Читать книгу Once Buried - Блейк Пирс - Страница 10

Riley whirled around to see what Bill was yelling about. His voice was coming from behind the trees off to one side of the path.

“What is it?” Chief Belt called out.

“What did you find?” Terzis echoed.

“Just come here,” Bill yelled back.

Riley got to her feet and headed in his direction. She could see broken-down brush where he had left the path.

“Are you coming?” Bill called out, starting to sound a little impatient.

Riley could tell by his tone of voice that he meant business.

Followed by Belt and Terzis, she waded through the thicket until they reached the small clearing where Bill was standing. Bill was looking down at the ground.

He’d found something, all right.

Another piece of erosion cloth was stretched over the ground, loosely held in place by small pegs at the corners.

“Good God,” Terzis murmured.

“Not another body,” Belt said.

But Riley knew that it had to be something different. For one thing, the hole was much smaller than the other, and square in shape.

Bill was putting on plastic gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints on whatever he was about to find. Then he knelt down and gently pulled the erosion cloth away.

All Riley could see was a circular piece of dark, polished wood.

Bill carefully took hold of the wooden circle with both hands and pulled it upward.

Everybody except Bill gasped at what he slowly brought out of the hole.

“An hourglass!” Chief Belt said.

“Biggest one I ever saw,” Terzis added.

And indeed, the object was over two feet tall.

“Are you sure it’s not some kind of trap?” Riley warned.

Bill rose to his feet with the object, keeping it perpendicular, handling it as delicately as he might handle an explosive device. He set it upright on the ground next to the hole.

Riley knelt and examined it closely. The thing didn’t seem to have any wires or springs. But was anything hidden beneath that sand? She tilted the thing to one side and didn’t see anything odd.

“It’s just a big hourglass,” she muttered. “And hidden just like the trap on the trail.”

“Not an hourglass, exactly,” Bill said. “I’m pretty sure it measures a longer period of time than an hour. It’s what’s called a sand timer.”

The object struck Riley as startlingly beautiful. The two globes of glass were exquisitely shaped, connected together by a narrow opening. The round wooden top and bottom pieces were connected by three wooden rods, carved into decorative patterns. The top was carved into a ripple pattern. The wood was dark and well-polished.

Riley had seen sand timers before – much smaller versions for cooking that counted off three or five or twenty minutes. This one was much, much bigger, over two feet tall.

The bottom globe was partially filled with tan sand.

There was no sand in the upper globe.

Chief Belt asked Bill, “How did you know something was here?”

Bill was crouching beside the sand timer, examining it attentively. He asked, “Did anyone else notice something odd about the shape of the pit on the trail?”

“I did,” Riley said. “The ends of the hole were dug in kind of a wedge-shaped manner.”

Bill nodded.

“It was roughly the shape of an arrow. The arrow pointed to where the path curved away and some of the bushes were broken down. So I just went where it was pointing.”

Chief Belt was still staring at the sand timer with amazement.

“Well, we’re lucky you found it,” he said.

“The killer wanted us to look here,” Riley muttered. “He wanted us to figure this out.”

Riley glanced at Bill, then at Jenn. She could tell they were thinking just what she was thinking.

The sand in the timer had run out.

Somehow, in a way they didn’t yet understand, that meant that they weren’t lucky at all.

Riley looked at Belt and asked, “Did any of your men find a timer like this at the beach?”

Belt shook his head and said, “No.”

Riley felt a grim tingle of intuition.

“Then you didn’t look hard enough,” she said.

Neither Belt nor Terzis spoke for a moment. They looked as though they couldn’t believe their ears.

Then Belt said, “Look, something like this would surely have stood out. I’m sure there wasn’t anything like it in the immediate area.”

Riley frowned. This thing that had been placed so carefully just had to be important. She felt sure that the cops had somehow overlooked another sand timer.

For that matter, so had she and Bill and Jenn when they’d been on the beach. Where could that one be?

“We’ve got to go back and look,” Riley said.

Bill carried the enormous timer over to the SUV. Jenn opened the back, and she and Bill put the object inside, making sure that it was braced and steadied against any sharp or sudden movement. They covered it with a blanket that was in the SUV.

Riley, Bill, and Jenn got into the SUV and followed the police chief’s car back toward the beach.

The number of reporters gathered in the parking area had increased, and they were getting more aggressive. As Riley and her colleagues made their way through them and past the yellow tape, she wondered how much longer they would be able to ignore their questions.

