ONCE LOST

by Blake Pierce

  Without another word to the mayor, Riley and Jenn went outside to wait for Chief Sinard to arrive and pick them up.

  *

  The landfill was only a ten-minute drive outside of Angier. Chief Sinard parked his SUV near the edge of the excavation. As soon as they got out of the vehicle, Riley felt her eyes stinging at the stench of the place. She wondered if maybe they ought to be wearing surgical masks.

  A burly, middle-aged man wearing overalls came toward them.

  He wasn’t wearing a mask, so Riley guessed they must be all right without them.

  Chief Sinard introduced Riley and Jenn to the man.

  “I’m Marcus Dunning,” he said. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t shake hands.”

  With a slight, self-deprecating chuckle, he added, “I find that visitors generally prefer that I don’t—shake hands with them, I mean. I can’t imagine why, can you?”

  Then his expression abruptly saddened.

  “This is terrible. I never thought I’d see the day …”

  Riley felt a pang of sympathy. Marcus Dunning had a hearty, kindly face. He seemed like a warm and caring man, despite the vileness of his work.

  Dunning started to lead them around the cratered-out landfill. The smell struck Riley as a combination of strong housecleaning products and rotten eggs.

  Dunning seemed to notice his visitors’ discomfort.

  “Sorry about the smell,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing toxic, it won’t hurt you. It’s mostly ammonia and sulfides. You get used to it when you work here long enough.”

  Riley figured she’d better learn more about this place in order to understand what had happened.

  She said to Dunning, “Tell me how this operation works.”

  As they kept walking, Dunning pointed down to where a bulldozer was pushing garbage against an upright wall of light brown material.

  “That’s today’s load,” he explained. “Elliot’s driving the ’dozer, shaping the load into what we call a ‘cell.’ Once we’ve got it compacted into place, we cover it with woodchips—both over the top and down the side. There are lots and lots of cells beyond this pile, and underneath it too—more cells than you can count, believe me.”

  They walked on around the excavated portion to where the vast landfill was entirely covered by a horizontal layer of woodchips.

  Dunning explained, “I was out here this morning when I noticed an awful smell, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.”

  Riley also could smell it now—a pungent stench that she was much too familiar with, like rotting meat doused in cheap perfume.

  Dunning stopped walking and pointed to a spot farther off in the middle of the layer of woodchips. That area had been dug up, with garbage and chips scattered to one side.

  “I traced the smell to that spot yonder,” he said, his voice shaking a little now. “The woodchips there looked like they’d been disturbed since we put them down. I took a shovel to it, and—”

  He choked aloud.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “I’d rather not look at her again, if you don’t mind.”

  “That’s fine,” Riley said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’re sorry this happened.”

  Dunning remained standing where he was as Riley, Jenn, and Chief Sinard walked out across the soft, thick, spongy layer of woodchips that covered untold tons of city garbage. When they arrived at the dug-up spot, they found what Dunning had discovered.

  The stench was now nearly intolerable, and Riley’s eyes were stinging so much that she had a hard time getting them to focus. She knew that surgical masks would have offered no relief for a stench like this.

  The first thing to catch her eye was the corpse’s face.

  It was so swollen and bloated that it hardly looked real—more like some unspeakably hideous Halloween mask. The eyes and tongue were bulging, and the skin was a mottled blend of green and red. Blackish, bloody foam had formed around the nostrils and lips.

  Much of the rest of the body was littered with garbage—milk cartons, empty cans and bottles, egg shells, fruit rinds, discarded food, and the like.

  As grotesque as the body was, it was recognizably that of a teenage girl who was still wearing what had once been a pretty outfit. The blouse appeared much too tight for her. But Riley knew that was because of the massive bloating.

  Riley stooped down for a closer look when she heard a violent choking sound.

  She turned and saw that Chief Sinard had buckled over and was vomiting.

  She looked at Jenn, who was holding her hand over her nose and mouth, staring wide-eyed at the corpse. Riley had seen corpses in this state of decomposition before, but she reminded herself that Jenn was new to this job.

  “Have you ever seen …?” Riley began.

  Jenn shook her head. But she pointed to the body’s right hand.

  She said, “I see something—under the girl’s fingernail.”

  Riley crouched beside the body. Jenn was right—there was something purple under a fingernail. In all this clutter, it had taken sharp eyes to spot it.

  Riley was impressed at how her younger partner was managing to remain cool, professional, and observant. She knew the younger agent would probably have to face more scenes like this in an FBI career. But she also couldn’t blame Chief Sinard for losing his composure, along with his most recent meal.

  As usual, Riley had brought along a bag and tweezers to collect samples. But before she had a chance to reach for the purple object, she heard a voice shouting from across the landfill.

  “Stay away from that body!”

  Riley turned and saw Barry Teague huffing and puffing as he jogged toward them, his enormous belly bouncing all the way. Following right behind the medical examiner were two members of his team. Their official vehicle was parked near where Chief Sinard had parked.

  Riley turned toward Chief Sinard to ask whether he had called the ME. But Sinard hadn’t stopped vomiting.

  Of course he called, Riley realized.

  It was the right thing to do, of course.

