Finishing School Read Free Page B

Abner himself, but had been rented to a former mental patient, Herbert Berryman, who had just up and left town about six months after Amanda’s disappearance. No one, not even the federal boys, had ever tracked the man down.
    Garue nodded toward Abner, but the guide, cigarette dangling absently, was staring into nowhere. Lewis Garue got the sense he wasn’t going to like whatever these hunters had found here today.
    The semicircle of men hovered around a device that looked like Rube Goldberg’s idea of a push mower. Out front was a single tire that might have been appropriated from the BMX bike of Garue’s twelve-year-old. A three-foot shaft ran back from the wheel and rode about a foot off the ground. A frame at the rear end attached atop the shaft, and within the frame were two boxes. Running up at an angle from the frame was a T-shaped handle. Garue had seen the contraption before—ground-penetrating radar.
    The man running the machine was tall, broad-shouldered and in his mid-thirties—Fletcher Keegan. A graduate of the National Academy at Quantico, Fletch had been at the Bemidji office of the regional crime lab for the last four years. He and Garue were friends as tight as the aspens across the edge line of the forest.
    Two of the other guys were also crime lab, though Garue didn’t know their names. Two more were deputies, a kid whose name Garue had not learned yet, and Andy Salyard, a seven-year vet of the force.
    When Keegan saw him, the crime scene tech waved, then shot Garue a no-rest-for-the-wicked glance, and went back to running his machine. Garue nodded to the rest, then joined Condon, who stepped away from the hunters to meet him.
    â€˜â€˜Bad day?’’ Garue asked Condon.
    Nodding, the sergeant said, ‘‘Looks to be.’’
    â€˜â€˜Anybody talk to the hunters yet?’’
    â€˜â€˜I did,’’ Condon said.
    â€˜â€˜Which one found it?’’
    Jerking his head toward a scrawny-looking hunter, Condon said, ‘‘That one. Name’s William Kwitcher. Billy.’’
    Garue began his interviews with the guide, Daniel Abner. The bald man looked stricken. The murder of Abner’s daughter had hit both parents hard. His wife, unable to cope with the loss of their only child, eventually divorced him and moved out of state. The guide had spent years getting his life back together.
    Garue asked, ‘‘What did you see?’’
    Abner told about Kwitcher stumbling onto the skeletal hand. As the guide spoke, Garue couldn’t help replaying in his mind the details of the Abner tragedy.
    Tweed and Kwitcher echoed Abner’s account. Everything seemed to check out, but something about Kwitcher’s attitude bothered Garue. The skinny man seemed more nervous than shocked about his grisly discovery, but something else, too—scared? Guilty, even? Garue let it pass, for now; still, something about Kwitcher definitely got a blip going on the lawman’s radar. When Garue finally let the trio go, however, Kwitcher was first to split. And the blip-ping increased. . . .
    Fletcher Keegan came over to Garue and Condon. He took off his BCA ball cap, ran a hand through the brown stubble that passed for a haircut. Keegan had honest brown eyes, a square jaw, and wide shoulders—near as Garue could tell, an all-American guy.
    â€˜â€˜What?’’ Garue asked, in response to Keegan’s frown.
    â€˜â€˜We’ve got ourselves a problem.’’
    All the healthy food that Anna had fed him for breakfast felt like it might actually burn through his stomach lining. ‘‘What, don’t tell me it’s just the hand , nothing else?’’
    Shaking his head, Keegan said, ‘‘No, it’s definitely a grave, all right.’’
    â€˜â€˜Okay,’’ Garue said. ‘‘That’s the bad news—what’s the really bad news?’’
    Plucking his cell phone off