When they reached the beach, the body was no longer in the hole. The ME’s team had already loaded it into their van. The local cops were still combing the area for clues.

Belt called out to his men, who gathered around him.

“Has anybody seen a sand timer around here?” he asked. “It would look like a big hourglass, at least two feet tall.”

The cops looked perplexed by the question. They shook their heads and said no.

Riley was starting to feel impatient.

It must be around here somewhere, she thought. She walked to the top of a nearby grassy rise and looked around. But she could see no hourglass, not even disturbed sand that would indicate something freshly buried.

Or was her intuition playing tricks on her? It sometimes happened.

Not this time, she thought.

In her gut, she felt sure of it.

She walked back and stood looking down at the hole. It was very different from the one in the woods. It was shallower, more shapeless. The killer couldn’t have formed the dry beach sand into a pointer if he’d tried.

She turned all around and gazed in every direction.

All she saw was sand and the surf.

The tide was low. Of course the killer could have made some kind of wet sand-sculpture arrow, but it would have been seen right away. If it hadn’t been destroyed, it would still be visible.

She asked the others, “Have you seen anyone else anywhere near here – aside from the man with the dog who found the body?”

The cops shrugged and looked at each other.

One of them said, “Nobody except Rags Tucker.”

Riley’s eyes widened.

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“Just an eccentric old beachcomber,” Chief Belt said. “He lives in a little wigwam over there.”

Belt pointed farther along the beach where the shoreline curved away from the area where they stood.

Riley was getting a little angry now.

“Why didn’t anybody mention him before?” she snapped.

“There wasn’t much point,” Belt said. “We talked to him when we first got here. He didn’t see anything having to do with the murder. He said he’d been asleep when it happened.”

Riley let out a groan of irritation.

“We’re going to pay this guy a visit,” she said.

Followed by Bill, Jenn, and Chief Belt, she started walking along the sand.

As they walked, Riley said to Belt, “I thought you’d closed off the beach.”

“We did,” Belt said.

“Then what the hell is anybody still doing here?” Riley asked.

“Well, like I said, Rags sort of lives here,” Belt said. “There didn’t seem to be any point in kicking him out. Besides, he’s got no place else to go.”

After they rounded the curve, Belt led them up across the sand to a grassy rise. The group waded through the soft sand and tall grass to the top of the rise. From there Riley could see a little makeshift wigwam about a hundred yards away.

“That’s ol’ Rags’s house,” Belt said.

As they approached, Riley saw that it was covered with plastic bags and blankets. Here behind the rise, it was safely out of reach whenever the tide was high. The wigwam was surrounded by blankets covered with what looked like a crazy assortment of objects.

Riley said to Belt, “Tell me about this Rags Tucker character. Doesn’t Belle Terre have rules against vagrancy?”

Belt chuckled a little.

He said, “Well, yeah, but Rags isn’t exactly your typical vagrant. He’s colorful, and people like him, visitors especially. And he’s not a suspect, believe me. He’s the most harmless guy in the world.”

Belt pointed to the things out on the blanket.

“He’s got kind of a goofy business going with all that stuff he’s got. He picks up junk off the beach, and people come around to buy stuff, or to exchange stuff they don’t want anymore. Mostly it’s just an excuse for folks to hang around and talk to him. He does this all summer, for as long as the weather here is comfortable. He manages to put together enough money to rent a cheap little apartment in Sattler for the winter. Then when the weather’s good again, he comes back here.”

As they got nearer, Riley could see the objects more clearly. It really was a bizarre collection that included driftwood, conch shells, and other natural objects, but also old toasters, broken TVs, old lamps, and other items that visitors had undoubtedly brought for him.

When they got to the edge of the outstretched blankets, Belt called out, “Hey, Rags. I wonder if we could talk to you some more.”

A raspy voice answered from inside the wigwam.

“I told you before, I didn’t see anybody. Haven’t you caught the creep yet? I sure don’t like the idea of a killer on my beach. I’d have already told you if I knew anything.”

Riley stepped toward the wigwam and called out, “Rags, I need to talk to you.”

“Who’re you?”

“FBI. I’m wondering if maybe you’d run across a large sand timer. You know, like an hourglass.”

There was no reply for a few moments. Then a hand inside the wigwam pulled aside a sheet that covered the opening.

Inside was a scrawny man sitting cross-legged, his big eyes staring at her.

And sitting right in front of him was a huge sand timer.