The Third Grave Read online

  He just had to figure out how to open it. He had no more keys, no crowbar, but as he shined his light over the seam in the bricks, he ran the tips of his fingers over the rough edges of the mortar.

  No knob.

  No pull.

  No handle of any kind.

  Damn.

  There had to be a way.

  More carefully he touched the edges of the seam again but . . . nothing. “Come on, come on,” he muttered in frustration.

  No one said it would be easy, but he could use an effin’ break.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump!

  The noise thundered through the basement.

  Bronco froze.

  What the hell?

  Oh, shit! Someone was running across the porch!

  No!

  Had he closed the outside door? Locked it behind him?

  Hell, no!

  Crap!

  Why was anyone out here after the damned storm?

  In one motion, he ducked, dimmed his flashlight and raised his gun, his eyes trained laser-sharp on the foot of the stairs, where only the faintest shaft of illumination was visible. Sweat drizzled into his eyes.

  Could he really do it?

  Kill a man? Or a woman? Or a damned kid?

  Crap, crap, crap!

  Heavy breathing, more thumping as whoever it was rounded that final landing.

  Oh, Jesus. Someone heard the shot! That’s what it was!

  Bronco’s finger tightened over the trigger.

  In a blur of motion a shadow leaped from the final steps.

  He fired—Bang!—and caught a glimpse of shiny fur as an animal yelped as if in pain, or scared and out of his mind.

  No! His stupid dog! Jesus Christ, he’d just killed his damned dog!

  The shot was still ringing in his ears but still, he heard a pitiful whine and scrambling paws. “Boy . . . here, boy.”

  The heeler was at his side in an instant, unhurt, just scared and shaking, brown eyes bulging. But no blood. Bronco checked with his flashlight, running the beam over the dog’s mottled coat. “You idiot,” Bronco muttered, but gave the shivering animal a quick scratch behind his ears. “I coulda killed . . . oh, hell . . .” There was no time for this. Now there had been two shots fired. No telling who might’ve heard them. One could have been dismissed, but two? Nope. No way. He had to work fast. To the dog, he whispered, “You stay. You hear me? Don’t move a muscle.”

  Fender whined, his tail tucked between his legs, his body trembling.

  Shit!

  Bronco couldn’t worry about it. He had less time than ever. He had to find the release for the door. And fast.

  He swept the light over the beams, searching for electrical wires that would lead him to a switch for the small brick portal, even though, if that were the case, if the catch on the door was electrically controlled, he was screwed. The power to the house had been shut off long ago.

  Think, Bronco, think. This has to be simple. Something you’re missing! What had Gramps said? Something about a combination?

  He returned to the door, crouched beside it, ran the flashlight’s beam over the dirty bricks once more.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the dog nosing around again, but ignored him. Right now he had to concentrate. Crouching low, Bronco took a step backward, ran the flashlight over the door again and . . . he saw it. A chip on one of the lower bricks that was slightly different from the others. Smoother. A long shot, but he knelt in the muck, placed his finger in the small divot and waited for a click.

  Nothing.

  Yet . . . then he spied another, similar notch on the brick above. He touched it. Again, zilch.

  Get in.

  Get out.

  Fender crept up to him. Curious. Nosing around.

  Bronco ignored the dog and tried several times to open the latch. But nothing happened.

  This had to be it. Right?

  The dog whined, the hackles on the back of his neck bristling, but Bronco was deep in concentration before he noticed the third notch on a brick that abutted the other two.

  Tentatively, sweat dripping from his nose, he placed a finger on the notch. Still nothing. Damn. Maybe he was way off base with this.

  Fender, muscles tense, let out a low growl.

  “Hush!” Bronco muttered. He couldn’t be bothered with the dog right now. He rocked back on his heels holding the beam steady on the small door. No more notches. Just the three in those abutting bricks. That had to mean something. Had to. He chewed on his lip. What if he touched all three impressions at once? What were the chances?

