The industrial park is enveloped in a vast cloud of dust. The crest of the bluff is barely visible through the thinner dust at the top of the cloud. I point the Flex toward it, but I know that somewhere out there, heavy equipment is scraping and pushing dirt without any regard for me. As I inch along the gravel road that crosses the mill site between the levee and Port Road, another text arrives: One of the bulldozers blocked the bluff road for ten minutes. I was scared, but it’s clear now. U better haul butt.
A big yellow Caterpillar D7 churns out of the dust to my right, moving toward me. This is how you treat a crime scene if you want to bury evidence. After gauging the movement of the bulldozer, I jam my accelerator to the floor and race for the bluff.
Chapter 12
“What did you see?” I ask as Denny opens the Flex’s back door and sets a wheeled Pelican case on my backseat. I guess that’s how he carries his drone around.
“Check for yourself.” He hands a micro SD card in a tiny plastic case over the seat, then comes around and gets up front.
“How about a summary?” I ask, putting the Flex in gear and heading north along the heavily wooded bluff.
“I definitely saw places where someone has been digging.”
“By the foundation piers?”
“One of them. Also out in the open ground. But those bulldozers have torn that section up by now.”
“I can’t believe they’ve moved this fast. They weren’t scheduled to start today.”
Denny grins. “The good news is, I have GPS coordinates for the whole flight. I can tell you exactly where to dig to find the places I saw today.”
“Can I read the coordinates off the card?”
“If you know what you’re looking at.”
I hand him back the SD card case. “Why don’t you make me a video file and email it to me? Or use Dropbox. Make it a highlight reel with everything marked simply enough for an idiot to read locations.”
“You gonna pay me for my time?”
“Absolutely.” I take a curve that gives us another broad river vista through the trees. “I appreciate you flying that site, especially coming early.”
“Hey, this is what I live for. We’re working a real-life murder case, man. We should make a podcast out of this. Like Serial, about Adnan Syed.”
A chill of foreboding raises the hair on my arms. “There’s not going to be any podcast, Denny. This is serious, okay? Buck’s dead. Gone. Forever. You saw his head.”
“Sure, I get it. But I still don’t see why we can’t—”
“No damn podcast,” I snap. “If I ever go public with this, I’ll credit you for your work. But I don’t want you taking any risks. None.”
“If you go public?” he says, looking incredulous. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”
“Sure you do! Somebody murdered Dr. Buck. And they probably did it at the place we just left. Not at Lafitte’s Den, where I found the truck.”
“What’s your evidence for that? Some disturbed dirt on a building site?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He came back out here to find some more relics, and they deleted him.”
“Maybe,” I concede. “But we’re not going to tell anybody that. Not yet.”
Denny looks more than resentful of this restriction. “Isn’t there going to be an autopsy or something?”
“Eventually. Depends on the backlog in Jackson. I’m going to speak to the coroner after he’s looked at the body. The people who run things around here wouldn’t want me to, but I know Byron Ellis pretty well. Also, he’s black, which means he might not be as eager to do the bidding of the people who’d like Buck’s death to be ruled an accident.”
Denny is scanning Instagram on his phone. “So are you gonna go back out there tonight and hunt for evidence?”
“Hell, no. They put guards out there after Buck’s first discovery. There’s no reason to think they won’t be there tonight.”
“But—”
“Leave it alone, Denny. Please.”
“Just think about it,” he says, looking up from his phone. “In their minds, Buck was the threat, right? But he’s dead now. And they think they’re wiping out all the evidence right this minute. So tonight’s the perfect night to go out there and dig.”
“Jesus, I already regret getting you involved.”
He grins again. “You sound like my mom. Don’t worry, that feeling won’t last long. Just until you watch my drone footage.”
I hope you’re right, I think, speeding up so that I can get him home sooner. Into the silence between us flows my memory of Paul Matheson asking me if I think Jet could be sleeping with her paralegal. What the hell? And after Buck’s death. It’s like four hours ago, the world turned upside down.
We’re less than a mile from Denny’s mother’s house when my iPhone rings. It’s Ben Tate from the Watchman office. “What you got, Ben?” I ask.
“It looks like somebody broke into Buck Ferris’s house.”
“Last night?”
“No, today. His wife called the sheriff’s office about an hour ago.”
“Quinn Ferris?”
“Yeah. She was at the funeral home, working on her husband’s arrangements, when it happened. What do you think they were looking for? More artifacts?”
“Bones. They’re scared shitless that he found bones. Bones would halt the project. They’ve got a bunch of bulldozers out there tearing up the mill site right now.”
“Can we stop that? Get an injunction or something?”
“Not with what we have now.” Up ahead, the mailbox of the Allman house comes into view. “Hey, did you find out who posted the security guards at the mill site on Saturday?”
“No. I’ve talked to the Chinese, the county supervisors, and any other candidates I could think of. Everybody denies hiring guards. Are you sure they were out there?”
“According to Buck, they were.” Nothing about this is going to be easy. “Is there anything else going on?”
“Yes, actually. Quinn called here for you just a minute ago. She wants to talk to you.”
“She’s probably trying to call me now. Let me go.”
“Hang on, man. I heard a rumor that Jerry Lee Lewis might be playing that VIP party on the rooftop of the Aurora Hotel tonight. You hear anything about that?”
Ben’s a big music fan. “Something. But don’t worry about missing out. This is one of those rumors that doesn’t pan out. Besides, the Killer’s over eighty now.”
Ben laughs. “I hear you. Later.”
I start to summarize the call for Denny, but his young ears already picked up both sides of the conversation. He’s working hard not to look excited, but I can see the fantasy in his head: a viral reality podcast with web links to drone footage chronicling a “real-life” murder investigation. He could be famous before he enters the ninth grade. As I pull into his mother’s driveway, Denny turns to me, his face suddenly serious, his excitement gone.