Nothing Stays Buried

by P. J. Tracy

  He watched an unremarkable MPD Ford sedan roll through a stop sign at the corner and heard the engine make a feeble attempt at a roar as Gino goosed it. He was driving too fast down Magozzi’s residential street, dodging arboreal wildlife foolish enough to be cavorting on a city thoroughfare.

  It was still weird to see Gino behind the wheel of anything but the drug-confiscated, supercharged Cadillac loaner they’d finally had to relinquish to the MPD auction block last November, something Gino was still bitter about, especially since it had in all likelihood been sold back to another drug dealer. The economy sucked, but the drug trade was doing a booming business in the city this year, all thanks to the Mexican cartels setting up shop along the I-35 corridor from Texas all the way to Minnesota.

  The heroin overdoses had doubled in the past few months, pills, meth, and cocaine were flooding in at an alarming rate, and Vice and the DEA were going nuts. Law enforcement could deal with the local gangs that were distributing, but as long as product kept pouring in, there was always somebody to sell it, no matter how many people you put in prison.

  Gino pulled up to the curb in front of the realtor’s FOR SALE sign staked in the front lawn.

  “You almost killed two squirrels in one block,” Magozzi said as he hopped in and buckled up.

  Gino slurped from his travel mug, dribbling a brown line of coffee droplets onto his pant leg. He didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah, they were the two emaciated squirrels that run this piece of crap. I was aiming for them. Dammit, I miss the Caddie.” He draped his hands over the steering wheel and scrutinized Magozzi’s house through the windshield. “You ever heard of curb appeal?”

  “My realtor may have mentioned it. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that no matter how many houseplants you buy or what hardware you put on your kitchen cabinets, you are never going to sell this thing unless you do something about your scorched-earth yard. Potential buyers don’t want a house that looks like it was built on a toxic waste dump.”

  Magozzi shrugged. The truth was, his scruffy, barren yard had never really bothered him, not until he’d bought the lake house. It was nestled in the woods and there was nothing but lush, unrelieved greenery as far as the eye could see. It was like living in a tree house. “There’s a perfect buyer out there somewhere.”

  “Well, I hope your realtor is sending out flyers in Braille.”

  Magozzi scoffed. “Hey, there are a lot of people who hate to mow as much as I do, and this is perfect for them. Bring in a couple loads of pea gravel, throw in a cactus or two for the summer, and you’ve got yourself a maintenance-free lawn. No mowing, no watering, no fertilizing. You take the cactus in for the winter and start all over again in the spring.”

  Gino let out a defeated sigh and pulled away from the curb, driving much more reasonably now that he had a passenger on board. “Nothing wrong with having two houses, either. Half the state owns a city house and a lake cabin somewhere else.”

  “It’s a pain in the ass. The first reasonable offer that comes in, I’m dumping this place. In the meantime, it comes in handy as a crash pad when we work late.”

  “You ever think about keeping it as a rental property?”

  “That would be an even bigger pain in the ass. . . .”

  Gino suddenly slammed on the brakes hard and leaned on his horn as a mindless text zombie walked out into the street against the light, oblivious to everything but his phone. He jerked his head up at the sound of the horn, mouthed “Fuck you,” returned his attention to his phone, and kept ambling illegally against the light.

  “Can I kill him, Leo?”

  “Vehicular manslaughter?”

  “I really want to shoot him.”

  “Your choice. Although you could just arrest him.”

  Gino honked again and held his shield out his open window. “It’s your lucky day that I’m on my way to clean up a dead body, otherwise you’d be in cuffs right now.”

  The text zombie’s eyes grew wide, then he bolted across the street and disappeared down an alley.

  “Dumbass. What the hell is wrong with people?”

  “I hope that’s a rhetorical question.”

  “It is.”

  “So where’s this dead body?”

  “You know that off-leash dog park by the VA hospital?”

  “No. I don’t have a dog.”

