by L. K. Hill
Colt shut up. Somewhere underneath the heaviness, Gabe felt sympathy for the rookie. He didn’t live in a place that saw murder on this scale regularly, if at all.
“Oh shit.”
Gabe turned. Rogers had emerged from the house and stood twelve feet away, peering into the cab of the sixties pickup truck. The one full of sand.
“What is it?” Gabe asked, approaching. Asper and Colt followed.
“I couldn’t understand why so much sand is inside but not outside.”
Rogers had a point. It hadn’t occurred to Gabe when he'd first noticed the truck. While sand filled the cab, around the outside of the frame lay only hard-packed dirt. He supposed the frame of the car might have protected what piled inside, while subsequent windstorms carried away outside sand. Even so, there should have been a sloping mound.
“And?” Asper barked.
“Another body.” Rogers pointed into the cab and Gabe leaned forward for a closer look. A white stub that looked an awful lot like a human toe bone stuck out from the sand.
Gabe sighed. How many children were buried out here?
Gabe glanced around, his investigative instincts kicking in. “Why is this body buried here, rather than with others?” Other than the pickup, the nearest car frame sat fifteen feet away. It had once been a sedan. The doors were missing and the metal held so many pock-marks, it looked more like a target than a car. Nothing but air filled the inside. Gabe kept going, checking, radiating outward from the property. Roger, Asper, and Colt watched him, three sets of eyes following his progress.
Not a single other car held sand inside. Only the pickup truck, and it stood nearest the house. Gabe sighed. This body was special. The killer buried him apart from the others.
Gabe returned to the pickup truck.
“Anything?” Asper asked.
Gabe shook his head. “No. This is the only one that’s been turned into a mausoleum. This body is special. The killer buried him apart from the others.”
Colt's eyes widened. Rogers and Asper merely nodded.
“Could it be someone he cared about?” Colt asked, his voice much higher than in the jeep on the way. “The killer's own child? A parent?”
Gabe didn’t answer. He had no answers yet.
A hot wind gusted across the ranch as the four men stared at the skeletal toe of a long-dead child. Gabe wondered who he or she was.
*******
The so-called experts didn't pile onto the property until nearly five hours later. In the interim, Gabe explored the house more. What they’d originally identified as a bathroom had been converted into something else. An altar of some kind stood at its center. Piles of wax from long-melted candles decorated it’s top. No crosses or Christian icons were anywhere to be found.
Below the altar sat a cabinet. Gabe pulled out bottles of liquid soap.
An idea formed in Gabe’s head. A connection. He couldn’t quite make out it’s dimensions yet. Four bodies upstairs. Four more under lock and key. How many bodies in Abstreuse had keys in the throats? How many hadn’t? Were all those with keys also covered in soap? He told Damiens to make certain the labs checked the bodies for the presence of liquid soap. The killer had repeated the pattern in Abstreuse. Why? How exact was it?
CSU vans from three different cities arrived. They opened their white back doors and pulled out piles of things Gabe recognized. Evidence collection kits, evidence bags, latex gloves, crime scene tape, and dozens of other objects Bailey handled at Gabe’s crime scenes.
Gabe found himself torn between watching the work being done in the cellar and watching the excavation of the body in the shell of the pickup truck. When he went to check the progress in the cellar, a lab tech that reminded him of Bailey informed him there was no room and he’d have to wait upstairs.
His dilemma decided for him, he went back outside. Before returning to the pickup truck, he walked to the shed. Two evidence collection techs studied the content of several boxes found in the shed, photographing, inventorying, and putting things in bags for the lab.
“Find anything?” Gabe asked.
One of the techs squinted up at him from where he squatted by a box and shrugged. “So far, a lot of moth-eaten clothing. And a tiny little lizard. Flew out of one of the boxes at me. Haven’t jumped so high since high school basketball."
“It was only a Zebra-tail, Donald,” the other tech, a woman, said.
Donald shrugged. “Still freaked the shit out of me. How should I know which ones are venomous?”
The woman rolled her eyes.
“Not local either, huh?” Gabe said.
