36
THIS WAS NOT AT ALL what O’Dell had expected.
Creed and Jason had left her. She could hear Grace squeaking her toy. They waited in a clearing about fifty feet behind her. She knew it was part of Creed’s routine. He did it out of respect for the law enforcement officers he worked with. He and his dog provided a service—search and find or search and rescue. He wasn’t trained for cadaver retrieval or evidence collection, and so he quietly left them. No questions asked. No sticking around to appease his curiosity. All he wanted to do was reward his dog and move out of their way.
But O’Dell had caught something in his eyes before he retreated with Grace. There was surprise and sadness mixed with unease that this might not be the only thing buried here. That this was only the beginning of what they might find. And in that brief passing glance, she noticed one other thing before he stepped away . . . she caught a glimpse of his dread.
Now, as she stood here alone, she shared that sentiment.
It was always tough when a child was involved. O’Dell had witnessed seasoned investigators tear up at the sight of a child’s body. As much as they trained and hardened themselves, that was the one thing that could dismantle almost every tough guy’s attitude. And she wasn’t immune to it either.
She had already called Sheriff Holt and asked him to bring in a forensic team. They would need to include the house and the outbuildings in their search. She hesitated now, holding a paper evidence bag that she had stuffed into her daypack earlier. She was more than qualified to collect this. She had done it many times before. But something stopped her.
The T-shirt looked to be the size for a small boy, maybe five or six years old. The blue-and-yellow-striped sleeve poked up and out almost as if its owner had just wiggled out of it. The other sleeve and half the chest were still buried in the dirt. From what she could see, there were no puncture marks, rips, or tears. However, rust-colored splatters stained the fabric. Even with the cloud cover and the canopy of branches, it wasn’t dark enough for her to use her black light. She didn’t really need to. She knew it was blood.
Fire ants.
That’s all she wanted to find here today. A possible crime scene where Trevor Bagley may have been tortured and, as a result, died. O’Dell had hoped to resolve whether or not Bagley was a drug dealer or a drug runner. All she wanted was to learn more about the victim, to understand his killer. But this . . .
Was it possible that Mrs. Bagley had taken the child and fled?
O’Dell tried to remember going through the house yesterday. There were no photos on display with any children. She was sure of that. The spare bedroom had not been decorated with the typical stuff that kids love. In fact, there had been a treadmill in the corner and storage boxes on the bed. She couldn’t remember seeing any toys, no bicycle or video games—there was nothing to indicate a child lived there. Even the breakfast that had been interrupted was set up for only two people, not three. Two adults—coffee mugs, no juice or milk glasses.
She squatted and examined the T-shirt again, without touching it. She realized she was holding her breath. She could be wrong about the blood. Then she remembered the altar set up in the Bagleys’ bedroom. She’d worked other cases involving all kinds of strange rituals. That someone had possibly tortured Trevor Bagley by tying him down over a massive amount of fire ants, that they had listened to him scream and writhe in pain—that alone was strange and cruel. But if a child was involved . . .
Her eyes made another careful scan around the immediate area. Except for where the T-shirt lay, the grass and dirt nearby didn’t look disturbed or dug up. There appeared to be no signs of a grave. But even that brought little relief. It certainly didn’t mean that a body was not buried close by, only that a killer may have been more precise.
More questions than answers. All the more reason they needed to continue looking.
O’Dell stood and folded the evidence bag back into her daypack. With her cell phone she snapped off several photos. Then she pulled out a bright orange ribbon and tied it to one of the branches at eye level and just above their discovery.
Finally she turned away, feet suddenly heavy, and walked toward Creed and Jason, stopping three times to tie additional ribbons to shrubs, marking a path for the forensic team. The underbrush was thick and it took effort not to get tangled. If it hadn’t been for Grace, no one ever would have ventured this way. O’Dell couldn’t shake the feeling that they had stumbled upon something that was never meant to be found.
When she looked up, the two men were watching her, waiting for her. Even Grace had stopped her play and had already relinquished her pink elephant. They were ready to continue.
37
THERE WAS SOMETHING she wasn’t telling him. It wouldn’t be the first time law enforcement officers had held back information or important details from him, but for some reason Creed expected more from Maggie O’Dell. Yes, they had worked only one case together, but he thought it had been enough for her to know him, to know that she could trust him. And yet, she didn’t trust him.
That was her problem, not his. It became his problem if it endangered his dog. Grace was fine. She was ready to start all over again. So why did he feel anxious, on the verge of anger?
“I don’t get it,” Jason interrupted Creed’s thoughts.
“Get what?”
“She didn’t find what you wanted her to find but you rewarded her. How do you keep her from trailing off and finding some other discarded item?”
“It wasn’t some discarded item. At least not to Grace. She thinks she did find what I asked her to search for because it has the same scent.”
“The same scent?”
Creed glanced over at Maggie. She wasn’t anywhere near denying it.
“Blood. She smelled the blood. I try to reward her for anything she finds with blood on it, or remains. Human blood or remains, that is.”
