An Ice Cold Grave Read Free Page A

range. Now, kids that age are prone to run away, and they’re prone to suicide, and they’re prone to have fatal car accidents. And if we’d found them, or heard from the runaways, we’d be okay with that, as okay as you can be.”
    We nodded.
    â€œBut these particular boys, it’s just—no one can believe they would run away. And in this time, surely some hunter or bird watcher or hiker would have found a body or two if they’d killed themselves or met with some accident in the woods.”
    â€œSo you’re thinking that they’re buried somewhere.”
    â€œYes, that’s what I’m thinking. I’m sure they’re still here, somewhere.”
    â€œThen let me ask you a few things,” I said. Tolliver took out his pad and pencil. The sheriff looked surprised, as if the last thing she’d ever expected had been that I would ask her questions.
    â€œOkay, shoot,” Sandra Rockwell said after a brief pause.
    â€œAre there bodies of water in the county?”
    â€œYes, there’s Grunyan’s Pond and Pine Landing Lake. And several streams.”
    â€œHave they been searched?”
    â€œYes. A couple of us dive, and we’ve searched as well as we can. Nothing’s come to the surface, either. Both of those spots are well used, and anything that came up and a lot of things that went down would have been found, if they’d been there to find. And I’m sure the pond’s clear. Still, it’s possible that there’s something in the deepest part of the lake.”
    The sheriff clearly believed that wasn’t likely.
    â€œWhat did the missing boys have in common?”
    â€œBesides their age range? Not much, except they’re gone.”
    â€œAll white?”
    â€œOh. Yes.”
    â€œAll go to the same school?”
    â€œNo. Four of them to the local high school, one of them to the junior high, one of them to the private academy, Randolph Prep.”
    â€œThe past five years, you said? Do they vanish at the same time of year?”
    She looked at a file on her desk, opened it. Flipped over a few pages. “No,” she said. “Two in the fall, three in the spring, one in the summer.”
    None in the winter, when the conditions would be worst for an outdoor interment—so she was probably right. The boys were buried somewhere.
    â€œYou think the same person killed them all,” I said. I was guessing, but it was a good guess.
    â€œYes,” she said. “That’s what I think.”
    It was my turn to take a deep breath. I’d never handled anything like this. I’d never tried to find so many people. “I don’t know a lot about serial killers,” I said, and the two dread words dropped into the room like unwelcome visitors. “But from what I’ve read and seen on television, I believe they tend to bury their victims in the same geographic conditions, if not in the exact same location. Like the Green River Killer dumping most of his victims in the river.”
    â€œThat’s true,” she said. “Some of them prefer the same location. Then they can visit it over and over. To remember.” She’d done her homework.
    â€œHow do you think I can help?”
    â€œTell me how you work. How do you find bodies?”
    â€œMy sister does two things,” Tolliver said, launching into his familiar spiel. “She can find bodies, and she can determine the cause of death. If we have to search for a body, obviously that’s going to take longer than someone taking her to the local cemetery, pointing to a grave, and wanting to know what killed the person in the grave.”
    The sheriff nodded. “It costs more.”
    â€œYes,” Tolliver said. There was no way to dress that up and make it prettier, so he didn’t. Sheriff Rockwell didn’t flinch or try to make us feel guilty about earning a living, as some people did. They acted like we were