shallow grave in the woods. The wardens had been searching with that in mind, and they knew how important it was that the girl’s resting place was found before the snows came. Winter would alter the landscape and hide forever any trace of digging and concealment, but this was a huge state and they could not search every inch of it. If Anna Kore’s body had been removed any distance at all from Pastor’s Bay, it might never be found.
But I wanted her to be alive. I needed her to be alive. I did not want to have to tell my daughter that a young girl had been dragged into the underworld, either vanished forever with no trace of her to be found, or with something of her returned to this world, ruined and decayed and without its soul.
According to my
I knocked on the porch door for form’s sake, but there was no reply. It opened to the touch, but the front door itself was locked, as was the back, and the windows were sealed. Still, it doesn’t take much to break into a trailer home; one shattered frame of glass later, I was inside. Apart from some cheap furniture and a couple of polyester rugs, the house was entirely empty. I could find no clothing, no pictures, no indication that anyone lived there. A thin layer of dust coated everything, but it was the accumulation of a couple of months, not years. The bathroom was clean and the mattresses in the two bedrooms were stripped of sheets and pillows, the bed linen neatly folded and placed back in their original zippered packing to save them from damp, the pillows and comforters tied up in big plastic bags from Walmart. There were no personal papers, no photographs, no books. All the drawers and closets were empty.
I went back outside. The dying sun, mostly obscured by clouds, gave a faint yellow tinge to the filth on the pond. I walked around the property, finding nothing untoward apart from the remains of a couple of broken cinder blocks that had accumulated a coating of mold, leaves, and cobwebs. I moved one of the shards and watched insects scurry in alarm across bare earth. I looked back at the house. I could see no cinder blocks, and there was no evidence of any kind of construction nearby, not even a barbecue pit.
I headed down to the other house on the lane. This one was a permanent dwelling, and well maintained, although winter blooms, a child’s bicycle, and a battered basketball hoop indicated that this was still a family home. I knocked on the door and a woman opened it. She was plain-looking, and in her early thirties. There was a paring knife in her hand. A boy of two or three peered around her legs, chewing on a piece of raw carrot. I showed her my ID, and explained that I was looking for the owners of the house at the end of the lane.
‘Oh, we never got to know them,’ she said. ‘They’d moved out by the time we moved in. We never met them but once.’
‘Do you remember anything about them?’
‘Nah. The woman was old. I think her name was Beth or something. Her son lived with her. He was kind of shy. We introduced ourselves after we bought the house, but we couldn’t move in for a while. This place had been empty for a couple of years, and it needed a lot of work done to it. My husband did most of it. He knew the old lady to say hi to while he was fixing things up, but he had to stop for winter, and when he got back to work they were gone.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Well, we’ve been here more than ten years, and that was right at the start.’
‘Who looks after the house now?’
‘A relative. I think he said he was a cousin, or a nephew. The old lady, Beth, she found the cold too much, he said, and moved down to Florida. Tampa, I think. He comes by a couple of times a year. Sometimes he stays for a night, because we see a lamp burning – there’s no power to the house – but he keeps himself to himself. We don’t mind. It’s not unusual up here.’
‘A relative? Not her son.’
‘No, he looks like him. He wears his hair the same way, and the same kind of glasses, but it’s not him. I have a good memory for faces. Names not so much, but faces I never forget.’
I thanked her and was about to leave when I saw a pile of threaded rods lying by the garage door. They varied in length from three to six feet.
‘My husband’s in construction,’ she explained, then added, ‘He’ll be back soon,’ just in case I had any bad intentions in mind.
‘I know this sounds weird,’ I said, ‘but would you mind if I borrowed one of those rods for a few minutes? I’ll bring it back.’
She looked puzzled. ‘What will you be using it for?’
‘I want to test the ground.’
She looked even more puzzled, but agreed. I picked up a rod that was about four feet long and headed back to the first house. There had been a lot of rain, and the ground was relatively soft so close to the pond, but it was still an effort to force the rod down. Starting at the pile of broken blocks I began to work my way out, probing as deeply as I could at the ground, trying to stick to grids of about two square feet. I’d been working at it for only five minutes when the rain came, and for another five minutes or so when a truck pulled into the yard. Stenciled on the side was the name ‘Ron Carroll – Independent Contractor.’ A big man in tan work boots, old jeans, and a red windbreaker stepped from the truck.
‘How you doing?’ he said. ‘Mind if I ask what you’re at?’
‘Mr. Carroll?’ I said, trying to buy myself some more time as I continued to probe at the dirt. There was rain dripping down my back, and my clothes were already pasted to my skin, but I wasn’t about to stop, not unless someone forced me.
‘That’s right.’
‘I think I met your wife.’
‘I think you did. She said you were a detective, and you told her something about wanting to test the ground.’
‘That’s right. I-’
The rod struck something hard. I pulled it out, shifted position, and inserted it again.
‘Do you have another of these rods in the back of your truck?’ I asked. The wind must have been gusting at forty miles an hour, and I was starting to shiver. The big nor’easter that had been forecast might ultimately present as snow on the mountains, and when the weaker trees fell they would bring power lines down with them, but here it was falling as icy water. Tonight the cops would be tied up with accidents and power failures. In a way, it was all to the good if I was right about what I believed was buried beneath my feet.
‘What have you found?’ asked Carroll.
‘Broken cinder blocks.’
‘Why would somebody bury cinder blocks?’
He was beside me now, his shoulders hunched against the rain. I pulled out the rod and moved it a foot to the right. This time it encountered no obstacle. I moved it two feet to the left. It went in eighteen inches before hitting stone.
‘To keep something from being dug up by animals,’ I said. ‘You remember Mrs. Lagenheimer? Your wife knew her as Beth.’
‘Yeah, the woman who used to live here with her son. She moved out years ago.’
I leaned on the rod. My back ached from pushing, and my hands were raw.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think she ever left.’
It didn’t take us long, working together and using the rest of the rods from Carroll’s truck, to mark out the boundaries of what I believed was a grave. The rough rectangle was six feet in length and about two in width. When we were done, I gave Carroll one of my cards and told him that I’d be back as soon as I could.
‘Shouldn’t we call the cops?’ he said.
‘They’re not going to come out tonight,’ I said, ‘not in weather like this. Even if they do, they won’t be able to make a start on a dig until it gets light again. And, you know, it may just be a pile of broken blocks.’
