Page 50 of Made of Steele
She shrugged the Clackamas County jacket over her dress and slipped into boots. She wound her hair into a ponytail and tugged it through the back of her cap. On the way to join Drew, who was just pulling down the drive, she passed Kelsey’s van and two police vehicles. Drew parked behind a second Veritas van that Ainslie must have driven to the site. To maintain his cover and hers with Oliver, they’d departed the restaurant separately, taking different routes.
On the car ride, she’d called her lieutenant, and he agreed to get to the scene as soon as possible. Teagan didn’t want to handle a multiple murder investigation without first notifying him. Not that she required his help, but he needed to know that things had escalated to serial murder as defined by the FBI. They declared it the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate events.
If the graves had been discovered before she’d left the force, she would be all over taking lead on such an investigation, but nothing was normal here. She was a member of the team only due to unusual circumstances.
Unusual and now very deadly circumstances.
Drew climbed out, settling a camo version of the Seattle Seahawks football team cap on his head. He looked amazing without a cap, but with one, he carried a dangerous and intense vibe. If they weren’t at a multiple murder scene, and if he hadn’t already smacked down her interest in him, she might comment on it.
Multiple murders. Serial murders. Wow! Those words made her shudder. Her job had really escalated to working a serial killer investigation. Unbelievable.
Under past circumstances, her department would call in the state and the FBI for assistance, but with a federal team already on the task force, she doubted that Harris would allow that to happen. It was a wait-and-see thing. Who would triumph and take charge? Gutierrez or Harris?
Drew tugged his cap lower. “Ready to get details from Kelsey?”
Teagan nodded.
“Then let’s do this.” Drew started toward the back of the property where the skull had been located.
Teagan hurried to match his longer strides and fell into step beside him.
He glanced at her. “Good job at lunch. You had Oliver eating out of your hands.”
She resisted shuddering. “He’s a slimy one. No wonder he’s still single.”
Drew cocked a sideways grin. “That’s what I thought and figured you did too. After all, if you’re wanting to date me, you have to have good taste.”
She laughed, likely his intention to lighten a mood that hung like a dark shadow in the air as they approached Kelsey and the four graves she’d marked off with stakes and string. Her team had also placed tarps near the stakes and raised a portable white canopy over each grave to keep out the rain. Dirt mounded the tarp next to the original grave where no one worked at the moment. Kelsey had moved to the grave next to it. She knelt on the tarp and held a small trowel in her hand, lifting tiny scoops of soil and dumping the dirt onto an anchored tarp.
Her assistant and a young woman knelt by the other marked graves and were using similar trowels to dig out the soil. So far, they’d removed soil about a foot deep in each grave.
Moving between the two graves Kelsie wasn’t working, Ainslie held her camera, the clicking sound as she snapped photos the only sound in the area. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail that swung as she stepped between graves. She wore a white Tyvek suit like the others, but she had a very advanced baby bump straining the zipper on her suit.
Teagan had heard that she and Grady were joining the other Veritas partners in having children. The only holdout on the partner list at this point was Maya and her husband, Hunter. They’d gotten married after the other five partners so maybe they would be announcing a pregnancy soon too.
Soft rain wetted Teagan’s body, and she was glad to step under the canopy covering Kelsey. As glad as a person could be to step closer to an unmarked grave. Ainslie glanced up, and Teagan waved. She nodded in acknowledgment and went right back to work. She and Kelsey both had such grim jobs, but they didn’t seem to let the horror bother them, and they were two of the sweetest people Teagan knew.
Drew stopped next to Teagan. “What do you know so far?”
Kelsey sat back. “I excavated the grave where we found the skull to about a foot deep. I’m calling it grave one. If you step over there, you can see I revealed various upper torso bones, and I can confirm there is indeed a body buried there. But then, as I told you, our intern arrived, and I took a break to show her the drone. That’s when I discovered the other graves.”
“And do we know if the remains in each location are human?” Drew asked.
Kelsey nodded. “That’s why we started on each of the graves instead of finishing the first one. Confirming the presence of human remains will more quickly let you all know what we’re looking at here. We should have enough excavated to give you more details soon.”
“You sound confident that you won’t have to dig very deep,” Teagan said.
Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “Experience tells me that most clandestine graves are shallow.”
“Why’s that?” Teagan asked.
She sat back and laid down her trowel. “First, digging in our Willamette Valley clay soil is hard work and the person digging gets tired. But then, killers are also eager to get their victims buried before they’re discovered, so they clear a spot just deep enough to cover the body. They don’t realize that shallow graves like this are often scavenged by predators and that leads to discovery.”
“Makes sense,” Drew said. “So how do we proceed from here?”
“We keep digging, but I also took the liberty of calling Sierra Rice, our trace evidence expert, to process the area, the house, and the shed. She’s on her way.”
“That’s great, thanks,” Teagan said.