Donald shrugged. “Am now. Moved here from Minnesota. Still learning the local wildlife.”
Gabe nodded. “Good luck. Do me a favor and let me know if you find anything interesting.”
“Of course detective.”
Gabe moved back toward the pickup truck to watch the excavation. As the sand brushed aside easily, it went quickly. With every new layer brushed away, pictures were snapped and soil samples taken.
Finally, they’d uncovered the body. Gabe couldn't tell gender, as no skin or hair remained on the skeleton. One of the men overseeing the excavation assured them the child was male and looked to be ten to twelve years old.
It could be Dillon. Gabe had no way of knowing how long Dillon lived after being taken. He might have died at this age. Yet, Gabe’s heart didn’t leap in his chest. Nothing about this boy cried out to him.
Gabe remembered well what Dillon had worn when he disappeared. Depending on how long he'd lived, he'd probably changed his clothing. At the very least, this skeleton didn’t wear the outfit Dillon disappeared in. This boy wore dark blue sweat pants and a threadbare tank top that had been white at one time. Just above the knee of the sweats, a two-inch band of color showed through the dust. Something had been tied there, and later removed, creating the void where the where the original color shone through more vibrantly.
The techs noticed it too. They pointed it out to one another and photographed it.
Gabe sighed and turned away. The hot wind still blew, making Gabe feel like he breathed hot water. The back of his throat felt parched.
He wandered toward the back of the house, watching people trek in and out, snapping pictures and excavating. Something caught Gabe's eyes. In the distance, perhaps a quarter mile from the house, stood another building he hadn't noticed before. Others had, though. Damiens and several techs stood around it, conversing.
Gabe set out across the desert yard to join them. Damiens turned when he saw Gabe coming and walked forward a few steps to meet him.
"Anything of interest here, Sheriff?" Gabe asked.
"Yes. We're not sure what to make of it."
"What is it?" Gabe asked.
"Definitely a tomb," Damiens said. "Come look for yourself."
What Gabe originally thought was a building appeared to be something like the small shed closer to the house. Four walls and a door. Only this shed had no roof. It stood roughly ten feet tall, and inside stood what reminded Gabe of a Native American burial scaffold.
A structure of wood, held together with both ties and nails raised a canvas bed toward the sky.
"Is there a body in that?" Gabe asked.
"Yes," Damiens answered. "But not a child. Looks like an adult male."
Gabe frowned. What on earth? The kidnapper seemed to be in Abstreuse, so who was buried here? He sighed. Tests would need to be done. They wouldn't learn this man's identity today.
Sheriff Damiens turned toward the house. "I must find some items from my truck, detective." He headed back toward the house.
Gabe stared at the strange burial scaffold another minute before following Sheriff Damiens. He didn't catch up to him until he'd already reached the jeep.
“How much will be excavated, Sheriff?” Gabe asked. “When will they dig up the property looking for more bodies?”
Damiens, who'd been digging through a box, froze, raising his head slowly to meet Gabe’
s eyes. “I can’t say for sure, Detective,” he said slowly.
Fear immediately gripped Gabe’s neck. “There may be more children buried here.”
The sheriff nodded. “I understand. We have experts coming out tomorrow. They’ll use ground radar and investigate any…mounds that look suspicious. But detective, without something definitive to go on…” He sighed, meeting Gabe’s eye. “This property goes on for miles, Detective. We can’t simply dig up the desert, hoping we'll find something.”
Gabe ran a hand through his hair. Fear gripped him more tightly. What if none of these bodies were Dillon? What if Dillon lay out here somewhere and they never found him?
“Detective.” Damiens studied his earnestly. “You know we won’t get IDs on these bodies today. Probably not for a couple of weeks.”
Gabe fought a sudden lump in his throat. He’d expected to come out here, find a body, and feel it was Dillon. Now he only wanted to leave. He could if he wanted. He held no expertise in anything being done here.
“Detective.” Gabe and Damiens turned in tandem toward the shed. Donald stood in front of it, looking grim. “You wanted to know if I found anything?”
Gabe practically lunged toward Donald. Damiens moved as well. Someone called his name from the porch. The sheriff’s mouth settled into a stony line. “Go ahead,” he said to Gabe. “I’ll be right there.”
