Chapter Sixteen
The Cemetery
Monday Night
The Discovery
Well, holy Hell’s bells, this was one hot freaking mess if she ever saw one. Oh, this was definitely escalating in leaps and bounds, and it didn’t make her happy in the least to know they were stuck in the middle of it.
It wasn’t so much that she was targeted, because honestly, when wasn’t she?
That was the story of her goddamn life.
This was more about the fact that this was going to go nuclear as soon as the media got wind, and that was going to happen as soon as the judge approved those warrants. This was going to be all over the news, and the families of these dead women were about to have their lives ripped back open.
And the blowback was going to be nasty.
Bet.
On.
It.
On top of that, she was going to be playing sick and twisted games as someone gunned for her. That never went well in the media.
Speaking of games, that message was definitely going to rile up some men.
Her men.
‘‘Welcome to the game, Deputy Director. You’re next. I’ve been waiting for you.’
That pretty much said it all, and she knew the fallout was coming. It looked like she was saddling up for one hell of a ride into the crazy.
No.
Shock.
There.
That was why they paid her the big money to head this division, and to run her part of the FBI.
That and because she was clearly insane.
As they heard Callen and Uriel heading that way, the sound of slapping footsteps on road, it was only a matter of time before Callen saw it.
In three…
Two…
One.
And she knew when he did.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” he said, coming to a stop beside his wife.
They were all staring at the spectacle on the stone, and no one was amused.
No one.
That’s when he said it.
“You’re going to be the death of all of us,” he added. “I know that’s the norm, but seriously? This side of the country, too?”
Her?
Uh, this was her job.
Right?
“Well, I certainly didn’t provoke a crazy. All I did was show up to a crime scene. I’m only a day in, and I haven’t even started to poke this nut.”
Gene wasn’t shocked this was going to take that route.
Why wasn’t he surprised that they’d walked into one hell of a circus?
“Want me to alert our backup?” he asked. “And the cops, too?”
She looked at her watch.
It was heading toward ten, and the last thing she wanted was having to wrangle people in a cemetery while someone was likely enjoying this.
The more people here, the more dangerous.
Tora was a woman, and she could be taken instead of her. She didn’t know enough about this psycho to be sure she would be the only focus.
For the time being, she’d let them stay where they were. Tomorrow, she’d update them.
“No. We’ll handle it. I wish we would have had time to do some research, but this dude is moving fast.”
Yeah, they all wished that.
She’d handed out assignments at dinner, and they’d come right here. The car ride over hadn’t been that long, and it certainly wasn’t long enough to do a deep dive.
She wasn’t done.
“Text Corbin to get researching the dead woman, Steph Lewis. I need to know everything about her to see how she connects to this. Like with Jonathan Miller, their paths all had to connect at some point. We just need to make that connection. Oh, and call Ethan. He’ll lose his shit, so break it to him easily, and no, he isn’t to come back.
The Shaman thing is why we’re here, and he’s going to become that Shaman if it kills all of us. ”
Well, that said it all.
Because at this rate, it might just kill them.
At that telltale tone in her voice, Gene didn’t argue. Elizabeth was annoyed.
Instead, he tapped his fingers to his brow in salute, and went to do as she said, not far away. He was no fool, and he wasn’t going anywhere alone.
Gene was too old for this shit to get abducted. That goddamn skull had horns, and as a practicing Catholic, he wasn’t going to that Devil rodeo.
PASS.
“Is that grave open?” Callen asked, still horrified by all of this.
Honestly, they hadn’t approached it yet, but she could see that it absolutely was open with a big pile of dirt beside it, but she hadn’t looked in it.
“Yep.”
He made an observation.
“That would take hours to unearth.”
She was aware of that also. That this was in a different section told her all she needed to know. This nut had been ready with a backup location.
“Yeah, so it’s ten, so let’s get a timeline,” she offered. “We left the cemetery at four. We would have heard digging if it was going on then, even across the cemetery. We could hear you running. So now, I need to do some math.”
They knew what that meant.
“MATE, I need you.”
At her name, the hologram popped up beside her, and checked out the scene.
“Oh, Devil horns. This one’s about to be fun. From all of the cases you’ve worked, and I’ve read, anytime you get a case with horns, it goes crazy.”
She sighed.
Tell her something she didn’t know.
“Thanks for reminding me. Riddle me this, MATE. How long would it take an out-of-shape person to dig a casket-sized hole by hand?”
