Once Buried Read online

  “Not an hourglass, exactly,” Bill said. “I’m pretty sure it measures a longer period of time than an hour. It’s what’s called a sand timer.”

  The object struck Riley as startlingly beautiful. The two globes of glass were exquisitely shaped, connected together by a narrow opening. The round wooden top and bottom pieces were connected by three wooden rods, carved into decorative patterns. The top was carved into a ripple pattern. The wood was dark and well-polished.

  Riley had seen sand timers before—much smaller versions for cooking that counted off three or five or twenty minutes. This one was much, much bigger, over two feet tall.

  The bottom globe was partially filled with tan sand.

  There was no sand in the upper globe.

  Chief Belt asked Bill, “How did you know something was here?”

  Bill was crouching beside the sand timer, examining it attentively. He asked, “Did anyone else notice something odd about the shape of the pit on the trail?”

  “I did,” Riley said. “The ends of the hole were dug in kind of a wedge-shaped manner.”

  Bill nodded.

  “It was roughly the shape of an arrow. The arrow pointed to where the path curved away and some of the bushes were broken down. So I just went where it was pointing.”

  Chief Belt was still staring at the sand timer with amazement.

  “Well, we’re lucky you found it,” he said.

  “The killer wanted us to look here,” Riley muttered. “He wanted us to figure this out.”

  Riley glanced at Bill, then at Jenn. She could tell they were thinking just what she was thinking.

  The sand in the timer had run out.

  Somehow, in a way they didn’t yet understand, that meant that they weren’t lucky at all.

  Riley looked at Belt and asked, “Did any of your men find a timer like this at the beach?”

  Belt shook his head and said, “No.”

  Riley felt a grim tingle of intuition.

  “Then you didn’t look hard enough,” she said.

  Neither Belt nor Terzis spoke for a moment. They looked as though they couldn’t believe their ears.

  Then Belt said, “Look, something like this would surely have stood out. I’m sure there wasn’t anything like it in the immediate area.”

  Riley frowned. This thing that had been placed so carefully just had to be important. She felt sure that the cops had somehow overlooked another sand timer.

  For that matter, so had she and Bill and Jenn when they’d been on the beach. Where could that one be?

  “We’ve got to go back and look,” Riley said.

  Bill carried the enormous timer over to the SUV. Jenn opened the back, and she and Bill put the object inside, making sure that it was braced and steadied against any sharp or sudden movement. They covered it with a blanket that was in the SUV.

  Riley, Bill, and Jenn got into the SUV and followed the police chief’s car back toward the beach.

  The number of reporters gathered in the parking area had increased, and they were getting more aggressive. As Riley and her colleagues made their way through them and past the yellow tape, she wondered how much longer they would be able to ignore their questions.

  When they reached the beach, the body was no longer in the hole. The ME’s team had already loaded it into their van. The local cops were still combing the area for clues.

  Belt called out to his men, who gathered around him.

  “Has anybody seen a sand timer around here?” he asked. “It would look like a big hourglass, at least two feet tall.”

  The cops looked perplexed by the question. They shook their heads and said no.

  Riley was starting to feel impatient.

  It must be around here somewhere, she thought. She walked to the top of a nearby grassy rise and looked around. But she could see no hourglass, not even disturbed sand that would indicate something freshly buried.

  Or was her intuition playing tricks on her? It sometimes happened.

  Not this time, she thought.

  In her gut, she felt sure of it.

  She walked back and stood looking down at the hole. It was very different from the one in the woods. It was shallower, more shapeless. The killer couldn’t have formed the dry beach sand into a pointer if he’d tried.

  She turned all around and gazed in every direction.

  All she saw was sand and the surf.

  The tide was low. Of course the killer could have made some kind of wet sand-sculpture arrow, but it would have been seen right away. If it hadn’t been destroyed, it would still be visible.

  She asked the others, “Have you seen anyone else anywhere near here—aside from the man with the dog who found the body?”

  The cops shrugged and looked at each other.

  One of them said, “Nobody except Rags Tucker.”

  Riley’s eyes widened.

  “Who’s he?” she asked.

  “Just an eccentric old beachcomber,” Chief Belt said. “He lives in a little wigwam over there.”

  Belt pointed farther along the beach where the shoreline curved away from the area where they stood.

  Riley was getting a little angry now.

  “Why didn’t anybody mention him before?” she snapped.

  “There wasn’t much point,” Belt said. “We talked to him when we first got here. He didn’t see anything having to do with the murder. He said he’d been asleep when it happened.”

  Riley let out a groan of irritation.

  “We’re going to pay this guy a visit,” she said.

  Followed by Bill, Jenn, and Chief Belt, she started walking along the sand.

  As they walked, Riley said to Belt, “I thought you’d closed off the beach.”

  “We did,” Belt said.

  “Then what the hell is anybody still doing here?” Riley asked.

  “Well, like I said, Rags sort of lives here,” Belt said. “There didn’t seem to be any point in kicking him out. Besides, he’s got no place else to go.”

