And in this case, all they had to do was hunt down the day the body had been found, find the autopsy report and then look up where the body had been buried.
The geeks in the Krewe’s Virginia office were handling the search. Once Adam Harrison had been called in to help get the ball rolling on Pierre’s application for legal residency for his family and entrance into the Witness Protection Program, he’d put all his resources at their disposal, geeks included. That left Brett, Diego and Matt to work with Pierre himself while his family and friends remained in the safe house, heavily guarded.
Pierre had already worked with a sketch artist. The problem was that Boss Man seemed to have different color eyes each time Pierre saw him. Mostly he had a mustache and a beard, but not always, and they weren’t always shaved in the same style. He usually wore glasses, too, but not always the same frames.
Even so, staring at the sketch, Brett told Diego and Matt that the drawing resembled the man who had accompanied Anthony Barillo to his house.
“We can bring him in,” Diego offered.
Brett shook his head. The resemblance could just as easily be a coincidence. “I can’t say it was him with Barillo. And if we bring him in before we’re sure, before we have evidence, we could blow the whole case.”
“We can keep him in mind, at least, in case we find some hard evidence, then move on him,” Diego said. “Unfortunately, an empty grave isn’t evidence.”
“Let’s start by hoping the records will direct us to the right potter’s grave,” Brett said.
“It’s a plan,” Matt agreed. “And if not, we’ll keep digging till we find the right one.”
Brett grinned; he liked the man. He was always willing to go the extra mile.
Brett knew they wouldn’t find Antoine in the grave where Pierre had seen him buried, but the killer might be “storing” other bodies there, and there was always the possibility of catching him in the act.
They visited every cemetery within an hour’s drive of Pierre’s apartment, just in case he’d been mistaken about the length of the drive, but he didn’t recognize any of them. Frustrated, Brett went online himself and tried historical cemeteries, which brought up several they had already seen but also some new possibilities. On the third page of listings he found a blog dedicated to an old cemetery down in Florida City, close to the Everglades and the gateway to the Florida Keys.
It was a small place, mostly reclaimed by nature, just on the edge of the national park. The road to it clearly hadn’t been repaved in years. But when Brett started driving down it, Pierre suddenly perked up.
“Mais oui!” he cried. “I remember this—bouncing before we reached the graveyard.”
The gravestones were scattered, some still standing, others tipped over, even broken. A few were military issue from World War I, a few more from World War II, and they even found a small stone marker that showed the deceased had fought in the Civil War.
“I hadn’t realized there were that many people living around here that long ago,” Matt said.
“There was a military base on the Miami River years before anything approaching a city existed down here,” Brett explained. “They were down here fighting the Seminole wars, which raged for years and years. Sherman got his start down here. Zachary Taylor fought down here, too. Miami itself was incorporated in 1896.”
Matt laughed. “I doubt this place is in Miami.”
“No, but it is in Miami-Dade County,” Brett said, looking around. They were surrounded by high grasses and, except for the little hummock that held the cemetery, the land here was marsh. The Everglades themselves were much the same. The “river of grass” was a mix of marsh and river and hummock, and it was often difficult to know where one ended and another began. It was much the same here, but on a smaller scale, a place being overtaken by nature, the heat of the day broken by a cool breeze moving through. He could hear the forlorn calls of different birds. To the east, buzzards were circling, and he imagined that they had probably homed in on roadkill somewhere on US1.
Pierre wasn’t paying any attention to the agents. He was moving through the thickly overgrown gravestones, head down, searching.
Suddenly he stopped dead. Brett tensed, nearly drawing his Glock. Then he realized that Pierre had stopped because an adolescent alligator was sunning himself on a large concrete-slab marker.
“Leave him alone,” Brett said. “He’ll leave you alone.”
Pierre nodded and pointed. “There. I remember that tree. They buried my brother beneath it.”
Diego groaned suddenly, looking at Brett. “I’m digging, right?”
“I’m not even sure who we call to get the proper permits to work here,” Brett said. He knew, of course, that he should call someone. He was talking about digging up a graveyard after all.
But he didn’t want to wait. He didn’t want permits and word getting out and a big show.
“Hey, I’m digging, too.”