Maura waited, silent. Afraid to hear the story’s ending.
Miss Clausen saw the apprehension in her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, Alice didn’t die. It was the dog saved her. He knew where she was. Kept barking his fool head off, led people right to the spot.”
“Then she survived.”
The woman nodded. “They found her late that night. By then, she’d been in the hole for hours. When they pulled her out, she was barely speaking. Like a zombie. A few weeks later, her family moved away. I don’t know where they went.”
“What happened to Elijah?”
Miss Clausen gave a shrug. “What do you think happened? He kept insisting it was just a prank. The sort of thing the rest of us kids were doing to Alice every day in school. And it’s true, we all tormented her. We all made her miserable. But Elijah, he took it to the next level.”
“He wasn’t punished?”
“When you’re only fourteen, you get a second chance. Especially when people need you at home. When your dad’s drunk half the day, and there’s a nine-year-old cousin living in the same house.”
“Amalthea,” said Maura softly.
Miss Clausen nodded. “Imagine being a little girl in this house. Growing up in a family of beasts.”
Beasts.
The air suddenly felt charged. Maura’s hands had gone cold. She thought of Amalthea Lank’s ravings. Go away, before he sees you.
And she thought of the scratch mark clawed into her car door. The sign of the Beast.
The cellar door creaked open, startling Maura. She turned and saw Rizzoli standing in the doorway.
“They’ve hit something,” Rizzoli said.
“What is it?”
“Wood. Some kind of panel, about two feet down. They’re trying to clear away the dirt now.” She pointed to the box of trowels on the counter. “We’ll need those.”
Maura carried the box down the cellar steps. She saw that piles of excavated earth now ringed the perimeter of their trench, extending almost six feet long.
The size of a coffin.
Detective Corso, who now wielded the shovel, glanced up at Maura. “Panel feels pretty thick. But listen.” He banged the shovel against the wood. “It’s not solid. There’s an air space underneath.”
Yates said, “You want me to take over now?”
“Yeah, my back’s about to give out.” Corso handed over the shovel.
Yates dropped into the trench, his shoes thudding onto the wood. A hollow sound. He attacked the dirt with grim determination, flinging it onto a rapidly growing mound. No one spoke as more and more of the panel emerged. The two flood lamps slanted their harsh light across the trench, and Yates’s shadow bounced like a marionette on the cellar walls. The others watched, silent as grave robbers eagerly awaiting their first glimpse into a tomb.
“I’ve cleared one edge here,” said Yates, breathing hard, his shovel scraping across wood. “Looks like some kind of crate. I’ve already dinged it with the shovel. I don’t want to damage the wood.”
“I’ve got the trowels and brushes,” said Maura.
Yates straightened, panting, and clambered out of the hole. “Okay. Maybe you can clear off that dirt on top. We’ll get some photos before we pry it open.”
Maura and Gary dropped into the trench, and she felt the panel shudder under their weight. She wondered what horrors lay beneath the stained planks, and had a terrible vision of the wood suddenly giving way, of plunging into decayed flesh. Ignoring her pounding heart, she knelt down and began to sweep dirt away from the panel.
“Hand me one of those brushes, too,” said Rizzoli, about to jump into the trench as well.
“Not you,” said Yates. “Why don’t you just take it easy?”
“I’m not handicapped. I hate standing around doing nothing.”
Yates gave an anxious laugh. “Yeah, well, we’d hate seeing you go into labor down there. And I wouldn’t want to have to explain it to your husband, either.”
Maura said, “There’s not much maneuvering room down here, Jane.”
“Well, let me reposition these lamps for you. So you can see what you’re doing.”
Rizzoli moved a flood lamp, and suddenly light beamed down on the corner where Maura was working. Crouched on her knees, Maura used the brush to clear soil from the planks, uncovering pinpoints of rust. “I’m seeing old nail heads here,” she said.
“I’ve got a crowbar in the car,” said Corso. “I’ll get it.”
Maura kept brushing away dirt, uncovering the rusted heads of more nails. The space was cramped, and her neck and shoulders began to ache. She straightened her back. Heard a clank behind her.
“Hey,” said Gary. “Look at this.”
Maura turned and saw that Gary’s trowel had scraped up against an inch of broken pipe.
“Seems to come straight up through the edge of this panel,” said Gary. With bare fingers, he gingerly probed the rusted protrusion and broke through a clot of dirt crusting the top. “Why would you stick a pipe into a…” He stopped. Looked at Maura.
“It’s an air hole,” she said.
Gary stared down at the planks under his knees. Said, softly: “What the hell’s inside this thing?”
“Come out of the hole, you two,” said Pete. “We’re going to take photos.”
Yates reached down to help Maura out and she stepped back from the trench, feeling suddenly light-headed from rising too quickly to her feet. She blinked, dazed by the flashes of the camera. By the surreal glare of floodlights and the shadows dancing on the walls. She went to the cellar steps and sat down. Only then remembered that the step she was now resting on was impregnated with ghostly traces of blood.
“Okay,” said Pete. “Let’s open it.”
Corso knelt beside the trench and worked the tip of the crowbar under one corner of the lid. He strained to pry up the panel, eliciting a squeal of rusty nail heads.
“It’s not budging,” said Rizzoli.
Corso paused and wiped his sleeve across his face, leaving a streak of dirt on his forehead. “Man, my back’s gonna pay for this tomorrow.” Again he positioned the tip of the crowbar under the lid. This time he was able to jam it farther in. He sucked in a deep breath and threw his weight against the fulcrum.
The nails screeched free.
Corso tossed aside the crowbar. He and Yates both reached into the trench, grasped the edge of the lid, and lifted. For a moment, no one said a word. They all stared into the hole, now fully revealed under the glare of flood lamps.
“I don’t get it,” said Yates.
The crate was empty.
They drove home that night, down a highway glistening with rain. Maura’s windshield wipers swept a slow, hypnotic beat across misted glass.
“All that blood in the kitchen,” said Rizzoli. “You know what it means. Amalthea’s killed before. Nikki and Theresa Wells weren’t her first victims.”
“She wasn’t alone in that house, Jane. Her cousin Elijah lived there, too. It could have been him.”
“She was nineteen years old when the Sadlers vanished. She had to know what was happening in her own kitchen.”
“It doesn’t mean she’s the one who did it.”
Rizzoli looked at her. “You believe O’Donnell’s theory? About the Beast?”
“Amalthea is schizophrenic. Tell me how someone with a mind that disordered manages to kill two women, and then goes through the very logical step of burning their bodies, destroying the evidence?”
“She didn’t do that good a job of covering her tracks. She got caught, remember?”
“The police in Virginia got lucky. Catching her on a routine traffic stop wasn’t an example of brilliant detective work.” Maura stared ahead at fingers of mist curling across the empty highway. “She didn’t kill those women all by herself. There had to be someone else helping her, someone who left fingerprints in her car. Someone who’s been with her from the very beginning.”
“Her cousin?”
“Elijah was only fourteen when he buried that girl alive. What kind of boy would do something like that? What kind of man does he grow into?”