The Buried

by Kathryn Casey

  Her eyes rolled back and her body went slack.

  Carrying Kristilynn’s unconscious body through the house into the backyard, Beau listened for anyone coming, thinking again about the dark-colored Tahoe out on the street. He walked through the hole he’d cut in the fence to the gate and onto the driveway where the black Camry waited. He flipped open the trunk. The woman inside opened her eyes and blinked as he dropped Kristilynn’s unconscious body on top of her.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered. “One sound and you’re both dead.”

  Thirty-eight

  In the Tahoe, my neck ached from sitting up. I fought to stay awake, but I knew I couldn’t make it through the night. At some point, I needed sleep. Once Kristilynn’s lights went off, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. About ten, I called the local cops hoping they had someone on for the night who could take over for me. Budgets tight, that wasn’t the situation.

  “You still out there, Lieutenant?” the sergeant at the desk asked. “We figured you’d given up.”

  “You know, we did have that suspicious car out here the past two nights. Remember?”

  “Yeah, sure. The burgundy Taurus with no license plate and a white bumper sticker with the word ‘squirrels’ on it.”

  “Any luck tracking it down?”

  “No, but we reminded the second and third shifts during rollcall that you have a BOLO out on it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m going to hang out and see if it shows back up.”

  “Good luck,” the guy said. “Hope you get a few Zs out there.”

  After I clicked the phone off, I checked email. I had only a few missives from the main office. In my text messages, I found a note from Mom.

  NOT COMING HOME TONIGHT????

  I’d forgotten to call her. I looked at my watch and hoped she’d written off my return and gone to bed. I thought about calling Maggie. Summer, she had no school in the morning, and I could picture her in her room working on her robot. But I decided not to, in case she’d fallen asleep.

  The heat in the car even with the windows down was unbearable. While August evenings in Houston aren’t cool, they’re usually tolerable. Not this year. Not with the record-high temperatures. Reluctant as I was to do so, I gave in and raised the windows, turned on the ignition and put on the air conditioning.

  Then, looking for something to keep busy, I logged onto my computer and pulled out my latest sketch. I searched newspaper clips of missing women and found one of a woman in Amarillo who looked vaguely similar. I wrote down her information, but then realized she disappeared ten years before Kneehoff’s killing spree. I thought about discarding the idea, but kept it.

  “It would be just like him to give me info that was off by a decade,” I muttered. “One game after another.”

  As I searched around, keying in ‘serial killer, Houston, Texas,’ links appeared to articles on Liam Kneehoff, most with interviews from anti-death row protestors who wanted him spared. Accompanying the fourth article I opened, the Houston Chronicle had a photo spread of Kneehoff’s victims. The two Jane Does were listed along with my sketches.

  As I scrolled down, I read about the growing movement to commute Kneehoff’s sentence to life in prison without parole, and I felt glad once again that those decisions weren’t mine. All I knew was that I never again wanted Liam Kneehoff to walk the streets. As long as he didn’t have a way to claim anymore victims, all was well. I –

  My attention focused on the chart. I thought about Kristilynn. If she hadn’t escaped, she would have been Kneehoff’s fourteenth victim.

  In that instant, a flash exploded in my mind. I’d had these moments before, ones when everything suddenly became clear, so crystal that it shattered and sent off shards that scattered in a snowstorm of understanding. I thought of the podcast, of Kneehoff’s remark that for years he’d hoped someone would finish Kristilynn off for him. I looked at the sketch and considered why it looked vaguely familiar.

  It was unfinished.

  I took out a pencil and drew in the mole on Kristilynn’s right cheek. I erased the sketch’s brown eyes and left them light, as if they were blue. The nose was a bit too long, not at all up to Kneehoff’s usual standards – apparently by design. He wanted me to work for the ID. But the shape of the face, the lips and the smile?

  There he had Kristilynn pegged.

