Once Buried Read online

  But as she kept driving, manifold details about the case kept crowding themselves into her brain—her vague impressions of the killer, the two murder scenes, a horde of unanswered questions about the killer’s obsession with sand …

  She also found herself remembering Hope Reitman’s serene and distant expression, that lulling smile of hers, her confused recollections.

  The poor woman, Riley thought.

  And yet …

  Riley wondered if she almost envied her.

  After all, Hope Reitman could no longer even try to keep so many things in her head. If she would only allow someone to take care of her, maybe she’d even experience a kind of peace that Riley would never know, quietly disappear into a fog of forgetfulness.

  Riley gritted her teeth.

  No, that must be terrible, Riley thought.

  What could possibly be more hellish than losing everything someone had been and done to a wasting disease?

  And yet …

  Riley wondered how many more things she could cram into her head without losing her mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Liam walked as quietly as he could out of the family room and through to the front of the house. He was carrying a suitcase stuffed with his own belongings.

  One question kept running through his mind …

  Do I really want to do this?

  He stopped in the dining room and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, looking again at his father’s message …

  I miss you, son.

  His father had sent that message a couple of hours ago. Liam hadn’t replied. Then about an hour later, his father had sent another message …

  Are you still my son?

  As Liam looked at the words, they tore right through him all over again.

  He hadn’t answered that second message either.

  But he’d immediately started packing his things to go home.

  And now he put his cell phone back in his pocket and quietly moved forward again.

  He knew that everyone else in the house was in bed—the two girls upstairs and Gabriela in her basement apartment. But Gabriela hadn’t gone to bed until a little while ago. He worried that she might not be asleep yet. Would she hear the front door when he opened it?

  As he went through the living room, he could see car headlights through the front window. It was pulling up in front of the townhouse and he felt sure that it was the cab he’d called to take him back to his father.

  He opened the front door and stepped out onto the stoop as the vehicle stopped and its engine shut off. The car door opened.

  Liam’s heart sank as he stood there in the open doorway holding his suitcase.

  It wasn’t the cab at all.

  Riley had just arrived home.

  He’d hoped that Riley’s current case would keep her away until much later, at least until well until after he was gone. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to make any explanations he couldn’t imagine how to make.

  But here she was.

  Riley got out and looked at him.

  “Liam!” she called out. “What are you doing?”

  Liam didn’t know what to say. He wanted to run back into the house and back to the family room and just hide beneath the covers in his sofa bed. But there was no point in trying to pretend that this hadn’t happened.

  Riley dashed up onto the front stoop beside him. She looked down at the suitcase, then straight at Liam.

  Her expression looked both confused and hurt. Without a word, she picked up the suitcase with one hand and grabbed Liam’s arm with the other. Carrying the suitcase, she ushered him into the house and plopped him down on a chair.

  “What were you doing?” she asked again.

  Liam opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  He had no idea what to say.

  Riley glared at the suitcase, then again at Liam.

  With a note of alarm in her voice, she asked, “Were you going to run away?”

  Liam was still speechless.

  “Well, were you?” Riley demanded more sharply.

  Suddenly words started to come to Liam in a helpless stammer.

  “I—I don’t know. I don’t know what I was doing, OK? I mean—running away, what does that even mean? As far as I’m concerned?”

  Riley looked completely baffled as she stared back at him.

  Liam reached into his pocket and took out the cell phone. He brought up his father’s messages and handed the phone to Riley. She stared at the messages with her mouth hanging open.

  Liam said, “Aren’t I running away already? From Dad?”

  Riley turned pale. Now it seemed to be her turn to not know what to say.

  “I don’t think I can do this, Riley,” Liam said. “Leave Dad alone, I mean. I’m all he’s got. He misses me. He needs me. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him if …”

  His words trailed off.

  Riley slowly sat down in a chair and spoke in a hushed, shaken voice.

  “Liam, we talked about this. Your dad is very ill. It’s a terrible thing, but it’s not your fault.”

  Liam couldn’t hold back his tears anymore.

  “But he sounds like he’s getting worse,” he said.

  “It’s still not your fault,” Riley said.

  “I feel like I’m letting him down.”

  Riley suddenly sounded angry.

  “Liam, it’s us you’re letting down! It’s April and Jilly and Gabriela—and me! We’re committed to you! All of us! We’re counting on you! You can’t go sneaking out on us like this!”

  Liam was shocked—not just by Riley’s voice, but by her exhausted expression. It suddenly dawned on him his dad wasn’t the only person he’d been worried about. He’d been worried about Riley as well.

  Trying to keep his voice from shaking, he said, “Riley, I’m grateful for everything you’re doing for me. But you’ve got so much to deal with already. Not just everybody here, but your job. I’ve got no idea how tough it must be for you. But it can’t be good for you, having another kid to deal with.”

  Riley shook her head miserably.