  Not that she was the least bit happy to see Teague—especially not after he had apparently lied to Mayor Daggett about how she and Jenn had conducted themselves back at George Tully’s cornfield.

  As he got nearer, Teague snarled, “I thought you feds would be gone by now. You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  Teague crouched down and looked at the body.

  “Hell,” he grumbled. “We’ll have a devil of a time identifying this one.”

  Riley couldn’t help but relish the opportunity to tell Teague his own business.

  “Not so hard,” Riley said. “She’s in the bloated stage of decomposition, with active decay kicking in. That places her death at a little more than a week ago. Which just happens to be when Holly Struthers disappeared.”

  Teague looked up at her and emitted a resentful growl.

  She pointed at the hand and said, “You might want to check under her fingernail.”

  Teague peered more closely. With his own tweezers he picked up the little patch of purple.

  “Some kind of synthetic fabric,” he said. “From a carpet, maybe.”

  He dropped the sample in his own evidence bag.

  Riley said, “I’d like to have our FBI lab run tests on that.”

  The man straightened up and glared up at her. “We can do it here,” he snapped.

  Riley just held out her hand. She was losing patience with the ill-tempered ME, but she didn’t want to get into a physical struggle with him out here on the spongy landfill next to a decaying body.

  After a moment, Teague gave in to the power of her glare and handed the little bag over. Without a word, Riley tucked it away to send to Quantico.

  Meanwhile, Jenn had walked around to the other side of the body. Still showing remarkable self-control, she stooped down and pointed.

  “There’s something in her blouse pocket,” she said.

  Riley walked beside Jenn, stooped down, and us
ed her tweezers to gently pull a sheet of folded paper out of the pocket.

  She shook it open and saw that it was a piece of musical staff paper. Some notes were penciled on it, with the title “Holly’s Song.”

  “Do you think that means anything?” Jenn asked, looking over Riley’s shoulder.

  “It’s too soon to tell,” Riley said, dropping the paper in her bag. “But I’m pretty sure of one thing. Whoever did this is the same person who killed and buried Katy Philbin.”

  Jenn nodded in agreement.

  “Same careless disposal of the body.”

  “That’s right,” Riley said.

  Jenn shuddered a little and added, “Which means that this girl was probably raped too.”

  “Probably,” Riley said.

  Chief Sinard had gotten to his feet and was wiping off his mouth.

  Riley said to him, “You were right to call in the FBI after all. This is definitely looking like you have a serial killer at work here.”

  Sinard didn’t look the least bit comforted by this news.

  He asked, “Do you think we’ve got the right man in custody?”

  Riley thought about the sleazy drug dealer called Trip. Although she had arrested him, she didn’t feel any sense of certainty that he was also the killer.

  “I wish I knew,” she said.

  She walked back over to where Dunning was still standing.

  She asked him, “Do you have any idea how somebody got in here to bury the body?”

  Dunning nodded.

  “The landfill closes at six,” he said. “But there’s just a chain across the road and a sign saying closed. Nobody goes poking around here at night. People stay away from this place. It never occurred to me—”

  Suddenly a woman’s shriek filled the air.

  “Where is she? It can’t be her! Let me see!”

  Riley turned and saw a man and a woman charging toward them across the field of woodchips. She quickly recognized them as Dorothy and Harold Struthers, Holly’s parents. Dorothy was screaming and waving her arms as she approached.

  Riley gasped.

  What are they doing here?

  She knew that a horrifying situation was about to get much, much worse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  As Harold and Dorothy Struthers approached, Jenn rushed away from Riley’s side and ran toward them, trying to persuade them not to come any closer. Harold stopped in his tracks and seemed to be trying to restrain his wife. But Dorothy pushed past both him and Jenn.

  Riley stepped in front of Dorothy and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “You can’t be here,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “The mayor called,” Dorothy said, sobbing. “Is it true? What he told me? It can’t be true! It can’t be her!”

  Riley felt a flash of anger.

  What did Mayor Daggett think he was doing, calling the girl’s parents at this point? Why couldn’t he wait at least until the body was in the morgue?

  Of course, the answer was quite simple.

  He’s a damned fool, Riley realized.

  Dorothy was struggling free of Riley’s grip and it was clear that the only way to restrain the woman would be to tackle her to the ground.

  That wasn’t an option.

  Dorothy pushed past her and scrambled across the landfill. Chief Sinard and Teague and his team all stood back and let her pass.

  When she got to the edge of the hole and looked down, Dorothy’s face took on an expression of sheer disbelief.

  In a croaking voice she gasped, “That’s not … it can’t be …”

  Riley understood what was happening. In its current state of decomposition, the corpse’s face was unrecognizable, even to a mother.

  But in a moment, Dorothy let out a deafening shriek.

  “Oh, God! That dress! Her dress!”

  Then she rushed back to Riley, beating against her with her fists.

  “You said she was all right! You said she’d come home! You lied!”

  Riley grabbed her wrists to restrain her, baffled by her outpouring of accusation.

  What does she mean? Riley wondered.

  But then she remembered Dorothy’s deep state of denial when she and Jenn had been at her house. Neither Riley nor Jenn had said anything to reassure her of Holly’s safety. Even so, the mother had taken their every word as confirmation that her daughter would soon be home safe and sound.

