Gap Mills, West Virginia
Wordlessly, Al thumbed through his message from Ed. It was much longer than a typical message relaying instructions and search parameters. He lowered the PDA. “You better turn around. We’re going to have a long night.”
“What now?” Vance asked, slowing down. He pulled into an embankment and flipped a u-turn.
As Vance righted the car back in the direction of the graveyard, Al eyed the dark hill to his right. “Ed thinks there might be something up there.”
“And I suppose he expects us to go up there tonight?”
“Yep.”
Vance drove close to the graveyard and parked on the side of the main road. They each grabbed what tools they could carry including rope and headed up the hill.
Al followed the GPS as close as he could in the dark, through bushes, and up the semi-steep embankment. It wasn’t easy but what was difficult was listening to Vance silently grumble every time he was smacked with a branch or made a misstep.
They made it over the crest and down the embankment into a ravine. Al could make out another hill ahead and rechecked his coordinates. He glanced to the right, “Fifteen feet that way.”
Vance led the way and stopped, “Nothing here.”
Al joined him and knelt down, shining his light to examine the ground. With his hands, he felt the ground which consisted of a soft, spongy layer of leaves and twigs. “You’re right, nothing here.”
“Well, it could be buried, whatever it is.”
Al stood up. “I’m not in the mood for randomly digging holes.”
“How many locations are we checking out?”
Al pointed down the ravine with the light. “Four, on this ridge, and the next spot is about 350 feet that way.” He then led the way, crunching through the bushes. He did his best to stay on track and when he neared the spot he immediately saw the outline of a tombstone blending in with the bushes. It was very old, crumbly, and tilting to the side.
“Ah, shit,” Vance said, moving closer. “We’re digging up another grave?”
Al double-checked his coordinates, “Don’t know. This is not the spot.”
“Oh?”
Al took several steps in different directions while analyzing his GPS coordinates. “We’re about twenty-five feet off.” He then made his way to the exact spot and kicked the bushes around. There was nothing obvious, but it was dark so missing something obvious could simply be that he just couldn’t see it. He walked back to the tombstone and Vance had finished clearing the bushes from around it.
Vance stood back. “There are Hebrew symbols on the front that Ed might want to see; worn down, but readable.”
Al could sense Vance wasn’t enthused about snooping around another gravesite. Kneeling, he aimed his light at the face of the tombstone and could make out writing. He snapped a picture of the writing and forwarded it to Ed.
Seconds later, a return message read, “By George, that’s it. Start digging.”