The Third Grave (Savannah #4) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,75

His pulse kicked up and he pushed the speed limit, driving out of town, through suburbia to the road that wound along the river.

The thought of finding the third Duval girl bothered him, and he was surprised at his disappointment. At a gut level he’d hoped to find her alive, living under an alias, perhaps not even knowing she was the missing Rose Duval, that the memory of her youngest years had been erased or blurred with the passage of time. But why would she be located away from the crypt, where it seemed the killer had created a space for her.

His fingers clenched more tightly over the wheel as he turned off the main road to a lane where the asphalt had buckled and finally turned to gravel. Dry weeds scraped the undercarriage while the Jeep’s tires bumped through potholes. Around a scraggly pine he found the deputy’s cruiser and a dirty white pickup with a canopy, fishing poles propped against its side.

Tina Rounds was as daunting and by-the-book as ever. The man beside her, Frank Mentos, was no more than five-six, a little round in the middle, his eyes huge in their sockets. His hair was gray beneath a baseball cap, and he was wearing hip waders and a fisherman’s vest.

The story was simple: Mentos had been fishing around the lake, started back to his truck, when he noticed something half covered in brush and dirt. Upon closer examination, he’d realized he was looking at a denim jacket, beneath which he thought he saw bones. He’d freaked, called 911, and Rounds was the first on the scene. She’d phoned Reed.

“Damnedest thing I ever seen,” Mentos said, swallowing hard as he stared at the partial skeleton.

Reed bent down on one knee, careful not to disturb anything, but looking at the bones and tattered clothing: the raggedy jacket and once-red shirt. If there had been pants, they had either disintegrated or been dragged off by animals, along with several obviously missing bones.

His heart nose-dived. The skeleton was, indeed, small.

“Hey!” A shout behind him caught his attention and he turned, still kneeling, to find Delacroix, her expression serious, sunglasses over her eyes as she hurried down the path. “What’ve we got? Oh, geez.” She nodded at Rounds and Mentos, and Reed filled her in as she, too, crouched for a better look at the body. “This all there is?” she said. “Missing leg bones and an arm?”

“All we’ve found so far,” Rounds said as the sun beat down, and Reed felt himself sweating.

“It’s not Rose Duval,” Delacroix said, rocking back on her heels and shaking her head. “But some other kid.”

Rounds asked, “How do you know?”

“Size,” she said, and Reed agreed. The skeleton would be too large for a five-year-old. “And she was too young to have lost her baby teeth. This one has adult-size incisors.”

“Unless she was brought here later,” Reed hypothesized. “The killer could have kept her a few years, then returned her here.”

“Unlikely.” Delacroix straightened and kept her voice low. “He already had a spot picked out for her,” she said, reminding him of the space for a third body at the Beaumont estate. “Why leave her here?”

Mentos’s Adam’s apple wobbled. “You think there were more?”

“Victims?” Delacroix asked.

“Yeah.” Mentos nodded and licked his lips. “Like more than those poor girls?”

“Unknown,” Reed said.

“Could be unrelated,” Delacroix said. “Why don’t you come down to the station and make a full statement?”

“I thought I just did.” Mentos looked from one cop to the other.

Delacroix offered a hard grin. “I know. Thank you. But there’s some red tape involved. Not much, but you know, this way it’s official.”

Mentos turned his eyes on Reed, as if looking for confirmation.

Reed backed up his partner. “You heard the detective,” he said. “Best way to wrap up your part.”

Mentos gave a short nod, as if he’d just won an argument with himself. “Okay, then. I will.” He glanced down at the bones now exposed to the harsh afternoon light. “I just hope this was an accident of some kind. That there ain’t some psycho out there pickin’ on kids.”

“You and me both,” Reed agreed. “You and me both.”

CHAPTER 18

It was after three when Nikki finally hit the road to drive to Tybee Island. Since her meeting with Brit Sully, she’d attended back-to-back appointments with her physicians. The first had been with an orthopedic surgeon, who had been satisfied with her shoulder.

“Healing nicely,” he’d said, and when she’d asked if she could ditch her sling, he’d told