Yellow police tape was strung across the gate to McGarry’s estate. Beyond it, three blue-and-white Winthrop County sheriff’s patrol cars, a black Chevrolet Suburban, a white crime-scene investigator’s van and a red ambulance were lined up along the snow-packed driveway behind McGarry’s Escalade. Uniformed officers and crime-scene investigators were bringing tarps and shovels to the van and the cars, getting ready to leave. The ruckus, if there’d been one at all, was over. Rigg parked on the road and walked up.
A sheriff’s deputy saw him and came down to the gate. ‘You can’t be here, sir.’
Rigg showed his press ID.
‘Your credentials don’t matter,’ the officer said. ‘This is private property. You can’t be here.’
The sheriff must have spotted Rigg, because he came walking down the drive. The Winthrop County sheriff was a tall man, blond, with a ruddy complexion. His name was Olsen. Rigg had interviewed him once, several years earlier, about a missing persons investigation. ‘The famous Milo Rigg?’
‘How are you, Sheriff?’
The sheriff told the deputy he could leave and said to Rigg, ‘Not at all delighted to see you, Rigg. You trashed us, some months back.’
‘Only those who weren’t helping in Stemec Henderson, and that wasn’t you. That case was off your turf.’
‘Trash one, trash all, and now you’ve come to do him?’ Olsen said, jerking a thumb toward McGarry’s mansion.
‘He must be livid, you guys showing up,’ Rigg said, for the show of it. McGarry was in Paris, or at points far from it, but that had not been published, thanks to Donovan.
‘He’s unavailable.’
‘Care to give me a statement?’ Rigg asked, pointing to two deputies carrying shovels back to their cars.
‘How did you find out about this?’
‘A tip,’ Rigg said, because Till hadn’t ratted him out.
‘Your tipster wasted your time.’
‘About Richie Fernandez?’
‘You can write that we arrived here this morning with a duly executed warrant authorizing us to search these grounds, based upon credible information that a person might be buried on this property. We knocked, but received no answer. We tried calling Mr McGarry’s various homes and his office, but could not locate him. In accordance with our authorization, we proceeded to conduct our search of his grounds. We have concluded our search. We are leaving, and so are you.’
‘You found nothing?’
‘Oh, we found something, Rigg, and now we’ve found you, right here where you don’t belong.’
‘What did you find?’
Olsen gave him only a smile, and turned and walked back up the driveway. Vehicle doors began slamming shut. An officer came down, removed the yellow tape and opened the gate.
Rigg waited in his car as the van, the ambulance and the cops backed down the driveway and drove away. The last squad car backed down, but stopped outside the gate. An officer got out. He was different than the first officer Rigg had talked to – younger, maybe twenty-five, which was right for a rural sheriff’s department.
Rigg got out of his car and approached the gate. ‘How do you guys manage to open locked gates?’ he asked in what he hoped was a conversational voice.
The officer smiled. ‘We always request security codes to keep on file. This owner complied.’
‘What was all the activity up there?’
‘Sheriff got a credible call that there was a body buried in a shallow grave. But it was just a dog.’
‘A dog?’
‘Sheriff was furious.’ He pointed to the keypad on the wood post. ‘You’ll have to leave, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to reset the code.’
Rigg got in his car and drove away, but only to the next side road. When the young officer’s car disappeared down the highway, he parked, put on the running shoes he’d thought to leave in the car, and walked back to the gate. The gate was made of tubular metal, set low, meant only to stop a car. He climbed over, walked up the driveway and on to the vast back grounds.
Their search area had not been widespread. Hundreds of footprints circled only the mound where McGarry had swept up snow. That mound was a tiny mudhill now, from being excavated and refilled.
The garage was the closest of the outbuildings. The side door was unlocked. Several red-tipped prong holders were screwed into a two-by-four along the wall. One held a pointed shovel. He brought it to the mound and began digging.
The dirt, already loosened by the sheriff’s team, was now muck, the heavy sludge of wet cement. Still, it took him only a couple of minutes to hit bone and just another to lift away enough to reveal a leg. It was about two feet long, and covered with fur. A dog, like the deputy had said.
He leaned on the shovel, staring down. No matter how beloved that pet might have been, its grave did not warrant McGarry coming out on two successive nights to sweep snow on to that dirt, nor to come out cradling a shotgun when Rigg approached the mound in daylight.
He dug around the entire animal. It was a collie. He shoveled around it until he was able to lever the stiff corpse up and on to the side of the shallow grave.
The dirt beneath the dog’s grave was harder, but didn’t seem as solidly frozen as it should have been that many weeks into winter. He poked at it carefully, digging up fist-sized chunks of dirt, bit by bit. He began sweating, despite the cold, but he kept shoveling, one small, careful bladeful at a time. And then an ear appeared and a patch of matted hair above it.
He shoveled back just enough dirt to cover it, dropped the shovel and went down to his car. He was trembling, whether from sweat or from fury, he did not know. He started the car, turned the heater on full blast and drove to the bar at the intersection down the highway.
He needed a drink, but he needed Pancho Rozakis more. He called him from the car. ‘Meet me at the bar down the road from McGarry’s estate. Bring every camera and drone you’ve got.’
He went inside. Only two people were at the bar – the dark-bearded bartender and a white-bearded fellow wearing denim overalls and a yellow-and-green DeKalb Corn cap. Rigg ordered a Scotch and took it to the farthest table, the same table where he’d sat with Aria.
Pancho Rozakis stepped in forty-two minutes later. He had a scruffy, untrimmed beard, like the denizens on either side of the bar, but there the similarities ended. Instead of thick denim and flannel to ward off the cold, Pancho wore his usual outfit of cargo shorts bulging with small gear, a tufted orange down jacket and a bright red Nebraska Cornhuskers ball cap.
‘Greetings and salutations, stalwarts,’ he said to the bartender and the customer, grinning as he headed to Rigg’s table. ‘Tell me again,’ he said as he sat down.
Rigg told him what he’d told him from his car.
‘Zowie,’ the photographer said.
Rigg phoned the Winthrop County sheriff’s department tip line and told the personable voice that answered that her sheriff hadn’t dug deep enough at McGarry’s estate and ought to get back there before the very human corpse the sheriff had missed got up and left. He clicked off and smiled at Pancho.
‘I haven’t had lunch,’ the photographer said.
‘My treat,’ Rigg said. He got up, went to the bar, ordered the house specialty and, in less time than bagged food should need to become bacteria-free, he brought the puffed cellophane back to the table. He dropped it on the laminate like something snagged from a polluted river.
Pancho, who was known to eat anything, looked at the bag bloated with steam with alarm. ‘What’s inside?’
‘It’s been nuked and will squirm no longer.’
‘Zowie,’ Pancho said.