When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(38)

“That’s generally what we do with groups. You pick the area, I take the ATVs, get you started. I can guide you, too, if you’d like.” Bill’s gravelly voice picks up. Talk of murder might make him uncomfortable, but clearly, the chance to be part of the action . . .

“Basically, you’re saying this map doesn’t show everything?” Keith presses. “There are dirt roads, personal paths, lots of other things going on which only the locals know about?”

“We don’t like to give away all our secrets,” Bill deadpans.

Keith doesn’t seem to know how to ask what he wants to know next. I don’t either. We’d walked the woods around the first burial site for hours yesterday, looking for animal dens and scattered bones. We’d never seen anything close to a trail.

“If there was a path, say, over a decade ago,” Keith muses finally, “but maybe it hadn’t been used for a while, how would we find it?”

“You don’t.”

“We don’t?”

“The mountain takes back its own. The woods don’t want to be cleared or groomed. Hell, it takes four different ATV clubs to keep these marked trails accessible. Work is constant and ongoing. Ask any landowner. You want to keep your yard, you gotta keep your yard.”

“So an old trail . . . would just return to the wild?”

“Yes, sir.”

In other words, Keith’s theory about an old, locals-only trail may be right. Or maybe even more personal than that—a trail once made by one person and known only by that person. Except this section of the Appalachian Trail was part of the Chattahoochee National Forest, not private property. So anyone who’d blazed a private path off the known byways would have to be someone with access. Maybe a park ranger, or local guide? It feels to me like the more we learn, the more the truth spins away.

“What do you think?” Keith asks me.

I understand the issue. We can’t keep asking questions without giving away too much. Were the graves accessible from the Laurel Lane trail on an ATV? There’s only one way to find out.

“I get to drive,” I say.

“Deal.” Keith pulls out his wallet. “We’d like to rent one ATV with transport to Niche. We’ll also need a map and helmets. Oh, and any kind of insurance you got. Maybe, make that double.”





CHAPTER 17





KIMBERLY





AS KIMBERLY QUICKLY LEARNED, EXCAVATING a mass grave was like emptying a bathtub one scoop of water at a time, keeping the water level even as you slowly brought it down.

Dr. Jackson liked to talk while she worked. “Now, if this were an archeological site, we’d start at the edge and dig ourselves in. But when you work a burial, you need to protect the grave itself, including the walls of the original pit which may yield tool marks we’ll want for evidence later. So what we’re going to do is start right in the middle. We’ll scoop off shallow amounts of dirt into buckets. Buckets will then be poured through a coarse sieve, then a fine sieve. Hopefully that will yield some interesting tidbits—buttons, jewelry, bits of fabric. A shell casing would be nice. But we also want flora, fauna, seed pods. We don’t know what we don’t know, so at this stage, anything left in the sieve is considered evidence.”

Kimberly nodded obediently, organizing their small crew into the human chain. Dr. Jackson took the lead, patiently removing shallow slices of dirt. Kimberly came next, holding up the bucket to receive each scoopful. Full buckets were passed down for sifting. Empty buckets passed back for refill.

Maggie roamed around them. Setting up the Total Station in select spots. Shooting data before bringing the toy to the next site, different angle.

The work was tedious and hot. Before long Kimberly could feel the sweat beading along her brow. She had to take a break and tie a handkerchief around her hairline. Dripping bodily fluids into a crime scene would definitely be in poor form. She noticed the others having to stop to do the same.

This grave, like the first, was not especially deep. Nor did it turn out to be particularly wide. Within a matter of hours, Dr. Jackson had fully exposed a tangled riddle of bones. Without the skulls for reference, Kimberly wasn’t sure she would’ve known she was looking at three bodies. It might have been six, maybe a dozen.

It was . . . heartrending. Three people reduced to a single cluster of bones.

Dr. Jackson called for a water break. The woman had a kerchief around her head and her neck, both heavily stained with sweat. When the forensic anthropologist straightened, Kimberly could hear the woman’s back crack, could see her wince.

“Definitely not in the lab anymore,” the doc said grimly, extracting herself carefully from the grave.

“Have you worked a mass grave before?” Kimberly asked as they headed to the edge of the woods, where the rest of their team had already gathered in the shade and were greedily sucking down liquid.

“Too many times. Rwanda. Central America. Many forensic anthropologists donate time working international cases. The countries where some of the worst genocides have taken place don’t have the resources to process their own sites. They rely on the international community to lend a hand.”

“I thought . . . I thought it would be easier to make out each body,” Kimberly said. She noticed the others were eavesdropping shamelessly on their conversation.