Buried Secrets: A gripping thriller you won’t be able to put down Read online

  Buried Secrets

  A gripping thriller you won’t be able to put down

  T.J. Brearton

  This one is for my aunt Alison.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  A Letter from T.J.

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  The shovel struck something hard.

  Brett Larson moved his foot away and yanked the shovel from the ground. He stared down, sweat dripping from his face.

  He plunged the blade into the earth again. It rammed some solid object about six inches deep.

  He tried to lever the handle back – if it was a rock it might pop out, and he’d already encountered a couple good-sized rocks so far that day. Otherwise, the ground was soft. The property was an old cow pasture, lumpy and tufted with thick grass almost as high as his knees in places. Practically impossible to mow without a tractor, but rich as chocolate cake. God bless those cows.

  Brett excavated around the object and scraped away some of the dark soil. He saw something white, but it might’ve been a nick in a rock caused by the sharp cutting edge of the shovel.

  He took the handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his brow, and blew his nose. He smiled as he wadded it up, thinking he was a real farmer now, and gazed across the deep, wide field at the house in the distance.

  Their house. A little yellow farmhouse with white trim and shutters against a hazy blue morning.

  Emily had disliked the color of the house when they’d first looked at it, but she had fallen in love with it anyway. Neither of them had gotten around to repainting yet. There had been other priorities.

  Like a garden.

  Brett surveyed his progress, trying to marshal a little confidence. He’d gotten up with the sun, just after 5 a.m. It had been cool then, misty, as the light spread over the mountains. Now the sun was really starting to beat down on the pasture he’d been turning over and plowing into rows.

  He knew he needed a real rototiller – turning earth by shovel was hard going – but all good things started small. Plus it was already mid-June and they were up against time if they wanted to get seeds in the ground. The property had taken ninety days to go to closing, ninety days from the offer agreement to the handing over of the keys. Twice the usual time it took to buy a house, from everything he’d heard. Now they were doing a bit of racing against the season.

  He stowed the handkerchief and rested his foot on the shovel’s shoulder. He saw Emily in the kitchen window and raised a hand. She waved back.

  She was barely the size of a child’s doll from here. He smiled at her despite the distance.

  He got back to work, deciding he’d remove just this last rock and then take a break. He was so anxious to sow seeds he figured he’d plant a little, dig a little, and go like this until he felt satisfied.

  The fertile smell of the earth plumed up, the insects danced in the morning light, the dew on the grass evaporated. What a day.

  He dug and picked and scraped with the shovel and tried to lever out the rock.

  The more he worked at it, the more it didn’t seem like a rock after all – the way the shovel hit it didn’t make that metal-on-rock chink. It sounded like something else. Maybe some petrified piece of wood or an old tractor part.

  He dug around a little more. As he carefully scraped the soil away, he could tell it wasn’t round like a rock either. It was long, like buried wood, but white.

  Like bone.

  He circumscribed an even wider hole. No use trying to pop the thing out of there anymore. He thought about archaeologists digging up fossils, and how they would do it. He didn’t want to damage the bone, if that’s what it was, any further. He wanted to remove it intact.

  It might’ve been from an animal, maybe a woodchuck or hedgehog.

  Fresh sweat threaded between his eyes and dripped from his nose. He smeared it away with a dirty hand and kept going, boring out the hole a full yard deep and almost as wide.

  The bone was too big to be from some backyard critter.

  Maybe someone had buried their pet dog out here.

  Maybe one of those old cows.

  But he didn’t think so, and his nerves were starting to crawl.

  He glanced at the house again. Emily had left the kitchen and was approaching through the high grass. It looked like she was holding drinks.

  Emily’s own dog had died a year ago. Well, Cleaver had been their dog, she would’ve said, but it was really hers, far and away, a dog she’d had for twelve years, long before she’d ever met Brett.

  Cleaver’s death had left a hole in Emily’s heart. Now the newlywed couple were trying for a baby. Married for just three months, in the house for just a few weeks so far, things were hustling right along. He wondered if Emily would get upset seeing the bone in the ground, if it would stir thoughts of her loss.

  The dog had been cremated. The crematorium offered them a look at the bones, and Emily had opted to do it. Something about seeing the skeleton, she’d said afterward, was soothing. Cleaver had looked clean and un-suffering.

  Brett went back to digging. The shovel banged into something else and he cleared away more cakey soil.

  A second bone.