He was surprised to see Jason’s face pale. He thought he’d made it plain when they found the child’s T-shirt that it had blood on it.
“She can tell human blood from animal blood? Son of a bitch,” he muttered, visibly shaken by the revelation. “I guess I was thinking there was a chance it was just dirt. Or animal blood.”
This time Creed met Maggie’s eyes. He wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but instead he focused his attention on Grace. She was in a hurry. She rushed from side to side, her nose held high, as if the scent she was trying to harvest floated up above.
She already sniffed deeply, quick breaths that in the humidity made Creed nervous. He kept track of the time, not allowing her to go over the twenty-minute work intervals. He made her stop for water, and she patiently obeyed but as soon as he gave the okay, she raced off.
She leaped over fallen branches and started bounding from tree to tree. Once in a while she hesitated at the base of a trunk and stared at the protruding roots. At one tree she pawed the ground, then stood on her hind legs and scratched at the bark. She inhaled and snorted.
Nothing there. And she took off again.
He wondered if finding the T-shirt had thrown her off. Was she expecting to find the new scent—the one she was obviously working—was she expecting it to be buried in the same way?
Creed tried not to react. She could be feeling his anxiety, his anticipation. He checked his tracking monitor. They had gone almost a mile from the house. It was going on two hours since they began. Grace was not the least bit exhausted. If anything, she was overly excited, not even concerned about her reward. She was definitely in a scent zone. They’d have to wait to find out whether it was part of the one they had just found.
He dreaded that it might be the child this time. As awful as it had been discovering those kids on that fishing boat, at least they were alive. It was nothing like finding the dead body of a child.
Oftentimes he’d lose track of t
he number of bodies—or parts of bodies—he and his dogs had helped find over the course of seven years, but he knew exactly how many of them were children: sixteen. He hoped today he wouldn’t be adding number seventeen.
In the next clearing between trees Creed noticed that the grass looked trampled. Small shrubs were broken, their leaves already turning brown. He stopped at the edge and put up a hand to warn Maggie and Jason to stop, as well. Almost immediately he could smell it—something rancid, as if someone had dumped out a garbage can.
“Something definitely happened here,” Maggie said before he had a chance to point out the disruption in the landscape.
Off to the right, branches had been tossed onto a pile along with other debris. Without getting closer, he could decipher pieces of two-by-fours and a roll of wire mesh. It looked as if someone had been constructing something and left the scraps behind. Then he saw the shovel, its blade half-buried in the ground, the wooden handle teetering sideways. He felt his stomach clench. So here was the torture chamber they were looking for. Or perhaps a grave.
But none of this interested Grace.
Creed turned around to find her pawing at another tree. This time she stood on her hind legs, her front legs pedaling the air and her head thrown back, as if she were trying to see up into the branches. He’d never seen her work a scent like this. It looked like she was trying to capture it floating above her.
And then it occurred to him just as she finally sat back on her haunches and turned toward him, finding his eyes and giving her alert.
Maggie and Jason only now noticed as Creed walked the short distance to the trunk of the tree. He didn’t see it until he was standing directly underneath. The woman’s eyes stared down at him, her long black hair tangled in the branches. Her body was snagged in the upper V, hidden from view by the leaves and the mass of kudzu that engulfed the tree.
He felt Maggie and Jason come up beside him. There were no gasps from either of them. Only a “son of a bitch” from Jason and a resigned sigh from Maggie. The sigh almost sounded like regret, as though she was too late.
And then in a calm, casual voice, she said, “I think we just found Mrs. Bagley.”
38
O’DELL HANDED HER CELL PHONE to Creed. She had called Sheriff Holt and explained to him what they had found. After a long silence Holt had asked her to “please repeat that.” He sounded out of breath.
The forensic team had arrived and had only just begun collecting evidence at the first site. There wouldn’t be enough ribbons in her daypack to leave a trail this far, so she handed the phone to Creed. He could give the coordinates according to his GPS tracker and hopefully lead the forensic team here.
On Creed’s instruction, Jason had taken Grace away from the area to enjoy her reward. Other than his first curses, the young man didn’t look fazed by their discovery, but then O’Dell didn’t expect him to be. A couple of things he had said earlier confirmed that he had not lost his arm below the elbow in some freakish industrial accident, but rather in combat, probably in Afghanistan. The vacant, brooding look on his face told her the loss was most likely recent—months, not years. So death was no stranger to him. Watching him with Grace, she caught him smiling at the dog’s crazy antics. To Grace, it had been a good day—two major finds.
But neither was what O’Dell was looking for. Not even close. She was, however, convinced more than ever that Trevor Bagley had also died out here on his own property.
She glanced at Creed. He had wandered away, trying to get a better signal on her cell phone. Now she saw him explaining to Sheriff Holt as he held his tracking monitor up. The overcast sky had begun darkening. Somewhere in the distance she thought she heard the faint rumble of thunder. They had maybe another hour if they were lucky.
