Shadow Play by Iris Johansen
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CHAPTER
1
SONDERVILLE, CALIFORNIA
Walsh watched the detectives and forensic team milling around the open grave, their flashlight beams lighting the darkness. Stay in the back of the crowd, he told himself. The rest of these locals were only curiosity seekers, and the cops were used to dealing with them. If he blended in and didn’t call attention to himself, no one would notice or remember him.
Damn kid. The girl had been buried for years and might never have been recovered if those Boy Scouts hadn’t chosen this area to set up camp. It must have been the recent rains that had washed away the top layers of dirt and revealed those old bones.
Or maybe not.
He remembered how strange that little girl had been, how he’d hated her before that final blow. And he’d heard there were weird stories about this wood where he’d buried her …
He felt a chill as he remembered those stories.
Forget it. They were just stories. He had come here to make sure that the report was true that the girl had been unearthed after all these years. He had carefully monitored the town and vineyards since the night she had been buried. Now that he was certain, he’d fade away for a while. He was good at fading away. He’d done it eight years ago, and no one had connected him to anything that had happened in this valley.
And no one must connect him to that child the forensic team was so carefully taking out of her grave.
She had to remain unknown and lost, as she had been all these years. It was too dangerous to him for her to be anything but the heap of bones she’d become after he’d thrown her into that grave. He would have to keep monitoring the situation to be sure that threat didn’t become a reality.
It would be okay. Years had passed, life moved fast, no one would care about this child who had been lost so long …
LAKE COTTAGE
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
“You have a FedEx package,” Joe Quinn said as Eve came into the cottage. “It’s on your worktable. It came from somewhere in California.”
She nodded. “Yeah, Sonderville. Sheriff Nalchek called me last night and asked me to bump his reconstruction to the top of my list.” She made a face. “I almost told him to forget it. I’m swamped right now, and I don’t need any more pressure.”
“You’re always swamped.” Joe smiled teasingly. “You thrive on it. And it’s natural that you’re in demand. Everyone wants the world-famous forensic sculptor, Eve Duncan, to solve their problems.”
“Bullshit.” She went to the kitchen counter and picked up the coffee carafe. “There’s usually no urgency about putting a face on a skull that’s been buried for years anyway. It has to be done, but there’s no reason that I can’t do it in an orderly fashion. Every one of those children is important.”