  Again the dog let out a warning growl, but Bronco paid no attention.

  He leaned forward, placed his fingertips into the holes one at a time. Nothing budged. He tried again, this time touching all of the indentations simultaneously.

  Over the low rumble of Fender’s warning growl, he heard a soft, but distinct click.

  His heart hammered. He licked his lips. But nothing moved. “Damn.” This had to be it. Nervously, knowing he was on the brink, he tried again, then on inspiration, pushed on the rough bricks, rather than waiting for the door to magically open.

  It gave!

  Scraping loudly as he shoved on it, the door slid slowly inward. The scents of dust and dry rot sifted out.

  He was in!

  Bronco could have shouted for joy.

  All the years of waiting!

  As Bronco leaned forward, shining his light into the dry space beyond, the stupid mutt gave out an eerie whine. “Shut up,” Bronco said, leaning forward. He peered into the dark, tight cavern, sweeping the beam of his flashlight over the interior, expecting to find a cache of unimaginable treasure.

  But no.

  No glittering gems or stacks of bills.

  Instead . . .

  What the hell?

  What the bloody hell?

  The flashlight’s beam landed on a skull.

  A human skull.

  With empty black sockets where eyes had once been, the jaw open, teeth visible in an eerie grin of death, the fleshless face seemed to stare straight into the bottom of Bronco’s soul.

  He let out a scream before he saw the second skull, next to the first, smaller and just as long dead. The clothes on the bodies were tatters, blouses, one with a bra, shorts and sneakers. Bits of jewelry winking in the flashlight’s glare.

  Oh, fuck!

  Kids!

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Frantically, he scrambled backward, as if expecting the skeletons to stand and start chasing him. He stood quickly, his head cracking painfully against a rough beam.

  His knees buckled, but only for an instant.

  Then he ran. Knocking over boxes and bins, banging his knee against a forgotten chest of drawers, Bronco Cravens ran as he’d never run before.

  CHAPTER 2

  “You buyin’ this?” Detective Sylvie Morrisette asked from the passenger seat of Reed’s Jeep. His partner for years, she was a small, compact woman made up of west Texas grit and muscle. Her platinum-colored hair was spiked, a tattoo of a snake’s tail visible at her neckline and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone in the department, or anywhere else for that matter, thought about her. And right now she was irritated. Disbelieving, scratching her chin as she thought, her eyes laser-focused through the bug-spattered windshield.

  “Buying what?” Reed asked, taking yet another detour out of Savannah. The hurricane had torn through the city, destroying buildings, smashing cars and uprooting hundred-year-old trees. Power poles had been mangled and leveled, parts of the town flooded, and every city worker was working overtime to get the town’s basic services restored. Traffic was being diverted by road crews from the city and power company. Many streets had been cordoned off where trees and electrical wires had been downed. Some roofs had been blown off, exposing the interiors of damaged homes. Cars had been overturned or stalled in the flood waters, sign posts twisted in the violent winds, most traffic lights dead. Traffic, what litt
le there was of it, was stalled and crawled through detoured streets as the main arterial roads were being cleared.

  “Buying what?” she repeated. “Sheesh, Reed. You know what I mean. That some dick found a body in the basement of the old Beaumont mansion,” she said, her weathered face screwing up in thought. “I mean, what the hell? Who was out there?”

  “Don’t know. Yet.”

  “And they were just out there after a category five? Right on the river? Makes no sense.” She cracked her window, allowed some air to rush in. “Whoever it was, he was up to no good. Or jerking our damned chains!”

  He wasn’t about to argue that. Sylvie Morrisette was in a mood, as in a bad mood. Detective Pierce Reed had been her partner for enough years to recognize the signs. Today she was fidgety and sharp-tongued, well, sharper than usual, and she was popping Tums as if they were going out of style. Morrisette had grown up in west Texas, her drawl still evident, was prickly by nature and had been married four times—bang, bang, bang, bang in her twenties, though she quit tying the knot after her fourth husband and father of her children had turned out to be “a real prize, if you’re into bullshit awards.” Now, her lips pursed, her eyes squinting through the windshield, she was definitely antsy.