  Liam Kneehoff was playing another of his games, sending clues I’d been too tired to decipher. With the sketch, he let me know what he had done. There was someone out in the world taking care of his unfinished business. He was claiming Kristilynn Cavanaugh as another victim and placing her among the dead.

  The map? It was a ruse to keep me confused.

  I jumped from the car, my heart racing. I ran so fast, I left the Tahoe’s door gaping open. On Kristilynn’s front porch, I rang the bell, and I pounded.

  I’d been in front of the house all night long, and I told myself that it was okay. Kristilynn was fine. I saw no intruders. No one had come. But where was she?

  I pulled her number up on my cell. I heard her phone ring inside the house, but she didn’t answer. I thought she might need extra time to get in her wheelchair, to look out and see that it was me before she pressed the button and opened the door.

  I waited.

  I heard no one stirring inside the house.

  “Damn it to hell,” I whispered.

  Then I shouted, laid on the doorbell again. “Kristilynn, it’s Sarah. Let me in!”

  A head popped around from the side of the house, someone standing on the driveway. I grabbed my gun out of the holster and aimed, as I walked cautiously toward him.

  “Whoa, lady, no need for that,” the man said.

  “Stay where you are!”

  The old man I encountered wore wrinkled shorts and a T-shirt. Paunchy with thinning white hair and round glasses, he stared at my gun as if it might jump out and attack him.

  “Hey, I’m just a neighbor looking for my wife. Who are you?”

  I flashed my badge. “Your wife?”

  “Yeah. My wife. We live on the block behind Kristilynn. My wife’s watching the neighbor’s house. I fell asleep during the news. I’m guessing she went to feed the cat. I woke up, and she was gone. I waited a while, and she didn’t come home.”

  “What does this have to do with –” I started.

  “Hear me out! I walked over to hurry her along. But she’s not there. Then I found….”

  The man stopped talking, and I realized that he looked terrified.

  “Well, you’re a cop. I was going to call 911, until I heard you and decided to investigate. You better come take a look!”

  Within minutes, the first squad car arrived. I called the captain, and he sent out the forensics guys in their mobile lab. Once dispatch was notified local cops arrived, troopers, and members of the press who monitored the police channels. We put up a perimeter to hold back everyone who wasn’t authorized to enter the scene. I asked two of the cops to grab any video from the nearby intersections and to look for a burgundy Taurus or any other suspicious car.

  “Check the houses, too, any surveillance cameras aimed at the streets,” I suggested. They knew that, but I wanted to make sure it was done. “A lot of houses have security systems these days. We could get lucky.”

  “You sure she’s gone?” the captain asked when he called back. “She was in the house? I was wondering if maybe she didn’t come home yet? Maybe she is out with friends.”

  He didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t either, but there was no doubt.

  “Yes, she’s gone, taken. There’s a small amount of blood on her bedsheets. Not only Kristilynn but one of her neighbors, a women abducted at the same time. I think the neighbor surprised the guy, so he took her, too,” I answered. “Whoever has them, kidnapped them right out from under me. While I watched the front of the house, he or she, maybe they came in through the back.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. We should have taken your concerns for Kristilynn
’s safety more seriously and given you help. Someone to watch the back of the house.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was too late for any of it to make a difference. What we could or should have done no longer mattered. The situation was as it was, and I couldn’t roll back the clock and change it.

  The captain asked, “Any idea who did this?”

  “No, but I aim to find out.”

  Thirty-nine

  Beau pulled into the driveway and then backed the car up to the garage. He went inside, hit the button that opened the garage door, and then eased the Camry in next to the RAV4. Once he had the door closed, he popped the trunk. The two women were conscious. Bloodied and bruised, their eyes stared out at him as round as owls trapped in a cage.

  “Welcome to my little house on the river,” he said, with a soft laugh that came without an accompanying smile. “Not a bad place. I’ve stayed in worse. But don’t get too comfortable. We won’t be here long.”