  “Well, if you’re a dog, it’s a great place, filled with hills and bluffs and woods. Apparently, it’s also a great place for killers.”

  The silence that followed was typical of every ride to every homicide scene. They’d make small talk, joke a little, Gino would rant about something, but as they got closer to their destination, they ran out of distractions and the heaviness of what waited for them started to sink in.

  SIX

  You could almost predict what kind of crime had gone down by the way the emergency vehicles were parked. At active crime scenes they were strewn all over any existing space in a haphazard scatter that always reminded Gino of his son’s Lincoln Logs after he’d demolished something he’d just built. God, boys were destructive little people.

  In the lot of Minnehaha off-leash dog park, every vehicle with a bubble on it was parked in careful, painful order, each one a door length away from its neighbor, front tires perfectly aligned. There were no urgent fishtail stops at a homicide scene to gain extra seconds, because everyone knew they were too late to help the victim.

  Gino parked behind a row of squads and a set of barricades, and they stepped out into the stifling heat that seemed to be getting worse by the minute. But even Gino didn’t complain about it—they were alive and a woman somewhere in this park wasn’t.

  The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s crime-scene unit was already on-site, and Magozzi saw techs walking across a green expanse of lawn toward a tree line. Uniforms were interviewing a few people beneath the shade of a stately old maple tree, and Sergeant Baker out of Third Precinct was crouched in front of a weeping young woman who was on her knees, hugging her panting husky and worrying the dog’s fur like it was a stuffed animal.

  Baker caught sight of them and waved, then found another cop to stay with the crying woman before he walked over.

  “Hey, Sergeant.”

  “Detectives. Haven’t seen you two in a while.”

  “And I’ll bet you didn’t miss us,” Gino said.

  Baker shook his head sadly. “No.”

  Magozzi gestured toward the woman the sergeant had just been talking to. “I’m guessing she found the body?”

  “Yeah.” He grimaced and looked down at the ground. “Actually, I think the dog found it first. And listen, it’s pretty bad. Well, they’re all pretty bad, but this one is worse than most, just so you know. I’ve got the scene laced up tight, but let’s get you two in there before things get crazy on the fringes and the media starts showing up.”

  “Where’s the victim?” Gino asked.

  Baker pointed to a thick cluster of trees in the near distance that was swallowing up the techs Magozzi had seen earlier. Urban Minnesotans loved their beautiful city parks, with all the lakes and trees and tidy, sheltered paths that carved through all kinds of terrain. They were the city’s greatest resource in Magozzi’s opinion, and gave people a chance to pretend they were out in the woods or on a lake someplace else, where there weren’t a million other people breathing down your neck, vying for space, and possibly plotting your demise.

  But as Gino had intimated earlier, a park was also a good place for the less well-intended to either hunt their prey or stash their dirty deeds. And maybe that would be the next brilliant government plan to crack down on crime—defoliate all the parks. No place to hide a body, problem solved. They would of course totally ignore the fact that woods weren’t the real problem, human nature was. That would be prejudicial, implying that there were actually homicidal maniacs out
there in spite of the tree cover. It might hurt the homicidal maniacs’ feelings.

  “Take us on a walk, Sergeant,” Magozzi said, tiring of his own cynical thoughts. “You have a way cleared?”

  Baker grunted. “Basically, we have a way trampled. This park is loaded in the morning. Last walk for Fido before his owners split for work and lock him in the house so he can chew the windowsills off. When the husky started howling, a lot of other dogs followed, and then their owners. The place looks like the tail end of a cattle drive.”

  “Super,” Gino grumbled. “So, who’s running the show?”

  “This is your lucky day. Jimmy Grimm is in the building.”

  Magozzi felt at least a couple of the six hundred muscles in his body relax a little, hearing the name. Jimmy Grimm was the head tech of the BCA’s crime-scene unit and the gold standard, and it was indeed a lucky day if he caught your scene. Not that there weren’t a dozen talented, seasoned techs in line for his throne when he finally decided to throw in the towel, something he’d been threatening for a while; but Jimmy was special, more like a third partner.