  Now at last that floodgate of denial had broken, unleashing a torrent of grief.

  Dorothy fell to her knees, keening and sobbing uncontrollably.

  Riley, Jenn, and Chief Sinard managed to lift her back to her feet and move her to the chief’s car, followed by a dazed-looking Harold.

  Still crying, Dorothy crouched on the ground while Harold leaned against the vehicle.

  Harold’s face was pale and his eyes were glazed.

  Riley sensed that he was in far too deep a state of shock to cry just yet.

  In a dull, stunned voice, he said, “We should have gone out and searched for her ourselves. We should have hired a private detective. Maybe if we’d done more, she wouldn’t have …”

  His voice trailed off.

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” Riley said.

  Harold stared at her and said, “How do you know?”

  Riley lowered her eyes. How could she explain it to him? She was all but sure that Holly had been dead and buried here by the time her parents had started to worry in earnest.

  But telling Harold that would hardly be any comfort to him.

  It was best to keep quiet.

  Jenn asked Harold a question of her own.

  “Mr. Struthers, please tell us how things were between Holly and your son.”

  Harold squinted with confusion.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Jenn said, “When we met him at your house, he seemed to show a lot of hostility toward her.”

  Harold still looked perplexed. But Riley understood where Jenn was going with this. She, too, remembered what Zach Struthers had said when Jenn asked her if he knew anyone who might have wanted to harm his sister.

  “Aside from me, you mean?”

  But Riley hadn’t sensed anything murderous about him—just a lot of pent-up sibling rivalry. Besides, he really was just a kid. Riley couldn’t imagine that scrawny, nerdish boy carrying out the whole scenario—killing his sister, possibly after raping her, then bringing her out here to bury her. And what about Katy Philbin? How could he have even gotten that kind access to Katy? How would he even know her?

  Of course, it wasn’t impossible.

  But it seemed extremely unlikely.

  Riley didn’t want to anger Jenn by stepping on her toes again. She now knew that her new partner was sensitive about being undercut. But she didn’t want to waste time, either. And she had a question of her own to ask.

  She took out the folded piece of musical staff paper they had found in Holly’s pocket and showed it to Harold.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” she asked.

  His expression still dazed, Harold looked at it closely.

  “‘Holly’s Song,’” he said, reading the title on the paper.

  He looked at Riley, as if trying to understand what she was getting at.

  He said, “So … she was writing a song?”

  Dorothy Struthers was getting to her feet. She seemed to be more composed now.

  “Let me see that,” she said.

  Riley held the paper away from her, trying to keep her from grabbing this important piece of evidence away from her. But Dorothy did so anyway.

  “My God,” she said in a hushed voice. “Music. It hadn’t occurred to me, but …”

  “But what?” Riley asked.

  “The last teacher she had while studying piano … Alec Castle.”

  Harold let out a slight gasp.

  “Mr. Castle? Do you think …?”

  “Please explain what you mean,” Riley said.


  Dorothy thought for a moment.

  “A few months back, when Holly thought she wanted to get really serious about her piano studies and we bought her that really nice piano, she also insisted on having a more serious teacher. She said wasn’t getting anywhere with the woman she was studying with at school. Mr. Castle had a reputation for really pushing his students. She wanted to study with him.”

  Dorothy paused to think again.

  “We took her to Mr. Castle’s house for one lesson. When we came to pick her up when it was over, she was crying.”

  “What about?” Riley asked. “What had happened?”

  “Holly wouldn’t say,” Dorothy said. “But she said she didn’t want to go back there ever again. So she never did. And that was the end of her interest in the piano.”

  Harold had been listening keenly to his wife.

  He said to her, “But if she was trying to write a song … maybe she was having a change of heart. Maybe she wanted to play the piano again.”

  Dorothy nodded.

  She said, “And maybe she went back to Mr. Castle on her own.”

  Riley’s head buzzed with interest.

  A piano teacher struck her as a plausible suspect. After all, he might have had all kinds of access to girls Holly’s age.

  Riley carefully took the paper away from Dorothy and put it back in its bag.

  Then she said to Jenn, “I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried over to Chief Sinard, who was still standing near the body. Teague’s team was engaged in the delicate process of lifting the decomposed body out of the hole.

  She asked him, “What can you tell me about a local piano teacher named Alec Castle?”

  The police chief looked surprised at the question.

  “Alec Castle … I haven’t given him much thought for quite some time. Why do you ask?”

  Riley said, “Holly Struthers took one lesson from him. He seemed to have done something to upset her, so she never went back to him again.”

  Sinard tilted his head thoughtfully.

  “So are you thinking he might be a suspect?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Riley said. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  Chief Sinard watched Holly’s body being taken away while he talked.

  “Well, he’s a strange guy. He’s lived here in Angier all his life, started teaching before I was born. When I was a kid, he was still well respected as a piano teacher. Not exactly liked. Nobody I knew ever liked him—quite the opposite, in fact. But he knew what he was doing, and he was strict, and some of his students went on to study music in college. A handful actually became concert pianists.”