  Beau grabbed Kristilynn and pulled her out of the car. He closed the trunk on the old woman, and then carried Kristilynn into the house, where he put her on the couch.

  “Don’t try nothin’,” he said. “I’ll be back. Quick.”

  The second time he opened the trunk, he found the old woman scrunched up into a ball and wedged as far back as she could get.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?”

  She walked into the house on her own as he pulled her by the arm. Once inside, he pushed her onto a wooden kitchen chair. He grabbed a dishtowel and used it to tie her ankles together. As he cinched it, the old woman let out a whimper.

  “Too tight?”

  She nodded, and he loosened the binding a bit.

  “See, I ain’t a monster,” he said, removing her gag.

  As soon as the cloth left her mouth, she shrieked, “Help! Help!”

  “You can scream your lungs out, old lady. Ain’t a neighbor within shouting distance of this house. It’s the perfect place to hide. What’s your name?”

  Tears crowded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. A bruise swelled on her forehead. “Sandy McCuskey. I live next door to that house where you took me. I’m old. I won’t do you any good. Please let me go,” she begged. “I won’t tell anyone anything. I promise.”

  “That’s not going to happen. First I just wanted her,” he said pointing at Kristilynn. “But now that I’ve got you, I’ve got plans for both of you.”

  At that, he approached Kristilynn on the couch. He leaned down toward her and talked to her as if she were a child. “Now aren’t you something? Glad you aren’t any heavier to carry, but it’s convenient that I don’t have to worry about you running away.”

  “Who are you? And why are you doing this?” she asked, after he loosened the pillowcase gag and it fell away.

  “Liam Kneehoff sent me.”

  “He’s in prison, he couldn’t –” she started.

  “You know, men like us, we have our ways,” Beau interrupted and shot her a proud wink. “We’re kind of buddies. We understand each other, fellow travelers and all.”

  Her tears falling ever harder, Sandy looked over at the younger woman. Kristilynn’s nose bruised and swollen, appeared broken. She cried softly, her head hanging against her chest. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCuskey. Sorry you got pulled into this,” she said.

  The old woman nodded. “I know. It’s not your fault.”

  Beau shot them both a warning glance, and the women went silent. “I don’t want no talking going on here. None. Or the gags go back on. Understand?”

  The old woman nodded. When Kristilynn didn’t respond, Beau walked over, grabbed her by her long hair and pulled her head back. “You listening to me, cripple?”

  A flash of anger on her face, Kristilynn’s chest heaved. She whispered, “Yes. I’m listening.”

  Satisfied, he walked over and flicked on the television.

  For the next hour, the women sat silent, casting each other worried glances, as he watched the news out of Houston. Cameramen scanned Kristilynn’s house on Willoughbee Lane. While on the street, reporters interviewed the neighbors.

  “Two women kidnapped,” the reporter who stood down the street from the scene said. Behind him viewers could see the revolving blue and red lights on the squad cars, and the CSI van parked in front of Kristilynn’s house. “Sources tell us that one of the women is Kristilynn Cavanaugh, the lone survivor of Liam Kneehoff, the I-45 Strangler’s reign of terror.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Kneehoff?” the anchor back at the station asked.

  “Authorities aren’t talking as yet, but the serial killer did an interview for a podcast earlier this week and named Cavanaugh. He said he’d hoped for years that someone would kill her for him.”

  “Sounds like it could all be connected, then doesn’t it?” the anchor said.

  “As I said, no official statement yet, but my guess is that’s one of the working theories. That someone heard that podcast and decided to do what Liam Kneehoff wanted.”

  Beau Whittle snickered. What he didn’t see made him smile. “You know they haven’t showed my picture or mentioned my name. I thought maybe they had me pegged for this, but they don’t!” he boasted to the women. “God damn! They don’t know it’s me who done it!”

  “They’ll figure it out,” Kristilynn said. “There’s a Texas Ranger who’s been watching out for me.”

