She turned and left, leaving Laredo staring moodily after her.
Chapter 32
PINE HAD NOT GONE TO SLEEP. She had not even come close to shutting her eyes. She had sat on her bed, fully dressed, until well after midnight. She had heard Blum come in and go to her room. She might have come out then and talked to her friend, but she chose not to. She wasn’t exactly sure why.
Coward.
At one in the morning, Pine rose, walked back down the stairs and out the front door into a damp, chilly night in Andersonville. She drew her coat closer around her and headed out to a destination she hadn’t really thought about going to until that very minute.
Eschewing her rental SUV, she hustled on foot across the highway to the Andersonville National Historic Site, barely beating a collision with a late-night motorist zipping down the road and not paying much attention. She entered the grounds and soon reached the location of the second victim’s body. The police tape was still up, but there was no one guarding the crime scene; apparently all available evidence had already been collected, or perhaps, like the spot where Hanna Rebane had been found, it was a simple lack of manpower. Although with the Bureau now officially involved additional resources had been deployed.
She had never imagined that the additional resources would be Eddie Laredo.
She looked down at the spot where the body had been found. She didn’t know yet that he’d been identified as Layne Gillespie, formerly of the U.S. Army with a general discharge for reasons as yet unknown. She didn’t know that he had lived last in Savannah. She didn’t know why someone had ended his life and then dressed him like a cheap groom.
There was obviously something systematic about the killer’s methods and selection of victims along with the presentation of the bodies in the strange garb. But she didn’t know enough to truly nail what his goal was.
These guys never make it easy. I guess that’s the point.
She ducked under the police tape.
A sharper breeze was starting to blow in from the north. As a child she had never remembered Georgia as being particularly cold, but now it felt downright frigid to her.
Being in a cemetery at night probably doesn’t help.
She knelt down and looked at the grave marker. It was the first one on the left.
“Patrick Delaney from Pennsylvania,” she read off. The other names left to right were Charles Curtis, William Collins, John Sarsfield, W. Rickson, with the U.S. Navy, and A. Munn, also with the U.S. Navy.
Was there any significance that the dead man had been placed on Delaney’s grave? The victim had been black, that was also something to keep in mind. But these graves contained the remains of Union soldiers. Though they had been bad guys as POWs, they had been fighting to free the slaves.
Or maybe I’m overthinking this and it has nothing to do with the history here at all.
But it had been a risk to carry a body out here. Very risky. But then it had been dicey to leave the body of Hanna Rebane in a public area. This guy liked to take chances, that was clear.
This area smelled of death even though the last burial along this short row of graves had taken place more than 150 years ago. But the stench lingered. It would be here forever because all those who had died here would never leave this place. If you believed in God, you would trust that their spirits had long since gone to a better place. But six feet under her boots, Pine knew the human remains of those “spirits” would have an eternal presence in Andersonville.
Pine didn’t know if it was the snap of a twig or just her personal antennae that made her reach for her gun. She pivoted on the balls of her feet to take in as much of her surroundings as possible. Maybe it was a squirrel, maybe it was a late-night visitor like her.
Maybe it was the killer coming back for something.
Maybe coming for her.
Another twig snap.
Now she went on the move, not electing to be a sitting duck. Her first tactic was to force whoever was out there to lose a sight line on her, if he had one. She did this by hustling across the graveyard and reaching the office building for the Park Service. It was a two-story structure made of wood and brick painted red with some