  Magozzi, Gino, and Baker crossed a dew-spangled lawn that was dotted with picnic areas, then mounted a rough jogging trail that led through shady woods that didn’t do much to mitigate the swelling heat that was building as the sun lifted higher in the hazy sky. Gino was huffing and puffing after a few minutes, wiping his brow repeatedly with a handkerchief. “Hot,” he muttered, loosening his tie.

  After a few minutes, they hit a phalanx of police officers standing behind a far-reaching cordon of crime-scene tape that disappeared into the trees where techs were placing markers. Baker lifted it for them before veering into the brush and heading north down a slight incline. “A little tough going, guys,” he warned. “Watch your step.”

  Twigs crunched beneath their feet as they negotiated more rugged terrain, and Magozzi felt the sting of sandburs grabbing hold of his pants and sinking their little needles into his flesh. “She was dragged in here,” he said, pointing out a trail of broken plants just to their right. “Dead or alive?”

  Gino paused to crouch near a crushed thornbush. “Get a tech over here with a bag and a marker, Baker. This bush took a bite out of someone.”

  “Probably a dog. Or maybe the victim.”

  “Or maybe whoever was dragging the victim,” Gino replied, and Baker closed his eyes. He was never going to make Homicide.

  Magozzi lifted his head toward the tree canopy when a bird issued a sweet, tuneful call; it was far too cheery a soundtrack for the movie they were all in, already spoiled because they knew the ending. But the pretty birdcall wasn’t loud enough to obscure the hissing buzz of flies.

  “Jesus,” Gino whispered, pausing at the perimeter of some sick asshole’s idea of a good time.

  Magozzi moved up to stand next to him and stared down at the pretty face of a young woman. He always started with the face. Person first, murder victim second. Late twenties, maybe early thirties, brown hair, brown eyes he wished he could close.

  She was splayed on her back, arms outstretched above her head as if she were about to do a backward dive into the shallow, limestone ravine just a few steps beyond. There was a dark necklace of bruising around her neck, and when his eyes moved down her torso, he felt his stomach coil tight and his throat close: her Nike-emblazoned sports tank was crisscrossed with deep slashes where flies were feasting. They’d seen this before. “We’ve got a cutter, Gino.”

  Gino’s breathing was fast and shallow, and the collar of his blue shirt was already dark with sweat. “More like a butcher. Sick bastard spent some time on her. And she’s fresh, and not that far off the path. Had to be a night job, or early morning before sunup. Even if he’d disabled her before he dragged her here, you can’t do this kind of carving in broad daylight with people walking on a trail a couple hundred yards away.”

  “And what does that remind you of?”

  “Christ, yeah, I know. Megan Lynn, McLaren’s unsolved from last May.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Jimmy Grimm said solemnly as his head suddenly popped into view just below them.

  “Hey, Jimmy. See anything down there, like a bloody knife?”

  “At first glance, no, nothing but a lot of dog crap. I’ll have the team comb through it when they finish with the primary scene.” He lost his footing and slid down the slope a few feet. “Dammit, I can’t get back up. Give me a hand.”

  Gino made a daring and treacherous move, balanced on the incline, and offered his hand to pull him up.

  Jimmy dusted himself off, put on a new pair of gloves, and regarded them with steady eyes once he was back on solid ground.

  “Different park, same scene as Megan Lynn’s last year. Strangulation. Cutting on the torso. No outward signs of sexual assault.”

  Magozzi nodded. “Did you check her for a card?”

  “Not yet.”

  Gino was the first to see what they’d all been fearing—the outline of a small rectangle beneath the fabric of the girl’s tank. “Oh, shit,” he murmured.

