I frowned. Something was again lighting up my intuition, but not in a way that made any sense to me. I felt strongly that we were digging in the right spot, but there was something odd about the ether—something off. “I can’t tell,” I admitted. “She might be down a few feet farther.”
Perez muttered an expletive under his breath and got back to it. His phone rang again and he stopped to unclip it from his belt, look at the screen, then toss it to Robinson.
Robinson had been standing off to the side a bit, glowering at me with crossed arms. He seemed really irritated by the whole scene. He caught the phone, though, glanced briefly at the display, then answered it with, “Rivera? It’s Robinson. Perez is still digging. . . . No, sir. Nothing. There’s nothing but dirt.”
I glared at Robinson. Oh, ye of little faith, I thought, turning away from him to focus once again on Perez.
We all stood around for another ten minutes, and Perez had moved even more dirt by then, but I could tell he was really beginning to tire. Pausing to wipe his brow again, he looked up at me from the hole he’d been steadily digging and said, “There’s nothing here, Cooper.”
I moved over to stand beside the hole he’d made and put my hands on my hips. Something again felt off and I was now feeling the pressure of the fact that we hadn’t found a body, even though Perez was about six feet down. The truth was that I hadn’t expected Perez to need to dig so deep. It’d initially felt like the girls were only two or three feet under the surface, but now there seemed to be nothing in the grave that I’d marked off. And yet the feeling of someone being buried there was so strong.
“I’m not wrong,” I said.
Perez glanced at Robinson. “Your call,” he said.
Robinson pointed to the bulldozer. “We’ve got a better tool at our disposal.”
“No!” I told them. “You’ll wreck the crime scene!”
But Robinson appeared to be unfazed. “What crime scene?” he asked me.
Perez climbed out of the hole and stood dirty and sweaty next to Robinson. “He’s right,” he said to me. “Without a body, there is no crime scene, and if there is someone buried here, and she’s buried deep, our best bet is to let the dozer remove some of the dirt so we can take a look.”
The driver shifted on his feet again. “I can dig you a twelve-foot hole in six minutes,” he said.
“Do it,” Robinson and Perez told him.
I pressed my lips together, so angry at their willingness to destroy a crime scene just because they didn’t believe me. I hoped they’d be sorry when the first girl was uncovered.
The driver moved back to his rig and started up the engine. The agents and I stepped well out of the way so that he could do his work, and he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told us he could dig a deep hole in relatively little time.
Within a matter of minutes we were staring at a square hole, a good fifteen feet down in exactly the spot I’d indicated. The hole dug by the bulldozer was wider than the grave, so it should’ve exposed the other girls buried next to our target, but there was nothing in the earth. Nothing but dirt.
My brow furrowed when the driver backed his rig up again and for the first time since I’d seen the graves, I started to get really nervous. We should’ve discovered at least one of the bodies by now, and no way would the murderer risk being seen burying a dead body by standing around for an hour or two digging a hole that was below six feet.
“I don’t get it,” I said to myself, and moved over to the edge of the hole.
“There’s nothing down there,” Robinson said, his voice now filled with disgust. “You led us on a wild-goose chase and wasted the whole morning.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I’m not wrong.” Stubbornly I moved to the edge of the hole, ready to jump in and start digging myself, but when I reached for the shovel, Robinson caught my arm and held me back.
I looked up at his angry face, then pointedly down at his arm. “Oh, hold me closer, tiny dancer,” I snarled.
He tightened his grip and snarled back, only his was perhaps a weensy bit scarier than mine.
“Darnell,” Perez said softly. “If she wants to dig some, let her.”
Robinson’s hand unlatched itself from my arm and he turned away in disgust. I glared at him for a moment before picking up the shovel and very carefully made my way down to the bottom of the pit. The hole dug by the bulldozer sloped a little as it got deeper, which allowed me to half shuffle, half slide down to the bottom. It smelled mossy and dank and I wondered how my intuition could insist there was a dead body buried someplace that showed no evidence of that. I mean, I can be wrong, and I have been, but not about something that felt so certain. So definite. So substantive. I couldn’t reconcile it and I didn’t know even how to explain it.
Still holding the shovel, I made a few attempts to move aside some dirt, which was very difficult, given that it was so packed in at this depth, but at least I wasn’t hitting bedrock. I figured centuries of mud and dirt rolling down the mountain during the rainy season had deposited quite a bit more earth here than just a little further up. It was obvious that a murderer hadn’t dug a grave here, but I felt compelled to keep scratching at the ground and stall for time while I tried to think about what else to do. If I went back to Rivera after having claimed to have visions of four dead girls who didn’t seem to exist, I’d be sent home with my tail tucked between my legs and egg on my face.
“Come on, Cooper,” Perez said. “Get out of there so we can let this guy get back to his job and we can get back to ours.”
Frustrated, I jammed the shovel one last time into the bottom of the pit, and it caught on something. Like a root. Or . . .
I bent over and scraped with the shovel a little more.
“Cooper!” Robinson barked. “Get out of there or I’ll come down and drag you out.”
