Buried Read online

  “Please just come.”

  She stepped right next to her. “I could easily overpower you and run.”

  The woman looked at her with such unbridled horror that Hannah backed off. The look on her face was not born of casual fear. This woman had clearly experienced a nightmare beyond imagining. It was the first time Hannah was convinced that this woman was nothing but a fellow victim.

  Hannah tried not to let that fear infect her, but it seeped into her pores.

  She did not want to find out what this woman was afraid of.

  “He left your daughter behind. She’s not here,” the woman said.

  “Sam is safe?” Hannah could barely say the words.

  The woman nodded. “Did you … before you came here, did anyone get my message?” she whispered.

  “Your message?”

  “I had to clean them afterward.… I wrote a message on her body, but … I guess it didn’t work.” Her face fell. “Now please come.” She held out her hand.

  Unsure what else to do, Hannah took it.

  CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

  Sayer’s phone buzzed as they drove away from the Valdezes’ house.

  “Hey, Ez, you’re on speaker.”

  “Just calling to report that Dana finished the autopsies.” Ezra’s voice sounded slightly tinny. “Official cause of death for our two recent victims, internal injuries caused by blunt-force trauma to their head and body. In other words, they were beaten to death, most likely by hand. No weapon marks and all of their injuries were consistent with a fight.”

  “Not just a beating, a fight.”

  “Yeah, according to Dana they fought back hard.”

  “Okay, so they weren’t sedated. Anything else?” Sayer asked.

  “Yeah.” Ezra rifled through paper. “There were burn marks on both of their necks consistent with a taser or some kind of electric shock device.”

  “Hum, probably a way to control his victims.”

  “One more thing.…” He paused. “Both women had a broken left pinkie finger that looked wonky.”

  “Define wonky, please.…”

  “Well, the breaks don’t look defensive or offensive. Here, I’ll read Dana’s note.” Ezra cleared his throat. “In both women, the phalanges of the left fourth finger bone were shattered. Injuries not consistent with offensive or defensive wounds. The injuries are consistent with a finger being smashed between two hard objects. Possible that both victims had one finger broken on purpose.”

  Sayer remained silent, processing.

  “So maybe our victims were tortured?” Max said softly.

  “Maybe. That’s it for now,” Ezra said.

  “Thanks, Ez. We’re going to head to UVA to find out more about the sword and get a profile, then we’ll head back up to you.”

  Sayer hung up and gave Max a look. “What the hell is our UNSUB doing to these women?”

  UNKNOWN LOCATION

  The skeletal woman led Hannah Valdez through the metal door.

  Hannah curled her fingers tight and the woman responded, holding her hand firmly. Their hands felt warm and papery against each other.

  It was strangely comforting.

  Hand in hand, they walked through a swinging wooden door out into an open area.

  Hannah’s mouth fell open in shock. The short hall emptied into a cavern the size of a soccer field. Sheer rock walls rose to a high arched ceiling, so high it was almost impossible to see in the spotlights that lined the cavern walls.

  The roaring sound she’d heard in her room was louder here, filling the entire cavern with an echo.

  Rusted industrial equipment littered the rocky ground. A single metal table and chair sat at the center of the cavern.

  By far the most terrifying thing in the room was an upright metal contraption covered with thick leather straps and with a large silver blade propped out to the side. It looked like a torture device. Was she about to be strapped down? Hannah’s heart started racing.

  “Welcome to the pit, Hannah,” a voice crackled from a loudspeaker, filling the cavern. Hannah searched for the source.

  At the far end of the massive chamber, a ladder ran up to a glass-enclosed control room perched on a ledge far above. She realized that, rather than a cave, this was actually a massive pit dug down into the ground. Some kind of mine complex?

  A shadowy figure stood in the control room overlooking the pit.

  “Let me go, you bastard!” Hannah let her rage and fear out in a harsh shout.

  “If you cooperate, this will go smoothly and you’ll be back to your room in no time.” The voice echoed loudly in the large chamber.