  “Yeah, I saw her,” Beau said. “You think she was watching out for you? She was right there, parked out on the street, watching your house.”

  “Are you sure?” Kristilynn asked. “On my street?”

  “Yeah, and look how much good that done you. None at all.”

  Forty

  At midnight, Polunsky was lit up like sunrise. Floodlights cast an eerie glow that shimmered on the guard towers and Cyclone fences. I pulled up and parked, got out of the borrowed Tahoe and headed toward the sally port gates. I’d left my gun locked in the SUV’s strongbox, along with everything but a small digital tape recorder, my state ID, a pad of paper and a pen.

  Buzzed in, I walked through the metal detectors. One of the guards waited for me, and he handed me the necessary forms. I signed them, and he gave me a visitor’s badge. The warden, looking worried, tired and rumpled, waited for me in the hallway.

  “We’ve got him in the visitor’s area. You can talk to him over the phone.”

  “No. I want to talk to him face-to-face,” I said. “Put him in the interview room we’ve been using to draw the sketches.”

  “Lieutenant, it’s late and I’m short staffed this time of night. I don’t have the guards to do that.”

  “I need to get in his face. Bring someone in. I’ll wait.”

  Twenty minutes later, Kneehoff shuffled in wearing shackles and handcuffs. A guard twice his size pushed him into a chair, while two more wrapped the strap around his chest and chained him to it.

  “Is this really necessary?” he asked. “I thought we were talking in the visitor’s area. These chains hurt my –”

  “You think I care what they hurt?” I shouted. “You think I give a damn about your comfort? I don’t, Kneehoff. Not a lick about what happens to you. But you’re going to tell me who has Kristilynn. And you’re going to tell me now.”

  At first, he looked somewhat amused. Then Kneehoff laughed, not just laughed but roiled in laughter. His chest shook, as if I’d just told him the most uproarious joke. He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t ask for any particulars. He asked no questions. He knew Kristilynn had been taken. And his laughter thundered.

  “Shut up!” I shouted. “Shut up! Now!”

  In a blink, he stopped. Finally quiet, he stared at me with a palpable hatred. “How are you going to make me do anything?”

  I walked toward him, my hand in a fist. The guards shuffled closer and watched. I didn’t know if I hit him if they’d interfere or help. I suspected that they probably hated him as much as I did.

  “You wouldn’t hit a man chained to a chair, would
you?” he jeered. “I thought you were better than that, Sarah.”

  With every bit of self-control I had, I pulled back my anger, and silently counted to five. I walked away, sat down across from him and stared into his empty eyes. “I need to know who has her, now.”

  “How would I know? I’m on death row. You think I get phone calls? You think folks drop in to tell me that they’re going to kidnap someone?”

  “You prodded someone to do it. In the podcast –”

  “Sure I did. I did it!” he blustered. “And there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t force me to cooperate.”

  I thought about that, what bargaining chips I had.

  “Well,” I said. “I have one offer for you. We’re at the end of the road, you and I. No more victims to draw. No one else to find, right?”

  Kneehoff looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “Right.”

  “I can keep you alive, at least a little while longer. If you help me, tell me who has Kristilynn, I won’t tell the warden that we’re finished for one month,” I said. “That’ll postpone your execution by a full thirty days. Four more weeks to draw air, to read your newspapers and books, to order candy bars from the damn commissary.”

  “I don’t eat candy,” he said with a smirk. “Bad for my teeth. The dental care in here is abysmal.”

  “That’s my offer.”

  “I want sixty days,” he said. “Two months.”

  I thought about that. It would cost me nothing, and might save Kristilynn’s life.

  “Sure. But that’s my final offer.”

  Liam Kneehoff leaned to his right, as far as the chest binding allowed, he grinned and put his chin down to his chest, a look of pure delight on his face. “You know, Sarah, I understand that you think this, the sketches, the maps, that it was all about me wanting to live longer, but it wasn’t.”