The pile of leftover construction rubble had to hold some answers to this puzzle. O’Dell walked toward it, her eyes picking out pieces she could identify. Some of the wooden planks looked rotted. Certainly not from a new or recent project. The grass and underbrush had grown up around it. Even to get there she’d have to wade through an area of knee-high scrub.
The roll of wire mesh intrigued her. It reminded her of something you’d use for a window screen. She had seen gardeners put this fine of a mesh over plants to keep out pests. Or maybe, in this case, it was to keep insects in? Could it trap fire ants and keep them in one confined area?
She was almost close enough to touch it when the ground fell out from under her. She plunged down into the earth. The surprise sucked the air from her lungs. Her hip slammed against something hard before she landed on her knees. Moist burlap had broken her fall, as well as the wire mesh and branches that had been concealing the hole.
The sudden darkness made it impossible to see. She tried to catch her breath. Needed to wait for her eyes to adjust. Stanch her immediate panic before the claustrophobia grabbed hold.
She tested her feet underneath her. Clawed her way to a standing position. Her right knee hurt like hell but it didn’t collapse. With tentative fingers, she broke through the darkness. The dirt walls were wet and slick. About a foot on each side of her.
She looked up and her knees wobbled. The pit appeared to be twice as deep as she was tall. The overcast sky allowed very little light to filter down. She couldn’t hear Creed or Grace’s squeaky toy. Only muffled sounds, as if she had dropped out of existence.
“Creed. Jason,” she yelled. “Grace.”
She remembered her flashlight—not a flashlight, a black light—but even the UV purple-blue light would break the darkness. She shoved her hand into her daypack and fumbled around inside until her fingers found the long cylinder.
“Grace!” she tried again. Surely the dog would hear her and come looking.
She flipped the black light on and was disappointed to see how little it helped. Still, she swung the stream of light around her. Burlap hung from the walls in strips. Some of the rotted planks were thrown into the corner. That must have been what she had slammed her hip into.
She felt dirt falling on her head and looked up to find Grace peering over the edge.
“Hi, Grace. What a good girl.”
Out of the corner of her eye O’Dell saw something flit across the dirt wall just inches away. She jerked back and shot the black light at the spot where she had seen the movement. And suddenly the entire wall came alive. Dozens—no, hundreds—of scurrying creatures glowing bright blue, fluorescing in the black light.
She gasped, almost screamed.
“Maggie, are you okay?”
She heard Creed’s voice but didn’t dare look up, not wanting to take her eyes away for even a second. She couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? They had been searching for a torture chamber all day and she had literally stumbled into it. But there were no fire ants.
Oh God, if only there were fire ants.
“Maggie?”
She couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. All she could do was stand paralyzed and watch as the walls started to crawl with hundreds of fluorescent scorpions.
39
THE FIRST STING SURPRISED HER even though she had been expecting it. It felt like a needle driving deep into her neck until it hit bone and was left there. The second sent a tingling down her spine. It wasn’t until after the third—maybe the fourth—that she felt the burn begin.
She couldn’t look up without her head spinning. Through a blur she could barely make out Creed yelling to her over the edge—and maybe Jason, or was she seeing double? Because suddenly there were two Jack Russell terriers, too. Then there were three and now four.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. She couldn’t hear Creed’s voice. Grace’s bark sounded muffled and miles away. A scorpion raced up her arm and she flung it off, only to see another on her shoulder. She could feel them in her hair, on her neck and back. She didn’t dare scream and risk one crawling into h
er mouth. The stings hurt less through her clothing. It was difficult to breathe. Her chest hurt. Sweat dripped down her face and she wanted to throw up.
There was a flash of light around her, and it took her a minute to realize it came from above. The men were trying to figure out what to do, shining light down into the hellhole to make sense of her silence.
Dirt trickled down on her but she couldn’t look up. It took all her effort to stand still. Her stomach cramped and a new panic raced through her when she realized she couldn’t swallow. She watched scorpions move freely up and down her body, but now she didn’t feel them.
More dirt rained on top of her and a shadow came over the opening. Someone was coming down. She stole a glance up and saw boots descending straight above her, avoiding contact with the walls. In no time Creed was in front of her, his shadow taking up the small space. She couldn’t see his face. It was too dark. And she couldn’t hear him. Her ears were filled with the sounds of water rushing and her heart thumping.
She could feel him slipping something under her arms. A rope. He cinched it quickly. Suddenly she was being yanked up, a jerk and jolt at a time. She tried to hang on with hands that wouldn’t obey and couldn’t grip. Jason grabbed onto her and she worked her feet over the ledge of dirt. Her first instinct was to twist and pull the rope off herself. Somehow she managed, then flung it back down for Creed.
She rolled over, attempting to sit up, and felt something tapping at her. She swatted instinctively to find Grace’s muzzle in her hair. The dog yelped and jumped back. That’s when O’Dell realized she had brought some of the damned scorpions up with her.
Again, she tried to sit up. Her head began to spin. She closed her eyes. She needed to breathe. She needed to take in the fresh air, but her lungs and throat felt thick.