I turned to glare up at him. “You want me to come out?” I snapped. “Then come on down, Agent Robinson. And while you’re here, maybe you can explain this.” Very carefully I propped the blade of the shovel underneath a hard lump of earth and pried out of the dirt a skeletal hand.
It would’ve been seriously gross if I’d thought about anything other than my relief at having been right.
For their parts, Perez and Robinson stared down at me and the hand sticking out of the dirt with such shock that I wanted to take a picture and show Candice later. I resisted of course. But only just barely.
Then Robinson lifted up his cell and made a call. “Yes, sir. It’s me. She was right. We found remains. Better send the techs to us and I’ll alert the local PD.”
With a satisfied sigh I moved away from the hand so as not to further disturb the scene and carefully edged my way back up out of the hole. When I was on level ground again, the driver stared at me in awe. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”
Chapter Six
• • •
Hours later, and draped in a blue and yellow FBI Windbreaker, I stood in the center of a storm wishing like hell I’d never come to L.A.
The crime-scene techs had unearthed a body all right, but the medical examiner—a man with thirty-two years of experience no less—had pronounced the deceased as anything but a murder victim.
It seemed that I’d led the investigators directly to the ancient remains of a Native American tribesman, who’d perhaps lived in the area some five hundred to a thousand years earlier.
The surrounding terrain was now swarmed by local news reporters, archaeologists from UCLA, and, of course, the owners of the development project, who were fit to be tied.
Pointing angry fingers at me (thanks to Agent Perez, who’d let it “slip” that I was the one who’d insisted there were remains to be found, and enlisted the help of the bulldozer driver), they’d yelled for a good half hour. With the discovery of the remains, the entire area quickly became a
war zone of jurisdiction between the developers, the UCLA archaeologists, and representatives from the Haramokngna American Indian Cultural Center, who were claiming the remains belonged to a member of the Tongva tribe, and as such, no one but them could touch it or excavate the area until they had.
With a sigh I eyed the large sign announcing the new homes starting in the seven hundred thousands. There was no way anything would be built on the property for at least a few years. No wonder I’d seen the sign faded and aged. And no wonder the developers were furious at me. The substantial outlay they’d put out to secure the real estate would very likely be tied up in the courts for years, and of course there’d be legal fees involved.
It all made me feel not so great about things, especially as I’d obviously disturbed a Native American’s burial site. He or she should’ve been left in peace.
“Hey, there,” I heard someone to my right say.
“Hey,” I replied with a sigh.
“How’s things?”
“Peachy, Candice. Isn’t it obvious?”
She chuckled softly and draped an arm across my shoulders. “You’re all over the news.”
“Swell.”
“So what’s the real story?” she asked. “I mean, I know you wouldn’t have used that radar to dig up ancient remains unless it was important.”
I sighed again. “I didn’t know the remains were ancient. I thought they were relatively recent.”
“Ah,” she said. “Still, to pick up on a body twelve feet belowground, that’s impressive, Sundance.”
I shook my head. “I’m not convinced that I did that, though.”
“I’m not following.”
I turned to her. “Robinson and Perez took me to feel out the ether at the bank down there,” I said, pointing, “and I had this sense like something was off. I kept seeing my symbol for murder and the tug I felt was from outside the bank, so I followed it and it led me here. Then I swear I saw four unmarked graves right where those spotlights are, and there was a guy in a bulldozer about to run over the graves. I stopped him, we started digging, and the rest is ancient history.”
“Let’s go back to the four graves,” Candice said.
I shivered with cold. What’d been a fairly mild day had turned chilly, and while the borrowed Windbreaker was helping, my feet and hands were so cold they were numb. “Okay,” I said, my teeth chattering a little.
Candice seemed to notice, because she said, “But first, let’s get you out of here, fed, and warmed up. Would you rather head back with me to the hotel for a shower and room service? Or to the nearest restaurant for something to eat?”
At the mention of food my stomach gurgled noisily. I hadn’t eaten all damn day. I would’ve left hours before, in fact, but Robinson, Perez, and Rivera were all still there, along with several FBI crime-scene techs who’d been scanning the ground with some sort of X-ray gizmo that was able to detect human remains in the soil.
I guess Rivera had been so surprised and impressed that I’d been able to detect a skeleton twelve feet down that he’d given my earlier prediction of four murder victims a lot of credence, and he’d insisted on having his team fully survey the landscape to search for those bodies.
I hadn’t had the courage to tell him I now didn’t believe they were ever there. “I think I have to stay a little longer,” I said miserably.
Candice looked from me to Rivera and the other two agents. “Screw that,” she said. “Those guys are dressed for the conditions, Abby. I mean, girl . . . you’re wearing sandals.”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
Candice shook her head and removed her arm from my shoulders. She then took me firmly by the hand and pulled me over to Rivera, who was speaking with some local senator or congressman that I’d heard had money in the development deal. He looked angry enough to choke a horse and he and Rivera had been going at it back and forth in short bursts for a lot of the day.
Of course, none of that mattered to my BFF, who strode right up to them with me in tow, stopped in front of Rivera, and said, “Hey! You the one in charge?”
