“Where?”
“You didn’t hear about this?” His voice carried the excitement of a sports fan reliving an extraordinary play from the previous night. “Thought that’s why you guys were here.”
“No,” Livia said. “We didn’t hear.”
He pointed his cigarette at the binder. “Details are still coming in. Her body was found in the woods, down in Georgia. It was zipped in a body bag and lying next to a hole in the ground. Like someone dug the grave but never buried the body. Really weird!” Nate smiled and then sucked again on his cigarette.
“This was a few days ago?”
“Yeah.”
Livia handed the binder back to him. “We’ve got to run.”
Nate pointed to Megan. “I thought you said I’d get to ask her some questions.”
“Sorry. Some other time.”
Livia took Megan by the wrist and hurried back to the car. “What about signing my book?”
“Another time,” Livia said before pulling away. She took a hard right and stepped on the gas. “Sorry to put you through that. You okay?”
“I dealt with worse during my initial book tour. Who’s Paula D’Amato?”
“Another girl I think Casey took. I’m going to have to make a trip down to Georgia, see if I can meet with the medical examiner who did the autopsy. If the same findings are present that link you and Nancy Dee, you think we’ll be able to get your father on board?”
Megan nodded. “Probably. But I don’t understand. If you think this guy, the guy who was dating Nicole, was involved with these girls and had something to do with their disappearances, and mine . . . he’s dead, right? So what are we looking for?”
“If Paula D’Amato’s body was just found, I want to know when she died. If it was recently, Casey wasn’t alone. Someone else is still out there.”
CHAPTER 35
The thousand-watt twin adjustable LED lights brightened the forest as he dug. The earth was wet and the dig was easy, the shovel slicing effortlessly into the mud under the weight of his foot. The woods were quiet at night, its residents mostly tucked away under the cover of leaves or logs. Of course, the nocturnal hunters would be out—the owls and bats and coyote. But the lights by which he worked would hold them off, despite the lure of bitter odor her body gave off as it lay on the forest floor secured in black vinyl and waiting to be covered by the earth he was moving.
When he heard it, he stopped. With his foot on the shovel, he listened. Heard it again. He looked over at the black bag and then stumbled backward when he saw it move. Crinkling in the middle, the bag creased in a ninety-degree angle, as though she had sat up. He dropped the shovel and staggered away from her body until he fell into the shallow grave he had dug. He scrambled to get to his feet but his limbs were frozen with fear. She had unzipped the bag and her torso appeared above him. With unblinking eyes, she picked up the shovel and dumped dirt onto his shoulders. He clawed and begged, managing for a moment to get to his knees, but she was relentless with her efforts. The weight of the earth was finally too great, and he collapsed onto his stomach as she shoveled more dirt over him. The burden of the soil became so great that his lungs could no longer expand under the pressure. He looked up at her just before a final pitch of ground covered his face and his vision went black.
*
He sat straight up in bed now, grasping at the covers the way he’d been clawing at the sides of the grave in his nightmare. Inhaling deeply, he savored the air that was missing from his dream. Night sweats had soaked his clothes and sheets.
“What’s the matter?” came the groggy voice next to him.
It was amazing how even her concern disgusted him. She did not love him, not any longer, and her feigned worry turned his stomach. Part of him blamed her for what he had become. Blamed her for the emptiness inside of him. The vacancy he tried so desperately to occupy with the girls he held captive and offered to love and care for.
“Nothing,” he said, out of breath.
“Bad dream?”
Without answering he climbed from bed and walked down to the kitchen for a cup of water. His T-shirt stuck to his chest and he peeled it away as he swallowed the water. The last year had gone wrong. So terribly wrong. Things had gotten far away from him, and he didn’t want to admit that it all might be falling apart. The debacle last year—with the bunker and escape, the hunt and the pressure and the media—should have been enough to stop him. To wake him up and bring to him the realization that things could not continue without great wreckage finding him. Yet he was helpless. He could no more convince himself to stop than he could convince the girls he loved to love him back. On this front, though, he was sure things were changing. He simply needed more time.
He knew, however, that he could not sustain this level of incompetence and expect to survive. His sloppiness since the bunker escape last year could not be ignored. He had spent his life on details, and warned his underlings against shoddy work. Taught those around him the need for precision and accuracy. The necessity of paying attention to every facet. Now he had fallen prey to the same careless errors he preached to avoid. The body turning up in the bay was a direct result of panic and inattention to detail. The knots securing the body to the cinder blocks were not closely considered; the consequences of this error were still unknown. The press had lost interest after the initial story broke, and the passing weeks had given him hope that he might be able to dodge the bullet. But more errors had followed. The careless application of the plywood that secured the cellar window had nearly allowed another escape. And his desire to make her comfortable by providing a frame for the box spring was an error so egregious he was sickened every time he thought of it. The quarrel that followed was unfortunate, and losing his temper was a sign of incompetence.