  “I’m not going to cooperate with anything.”

  The skeletal woman painfully squeezed her hand and gave her a desperate, pleading look. Then she pulled away.

  As Hannah’s hand fell to her side, a shock exploded from her neck.

  She let out a strangled cry as her muscles went rigid. Her jaw slammed shut. Molars cracked on impact.

  Hannah toppled backward to the ground, hitting her head. She lay jerking on the floor.

  As quickly as it had begun, the pain stopped.

  Her muscles turned to jelly and she curled forward, groaning.

  The skeletal woman hurried to her, gently stroking her hair back from her face.

  “That was on four,” the voice echoed down. “Your collar goes to ten. I repeat, if you cooperate, this will go smoothly and you’ll be back to your room in no time.”

  Unable to speak, Hannah grunted a sound of agreement.

  “Very good. Go sit at the table.”

  The woman helped Hannah up and nodded toward the table. Something in her eyes was unreadable, but Hannah couldn’t think beyond the fact that she never wanted to feel that pain again.

  Shaky, she sat down and almost fell from the chair.

  She put her head down on the table. The metal felt cool against her forehead and she closed her eyes.

  Everything jumbled in her mind like a churning ocean. This pit. The roaring sound in the background. Being held here. The strange skeletal woman. It all felt so far beyond any nightmare she could have ever imagined.

  “Hannah!” the voice boomed from above.

  She jolted up with a gasp.

  “Don’t fade on me. I’m just here to conduct my first test, then I’ll be on my way.”

  Hannah tried to get her bearings, but when she lifted her head, the whole world tilted. She slid from the chair, barely catching herself on her hands and knees. She stayed like that, unsure if she could stand.

  “Ah, I see you haven’t eaten. Jillian, get her food and water,” the voice commanded loudly.

  The woman hurried to gather a bottle of water and a stale sandwich.

  Hannah took them from her trembling hands. She drank the entire bottle and inhaled the food without wondering if they were drugged. She was well beyond such prosaic fear.

  The food hit her stomach, sending it into a spasm. But she could feel her body responding. She used the table to pull herself back into the chair.

  “It’s time for your first trial,” the voice said.

  Hannah’s mouth went dry at the look of pure terror on the skeletal woman’s face.

  The woman reluctantly left Hannah’s side and disappeared into one of the side tunnels. Hannah watched the dark archway, breath held in anticipation of the next horror.

  She was confused when the woman returned with a single brick.

  “Just a simple trial to help you begin your transformation.” The voice sounded almost gleeful. “Pretend you’re Hercules.”

  The woman placed the brick on the table next to Hannah and stepped over to the wall. She pressed herself against the rock.

  “Transformation? Trial? What’s happening?” Hannah asked the woman, but she wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Now, smash your left pinkie finger with the brick or I will shoot your new friend in the head.”

  “What?” Hannah stood up and turned to face the figure.


  “Smash your left pinkie finger or I will shoot her in the head,” he repeated calmly. “I assume you’d rather not have to clean up her corpse.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hannah shouted up.

  A gun went off. Hannah’s whole body jolted at the sound.

  A chip of stone flew off only a few inches from the other woman’s head.

  Hannah stared up in shock.

  “Do it!” the voice shouted.

  She looked over at the woman, who trembled uncontrollably. Tears leaked out of the sides of her eyes.

  “You have until three.”

  Hannah looked down at the brick.

  “One.”

  She looked up at the woman. A small circle of urine appeared on the front of her cotton wrap.

  “Two.”

  Hannah’s own tears began to fall, but she lifted the brick. Without hesitation, she slammed it down.

  A feral cry burst from her mouth as her finger exploded with pain.

  The woman collapsed to the floor with relief.

  Hannah swooned and leaned forward, putting her head back down on the table, unable to do anything but breathe in and out. In and out.

  UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HISTORY DEPARTMENT, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

  Sayer shivered slightly in the cool air as she and Max made their way across the UVA campus. Maple trees lined the bustling promenade, littering the green lawn with blazing red and orange leaves. They entered the UVA History Department and wandered along the glass rotunda until they found the office of Dr. Hamza Suvari.

