Max frowned. Was she the only one who saw something more sinister?
Jasper got up and winced. “Twisted my ankle.”
“Sit—I want to do something.” She took several pictures, then shined her light all around the area. She got on all fours and crawled around the sinkhole, moving the dirt with her hands. “Here,” she said. “There is an obvious cut in the earth here from a shovel. It’s been filled in, but someone dug a hole here.”
“That’s odd.”
Max didn’t say anything as she continued to inspect the area. Her knee pressed against something hard, and she reached down. She picked up what she thought was a gray-white stone and almost tossed it, but it had very little weight. She shined her light on it. A thrill of discovery sent butterflies through her stomach.
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain that this is a bone. A finger.” She held it up for Jasper to see.
“Animal. It has to be an animal.”
“I’m going to call Detective Santini. He’s got to get a forensics team out here immediately.”
“You don’t think—”
“Yes, I do. I think that somehow Jason found out about a crime, and someone killed him to keep him quiet.”
Jasper paled as he stared at the ground where his foot had plunged. “Dear Lord, there’s a body down there?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s concave. That means something was removed. I think when the sports complex was approved, a killer came here to remove his victim.” She held up the bone. “And Jason caught him in the act.”
Chapter Nineteen
Nick Santini showed up at Atherton Prep nearly an hour after Max called him. Alone.
Max was standing at his door before he even turned off the ignition. “You took long enough—where’s everyone else?”
He didn’t say anything but got out of the Bronco. He looked at her from head to feet. She glanced down at her torn panty hose, dirt-stained knees, and formerly white sneakers, then caught his eye. “I told you we found a grave.”
“Yes, you did.”
Jasper limped over. “Detective.”
“Pierce. Explain what you two were doing here.”
Why was Nick addressing Jasper? Max didn’t give Jasper a chance to respond. She said, “As I told you the other day, Dru said that Jason was concerned about holes in those trees.” She pointed to the redwoods. “I asked Jasper to come out with me and inspect the area. I thought he might have an idea of what was off about the trees that had Jason so concerned. Brian Robeaux said there were a couple of small holes in the ground, not in the trees specifically but around the trees. Brian didn’t think it was important, but Jason thought it was strange. Because Jason was killed here, next to the trailer, Brian didn’t think to mention anything about Jason’s interest in the holes. He said he didn’t make the connection at all.
“While Jasper and I walked through the area looking for evidence of the holes, Jasper stepped into an area of loose dirt and twisted his ankle. I took a picture.” She handed Nick her phone with the pictures of the concave area. “That looks like a grave. And considering I found this”—she handed him the finger bone—“I think I’m right.”
Nick stared at the bone, pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, and put the bone in. “You think you found a grave and yet you removed evidence.”
“I was crawling around the area and knelt on it. I didn’t know it was a finger bone until I picked it up. There could be more, I didn’t look. Once I knew what was there, I stopped searching. So now, why don’t you have a forensics team with you? It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours.”
“I want to look at it first,” Nick said. “You can leave.”
“Leave? Hell, no. I found this grave. This is why Jason Hoffman was killed. You know it, I know it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Nick took out his handcuffs and cuffed her to his door handle. He did it so fast that by the time she saw it coming, she was too shocked to stop him.
Without a word, he motioned for Jasper to follow him to the trees. Jasper gave her a surprised look, then shrugged and followed Nick. Damn them both.
Max was more than a little furious. She jerked her wrist, watching Jasper and Nick talk as they headed over to the grave that Max had marked with a construction cone.
Damn cop.
She reached into her hair and took out a bobby pin. David had taught her how to pick locks, but she’d never had to do it with her left hand before. And handcuffs were different. She dropped the pin and had to pull another from her hair. It took a minute, but she got the cuffs off.
That was a trick she was going to have to practice a few times. It was a useful skill.
She rubbed her wrist and glanced in Nick’s Bronco. She sat in the driver’s seat and went through a stack of files on the passenger seat. The top file was the Jason Hoffman case. Most of the stuff she already knew. Except for one tidbit.
Nick had taken notes, apparently from a conversation he had with one of the federal agents. Since Amy was talking in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence, she’d admitted that she’d called Potrero when Nick was outside the house talking to Dru. Potrero’s cell phone history confirmed he’d called Cross immediately after Amy called him, not long before Dru was attacked. It was obvious to Max that Potrero and Cross thought Dru was going to expose their pot farm and money laundering scheme, which is why they went after her. While both of them had lawyered up, they each emphatically denied killing Jason Hoffman, and each had an alibi for the night Jason died, which Nick had verified.
Nick had several sticky notes on the inside of his file. One caught her eye: Follow up on Max’s theory about the holes/trees at the construction site.
He’d planned on coming out here anyway—why was he giving her such a hard time?