Open Grave Page 2

  Samuel was already pounding the brakes and pulling the wheel. The whirl of pale-colored motion that had darted into the road and fallen in front of the car slowly, painfully coalesced in his mind: a girl. Had he hit her? He hadn’t felt a thud or thump, but the Dodge was solidly built and so very much larger than the slight figure that had appeared from nowhere, as if by magic.

  Jo crossed her arm in front of Maybelle as the car lurched to a stop. Samuel opened his door and leapt out, scanning the road behind him. The girl was a heap of worn calico and denim, kneeling in the road, dusty pale soles of her feet facing him, head held in her hands, straggling brown hair hiding her features.

  A vacant lot littered with the burnt-out ruins of a house crowded with weeds and saplings lay on one side of the road. The house on the other side hid behind a tall hedge of evergreens, only its roof visible.

  No one to be seen, no hands tugging at curtains, no eyes blazing venom at the Negro daring to approach a white girl.

  The girl looked up at him, twisting her body like a feral animal preparing to escape.

  “Please,” she begged through choked tears. “Please. You gotta help. Please. They’re gonna kill him.”

  Chapter One

  Greer Quarry and Stone Works, Greer, PA

  July 1st

  * * *

  Walter shielded his eyes from the bright July sun and stared up at the stark cliffs of the quarry. The way they loomed above the boat made him feel small, insignificant. He lowered his gaze back to where his brother, Terry, stood at the boat’s wheel. Sunlight bounced from the crystalline clear blue water of the quarry and he wished he hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses in the truck.

  “The judge is gonna kill us, he finds out. Technically, we’re trespassing.” No technically about it, and they both knew it.

  Terry shrugged away Walt’s concerns. Like he always did. He was the eldest but far more reckless. “Judge Greer’s a good businessman. Knows we can’t make a proper bid for the property without fully inspecting it.”

  “He already told us he wasn’t going to sell the quarry.” Not over his dead body had been the exact words.

  “Just means he wants to make sure we’re serious and not wasting his time.” Terry turned to face Walt. “We’ll need to re-grade the boat access, turn it into a proper landing ramp.” He waved to the area on the far side of the water where the truck and boat trailer waited. “That shallow section will be perfect for classes. With a large dive platform maybe twelve-fifteen feet below the surface.”

  Walt nodded. Terry was the one with the big dreams; Walt’s job was to figure out how to make them come true.

  “Then,” Terry continued, his hands skimming out over the darker waters closer to the sheer cliff walls, “down here on the deep side, we’ll lay out dive paths along with decompression platforms. Stock the whole place with paddlefish and interesting objects for folks to get their picture taken with. I was thinking maybe an old weather balloon, if we can figure out how to anchor it and keep it inflated.”

  “How about a phone booth?”

  “E.T. phone home. I like that.” He turned back to the wheel, leaning over their Hummingbird fish finder. “Got something down on the bottom. Around a hundred-twenty feet.”

  Walt craned to look over Terry’s shoulder. “Equipment abandoned when they let the quarry fill?”

  Terry’s grin turned wicked. “Maybe the stories are true. About the quarry ghosts. Two young lovers leaping from lovers’ lane.”

  Walt’s gaze jumped up to the crumpling edge of the cliff overhead. He wished Terry wouldn’t joke about things like that. Hard to believe this barren stretch of land had ever been a lovers’ lane. Most unromantic spot he could imagine. Goosebumps crawled over his skin as they entered the shadow of the granite wall.

  “Looks like a big car,” he told Terry, tracing the outline of the object on the screen.

  “So they didn’t jump. Maybe it wasn’t even suicide. Maybe just two drunk, horny kids too busy necking to know they released the emergency brake.” He arched his hand up before plunging it in a nosedive. “Only one way to find out.”

  “What? Today?”

  “Sure, why not? We got the gear. If we’re going to invest in this place, open up our own dive school, then we need to check out the conditions, right?” He was already unpacking the tri-mix tanks from their gear bags. Terry lived for technical dives—the deeper and more dangerous, the better. Which left Walt to play mother hen, working the numbers, calculating depth times and decompression stops.

