Page 51 of Child In Jeopardy

Her mother frantically shook her head. “It might be too late. If Leonard knows we’re onto him, he could do something to destroy the scene. He could set a fire or something.”

A fire would definitely do some damage, but it likely wouldn’t obliterate a body in the ground.

“Come back to your car, Mrs. Walsh,” Duncan ordered.

Again, her mother didn’t respond. Not with words, anyway. But Pamela turned and started running.

Both Slater and Duncan cursed, and the three of them went after her. Thankfully, her mother wasn’t hard to follow because she kept on her flashlight, and Lana could see it bobbling through the dark and fog as her mother ran. Not for long, though. Her mother stopped.

Then screamed.

The sound ripped through the night and caused her, Slater and Duncan to speed up. Lana tried to tamp down any worst-case scenarios. And failed. There were just too many dangerous possibilities, ranging from a killer to wildlife about to attack.

By the time they made it to Pamela, she turned. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open as if preparing for another scream.

“There,” her mother said, and she aimed a trembling hand at something on the ground in front of her.

Steeling herself for what she might see, Lana moved closer. And closer. Until the fog cleared for a second or two so she could see the headstones for what she presumed were the horses’ graves. Then she saw something else.

Something that sent her heart to her knees.

Because there was another grave, an unmarked one, and it wasn’t covered, either. It was now a gaping hole.

Duncan fanned his flashlight into the hole and groaned. Lana soon saw why. At the bottom of the hole were the bleached white bones of what had once been a body.

Chapter Sixteen

Slater cursed when he caught glimpses of the body through the breaks in the fog. Or rather what was left of the body, anyway. Not all the bones seemed to be there, but there were enough of them for him to know it was human remains.

The skull was evidence of that.

The cop part of him warned him not to jump to any conclusions. That this might not be Alicia Monroe. But with the emails and the tow truck that’d picked up a vehicle here, it was hard for him not to look at those bones and see the young woman that Alicia had once been.

Duncan was muttering some profanity, too, and he fanned his flashlight around the grave, no doubt looking for any footprints that didn’t belong to any of them. Slater didn’t immediately see any, but the weeds and grass likely would have prevented deep impressions into the ground.

“It’s true,” Pamela sobbed. “It’s all true.” She buried her face against Lana’s shoulder when Lana pulled the woman into her arms. “Leonard killed Alicia and buried her here.”

Maybe, but no matter who this was, the scene had to be preserved. Of course, it had already been compromised. And recently. Slater looked at the mounds of dirt around the sides of the grave, and he was pretty sure someone had attempted to dig it up.

But why?

To remove the body?

If so, the person had failed because the body was still there. Maybe the digging had been step one, and the person was coming back to finish the exhumation. Again, though, hehad to ask himself why. The immediate answer that came to mind was that Buck had realized the location was about to be compromised and had dug it up, only to die before he could finish the job.

Was that it?

Slater continued to mull that over and was about to escort Lana and Pamela back to the cruiser so that he and Duncan could start the necessary phone calls needed in a situation like this. But Slater stopped when the glint of something caught his eye. Duncan stopped, too, fixing the flashlight onto the upper torso of the skeleton.

And Slater saw it then.

A silver heart pendant on a thick chain.

“What is it?” Pamela asked, trying to get a look at what had caught their attention.

Lana must have thought they’d seen something ghoulish, because she gathered her mother into her arms and started leading her away from the grave. Slater was all for that. In fact, he wanted Lana back in the cruiser where she’d be safer, but first he used his phone to take some photos of the skeleton and that necklace.

A necklace he thought he remembered seeing before.