  “I don’t have time for this,” she said.

  “That’s just what I mean,” Liam said. “Having me around is just too much—”

  Riley interrupted him with a wail of despair.

  “You don’t understand!”

  She was shaking all over now, her fists gripping the arms of the chair.

  In a choking voice, she cried out, “I don’t … have time … for anything!”

  Then Liam saw Riley’s eyes dart around wildly.

  She looked as if she’d just realized something absolutely terrible.

  Then she buckled over in the chair and burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  Liam was stunned into silence. For a moment he watched helplessly as Riley wept uncontrollably. Finally, he got up and walked over to her. He sat down on the arm of her chair and put his hand on her shaking shoulder.

  He soon heard Gabriela’s footsteps coming up the stairs, and the girls’ footsteps coming downstairs. Riley’s outburst had awakened everyone in the house.

  *

  As she sat there weeping helplessly, Riley felt sick and dizzy, and her whole world seemed to whirl around her. Her own words echoed through her head …

  “I don’t have time for anything!”

  She knew that she had somehow told the truth about herself, and she was struggling to understand what it meant.

  She remembered something that Mike Nevins had said.

  “More ugly stuff is liable to surface inside you before this whole thing is over.”

  This was it, and she knew it.

  This case was all about time. The inexorable flow of the sand through the timer, the measured hours and minutes and seconds between life and death, the thought of victims themselves being buried alive, knowing that they didn’t have much time left to live—all these things were triggering fears Riley didn’t even know she had held deep insi
de, never daring to let them surface.

  No, she didn’t have enough time—not for her family, not for another teenager in her life, not for all the people whose lives she needed to save.

  All those people, she thought wretchedly.

  For the first time, the truth welled up and exploded inside her.

  There were always more people who needed saving, more monsters to stop, while the people she loved needed her more and more and more. There was no end to it all and there never would be.

  She really and truly didn’t have time for anything.

  Even if she lived another fifty or sixty years, she’d die leaving an endless mass of work unfinished.

  She’d leave the world completely unchanged, as if she’d never lived at all.

  She’d never thought of herself as the kind of person who feared death. But deep inside, she’d been terrified by death all along.

  Not for her own sake, but for the sake of the people who needed her now, and the infinite number of people who would need her in the future.

  They needed her help, and she’d never be able to help them.

  She simply didn’t have time … to accomplish anything meaningful or lasting in her life.

  Riley’s sobbing lessened, and she felt her body go slack. The weight of fear she’d been carrying around had been lifted at long last. But the pain was still there. Riley wondered if it would ever leave.

  She realized that Liam was sitting on the armrest next to her with his hand on her shoulder.

  The poor kid, she thought.

  He must be wondering what on earth had come over her.

  She also heard noisy, jarring voices. She looked up and saw Gabriela and the girls standing around speaking angrily to Liam. She realized that they were mad at Liam for planning to leave—and especially for making Riley cry.

  She looked up at Liam and saw that tears were pouring down the boy’s face.

  Riley said to Gabriela and the girls, “Don’t be mad at Liam. None of this is his fault.”

  Jilly was pacing back and forth.

  “What do you mean, it’s not his fault?” she snapped. “He was sneaking out in the middle of the night without telling any of us. Doesn’t he care about any of our feelings?”

  “He does, Jilly,” Riley said. “He cares a lot. He cares about his dad’s feelings too. That’s the kind of kid he is. He cares about everybody’s feelings. He’s a really, really good kid.”

  Riley reached up and pulled Liam into a hug.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said.

  “It’s OK,” Liam said, wiping away his tears. “I guess I had it coming.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’ve had other things eating at me, and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK,” Liam said again.

  Riley saw that April had calmed down and was looking at her and Liam with concern.

  April said, “Liam, just promise you’ll never do this again.”

  “I promise,” Liam said.

  Gabriela was standing by with her arms crossed. She nodded with approval at Liam’s promise.

  She said, “I will go get us something to make us all feel better.”

  As Gabriela headed toward the kitchen, Riley got up from her chair and hugged April, Jilly, and Liam, telling them over and over again that she was sorry about her outburst and that everything was going to be all right.

  A car horn honked outside. Riley realized it was the cab Liam had called for. Jilly hurried outside to tell the driver that he wasn’t needed.

  *

  Riley and her family sat for a little while in the living room sipping cups of a hot, sweet drink that Gabriela had made called atol de elote. It was the perfect drink to soothe their shaken spirits. After some comforting chatter and a few more hugs, everybody was feeling better and headed back to their rooms.

  Riley herself went upstairs and took off her shoes and flopped onto her bed. After the emotional upheaval she’d just experienced, she was too exhausted to bother to get undressed.

  Anyway, she realized she could no longer stay awake, which was surely a good thing. Like Meredith had said, she and her colleagues needed to be fresh and alert for whatever tomorrow might bring.

