Buried (Detective Ellie MacIntosh)
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Authors: Kate Watterson
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.
To the ghost in Brown County. I am glad we get along so well.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks always to Kristin Sevick and Barbara Poelle for fabulous guidance, with humor thrown in along the way.
CONTENTS
Prologue
White jagged streaks split the sky and the deafening blast, only a few seconds later, meant the lightning had hit all too close.
These early fall storms could be really nasty.
Time to get off the water.
Roger Bridges nudged the canoe toward the bank, paddle dipping fast, his back hunched as the storm roared in.
He fought his way under an overhanging branch because he had no choice—by now the lake was wild, the wind coming from the north, waves hitting the sides of the craft, slapping water upward into his clothes and face. The roar of the wall of rain swept in like a force of enemy aircraft, low and hollow.
Dragging the canoe out wasn’t the easiest maneuver, but he’d paid three hundred bucks for it and wasn’t about to let it go just because he was going to get wet. He’d seen the piles of thunderheads but figured he’d have time—wrong on that score.
What the hell was he thinking? This was Wisconsin, and the weather was about as predictable as a cornered rabid badger, and the hail was coming sideways and hurt.
He banked the canoe, dragging it up, rain coming down hard now, his hair dripping into his eyes …
And that was when he fell into the grave.
Chapter 1
SEPTEMBER 1957
She was cold. Shivering. Her body reacted to every sound in the creaky old house. The wind was rising, whistling through the eaves, and the old birches outside groaned and protested in a primal whine.
The one board in the parlor always complained when stepped on just right and she made that mistake, the protest loud and damning.
No.
The floor was chilly, but she was freezing already, so it didn’t matter
.
This wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t want perfect, she just wanted it over. Lies were tiresome, there was just no two ways about it. A burden, something to cart around with you all day and take to bed at night. Her mother had always said so, and she was beginning to agree.
Around the corner there was an oak sideboard, massive, with pretty dishes and an engraved silver coffee urn, looming in the filtered light. There was an old sofa, a carriage lamp, and the smell of roses lingered from a vase full of blooms from the garden, but the flowers were starting to wither, so the sweet odor was tinged with decay. Accidentally she bumped the table and a few of the petals fell, whispering against the polished wood.
The knife was in her hand. Not heavy—a lightweight steel made for fileting fish, curved, the blade Finnish, something she’d gotten actually from her father, inherited when he died. There was a hint of rust along the edge because she didn’t oil it like he had, but it was still as sharp as death.
And death was part of this chill night.
SEPTEMBER, PRESENT DAY, ONEIDA COUNTY
The day was
cold and Detective Ellie MacIntosh winced and adjusted her collar in the mist. Raindrops were even gathering on her lashes. So much for Indian summer. The entire week before it had been in the seventies, but that party seemed to be over. The leaves were starting to take on just enough color to indicate summer was going to fade before long. It looked like it might be an early fall.
“What is it I need to see again?” The question was reasonable because it was hardly the right weather for a stroll through the woods. Damp, too cool, the pine needles underfoot slippery, the trees dripping.
“A hole.” Her grandfather stopped as if he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, and then veered off a little to the left. “Over here.”
That didn’t really fill in the blanks. She carefully stepped over a fallen log with fungus the size and shape of human ears on the side. “Excuse me, but, we are out in this to look at a hole? Can you be a shade more specific?”
He glanced back. His face was reddened by the crisp breeze and his pale eyes direct. The cold wind ruffled his white hair. As usual, he wore a plaid shirt, a tan coat over it, and his jeans were so worn they must have been three shades lighter than when he originally bought them. His boots were covered in mud, but it was wet out. “Just follow me, Eleanor.”
Fine
.
She disliked her given name, but could hardly tell him that since she’d been named after his mother, so she instead glanced around the wooded hill. At the bottom of the slope there was the same lake she’d swam in as a child so many times, and right now it held a flotilla of fallen maple leaves, starting to gather in a circle thanks to the wind, the water swirling. The trees were turning early, not a good sign. It had been awhile since they’d had a truly frigid winter by Wisconsin standards.
Mystified, she watched her grandfather tramp between a ridge of white pines and slender birches and followed.
What is this?
Her first glimmer of what was really happening made her stumble over a small rock. She was no longer paying attention to the terrain, her foot sliding on the hill before she caught her balance with one hand behind her, skidding on the fragrant pine needles.