  After they rounded the curve, Belt led them up across the sand to a grassy rise. The group waded through the soft sand and tall grass to the top of the rise. From there Riley could see a little makeshift wigwam about a hundred yards away.

  “That’s ol’ Rags’s house,” Belt said.

  As they approached, Riley saw that it was covered with plastic bags and blankets. Here behind the rise, it was safely out of reach whenever the tide was high. The wigwam was surrounded by blankets covered with what looked like a crazy assortment of objects.

  Riley said to Belt, “Tell me about this Rags Tucker character. Doesn’t Belle Terre have rules against vagrancy?”

  Belt chuckled a little.

  He said, “Well, yeah, but Rags isn’t exactly your typical vagrant. He’s colorful, and people like him, visitors especially. And he’s not a suspect, believe me. He’s the most harmless guy in the world.”

  Belt pointed to the things out on the blanket.

  “He’s got kind of a goofy business going with all that stuff he’s got. He picks up junk off the beach, and people come around to buy stuff, or to exchange stuff they don’t want anymore. Mostly it’s just an excuse for folks to hang around and talk to him. He does this all summer, for as long as the weather here is comfortable. He manages to put together enough money to rent a cheap little apartment in Sattler for the winter. Then when the weather’s good again, he comes back here.”

  As they got nearer, Riley could see the objects more clearly. It really was a bizarre collection that included driftwood, conch shells, and other natural objects, but also old toasters, broken TVs, old lamps, and other items that visitors had undoubtedly brought for him.

  When they got to the edge of the outstretched blankets, Belt called out, “Hey, Rags. I wonder if we could talk to you some more.”

  A raspy voice answered from inside the wigwam.

  “I told you before, I didn’t see anybody. Haven’t you caught the creep yet? I sure don’t like the
idea of a killer on my beach. I’d have already told you if I knew anything.”

  Riley stepped toward the wigwam and called out, “Rags, I need to talk to you.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “FBI. I’m wondering if maybe you’d run across a large sand timer. You know, like an hourglass.”

  There was no reply for a few moments. Then a hand inside the wigwam pulled aside a sheet that covered the opening.

  Inside was a scrawny man sitting cross-legged, his big eyes staring at her.

  And sitting right in front of him was a huge sand timer.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The man in the wigwam just stared up at Riley with wide gray eyes. Riley’s attention snapped back and forth from the vagrant to the big sand timer in front of him. She found it hard to decide which was the most startling.

  Rags Tucker had long grayish hair and a beard that hung down to his waist. His tattered, loosely fitting clothes suited his name.

  Naturally she wondered …

  Is this guy a suspect?

  She found that hard to believe. His limbs were thin and spindly, and he seemed hardly robust enough to have carried out either one of these arduous murders. He fairly exuded a sense of harmlessness.

  Riley also suspected that his scruffy appearance was something of a pose. He didn’t smell bad, at least from where she stood, and his clothes looked clean in spite of all their wear and tear.

  As for the sand timer, it looked much like the one they’d found back near the path. It was more than two feet tall, with wavy ridges carved on the top and three skillfully carved rods holding the frame together.

  It wasn’t identical to the other one, though. For one thing, the wood wasn’t as dark—more of a reddish brown. Although the carved patterns were similar, they didn’t look like exact replicas of the designs they’d seen on the first sand timer.

  But those small variations weren’t the most important differences between the two.

  The greatest contrast was in the sand that marked passing time. In the timer that Bill had found among the trees, all of the sand was in the bottom globe. But in this timer, most of the sand was still in the top globe.

  This sand was in motion, trickling slowly into the globe below.

  Riley felt sure of one thing—that the killer had meant them to find this timer, as surely as he’d meant them to find the other one.

  Tucker finally spoke. “How’d you know I had it?” he asked Riley.

  Riley produced her badge.

  “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” she said in a non-threatening voice. “How did you get it?”

  Tucker shrugged.

  “It was a gift,” he said.

  “From whom?” Riley asked.

  “From the gods, maybe. It dropped from the sky, the best I can figure. When I first looked outside this morning, I saw it right away, over there on the blankets with my other stuff. I brought it inside and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again, and I’ve been just sitting here watching it for a while.”

  He stared hard at the sand timer.

  “I’ve never watched time actually pass before,” he said. “It’s a unique experience. Sort of feels like time is passing slowly and fast at the same time. And there’s a feeling of inevitability about it. You can’t turn back time, as they say.”

  Riley asked Tucker, “Was the sand running like this when you found it, or did you turn it over?”

  “I kept it just like it was,” Tucker said. “Do you think I’d dare change the flow of time? I don’t mess with cosmic matters like that. I’m not that stupid.”

  No, he’s not stupid at all, Riley thought.

  She felt that she was beginning to understand Rags Tucker better with each bit of their conversation. This addled and ragged beachcomber persona of his was carefully cultivated for the entertainment of visitors. He’d turned himself into a local attraction here at Belle Terre. And from what Chief Belt had told her about him, Riley knew that he made a modest living at it. He had established himself as a local fixture and gained unspoken permission to live exactly where he wanted to be.