  She closed her eyes and felt waves of sleep washing over her …

  Like the tide over sand, she thought.

  She sighed with despair. Those images of sand pouring through the timer or rippling on a beach—she simply couldn’t get them out of her head.

  She also worried about what the killer might be doing right now.

  Had they really thwarted his plans by closing off the Belle Terre preserve?

  Or was he busy committing yet another sadistic murder at that very moment?

  Riley sighed again.

  She wondered—which should she dread more?

  The nightmares she was about to have during the rest of the night?

  Or the nightmares she might face tomorrow?

  All thoughts fled from her mind as sleep closed on her like a vise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Slowly, consciousness returned to Silas Ostwinkle. At first he wondered if maybe he was in Iraq again. He couldn’t remember feeling so terrible since he’d been in combat way back in February of 1991.

  The nausea, the splitting head pain, the feeling of helplessness …

  Can’t be Iraq, he told himself, struggling to clear his head.

  No. It’s just another goddamn hangover.

  Surely that was what was going on.

  But he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He hoped he’d somehow gotten home safely into his bed and hadn’t wound up unconscious in some strange place.

  If he was home, there was nothing to do except sleep it off for a few hours, then climb out of bed and heat up some of yesterday’s stale coffee and spend the afternoon and early evening nursing his hangover until he had to go on his night shift duties.

  But he became aware that a light was shining on his face, penetrating his closed eyelids. That probably meant that he wasn’t at home in bed.

  He didn’t want to open his eyes. But he was going to have to do that to find out where he was.

  He cracked his eyelids open just a little. The painful brightness slammed them shut again.

  He almost cursed aloud …

  “What the fuck?”

  … but he couldn’t open his mouth and his curse came out as a wordless groan.

  He twisted his jaw and his lips hurt as he tried to move them.

  He realized that his mouth was taped shut.

  He felt a shock of panic charge through his body.

  But his body couldn’t move. It seemed to be immobile from his chest down. Even his arms refused to move.

  Struggling against the brightness, Silas got his eyes cracked open. What he saw in front of him was disorienting. He couldn’t make out what he was looking at.

  His eyes were adjusting to the light, so he tilted his head upward. Straight above him he saw a metal ceiling with bare light bulbs hanging down from it. It all looked vaguely familiar.

  Now he recognized the place. He was in one of those old storage buildings at the marina. He seldom bothered to even check inside the buildings during his nightly rounds. What was he doing here now?

  A face abruptly appeared in front of him—a man’s face, smiling and vaguely familiar, looking down on him.

  The man reached out and ripped the tape loose from Silas’s mouth, sharply stinging his lips and his stubble of beard.

  The man spoke in a pleasant voice.

  “Hey, buddy, how are you doing? You look a little the worse for the wear.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Silas asked.

  An expression of mock hurt crossed the man’s face.

  “You’ve forgotten already? Why, we met earlier tonight. I thought we’d really hit it off. I’m kind of disappointed. Well, I remember your name. It’s Silas somebody. Yeah, Silas Ostwinkle. And I’m Felix Harrington.
Pleased to make your acquaintance—again.”

  He held out his hand as if offering to shake Silas’s hand.

  Silas then realized that his own hands were fastened behind him and tingling with numbness. So were his legs and feet. And he was down in the dirt, half-buried.

  Silas shook his head, trying to make some sense of everything.

  The man’s face looked worried now.

  “Buddy, you’ve been out for a long time. I mean, hours now. I was afraid you weren’t going to come out of it. Sunrise is coming soon. You’d better start waking up.”

  Silas was able to twist his head enough to check out his situation. He was down in a hole that he could barely see out of. He was buried up to his chest.

  The man—Felix Harrington, he’d said his name was—had crouched beside the hole and was looking down at him.

  Little by little, Silas started to remember …

  He’d been drinking quite a lot before he started his shift, and he’d been more than a little wobbly as he’d made his way through the marina. But he’d figured it didn’t matter. What a stupid job it was, anyway—watching over a bunch of buildings that were just going to get torn down sooner or later. He had even left his gun in his truck because he’d never needed it out here and he didn’t like to carry it when he was drunk.

  He’d been doing his rounds when his flashlight fell on the face of a smiling stranger.

  He’d seemed like a nice enough guy, and Silas had decided not to make him leave the marina. After all, the stranger wasn’t doing any harm here.

  Silas had even given him a sip from his whiskey flask when he’d asked for it.

  Then the guy had said …

  “I’ve never come around here before. Maybe you could show me the sights.”

  They’d started walking, talking about one thing or another, and then …

  Silas remembered a sharp blow to his head—and that was all.

  And now he was here, more than half-buried by this nut with the perpetual grin on his face.

  The man leaned forward and dangled something in front of Silas’s face. It was a military medal hanging from a ribbon with vertical stripes of tan, black, white, red, blue, and green.