Gabe met Donald at the door of the shed. Glancing down, he noticed box sitting inside the door with its flaps open. Something reflective threw his own murky reflection back at him. “What is it?” Gabe asked.
“Photographs,” Donald said quietly.
Something in his voice sent chills down Gabe’s spine. He squatted down and reached into the box. Donald’s hand shot out and grabbed Gabe’s. “Detective, there are fingerprints on the glass. I can see it reflected in the light. I have to dust these before you can touch them.”
“Can we do that here?”
“Yes, but indoors. The wind will blow the dust around out here.”
“Can I help?”
Ten minutes later, the two techs stood on opposite sides of a makeshift table in the shed, the shed's door stood firmly shut. Donald dusted each picture thoroughly for prints. When he found them, the other tech—whose name turned out to be Barbara—collected the prints using special tape. When they finished, they handed the pictures to Gabe, who studied them under a light before sliding them each into a clear plastic bag.
The photos had been lovingly matted and framed. No small feat, especially in such a rundown place as this.
Each photo, without exception, showed what looked like a family picture. Except there were too many children. Anywhere between six and twelve in each photo. No photo held the same set of children. The one consistency among the photos came in the man who sat in the center of the children. He looked tall and lanky. Balding on top, tufts of hair adorned the sides of his head. He didn’t smile. Didn’t even try. None of the children smiled either. They all stared at the camera as if it were their duty.
Gabe recognized the man. His face had haunted Gabe’s dreams for twenty-five years. The man who’d driven the blue van. The man who’d stepped out onto the sidewalk that day and put a hand on Gabe’s bike. Who’d ordered him to lay on his belly in the grass. The man who’d left with Dillon in tow.
Chances were this was Cleon Gaudy, the man whose name was on the ranch’s deed.
Gabe studied the faces of each of the children intently before bagging each picture. His eyes slid across each face quickly at first before going back to study them in detail. The air in the shed felt thick and heavy. Neither Donald nor Barbara spoke as they worked.
When they handed him the sixth picture, Gabe felt ill. So many children. So many. Gabe’s eyes froze on the face of one particular boy, his guts curling into knots.
Standing directly beside his kidnapper, the man’s hand resting on his right shoulder, stood Dillon. Gabe felt as though some small part of his heart exploded. He sucked in a breath. Grime covered Dillon’s face, his clothes were unfamiliar, and he looked a year or two older than when Gabe last saw him. Or did the memory of a six-year-old boy play tricks on the thirty-year-old man?
“Detective,” Donald said softly. “Are you all right?”
Gabe found both techs staring at him. He’d never be able to answer, so he didn’t try. He just went back to studying his brother’s dark, faded image. The lines and planes of Dillon’s face. The vacancy in his eyes. Not the happy, smiling eyes of the brother Gabe played with on summer evenings, and kept secrets from their parents with. The photo showed only the empty shell left after a monster moved through and destroyed the child in its path.
Anger and hatred rose so sharply in Gabe’s chest, he shook. He balled his fists, which made it worse.
“Detective,” Barbara said, her voice full of compassion. “What can we do for you?”
They asked no specific questions. It occurred to him they must know. Everyone must know. Shaun probably explained things to Damiens, who’d explained to everyone else.
Gabe studied the photo again. It drew him like a magnet. Tears blurred his vision and Dillon’s face warped in Gabe’s eyes.
Then he saw it.
Dillon was complete visible in the picture except for one shoe hiding behind a younger child in front. Wrapped around Dillon’s leg, right above his knee, was the yellow bandanna that had appeared on Gabe’s stoop barely a week ago.
Gabe’s eyes took in the dark colored sweats and threadbare tank top Dillon wore in the picture. With a cry, he launched himself toward the door of the shed and barreled through it, picture clutched in his hands.
Donald’s voice bounced off Gabe’s brain—
“Detective, wait! You cannot take that into the wind!”
—But Gabe didn’t understand what he’d said.
He half ran, half staggered toward the pickup truck.
