Five hundred feet.
One hundred.
I turned off the ignition, and we got out, heading to the back of the SUV and grabbing the shovels. The sun was still high in the sky, and a slight wind was moving from the southeast.
“Give me a second,” I said, walking forward, my phone and shovel in hand.
The area where we’d parked was an open field, and the ground was a mix of wetland grasses and sandy dirt, which had a silty texture from the overflow of the river. Far in the distance, the greenery got taller, and I could see a line of magnolias. Close to us was a fence, marking out the confines of private property.
As I paced off an area near the fence line, I could hear Quinones telling Richie that he had looked up PAR and come to the conclusion that we were “the real deal.” I wondered how long that would last once I put him to work digging holes.
When I had the area mapped off in my head, I motioned Richie and the detective over and paced off seventeen feet. I told Richie to stand there. Then I asked Detective Quinones to step two feet over and six feet back. I walked to a third spot.
“I’m going to ask you each to dig four holes,” I said. “Thirty inches deep. Can you do that?”
Richie glanced at me. “Hey, I work for you.”
I looked at Quinones.
He shrugged. “Why not.”
Still, he didn’t look prepared to dig. “Do you have a question?” I asked.
He shook his head, and we all began. Richie dug, then moved, as did Quinones and I. As we got deep, we had to go wider, and the process took time.
“If you hit nothing,” I said, “move two feet to the east for your next hole. If nothing’s there, two feet south. Then east. Then south.”
We each finished our second hole and moved.
As we started our third, the detective began speaking. “The way I see it,” he said loudly, “you fellas gotta start back at the beginning. Talk to witnesses. Look for new leads.”
Others might have been frustrated by Quinones’s complaints, but I was blocking the noise out. Thinking of a time when I was eleven and my mother had taken me panning for gold. It was a trip to Arizona that I’d begged to go on, but upon arrival at the location, it was clear the place was a tourist trap. Still, I stayed out every night until 9 p.m., convinced the statistics were on my side. That I would find gold and make us a fortune.
“I’m at depth,” Richie said.
He was going faster than Quinones and I were.
“Just wait for us,” I said, “so we’re all moving in tandem.”
“These are folks from marginalized communities,” Quinones continued, still digging. “Prostitutes. Illegals. But that doesn’t mean someone didn’t see something.”
“I’m ready to move,” I said to Richie, and we all shifted.
A moment later, I heard a noise and looked over.
Richie stood there, frozen.
He’d hit something.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Richie’s shovel was eighteen inches into the ground at the fourth spot, and the sound we’d heard was the blade connecting with an object that was hard, yet gave off a dull thud.
I turned to Quinones. “The three women were wrapped in cloth, correct?”
The detective nodded, but his face barely moved. “Yeah,” he said. “Like—strips of it.”
“Mark where you are, Detective,” I said. “I’ll do the same. Then we’ll both help Richie.”