She did the math.
“Ten hours.”
“How long would it take a person in excellent shape to dig a hole the same size?”
She did the math again.
“Four hours. If it was say, Ivan, it would take more towards four. If it was Gene, somewhere right behind him. It would take Callen more like eight.”
That the AI was throwing shade made Callen gasp.
“What the hell?” he asked.
MATE was to the point.
“You’d bitch, moan, try to find someone to pay to do it, and talk the entire time. Ivan would do it fast because he’s a Marine, and Gene would be pissed that he had to do it, but he’d do it, nonetheless. You’re a pussy.”
Elizabeth laughed.
How could she not?
The look on her one husband’s face was priceless, mostly because he wasn’t arguing that point. He absolutely would bitch, moan, hire someone, and talk the whole time.
Instead of waiting for Callen to start, she went there.
“So we left at four, and Jeffrey left at the same time, so that means the killer got here sometime after, and completed not that long ago. I’m going to say he’s in good shape. This isn’t the first grave he’s opened.”
No one argued that.
Elizabeth pulled out her phone, and she dialed her husband. She was going to have to get this situation handled.
By situation, she needed an ME.
On the second ring, Chris answered, and she could hear him packing up for the night. There was the very familiar telltale zip of his gear bag.
“Hey! I was just going to call. I’m on my way in five minutes. You owe me cuddle time.”
Well, about that.
She was going to have to take a rain check, and she was betting he wasn’t going to be thrilled.
“We have a problem.”
He said one thing.
“Oh, for fucks sake. What now?” he asked. “If you tell me you’re hurt, again, I’m grounding you.”
She snorted.
The annoyance and frustration were evident in his voice, and she knew why.
‘Cuddle time’ was canceled, and he knew it.
No one was getting laid until they figured this nightmare out.
As she moved toward the hole, she was careful not to walk on evidence, the dirt, so she could stare down into the hole. The lid was open on the casket, and inside, there was a headless body, fully clothed with some dirt that had fallen in.
Oh, she gave this nut credit.
He’d found a way to pop the lid, and access the body, all the while the body stayed in the hole. Someone was smarter than the average cuckoo.
That was for damn sure.
Checking out the remains, she saw one thing that alarmed her. This person’s skirt was askew.
“Elizabeth?” Chris asked, wondering if they’d been disconnected.
“I’m here. I was just looking at the mess we have. We’re at the cemetery, and we have a body.”
Well, sort of.
He sighed.
Honestly, at least it wasn’t anyone hurt. He knew there’d be more fallout, but it had come a little too quickly for his liking.
“I’ll be right there.”
Yeah, that said it all.
While he was mentally preparing himself, she explained the scene because in twenty-two years, she’d never seen someone break into a casket quite like this.
And on day one.
“There’s a skull along with a body, so bring Tony,” she said, not quite sure how to explain this one.
It was crazy.
“He skinned someone’s face, just the eye portion, and placed the eyes back in the holes.
This is nightmare behavior,” she admitted.
“Also, bring half of the techs. We have a body in an open casket. From what we suspect, this may be Steph Lewis. She was the last one buried. Now, we have to figure out if the body is hers. This killer likes to move shit around.”
Chris got it.
Well, it looked like he was going to give Elizabeth her present early. Thank God he’d managed to get Chrissy to take his offer. This was one hell of a case, and it was getting weirder.
He clued her in.
“We have two more IDs,” he said. “One eyeball came back as the same DNA as Alina Mussen. The other one is Lory Vanbruggen.”
Well, that was a familiar name.
It had come up earlier.
That had been the grave that didn’t have grass growing on it, despite it being two weeks. Now, she was pretty sure she knew why.
“Okay, Christopher. Get here. Be careful. We’ll hold the scene. Oh, and the skull has horns. Like devil ones. Yay us. This is about to be wild.”
He wasn’t liking this.
Not.
At.
All.
Immediately, he went there because this wasn’t his first scene, nor his thousandth.
“Did the killer leave a message?” he asked, hesitantly, but only because he knew how this worked.
They’d done this dance plenty of times.
Chris knew that his wife was going to be challenged if the killer did this. He doubted the scene was left like that because of lack of time. Someone was painting a picture.
A gross one.
“Yeah, it said ‘Welcome to the game, Deputy Director.
You’re next. I’ve been waiting for you’,” she admitted.
No.
Big.
Shock.
He’d called that one.