.

got to get my head in the game.

* * *

      It was about ten-thirty when Riley and Jenn arrived in the Belle Terre Nature Preserve. They followed a road to the beach until they found a couple of parked police cars and a medical examiner’s van. Beyond the vehicles on a grassy rise was a barrier of police tape to keep the public away from the beach.

      The beach wasn’t immediately visible as Riley and Jenn got out of the van. But Riley saw gulls flying overhead, felt a crisp breeze on her face, smelled salt in the air, and heard the sound of surf.

      Riley was dismayed but hardly surprised that a small group of reporters had already gathered in the parking area beyond the crime scene. They crowded around Riley and Jenn, asking questions.

      “We’ve had two murders in two days. Is there a serial killer at work?”

      “You’ve released the name of yesterday’s victim. Have you identified this new victim?”

      “Have you contacted the victim’s family?”

      “Is it true that both victims were buried alive?”

      Riley cringed at that last question. Of course, she wasn’t surprised that word had gotten out about how the victims had died. Reporters could have learned that much from listening to local police scanners. But she had no doubt that the media was going to sensationalize these murders for all they were worth.

      Riley and Jenn pushed past the reporters without commenting. Then they were greeted by a couple of local cops, who escorted them past the police tape over the grassy rise onto the beach. Riley could feel sand seeping into her shoes as she walked.

      In a moment, the murder scene came into view.

      Several men surrounded a hole dug in the sand where the body still remained. Two of them strode toward Riley and Jenn as they approached. One was a stocky, red-haired man in a uniform. The other, a slender man with curly black hair, was wearing a white shirt.

      “I’m glad you could get here so soon,” the red-haired man said when Riley and Jenn introduced themselves. “I’m Parker Belt, the Sattler police chief. This is Zane Terzis, the Tidewater District medical examiner.”

      Chief Belt led Riley and Jenn over to the hole and they looked down at the half-uncovered body.

      Riley was more than used to seeing corpses in various states of mutilation and decomposition. Even so, this one jolted her with a unique kind of horror.

      He was a blond man, about thirty years old, and he was wearing a jogging outfit suitable for a cool summer morning’s run along the beach. His arms remained sprawled in a statue-like state of rigor mortis from his desperate attempts to dig himself out. His eyes were shut tight, and his wide-open mouth was filled with sand.

      Chief Belt stood next to Riley and Jenn.

      Belt said, “He still had a wallet with plenty of identification – not that we really needed it. I recognized him the second Terzis and his men uncovered his face. His name is Todd Brier, and he’s a Lutheran pastor in Sattler. I didn’t go to his church – I’m a Methodist. But I knew him. We were good friends. We went fishing together from time to time.”

      Belt’s voice was thick with sorrow and shock.

      “How was the body found?” Riley asked.

      “A guy came by walking a dog,” Belt said. “The dog stopped here, sniffing and whining, then started digging, and right away a hand appeared.”

      “Is the guy who found the body still around?” Riley asked.

      Belt shook his head.

      “We sent him home. He was badly shaken up. But we told him he needed to be available for questions. I can put you in touch with him.”

      Riley looked up from the body over to the water, which was some fifty feet away. The waters of the Chesapeake Bay were a deep rich blue, with white-topped waves lapping softly at the wet sand. Riley could see that the tide was going out.

      Riley asked, “This was the second murder?”

      “It was,” Belt replied grimly.

      “Has anything like this ever happened here before these two?”

      “Right here in Belle Terre, you mean?” Belt said. “No, nothing like it at all. This is a peaceful preserve for birds and wildlife. Local people use this beach, mostly families. From time to time we have to arrest some would-be poacher or settle an argument among visitors. We also have to chase away transients from time to time. That’s about as serious as it gets.”

      Riley stepped around the hole to look at the body from a different angle. She saw a patch of blood on the back of the victim’s head.

      “What do you make of this wound?” she asked Terzis.

      “It looks like he was struck by some hard object,” the ME said. I’ll study it better when we get the body to the morgue. But from the looks of it, I’d say it was probably enough to daze him, just long enough so he couldn’t put up a fight while the killer was burying him. I doubt that he was ever completely unconscious. It’s pretty obvious that he struggled hard.”

      Riley shuddered.

      Yes, that much was obvious.

      She said to Jenn, “Take some pictures and also send them to me.”

      Jenn immediately took out her cell phone and started snapping photos of the hole and the corpse. Meanwhile, Riley walked slowly around the hole checking the beach in all directions. The killer hadn’t left a lot of clues. The sand around the hole had obviously been disturbed by the killer when he’d been digging, and there was a trail of vague footprints where the jogger had approached.

      Vague, too, were any footprints left by the killer. The dry sand didn’t hold the shape of a shoe. But Riley could see where the marsh grass she’d come through had been broken down by someone other than the investigative team.

      She pointed and said to Belt, “Have your guys scour that grass carefully to see if any fibers might have gotten caught there.”

      The chief nodded.

      A feeling began to creep over Riley – a familiar feeling that she sometimes got at a crime scene.

      She hadn’t felt it often during her most recent cases. But it was a welcome feeling, one that she knew she could use as a tool.

      It was an uncanny sense of the killer himself.

      If she allowed herself to let that feeling sweep over her, she was likely to get some insights into just what had happened here.

      Riley moved a few steps away from the group gathered at the scene. She glanced at Jenn and saw that her partner was watching her. Riley knew that Jenn was aware of her reputation for getting into killers’ minds. Riley nodded, and saw Jenn swing into action, asking questions of her own, distracting the others on the scene and giving Riley a few moments to concentrate her skills.

      Riley closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene as it must have looked at the time of the murder.

      Images and sounds came to her remarkably easily.

      It was dim outside, and the beach was shadowy, but there were traces of light in the sky across the water from where the sun would later rise, and it wasn’t too dark to see.

      The tide was up, and the water was probably only an easy stone’s throw away, so the sound of the surf was loud.

      Loud enough so he could barely hear himself digging, Riley realized.

      At that moment, Riley had no trouble stepping into a strange mind…

      Yes, he was digging, and she could feel the strain of his muscles as he threw shovels of sand as far away as he could, feel the mixture of sweat and sea spray on his face.

      The digging wasn’t easy. In fact, it was a bit frustrating.

      It wasn’t easy to dig a hole in beach sand like this.

      Sand had a way of trickling back in, partially refilling