  He stopped and stared a moment as his newlywed wife neared.

  Then he went back to the first bone, carefully whittling away the soil until the far end of it was free. The thing was sixteen, maybe eighteen inches long.

  One end was big and knobby, like the handle of a cane.

  He suddenly considered throwing the dirt back, covering what was there. He’d burrowed down a good ways now, at least an arm’s depth.

  The bones made him anxious. But he left them exposed.

  He leaned the shovel against the nearby fence and walked out to meet Emily.

  She reached him and handed him the drink, ice cubes rattling in the glass. “How you doing, baby?”

  He gave her a kiss on the lips and then took a sip. The iced tea was incredible, not too sweet, perfectly refreshing.

  “I’m good.”

  Emily surveyed the work. “Wow. You’re really going for it.”

  “We. We’re going for it. This is garden number one right here.”


  She squinted. “Right at the edge of the woods? What about animals?”

  He hadn’t considered it. The oversight made him slightly defensive. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll put up a deer fence, totally…”

  “You’re going to get the garden hose all the way out here?”

  “Yeah. Oh yeah.” He had no idea if he had enough hose to reach. “Like I said, this is number one. The soil is something else here. Just so rich. I’ll keep moving back towards the house as I go.”

  “Cool.”

  She was wearing high white shorts that showed off the thin taper of her legs and a light brown tank top, her skin already bronzed from the late spring sunshine. She’d been ovulating not quite two weeks ago and they’d had sex nearly every morning or night for a few days. She looked so good standing there, he wondered if she’d be up for an early-morning booty call, even if the window had closed.

  But then her eyes drifted past him and she looked at the hole. “What’s that?”

  “Oh there’s been bumps along the way,” he said, catching up to her. It was stupid, he thought, but he really wished Emily wasn’t out here, wasn’t about to see this. “I thought it was just another rock.”

  She reached the hole and stopped, looking down, sipping her drink.

  Brett fought the urge to grab her by the arm and lead her away, take her back to the house, make love, forget whatever was there in the dirt.

  She lowered down to a squat and set the drink on the ground beside the hole.

  The glass tipped over on the uneven ground, spilling the tea.

  “What is that? Animal bones?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They fell silent, looking down. The crows were calling in the distance.

  “Huh,” she said.

  He squatted beside her, grunting a little with the effort. He was by no means old, thirty was not old, but he was feeling the morning’s labors. It was a hell of a lot different than driving a roller, sitting all day.

  “That looks human,” Emily said.

  “No. No way.”

  But he thought so, too.

  “Yeah.” She pointed. “That’s a leg bone. The femur.” The aim of her finger shifted. “What’s the other one?”

  Just a piece of the second bone was visible, sticking out of the edge of the hole he’d excavated, down about half the depth.

  “I don’t know. The other leg?”

  She glanced over, smiling but serious. She stood up and put her hands on her hips, the grin fading to a tight line. This was Pensive Emily, and it was a look he was coming to know as characteristic of his new bride.

  She stared down at the bones. “Yeah, honey, I think that’s a femur bone. See how the one end sort of has that little split? That’s where it rests on the knee, the patella, or whatever. And the other end, that big knob, that’s where it connects to the hip.” The more she spoke the more she sounded confident. “Yeah. Holy shit. That’s someone’s leg, Brett.”

  The reality of it was sinking in. Maybe it was what he’d been hoping to avoid. With Emily’s arrival and input, the possible implications were taking shape. Someone buried a body out here? Or just a leg? Had the person been dismembered? Where was the rest of it?

  Brett was no archaeologist or physical anthropologist – tough to estimate the age of the bones. A basic grasp of decomposition, though, suggested they couldn’t be that old because they were still pretty solid.

  On the other hand, couldn’t bones last for thousands of years? They called them fossils.

  “I bet that’s the tibia,” Emily said, pointing again at the other piece.

  Brett started for the shovel leaning against the fence. Emily squatted down again.

  “Watch out, honey…” He moved to keep digging.

  She stuck out her hand. “Okay, wait. Hold on.”

  “What?” He blinked away some more sweat. While she was thinking about things, Brett took off his T-shirt and wiped his face and neck. He tossed his shirt aside and waited, watching as Emily worked it through.

  “Maybe we have to call somebody,” she said.

  “We don’t even know what this is. Maybe it’s a human leg bone, okay. But there’s no emergency. Let me dig out the rest, see what’s there.”

