Naked Prey

“Whoops.”
    “Got something?”
    “Got a hole. We got it on the third and fourth runs. It looks like it’s, uh, four feet long and three feet wide.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Mostly what look like tread tracks from the bulldozer, both current ones and some buried ones . . . but the hole cuts through all of that. It looks like there’re a few inches of packed stuff, then it goes soft.” He tapped the computer screen. “You can see the edges of it.”
    “Better get some shovels out here,” Lucas said. “Whydon’t you guys pin down the edges of the hole, and Del and I’ll get the shovels.”
    “Get some sandwiches,” one of the Californians said. “There’s a place in town called Logan’s . . . ”
    “Fancy Meats,” Lucas said. “Give me your orders. Might as well do it right. I’ll get some lights, too.”
    T HEY WENT THROUGH Broderick without slowing down and as soon as they were within cell-phone range, Lucas called Ray Zahn. “I need to get the guy who runs the dump bulldozer. Know where we can find him?”
    “Yeah, he’s about three blocks from me, if he’s home,” Zahn said. “What do you want him for?”
    “We need him to show us around the dump,” Lucas said. “It’s serious.”
    “I’ll drag his ass up there,” Zahn said. “When do you want him?”
    A T THE A CE Hardware, Lucas bought four long-handled shovels and four spotlights with cigarette-lighter adapters. “Haven’t sold that many spotlights since deer season,” the counterman said. “Pick out a deer at two hundred yards.”
    Lucas thought about that for a moment, then went to the back of the store and found four two-by-four-foot pressed-board handy panels with one white side, and a roll of duct tape. “Reflectors,” he said to Del. Outside, it was getting dark.
    B ACK AT THE dump, the Californians had outlined the hole, and using a long-bladed screwdriver, had determined that there were about six to eight inches of compressed dirt over a looser fill.
    Lucas used a tire-iron to pop the lock off the dump gate, and they drove Lucas’s truck and the two FBI vehicles into a circle around the dig site. Lucas brought the spotlights out, the Californians set up the white panels, and when the lights were plugged in, Lucas focused them on the panels, and the dig-site was bathed in a smooth reflected light.
    “Cool,” one of the Californians said.
    T HEY STARTED DIGGING, three at a time—four shovelers was one too many—and cleared out the ’ dozer-compacted cap in ten minutes.
    “Looks like a grave,” Del said from the sidelines.
    Another set of headlights swept over the dump, and a minute later, Ray Zahn had pulled in beside Lucas’s Acura. Zahn and another man got out, and Zahn said to Lucas, “This is Phil Bussard. He runs the ’dozer.”
    “You remember seeing anything that looked like a hole, or a dug spot, right here, this morning?”
    “Nothing like that,” Bussard said. “Did see a bunch of truck tracks. Somebody unloaded something back here. Didn’t think nothing of it.”
    “How did they get through the gate?” Lucas asked. “Is it always locked when you’re not here?”
    “Yeah, but about half the people in town know the combination,” Bussard said. “All kinds of people are authorized to get in here, and the number gets around. It’s ten-twenty-thirty.”
    “So why lock it at all?”
    “For the lawyers. If somebody works the lock and gets in here, and gets hurt, I guess it’s breaking and entering, or something. They committed a crime, and if they get hurt doing it, it ain’t the county’s fault.”
    “Where were you working a month ago? Around Christmas?”
    “Right over on the other side there,” Bussard said, pointing. “If you look at the edge, you can see some Christmas wrap. That’s where it’d be.”
    “See any holes over there?”
    “Not that I remember. See truck tracks all the time.”
    Zahn came back from the widening hole. “Sure does look like a grave,” he said.
    T HE PEOPLE IN the hole were slowing down, so the last Californian, Bussard, and Lucas took the shovels, and continued down. At three feet, the Californian said, “Somebody hand me that screwdriver.”
    He took the screwdriver, squatted, and pushed it into the dirt at the bottom of the hole, probed for a minute, then stood up. “I’d say we’re eight inches off the garbage level.”
    “That’d be about right,” Bussard said, bobbing his head.
    Eight inches down, Lucas cut through a