What was in front of her was not a hole. Well, it was, but it was roughly square and reminiscent of something grimmer than that generic label.
The partially revealed outline in the moist soil was of a human skull, and one fragile, broken hand didn’t help the situation. The grinning skull had a missing tooth, and a wash of horror swept through her despite a career in law enforcement and experience with more than a few gruesome sights.
Not a hole.
A grave
.
“What the hell?” She hadn’t meant to blurt that out, especially in front of a man she revered, so the question was quickly amended. Her grandfather was more than a little old
-
fashioned. “I meant: What on earth? When did you find this?”
“This morning. And I didn’t find it.”
Her grandfather was breathing heavily enough that she felt a flicker of worry. “Are you all right?”
The nod he gave was curt. “The storm must have washed it out. That rain came through like a runaway locomotive.”
No doubt a correct conclusion. When the front swept in, it had arrived with a vengeance as the temperature plummeted a good forty degrees. It would warm up again, but not today.
She
certainly felt cold through and through. A frigid droplet trickled down her neck.
“It looks old to me.” He stared at the skeleton, but stood a few feet away.
If he meant those brittle bones, it looked 100 percent, extremely dead to her. The age would probably have to be determined by a forensic anthropologist, but impossible to gauge on a wet hillside half covered in dirt.
But definitely in the dead category.
“It obviously isn’t new, but old is a relative term. At a glance a buried skeleton is not in your provenance of expertise or mine either, for that matter.”
That was putting it mildly. He leaned on a walking stick he often carried but never used. “So, what now?”
The phone call that had summoned her up north hadn’t exactly prepared her for this, but he had never been a talkative man, which was why she had dropped everything and made the drive from Wausau where she’d been visiting her sister. Jody had agreed. If Robert MacIntosh called, it was urgent. That he’d specifically asked Ellie to come alone made sense now. If he wanted help, he needed it, and this seemed to bear out that conviction. She managed to ask calmly, “Have you called the police?”
“I called
you
.”
“Not quite the same.”
He looked at her, his face not precisely amused, but still the corner of his mouth lifted. “You are still a detective for the Milwaukee police, right? Big
-
city law enforcement. The only person I know who has shot more than one man. So who else should I call? You
are
the police. So technically, I have called them.”
The testiness in his voice was a surprise, but maybe he was more rattled than he cared to admit. The reference to two recent cases and the way they’d been handled made her experience a moment of chagrin, but it had been all over the television so she knew he’d heard about it. She didn’t really think he was being critical as much as asking for her help in a roundabout way.
It was a little interesting to her they had never discussed what happened. How was that conversation supposed to go anyway?
Hey, Grandpa, did you hear about me shooting a serial killer?
Not her style, and actually, not really his style either. They were politely close, if such a thing were possible. She adored him, but the affection was implied since he didn’t wish to talk about it, so she didn’t bring it up.
It was hardly as if she’d never seen a dead body, but the outline of the half-turned skull got to her. It was maybe more the lonely spot and the bleak, gray day. “I am a detective, but this is not my jurisdiction either. How about 911? Lots of people use it, especially when they find the evidence of a crime.”
“Do I have evidence of a crime?” The shrug he gave was pragmatic, but she thought he looked a little pale except for his cheeks being reddened by the sharp breeze. “Make them all rush out here for what? There is no one to be saved and it seems to me time doesn’t really matter much to those old bones. Waste of tax dollars to have everyone come with screaming ambulances when it is obvious whoever is buried here can’t be helped.”
There was validity to that logic—though she didn’t agree completely. Her job as a homicide detective was to help, even if it was to only obtain justice for the victim. They both stood for a few moments staring at the half-exposed skeleton. “No, he or she can’t be saved. I’ll concede that.”
The trees wept, her coat was soaked, and this situation was beyond the scope of her experience, even as a law
-
enforcement officer. She was far too used to blood and death, but this was not her usual kind of case.
Not her case at all, in fact.
Ellie let out a slow breath and reminded herself that he was eighty-plus years old and maybe he didn’t realize that since she now worked in Milwaukee this was not going to be her investigation. She unclipped her phone from her pocket. “Let me get the sheriff’s office and they will have someone here as soon as possible. It will probably be just a deputy at first and then the coroner as soon as he can respond. At that point, they can decide what to do next. I can’t really do more than that.”