came into view.

Several men surrounded a hole dug in the sand where the body still remained. Two of them strode toward Riley and Jenn as they approached. One was a stocky, red-haired man in a uniform. The other, a slender man with curly black hair, was wearing a white shirt.

“I’m glad you could get here so soon,” the red-haired man said when Riley and Jenn introduced themselves. “I’m Parker Belt, the Sattler police chief. This is Zane Terzis, the Tidewater District medical examiner.”

Chief Belt led Riley and Jenn over to the hole and they looked down at the half-uncovered body.

Riley was more than used to seeing corpses in various states of mutilation and decomposition. Even so, this one jolted her with a unique kind of horror.

He was a blond man, about thirty years old, and he was wearing a jogging outfit suitable for a cool summer morning’s run along the beach. His arms remained sprawled in a statue-like state of rigor mortis from his desperate attempts to dig himself out. His eyes were shut tight, and his wide-open mouth was filled with sand.

Chief Belt stood next to Riley and Jenn.

Belt said, “He still had a wallet with plenty of identification – not that we really needed it. I recognized him the second Terzis and his men uncovered his face. His name is Todd Brier, and he’s a Lutheran pastor in Sattler. I didn’t go to his church – I’m a Methodist. But I knew him. We were good friends. We went fishing together from time to time.”

Belt’s voice was thick with sorrow and shock.

“How was the body found?” Riley asked.

“A guy came by walking a dog,” Belt said. “The dog stopped here, sniffing and whining, then started digging, and right away a hand appeared.”

“Is the guy who found the body still around?” Riley asked.

Belt shook his head.

“We sent him home. He was badly shaken up. But we told him he needed to be available for questions. I can put you in touch with him.”

Riley looked up from the body over to the water, which was some fifty feet away. The waters of the Chesapeake Bay were a deep rich blue, with white-topped waves lapping softly at the wet sand. Riley could see that the tide was going out.

Riley asked, “This was the second murder?”

“It was,” Belt replied grimly.

“Has anything like this ever happened here before these two?”

“Right here in Belle Terre, you mean?” Belt said. “No, nothing like it at all. This is a peaceful preserve for birds and wildlife. Local people use this beach, mostly families. From time to time we have to arrest some would-be poacher or settle an argument among visitors. We also have to chase away transients from time to time. That’s about as serious as it gets.”

Riley stepped around the hole to look at the body from a different angle. She saw a patch of blood on the back of the victim’s head.

“What do you make of this wound?” she asked Terzis.

“It looks like he was struck by some hard object,” the ME said. I’ll study it better when we get the body to the morgue. But from the looks of it, I’d say it was probably enough to daze him, just long enough so he couldn’t put up a fight while the killer was burying him. I doubt that he was ever completely unconscious. It’s pretty obvious that he struggled hard.”

Riley shuddered.

Yes, that much was obvious.