  But once they were below the surface, their bubbles sparking through the gleam of their dive lights, all worry fell away. Despite growing up in landlocked rural Pennsylvania, both Walt and Terry had always felt most at home in the water. Terry had even done a stint in the Navy—he’d hoped to be a SEAL but had ended up a mechanic. While Walt—who hadn’t passed the physical to join up, something about scoliosis—had worked fishing charters from the Outer Banks down to the Keys during school breaks before he finally dropped out of college and came back home to help his parents with their struggling family farm.

  This quarry, surrounded by ancient rock, abandoned as useless once underground springs flooded it, was their family’s chance to finally pay off their debt. He and Terry could still work the farm weekdays and open the quarry up on weekends and holidays. Dive enthusiasts were always looking for good spots that didn’t entail expensive travel to far off exotic places. Although, as Terry said, finding good, deep water in the middle of the Alleghenies was probably more exotic than heading to the crowded dive spots in the Caribbean.

  The crystalline water remained clear even as it darkened at the deeper depths. Little debris, mud, or silt, almost no algae. Some chemical in the rocks maybe kept it at bay while giving the water an unnaturally bright turquoise hue, unlike anything seen around here. The quarry had a surprising number of fish, and they were curious about the two strange new visitors. Both had their video cameras going, and Walt caught a great shot of several fish nuzzling Terry.

  Then they arrived at their destination. It was a car. An old one, big and clunky, yet somehow pretty. It glowed an otherworldly shade of blue in the sharp white of the dive lamps.

  Terry swam around to the back, his light a tight beam. Walt glided to the front, framing the hood ornament and insignia in his camera shot. The hood was slightly buckled and the front windshield cracked, but other than that, there was no obvious damage; the car looked like new.

  Definitely not left behind before the quarry filled with water—no rust. So how had it gotten here? He backed away, counting down the seconds before they’d need to begin their ascent. Terry motioned him in closer, pointing to the passenger side window. Walt tapped his dive watch even though they had a little more time left.

  Terry shook his head, pointed to the window, gesturing for Walt to take a look inside the car. Walt really, really did not want to look, but he could never resist Terry. Walt glided into the car, his bubbles bouncing from the glass. At first his dive light was too bright, reflecting from the glass, and he couldn’t see inside. He reached to adjust it, accidentally knocking it too far, plunging him into darkness.

  He fumbled the light. Its beam shuddered in his hand, bouncing in time to his pulse. His ears roared—he was hyperventilating. As he fought to slow his breathing, his temples throbbing and eyes burning with pressure, his hand finally steadied the light.

  The black void pierced by the beam broke into a star-shaped shadow. No. Not a shadow. A hand—or what was left of it. Pressed against the car window.

  Beyond the hand the light hit a skull. Snaggled hair and greasy fat clung to it, its lower jaw hanging open on one side in a gaping, ghoulish grin.

  Chapter Two

  July 3rd

  * * *

  She’d take out the leader first, TK O’Connor decided. Hard jab to the throat, leg sweep. The combo would send him to the pavement. Question was: would the three—no, four, she’d missed the skinny kid by the mouth of the
alley—others attack or give her time to escape?

  She blamed her predicament on the heat and sloppy city planning. One side of the street was lined by a row of burnt-out houses, their roofs bowed in surrender behind a hastily constructed eight-foot tall chain-link fence.

  Opposite, stood a ragged yellow brick four-story apartment building. Both the fence and the building were plastered with election signs. Take GREER to Congress! they read, the words circling around a photo of JR Greer, the mayor of Greer, smiling like a used car salesman. Seemed like a long shot for a small-town mayor, but since JR was the one who’d hired the Beacon Group to assist with a cold case, she wasn’t about to argue the point.

  But she did blame the mayor for her current predicament. The street she’d intended to cut down to get to the police station from her hotel was closed. Not for construction, for demolition.