  She stood up again and rubbed her lips with the ball of her thumb, scowling down at the bones. Then she glanced around, as if someone might be watching.

  “Watch out,” he repeated, and edged closer.

  When she stepped back, he resumed digging.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I am being careful.”

  “Alright, you don’t need to be snippy at me.”

  “I’m not snippy at you. Sorry.”

  He gouged fresh clods of dirt with the shovel and tossed them aside. Once he’d trenched around the second bone, he made more precise moves and slowly stripped away the soil. Emily was right, and his high-school biology was coming back to him – this was the tibia, the second part of the leg that went from the knee to the ankle. If memory served, there should be yet another, thinner bone that went along with it – the bottom half of the leg was two bones running parallel.

  He made even softer, smaller digs, moving quickly and growing excited until he felt the subtlest impact. Now he put the tool aside and got down on his knees. He used his hands to scoop out the earth. Emily dropped down beside him.

  As they dug, they glanced at each other, sharing a little frisson. Emily was a knockout for sure, and she looked her most youthful the way she was now, the lines in her forehead gone and the excitement shining in her eyes.

  Their hands touched. They both grasped in the dirt and exhumed the small, thin bone. He didn’t know the name of it. She probably did.

  “I’m not sure about this one. Fibula, maybe. Tibia and fibula? Does that make sense? Or is it fibia and tibula? Look, be careful. This one is so thin. Man, Brett, we’re touching it. Our fingerprints—” She let go and pushed away from the hole, rising to her feet.

  Brett kept hold of the fragile bone. He could snap it like a twig if he wanted; there was nothing to it. Not knowing what else to do, he placed it back in the dirt.

  He stood and dusted off his knees. “I’m going to keep digging. Maybe there’s a whole skeleton here.”

  His words sounded strange – when did anyone ever say maybe there’s a whole skeleton here? At least, anyone who didn’t have a research grant and a string of letters after their name?

  “I’m gonna call.” Emily had paled, growing anxious.

  “You have your phone?”

  “There’s barely service out here. Worse than inside.”

  They had yet to reconnect the landline which was already installed in the house. Sometimes they could find a spot upstairs where the cellular service came in nicely, but not always. There were rumors that a new tower was going to be erected in the area, but some of the locals had been fighting against it, calling it a potential “blight on the landscape.” Brett and Emily had the internet wired in, though. They could contact someone that way if the phones didn’t work. And they had the option of getting phone service through the internet, too. He just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Like painting the house.

  “Well, head back in and give it a try,” he said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She wasn’t taking her eyes off the bones.

  Brett stepped close to her. Seeing her nervous made him protective, and he set aside his own concerns. “Hey. Honey, it’s okay.”

  Her eyes found him and she seemed to relax a little bit, even smiled again. He noticed how she put her hands around her stomach, almost protectively. “Yeah. It’s alright. Weird, though.” She let out a breath.

  “I’ll be really careful. I’ll dig around in a big wide area. Just like a scientist.” He winked.

  She smiled a little and then turned for the house. “Okay. Here I go.”

  Emily jogged back towards the house and Brett returned to digging.

  Chapter Two

  James Rus
so saw the cops pull up in front of his house from the breakfast table. Felicia was in the kitchen with him. She had their little fourteen-month-old girl on her hip and was bouncing her, feeding her bits of eggs that the baby kept spitting out, making Felicia laugh.

  Russo pushed his own half-finished plate of eggs aside as he stared out the window. He knew who was out there – he recognized the cops from the way they got out of the car, looked up at the house, took their time.

  It was what police called a Whiskey unit. He knew because he used to work police dispatch, and “Whiskey” was a ten-code for a unit that served warrants. They were coming up the steps, a man and a woman, and he could see the paperwork in the woman’s hands.

  Russo blotted his mouth with a napkin and stood up from the table.

  Felicia sensed something right away. His wife was about as intuitive as anyone he’d ever known. He couldn’t get away with shit – not that he wanted to – because Felicia had a nose like a bloodhound. He had to work extra hard to keep secrets and he’d only managed just a few.

  There was an edge to her tone. “Honey…?”

  “It’s alright, Fifi.”

  He walked past them towards the front door. He smiled and cooed at baby Zoe and tugged on her tiny little jujube toes as he walked past. The baby girl giggled.

  The cops knocked. Russo was right there and opened up.

  The female officer flashed a smile and held up the piece of paper. “Mr. James Alonzo Russo?”