He paused midsentence and turned a flinty eye to her. “I’m Special Agent in Charge Rivera. And you are?”
“Candice Fusco-Harrison. So nice to make your acquaintance, Agent Rivera.” she said, with as fake a smile as you could imagine. “Listen, Abby’s frozen to the bone. I’m going to take her out of here and get her something to eat. She needs to be fed, warmed up, and put to bed before she collapses.”
“We’re not done here,” Rivera growled.
“I can see that, but nowhere in her consulting agreement does it state that she needs to be subjected to such conditions as starvation and hypothermia. I’m taking her. And if you have a problem with that, you can call—”
“You know what? Go!” Rivera snapped, cutting her off. “Take her away and get her warmed up. I’ll be in touch tomorrow about this mess.”
I gulped, and looked at Candice. She and I wouldn’t be splitting any betting pool money, and I’d probably need to pack my things after my shower and room service meal. I’d be sent back to Austin with one small win, and one big FUBAR. I’d blown it.
“You don’t want me to come in tomorrow, sir?” I asked him, just to be sure.
“No,” he said angrily. “I definitely do not want you to come in, Cooper. Wait for my call in the morning. You’re dismissed.”
My lower lip trembled in spite of my best effort to keep my emotions in check. I don’t know why it upset me so much to be sent packing, but it did. Clearing my throat, I turned away and Candice and I began to trudge through the dirt toward the bank parking lot.
“Hey!” I heard Rivera call when we’d gotten about fifteen feet away.
I turned almost hopefully back to him. “The jacket,” he said, motioning to the one I was wearing. “Leave it.”
Candice growled low in her throat. Rivera had meant to embarrass me by treating me like someone who was skulking off with government property—which I technically was, but I’d fully intended to give back the jacket the next day. I mean, it wasn’t like Dutch didn’t have three of the same Windbreakers in our closet at home.
My lower lip trembled a little more as I shrugged out of the Windbreaker and the cold breeze hit my chest hard, making me even more miserable. Angry now, I dropped the Windbreaker in the dirt and turned away from Rivera, itching to toss him the bird over my shoulder while I was at it.
Candice walked close to me and muttered, “He’s such an asshole.”
I would’ve verbally agreed with her if I could’ve worked my way past the lump in my throat.
The long car ride back to the hotel was made a little better by the fact that the first thing Candice did was stop at a local Starbucks in a strip mall with a Walgreens and, after leaving me in the car with the heater running, came back with a Venti caramel decaf latte, a pair of thick socks, and even a set of slippers she’d found at the drugstore. She also made me wear her coat until I stopped shivering.
“If I haven’t told you lately that I love you,” I said to her as we got under way again, “totally my bad. You’re awesome and I love you.”
She grinned while she drove. “Drink your coffee,” was her only reply.
After a shower that should’ve been much longer were it not for the drought conditions in Southern California, I came out to a meal of a grilled cheese sandwich and a big bowl of cream of tomato soup. Sinking onto the bed after taking the first bite of the grilled cheese, I moaned with happiness. “Ohmigod,” I said. “What kind of heaven is this sandwich?”
“It’s got bacon, Granny Smith apple slices, and Gouda cheese.”
“Holy freakballs, Candice,” I moaned again after a second bite. “How are you not fighting me for the other half of this sandwich?”
“I’m using all my powers of restraint,” she deadpanned. She then took the lid o
ff her own dinner, which I noticed was nothing more than a small fillet of grilled salmon and some steamed veggies. Candice almost never eats junk food, which is ninety percent of my diet. I’ll probably go before her, but at least I’ll die happy—likely clutching a plate full of chili cheese fries.
We ate in silence for a bit—which I appreciated. I didn’t want anything to distract me from the magnificence of that sandwich, made all the better by the most heavenly bowl of soup I’d ever tasted. It was more tomato bisque than soup.
But at last I sat back and patted my bulging stomach. “Thanks for that, Huckleberry.”
“My pleasure. Now spill it.”
Taking a deep breath (or as deep a breath as my stomach would allow), I told her everything. “I still don’t know how I could’ve been so wrong,” I said in conclusion. “I was so certain those girls were buried there.”
“Did the medical examiner comment on the sex of the ancient remains?”
I shook my head. “He said he was leaving that up to the archaeologists. The skeleton is old enough that it’s much smaller than modern people, so there’s no way to really tell without doing some in-depth measurements of the pelvic bones, but my guess is that the skeleton is male.”
“Why is that your guess?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It’s what my gut says. Which means at some point we’ll learn about it and my feelers are just out ahead retrieving information that’s yet to come in.”
That made Candice consider me curiously. “How do you know if something has happened in the past versus the future, Abs?”
“Sometimes I don’t,” I admitted. “I mean, sometimes it’s hard to tell. Time is a tricky thing, but mostly I can tell it’s the future because it feels in front of me, whereas the past feels behind me.”
“Sort of like ‘no’ feels like a weight to you and ‘yes’ makes you feel a lightness?”
I pointed at her. “Yes, exactly like that.”
“Okay, so what does the present feel like?”