  From what she’d seen so far of Greer, there was a whole lot of the town ripe for demolition. Starting with this group of corner boys who’d decided a pretty young blonde walking alone made for an easy target. No matter it was broad daylight and ninety-some degrees. They were bored and aimless—two things that made any pack of men dangerous.

  Her messenger bag was slung across her chest and she wore cargo pants, her Merrill combat boots, and a loose-fitting sleeveless blouse. Along with two knives, one in her boot, the other in her front pocket, and a Beretta nine millimeter at the small of her back. Definitely overdressed for the occasion.

  The uniform of the day if you were a Greer street thug consisted of baggy shorts, a variety of colorful short-sleeved shirts, hanging unbuttoned and untucked over wife-beaters, ball caps optional. Plus tatts. Even on the skinny kid near the alley who surely couldn’t be more than thirteen. Skin inked like a billboard.

  Except for a smattering of freckles on her shoulders, TK’s arms were bare, mainly because she’d never gotten drunk enough to join her squad and have the insignias she was entitled to emblazoned on her flesh.

  “Lady, are you seriously ignoring us?” The leader, not taller or bigger than the others, but the one with the deadest eyes who did all the talking that mattered. “We pay you compliments and you don’t even thank us?”

  She met his gaze. Oh yeah, he was definitely going down. It was the two linebackers flanking him that she was worried about. One at a time, she could take them, but not with the others blocking her escape route. No. Only way out was through Mr. Dead Eyes.

  “C’mon,” one of the others sang out. “At least give us a smile.” He favored her with one of his own, sunlight sparking off gleaming gold inlays shaped like pistols.

  The others joined in, crowding her, herding her, closing ranks around their prey. They didn’t seem to realize that she was actually steering them toward the spot she’d chosen to make her stand. The entrance to an alley between two apartment complexes. Narrow enough to take the linebackers out of the equation for the few seconds she’d need, leaving her with only the skinny kid after she dropped Dead Eyes and the guy behind him. Poor Skinny Kid. Should have stayed home, watched cartoons.

  Other than a quick glance at a map before leaving her hotel, she didn’t know the town of Greer, but she knew alleys. Here, Fallujah, back home in Pittsburgh running a parkour course, alleys were all the same. Narrow and crowded with opportunities. Beyond the kid, she spotted the rungs of a fire escape dangling eight feet off the ground. Drop Dead Eyes, plow through Skinny Kid, vault onto the top ledge of the dumpster, short leap to the fire escape, up the building, and gone…

  TK flexed her fingers, bounced on her heels, eager to flee. She could do it…but…should she do it? Physically assaulting at least two people, maybe three? For what? A barrage of innuendoes and trash talk?

  Yet, her only crime was being a woman walking alone down the wrong street at the wrong time. Why should she have to deal with their BS?

  No good answer. She flicked her gaze from the alley, shifting her attention from her mental choreography of parkour moves and close quarter combat strikes back to Dead Eyes. Who actually, despite his bravado, was just another teenaged kid, pretending to be a man. Smart enough to keep his boys in check—no one had laid hands on her; she almost wished they would, it would make her decision so much easier—but not smart enough to find gainful employment or a better use of his summer vacation than slouching against a crooked lamppost on a street corner, marking his territory.

  As TK continued her halting forward progress, the pack of youths surging with her, she wished she was better at clever comebacks. Seemed like it was always the next day when she figured out the perfect response to situations like this—so much easier to resort to primal fight or flight. Easier, but not better.

  “Leave her alone!” a man shouted from behind her.

  TK glanced over her shoulder and saw a white guy, college-aged, which made him a few years younger than her own twenty-six, dressed in slacks and a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top despite the heat. His hair was nicely trimmed, and he could have been a youth minister or a librarian or maybe an office worker out for a morning coffee run, caught like her in the maze of blocked streets.

  Either way, he was a civilian and a complication to the carefully balanced social algebra she and the corner boys had silently negotiated. Dead Eyes leered at the approaching man, the two boys behind TK turning to face this new target. Leaving TK squarely in the middle.

