Once Buried

“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.