“The region’s experiencing drought conditions, water levels are down. Kid slid down the embankment or fel off the jetty or some damn thing. Car was a couple yards off a boat landing, roof twenty inches below the surface.”
It happens al the time. A couple leaves a restaurant, vanishes. Two years later their Acura is found at the bottom of their neighborhood pond. Grandpa drops the kids off, heads home. Next Christmas the old man’s Honda is spotted in a culvert under the highway. Mama releases the brake and steers the family SUV into a reservoir, boys and al . Four months later a propel er hits metal, and vehicle and victims are hauled from the muck.
Thousands drive, golf, pedal, or walk by accident scenes every year. No one spots anything. Then someone does.
“Windows were up, car was sealed wel enough to keep the crabs and fish out,” Larabee continued. “Aiker doesn’t look that bad, considering how long he was in the drink.”
“Where?”
Larabee misunderstood my question.
“Backseat.”
“Was the body sent to Chapel Hil ?”
Larabee shook his head.
“They’ve got two pathologists on vacation and one out sick. Chief asked if I’d mind doing the post here.” I nodded absently, my mind on bones that werenotBrian Aiker’s. Larabee picked up on my mood.
“Guess that leaves you sucking wind with the privy skul and the Lancaster bones.”
“Yeah.”
“Ever get that report you were waiting for?”
“No.”
Larabee waited while I sorted through my thoughts. He was stil waiting when his phone rang. After hesitating a moment, he reached for it.
I withdrew to my office for more sorting. The process did not go wel . I tried adding coffee. No improvement.
Opening my laptop, I tried organizing in cyber bytes what I’d learned in the last eleven days.
Category:Places.Foote farm. Airplane crash site. Lancaster County, South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina. Crowder’s Mountain State Park.
Weren’t the Lancaster remains also found in a state park? I made a note.
Category:People.Tamela Banks. Harvey Pearce. Jason Jack Wyatt.
Ricky Don Dorton. Darryl Tyree. Sonny Pounder. Wal y Cagle. Lawrence Looper. Murray Snow. James Park. Brian Aiker.
Too broad. I tried subdividing.
Bad Guys.Harvey Pearce (dead). Jason Jack Wyatt (dead). Ricky Don Dorton (dead). Darryl Tyree (under arrest). Sonny Pounder (under arrest).
Victims.
That didn’t work. I was placing too many question marks after names. I bifurcated.
Definite Victims.Tamela Banks’s baby. The owner of the privy skul and hand bones. The headless skeleton from Lancaster County.
Possible Victims.Tamela Banks and her family. Wal y Cagle. Murray Snow. Brian Aiker.
Did Tamela Banks and her family belong in this category? Had they real y come to harm, or had they simply been spooked into going underground?