  Jimmy crouched down, delicately reached beneath the fabric, and pulled out a bloody playing card. “Four of spades,” he said quietly.

  Gino looked down at his dusty shoes, trying to ignore the unsettling sensation of stepping into a patch of quicksand. “Megan Lynn had the ace of spades.”

  “Yep.”

  “So where’s the two and three?”

  SEVEN

  Timothy Wells had just finished feeding and burping Abbie and Allie, and was now rocking them to sleep in his arms, spellbound by their curling little fingers as they flexed and gripped. Most people referred to them as “the Twins,” maybe out of convenience, or maybe because it sounded cute, like a title. That was fine, but he’d never understood the generic designation, as if they were a single entity and not two totally different, miraculous little people who deserved to be called by their names.

  Allie was a little fussier—inherited from his side of the family, no doubt; but Abbie, a calm and gentle mama’s girl through and through, was already sound asleep, her soft eyelashes fluttering every once in a while. It looked like she was dreaming, and he wondered what babies dreamed of after only six months on this earth. Probably food. Mom. Dad. The animal mobile hanging above the crib.

  His cell was set on vibrate, and it suddenly started skittering on the sofa table behind him. He smiled and didn’t bother looking at the caller ID, because Charlotte always called to check in after she’d gotten settled in at work. She couldn’t help it. “Hey, honey,” he whispered into the phone.

  “Tim? This is Jenny.”

  Tim frowned. Jenny was Charlotte’s office manager. “Oh, hi, Jenny. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m trying to reach Char. Is she on her way?”

  Tim rolled his eyes up to the grandfather clock by the front door. It was half past nine. Charlotte was half an hour late to work. Not like her. She was usually half an hour early. “She’s probably stuck in traffic. She didn’t call?”

  “She hasn’t checked in and she’s not answering her phone. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay, because that’s not like her, especially since she has a presentation at eleven.”

  Nothing’s okay now. Tim’s hands started shaking, imagining a car accident, or a bad fall in that dog park she liked to run in, with all the hills she thought would help her lose her baby fat faster. “She left early this morning to go jogging. She was planning to shower and clean up at the gym before work. Are you sure she’s not there?”

  “Positive.”

  Just keep Jenny on the phone a little bit longer. Charlotte will walk in any minute. “Oh, there you are, Char!” And then Jenny would thank him and apologize for bothering him, and the world would settle back into its proper place.

  “Tim?”

  Allie started squirming in his arms. Even
Abbie was starting to fuss.

  “Let me try her, Jenny. I’ll call you right back.”

  He listened to the entire outgoing voice message on Charlotte’s cell phone that she always, always answered when he called, because what if one of the babies was sick? She even took the damn thing into meetings and the restroom so she wouldn’t miss a call—the new mother’s certainty that the one time she didn’t pick up, it would be something serious.

  Tim had thought that was an overabundance of caution, because he was a terrific stay-at-home dad, and nothing was ever serious. But he wasn’t thinking that way today.

  He looked down at the two little people he loved second and third best in all the world, then squeezed his eyes shut. Oh my God, oh my God, what do I do now? Who do I call? Who can help?

  And then the doorbell rang.

  —

  There were twin babies in Charlotte Wells’s house, crying in a back bedroom, wailing actually, and the sound was killing Magozzi. It was as if those babies knew he and Gino were out there, and somehow knew why.

  Timothy Wells sat on an IKEA couch opposite them. There was a bargain-basement coffee table in between the seating areas that held a baby monitor, a television remote, and a framed photograph of the happy family. He was utterly expressionless, but his hands clutched each other, trying to hang on to a life that had just vanished in the few seconds it had taken Gino to say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wells . . .”

  After he’d asked the first, painful questions every survivor did as they worked through denial and tried to process shock, and after he’d heard the answers, he’d stood up woodenly, like a Punch and Judy puppet, excused himself, then walked out of the room. They could hear him throwing up through the bathroom door.