  “I’m fine,” she called to the man, hoping he’d get the message and make his escape before things escalated. She’d had this under control. Until he came along.

  “I said,” his voice low and yet carrying effortlessly to them, his pace slow and certain as he continued his approach, “leave her alone.”

  A lone woman, she didn’t pose enough of a threat to instigate any violence from the group of boys, but a man might. Especially this guy with his bland looks and confrontational attitude—the perfect contradiction of easy target and ego-threatening challenge that would make it difficult for the corner boys to back down peacefully.

  “You telling us what to do?” Skinny Kid shouted, his sudden assertiveness surprising TK and from the look on his face, himself as well. “We got every right to be here. Free country.”

  Dead Eyes stepped up beside Skinny Kid, the others squaring off beside him, forming a solid wall of muscle and flesh between TK and the white guy. She moved into the street where she had them all in view and room to maneuver. She could have simply taken off, made her own escape, but she felt responsible for the civilian now caught squarely in the corner boys’ sights.

  The white guy didn’t back down or show any fear; instead he stood his ground, his bland expression taunting the boys. TK couldn’t see a weapon on the man, but she sensed that he had one—the source of his confidence.

  The corner boys tensed as the white guy reached into his back pocket—but they didn’t draw any weapons of their own, proving TK right when she’d decided that they were unarmed. The white guy didn’t pull a weapon, at least not anything with lethal force; instead, he drew out his cell phone and aimed the camera at Dead Eye’s crew.

  “I asked you to leave this woman alone,” he narrated. “This is a live stream of your response. Want to see how quickly you end up in jail if you choose wrong?”

  His calm tone irritated even TK. He was much too confident for someone so young, outnumbered five to one—not including her, of course, but it was obvious that to the white guy she was a damsel in distress, not someone to count on if things turned violent.

  The idea of needing to be rescued—or even being perceived to be helpless, powerless—rankled. She’d had things under control. Hadn’t needed or asked for his help. And now she was caught, unable to protest or say anything until the standoff was decided. She was tempted to leave, let the testosterone storm dissipate on its own.

  A short squawk from a police siren interrupted the standoff. Dead Eyes shifted his attention to the street where a patrol car pulled to the curb, its front bumper sagging to scrape the uneven pavement, h
urling random sparks.

  “My man, Karlan,” Dead Eyes called to the officer behind the wheel. “Verdict in?”

  The officer rolled down his window. “Not yet.” He jerked his chin at the white guy who joined TK at the police car. “Everything all right here, Grayson?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle, Detective Karlan,” the white guy, Grayson, said. Somehow he made it sound as if he was the cavalry riding in to save the day.

  The police officer, a black man in his fifties, turned his attention to TK “You TK O’Connor?”

  “Jamel Karlan?”

  He nodded. “Hop in.”

  Grayson opened the passenger door before TK could reach it, holding it for her, his back to the corner boys.

  Dead Eyes didn’t seem to notice his prey escaping. “You know,” he said to Karlan in a conversational tone, “they let that cop get away with murder, we gonna have us a Fourth of July party no one’s gonna ever forget. Starting with some home cooked barbequed pig.”

  As TK settled into her seat, shifting so her knee wouldn’t knock against the shotgun secured below the dash and edging away from the computer canted on the center console, she watched for Karlan’s response to Dead Eye’s threat.

  Karlan didn’t take Dead Eye’s bait, instead calmly said, “How about we wait for the grand jury to decide if it was even murder or not?”

  Dead Eyes rolled back on his heels and spit on the sidewalk. “I should believe a bunch of folks too stupid to get out of jury duty? No way. Round here justice ain’t just blind, it’s deaf and dumb.”

  Grayson, still on the sidewalk with the others, shook his head. “Already making excuses so you all can have a riot no matter what the verdict is.”

  “Don’t need no excuse when there’s never any justice,” Dead Eyes shot back. “Not that you’d ever know what that’s like.”