Five feet before reaching it, a mass suddenly blocked Gabe’s path, stopping him in his tracks. Damiens used his body and both muscular arms to keep Gabe in place. He took in Gabe’s face, the picture he held, then twisted to peer over his shoulder at the small skeleton staring up from the dirt.
He turned back to Gabe, looking confused. “What is it, Detective?”
Gabe didn’t own a voice. He wasn’t sure he ever had. He proffered the picture as explanation. The sheriff took it and studied it. His brows furrowed, a wrinkle between them deepening as he studied. Another twenty seconds passed before his eyes focused on the portion of the picture Dillon stood in. Damiens raised his eyes to Gabe, and a deep, quiet understanding shone out from them.
“You cannot touch anything, Detective. Kneel beside it. You can lay the picture on the ground if you’d like.”
Gabe nodded numbly.
At a motion from Damiens, the techs moved aside to let Gabe through. He knelt gingerly on the hard-packed ground beside the shell of the truck. The door stood open and the skeleton inside could be plainly seen. Gabe shifted his gaze between the picture and the skeleton. Bones couldn’t reveal facial structure. Not for Gabe’s untrained eyes. The clothing looked identical, the bandanna tied in the exact same place as the void in the skeleton's dust.
Dillon.
Strange, that Gabe’s heart didn't tell him when the techs first freed the skeleton from its dusty grave. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore. His brother, missing for a quarter century, had been found. He lay before Gabe’s eyes, as real as the desert sand. As real as the men and women standing around him. So why did Gabe’s chest feel so gapingly empty?
*******
The sun sunk below the horizon and most of the bodies were bagged, put in trucks and driven toward various labs in faraway cities. Dillon’s body still lay in its metal sepulcher. Gabe sat on his butt in the dirt three feet away. He’d sat there for hours, staring at Dillon’s skeleton. He’d cried for a long time, while the techs worked quietly around him, giving him as much space as possible while still completing their tasks. The desert sa
nd eventually dried out his tears. Now Gabe sat silently, feeling like a soulless husk. No, that was wrong too. A soulless husk wouldn’t hurt so much.
A hand on his shoulder made him jump. “Detective,” Damiens said. “We’re losing the light. We need to take this body now, too. You can ride back with him, if you’d like.”
Gabe straightened his back, which cracked loudly. “Can I have two more minutes with him, Sheriff?” Not a logical request, given how many hours he’d sat there.
Damiens didn't hesitate. “Of course.”
The sheriff retreated to somewhere behind Gabe. It took Gabe another ten seconds to make himself move. Every muscle and joint complaining loudly, he rose to his feet and stepped toward the pickup truck. There he fell into a squat. His shadow fell across the boy-sized skeleton and the shadows grew so deep, Gabe could hardly make out the details anymore.
“Dillon,” his voice sounded high, foreign, like someone else’s. It cracked when he said Dillon’s name, and despite the desert sands, fresh tears bubbled toward his eyelids. “I’ve searched for you for twenty years. Now I’ve found you at last. I’ll take you home. We’ll bury you proper. Somewhere warm and safe and quiet. No more screams. No more dust or loneliness. Mom and Dad will be there.” He sniffed and used a thumb and forefinger to rub the tears from his eyes. He wanted to say more. Needed to say more. Nothing else came.
He straightened his legs, then squatted back down again, wishing he could touch the body. Kiss its forehead or rest a hand on its arm. He doubted it would bring much comfort. Everything remained so incomplete. His life had been incomplete because Dillon was missing. Now he’d found him, and it felt incomplete still.
Gabe felt like a string from his heart, raw and bleeding, hung outside his body. A connection severed that terrible summer evening so many years ago. He’d thought finding Dillon would re-forge the connection, even in death. That hadn’t happened. It felt as raw and painful as ever. There should be more. Had to be more. There wasn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He stood and turned away from the corpse. The tether seared with white-hot pain. Face crumpling, Gabe ran a hand through his hair as tears spilled down his cheeks. The hot wind stirred up dirt. Thousands of granules of it skipped across the desert landscape, sticking to the tear tracks on Gabe’s face. He felt it’s grit in his hair.