  Rags Tucker was here to entertain and to be entertained.

  It dawned on Riley that this was a delicate situation.

  She needed to get that sand timer away from him. She wanted to do that quickly and without raising a fuss about it.

  But would he be willing to give it to her?

  Although she knew the laws about search and seizure perfectly well, she wasn’t at all sure about how they applied to a vagrant living in a wigwam on public property.

  She’d much rather take care of this without getting a warrant. But she had to proceed carefully.

  She told Tucker, “We think it may have been left here by whoever committed the two murders.”

  Tucker’s eyes widened.

  Then Riley said, “We need to take this timer with us. It could be important evidence.”

  Tucker shook his head slowly.

  He said, “You’re forgetting the law of the beach.”

  “What’s that?” Riley said.

  “‘Finders keepers.’ Besides, if this really is a gift from the gods, I’d better not part with it. I don’t want to violate the will of the cosmos.”

  Riley studied his expression. She could tell that he wasn’t crazy or delusional—although he might sometimes act like it. That was just part of the show.

  No, this particular vagrant knew exactly what he was doing and saying.

  He’s doing business, Riley thought.

  Riley opened her wallet, took out a twenty-dollar bill, and offered it to him.

  She said, “Maybe this will help sort things out with the cosmos.”

  Tucker grinned ever so slightly.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The universe is getting pretty pricy these days.”

  Riley felt like she was getting the hang of the man’s game, and also how she could play along.

  She said, “It’s always expanding, huh?”

  “Yeah, ever since the Big Bang,” Tucker said. He rubbed his fingers together and added, “And I hear it’s going through a new inflationary phase.”

  Riley couldn’t help but admire the man’s shrewdness—and his creativity. She figured she’d better settle a deal with him before the conversation got too deep for her to make any sense out of.

  She took another twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet.

  Tucker snatched both twenties out of her hand.

  “It’s yours,” he said. “Take good care of it. I’ve got a feeling there’s something really powerful about that thing.”

  Riley found herself thinking that he was right about that—probably more right than he could know.

  With a grin, Rags Tucker added, “I think you can handle it.”

  Bill put on his gloves again and approached the timer to pick it up.

  Riley told him, “Be careful, keep it as steady as you can. We don’t want to interfere with how fast it’s running.”

  As Bill picked up the timer, Riley said to Tucker, “Thanks for your help. We might come back to ask more questions. I hope you’ll be available.”

  Tucker shrugged and said, “I’ll be here.”

  As they turned to go, Chief Belt asked Riley, “How much time do you think is left before all the sand runs into the bottom?”

  Riley remembered that the ME had said both murders had taken place around six o’clock in the morning. Riley looked at her watch. It was now nearly eleven. She did a little math in her head.

  Riley said to Belt, “The sand will run out in about nineteen hours.”

  “What happens then?” Belt asked.

  “Somebody dies,” Riley said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Riley couldn’t get Rags Tucker’s words out of her mind.

  “There’s a feeling of inevitability about it.”

  She and her colleagues were making their way back along the beach toward the crime scene. Bill was carrying the sand timer, and Jenn
and Chief Belt flanked him to help him keep the timer steady. They were trying to avoid affecting the flow of sand in the timer. And of course that falling sand was what Rags had been talking about.

  Inevitability.

  Even as she shuddered at the thought, she realized that was exactly the effect the killer had in mind.

  He wanted them to feel a tightening knot of inevitability about his upcoming murder.

  It was his way of psyching them out.

  Riley knew that they mustn’t let themselves get too rattled, but she worried that it wasn’t going to be easy.

  As she trudged through the sand, she took out her cell phone and called Brent Meredith.

  When he answered, she said, “Sir, we’ve got a serious situation on her hands.”

  “What is it?” Meredith asked.

  “Our killer is going to strike every twenty-four hours.”

  “Jesus,” Meredith said. “How do you know?”

  Riley was on the verge of explaining everything to him, but thought better of it. It would be better if he could actually see both of the timers.

  “We’re on our way back to the SUV,” Riley said. “As soon as we’re there, I’ll call you for a video conference.”

  Riley ended the call just as they got back to the crime scene. Belt’s cops were still scrounging through the marsh grass searching for clues. The cops’ mouths dropped open at the sight of Bill carrying the enormous timer.

  “What the hell’s that?” one of the cops asked.

  “Evidence,” Belt said.

  It occurred to Riley that the last thing they wanted right now was for reporters to get a look at the timer. If that happened, rumors would really start flying, making the situation worse than it already was. And there would surely be reporters still lurking in the parking area. They already knew that two people had been buried alive. They weren’t going to give up on that story.

  She turned to Chief Belt and asked, “Could I borrow your jacket?”

  Belt took off his jacket and handed it to her. Riley carefully draped it over the sand timer, covering it completely.

  “Come on,” Riley said to Bill and Jenn. “Let’s try to get this to our vehicle without attracting too much attention.”