  “Jesus, Reed, could you drive any slower?” She shook out the last two tablets from the plastic bottle and tossed it onto the floor.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. Just a little heartburn.”

  “A little?”

  “Yeah! That’s what I said. And why the hell are you drivin’ like an old lady?”

  Traffic was stacked in front of him. He sent her a questioning glance. Where the hell did she expect him to go?

  “You could hit the lights and siren, y’know.” She twisted her neck until it cracked, then fiddled with the air conditioning, then played with the automatic windows, something she did when she was nervous. “Shit, I could use a smoke right about now. I know, I know.” She held up a palm. She’d given up cigarettes years before. “And if I dared come home with even a whiff of tobacco on me, Priscilla would have a shit-fit.” She rolled her eyes. “My daughter has taken the position that she’s the rule keeper at the house at seventeen. As if!” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “But it gets worse.”

  “It does?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Nodding, she said, “Get this: Toby wants to go live with his father. Like that’s some sort of threat or something. I think it’s because my brilliant ex promised the kid a car when he turns sixteen.” She ran a hand through her spiky hair and let out a huff of disgust. “Like that would ever happen. As if Bart would want a thirteen-year-old cramping his style.” Rolling her eyes, she said, “And his sister. Seventeen going on goddamned thirty! Do you know how many times a week I hear that Priscilla is ‘almost eighteen’?” She made half-hearted finger quotes as Reed glanced at the GPS screen, searching for a faster way through the town. “Teenagers.”

  “We were all there once,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. I was hell on wheels. Don’t know how my mother survived,” she admitted as Reed slowed to a stop, waiting for a member of a road crew to wave them around scattered debris—branches, limbs, and a shattered window pane, the aftermath of a live oak crashing down on a garage. Not only was the roof of the garage collapsed on the sedan inside, but a pickup that had been parked in the drive had been totaled. A photographer was taking pictures, while a heavyset worker in a hard hat, orange vest and a sour expression beneath the shadow of a beard waved them through.

  “Some detour,” Morrisette muttered ungraciously. “Seriously, this is the best they can do? One lane?”

  “Give ’em a break, will ya? It’ll get better.”

  “Let’s hope. Or it will be midnight by the time we get out there.”

  “It’s less than three miles.”

  “Exactly!”

  Reed was waved through and picked up speed.

  Morrisette said, “I just can’t believe someone found bodies out there. In the basement of the old house? How likely is that? I mean, there aren’t that many cellars out here, especially not on the flood plain.”

  “It’s an old house.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about! A basement? Maybe a root cellar . . . but a full-on basement? I dunno.”

  “Anyone talk to the Beaumonts?”

  “Yeah, I expect they’ll show up. The deputy who called the son, Tyson, said he freaked out that bodies had been found on the place.” She glanced at Reed. “Well, duh.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The deputy said we’d be over to talk to them, but Tyson said he was gonna round up his old man, so I expect they’ll show up.”

  “Good,” Reed said. “Let’s see what they have to say. Maybe they can shed some light.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  An anonymous caller had phoned in to 911 to report a body in the basement of the old Beaumont house. A male who refused to identify himself. Reed had listened to the call; the guy had been freaked out of his mind, his voice raspy and strained. “I-I mean, I saw. Oh, Jesus . . . there are bodies at the Beaumont estate . . . in the basement. . . oh, Holy Christ . . . two . . . maybe more, I don’t know. Just . . . just fuckin’ skeletons.”

  The operator had asked, “Sir, could you give me your name?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? For the love of God, they’re dead!”

  “Sir, please, if you could calm down and give me your name and address.”

  “I told you. At the fuckin’ Beaumont estate out on Old Carriage Road. In the fuckin’ basement.”

