Ironically, Houdini never performed the buried-alive stunt. Tanks filled with water, ice-covered rivers, barrels full of beer—he tried them all. His next illusion, before he died, was going to be an escape buried beneath the Egyptian desert. Others have done the trick. It’s simple enough; a magician gets sealed inside a coffin and covered with dirt, only to miraculously emerge. It’s more than a hundred years old. The most famous version started a religion you may have heard about.

Before Mexico, before I had enough of the life of performer, I did the buried-alive stunt on Japanese television when I was seventeen. Wearing a diamond bustier and short miniskirt, chained and shackled, I was placed into a clear plastic coffin and buried in a corner of the Tokyo Dome. It was a dumb trick, really. My father and my uncle had created a secret passage the night before. But on television it looked great. I’d done more dangerous things. Stuff that almost got me killed. But none of that ever involved me literally crawling out of the grave. It’s probably physiologically impossible. The weight of the dirt is too heavy and you’ll run out of air.

Alive or dead, Chloe couldn’t have crawled out of her grave. Not without a trapdoor or a secret passage.

I pace the ground looking for some evidence of tampering. Some proof of a method. A telltale flap of grass like the one that hid my secret passage. I don’t see any. I kneel down and pull at the turf, just to see if it comes free. It doesn’t.

I wipe my hands off and stand up when I notice the medical examiner is watching me. I ignore her gaze and look down at the grave markers.

What if this isn’t Chloe’s grave?

For a moment I wonder if it’s a kind of puzzle. Did the man who did this just move the markers? That would be the easiest way.

I count twelve in this row and move on to the next.

Agent Shannon walks over to me. “Counting plots?”

“Yes,” I reply. My eyes stop on a marker for a woman who died the same week astronauts landed on the moon.

Shannon gives a reverential nod to the markers. His voice is hushed like we’re in a church. “We did that earlier. Pulled the records on the graves. No dice.”

“I didn’t think there would be any. But it’s worth a check.” I’m glad they already thought of it.

“Ever see anything like it?” Shannon asks.

“Besides in a magic trick? No. But that’s what this is.” I don’t mention that the last time I saw something like this I was on the inside of the coffin, or that I almost died. I don’t want to sound hysterical or try to make it about me. I don’t think my particular experience is relevant, just my general knowledge.

He folds his arms and looks back at Chloe’s body. “Hell of a trick.”

He’s trying to understand what’s going on here. I’m sure he’s imagining her crawling out of the ground, while the medical examiner is wondering how she possibly could have screwed up and declared a living girl dead. Danielle and her team are trying to figure out the soil chemistry and look for clues there.