  “Sir—”

  “They’re girls! Didn’t you hear me? Dead girls! In the fuckin’ basement!”

  And then he’d clicked off. Without giving his name or whereabouts or any information on how he’d come across the bodies and why he’d been on the grounds in the first place. But they had his number, and even as the first deputies had been dispatched to the scene, the department was working to ID the caller. Reed wanted to be first in line to talk to the guy, whoever the hell he was.

  “Why wouldn’t the guy who called emergency identify himself?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to be known, be a part of it.”

  “Maybe he’s the killer?”

  “If it’s a homicide. But unlikely.”

  “What? You think it might be something else? Like kids playing and getting caught in the basement and dying?” she scoffed.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “You don’t know yet. My money’s on murder.” Folding her arms over her chest, she raised an eyebrow to stare at him. “What d’ya say? Five bucks?”

  He wanted to counter with, Fine, you’re on. But he couldn’t. Because she was probably right. “No bet.”

  “Thought so. Anyway, I’ve got one of the newbies, Delacroix, trying to run down the phone call. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Maybe,” he said without any conviction as they slowed and eased around another utility truck, its amber lights flashing. “The call could have come in on a burner phone. No trace.”

  “Hell, Reed, let’s not go there yet.” She shot him a look that could cut through steel.

  “Just sayin’.”

  “Well, don’t. Okay? Would it kill you to try to think positive?”

  “Like you?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” she said, but scared up the hint of a smile as he cut through a neighborhood going to seed, took a side street and finally connected to the highway. He hit the gas. When they rolled up to the gates of the old Beaumont estate, they weren’t the first. Three cop cars, a cruiser and two SUVs, blocked the entrance.

  A deputy for the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department was posted at the rusted gate. Reed had met her several times. Tina Rounds, a tall, no-nonsense policewoman with a dour expression, her springy black hair pulled tightly away from her face, her hat square on her head. She made them sign in and display their badges despite knowing who they were. By “The Book” all the way.
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  The sun was hanging low in the sky, the air muggy despite the canopy of branches overhead. Together they walked along a winding lane that had once been gravel but now was two faint ruts separated by a band of grass and weeds. A few birds twittered in the heavy, still air, and a snake, shining like silver, twisted quickly out of sight, slithering away through the knee-high grass.

  Leaves and branches littered the lane, and a long, rusted real-estate sign was wedged into a larger limb that partially blocked their access. “You’d think if you owned a place like this, you’d take care of it better,” Morrisette observed.

  “Unless you just wanted to subdivide it into parcels.”

  “Humph.” Around a final bend, the live oaks and pines opened to a small rise where the old house stood. It may have once been grand, but now it was waiting for a bulldozer to put an end to its steady and imminent decline. “Sad,” she said as they walked to the front door, which was securely locked, then made their way to the back of the house and the open doorway, where Phil Carter, another deputy for the county, was waiting. About five-ten and trim, with blue eyes cut deep into his skull and the ravages from teenage acne still visible, he was a good cop who was known as “Crater,” the nickname having been pinned on him by a bully of a football coach twenty years earlier.

  They knew each other. No introductions necessary. “This way,” he said, and they followed him past a bank of boarded-over French doors to a side entrance most likely used by delivery people and servants back in the day.

  “What’ve you got?” Reed asked.

  “Nothin’ good,” Crater said, the trace of a Georgia drawl evident. “Two bodies. Maybe more. Been there a while. Other than that, the place is clear. No one else inside.”

  “Forced entry?” Morrisette was eyeing the dingy doorjamb.

  “Nope. Door wide open. But it hadn’t been open for long. Wasn’t wet inside. And that storm would’ve poured gallons inside.” He led them down a narrow, curving staircase to a basement where Reed couldn’t quite straighten without bumping his head on ancient beams. He sank into water and mud that had collected. Maybe the rain hadn’t gotten into the stairwell above, but it sure as hell had seeped through windows or cracks in the foundation.