  Max knocked and a soft voice answered, “Enter!”

  A spry man in his eighties sat behind a small desk, sprigs of silver hair perched on his head like a preening bird.

  “You do not appear to be students here to complain about the pop quiz on Ottoman history this morning.” He smiled, wrinkles deepening.

  “Dr. Suvari. I’m Agent Maxwell Cho with the FBI. I sent you an e-mail this morning about a bladed weapon we found in the course of a criminal investigation.” Max held up the plastic-wrapped sword.

  “Ah, yes! Come in, please sit. Can I get you some tea?”

  “No, thank you,” Sayer answered, not wanting to take too long. “We’re on an active case right now.”

  Dr. Suvari frowned with disapproval but nodded. “Of course. Let me cut right to the chase then, Agent…?”

  “I’m sorry. Senior Special Agent Altair.”

  Dr. Suvari bowed slightly. “Altair, what an auspicious name. What you have, Agent Altair, is not actually a Turkish yataghan at all, though I can see why you thought so. What you actually have is a Greek kopis. Both have short, recurved blades, but a yataghan tends to be slightly longer and more slender. Actually, the yataghan was probably an evolution from the kopis, but true yataghans weren’t even found in the Ottoman Empire until the mid-sixteenth century, when it was—”

  “Dr. Suvari,” Sayer gently interrupted. She’d spent enough time with academics to recognize the beginning of a lecture.

  “Of course, sorry. As I said, you have a Greek sword. A kopis has a shorter, thicker blade, though the real diagnostic difference is the hilt. Yours has a hook handle rather than a straight hilt.”

  “And what would a kopis be used for?” Sayer asked.

  Dr. Suvari frowned again. “In my limited knowledge about such things, I believe it was used for war, but also for butchery, including ritual sacrifice.”

  Goose bumps rose along Sayer’s arms and she momentarily wished she had accepted the offer of a warm tea.

  “Hang on.” He held up a finger. “Let me see if our Greek historian is in her office.”

  Sayer expected him to lift the phone on his desk, but instead he belted out, “Delores!” so loudly that she jumped.

  Dr. Suvari let out a mischievous grin. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. She’s just in the office next door.…”

  A middle-aged woman peeked through the doorway. “You need me, Hamza?”

  “Yes, could you come take a look at this? I believe it’s a kopis, but you would have a much better idea.”

  The willowy woman in a suede skirt and silk blouse hurried in, her sleek brown bob swinging as she moved.

  Max held up the weapon and she took it without any form of greeting.

  “You have a kopis?” She turned it over in her hand. “Where did you find this?”

  “It’s part of our current investigation.” Sayer tried to catch her eye. “I’m with the FBI.…”

  The Greek-history professor barely acknowledged her existence. She leaned in close, turning the short sword over in her hand.

  “Sorry, Delores can be … focused. Dr. Delores Schneider, these are agents Altair and Cho with the FBI. They need to know anything you can tell them about this sword.”

  The Greek historian glanced up from her inspection. “What? Oh, yes, sorry. I’ve just never seen one up close like this. Can I take it out of this bag?”

  “No, sorry. It hasn’t been fully processed.”

  The historian frowned.

  “So it is a kopis?” Sayer asked.

  “Most definitely.”

  “And could you tell us what a kopis would have been used for?”

  “Certainly. The word kopis was really just slang for “chopper” in ancient Greece. It was most often used in combat. The curved blade would allow the user to strike downward over the top of an enemy’s shield. But they were also commonly used for ritual purposes. Sacrifices and such.”

  “Did the Greeks sacrifice humans?”

  “Debatable.” She continued turning the sword over in her hands. “But, in my expert opinion, yes. There’s a growing consensus that they did ritually slaughter human beings.”

  “And what would that look like?” Sayer asked, thinking about cause of death. “A ritual sacrifice.”

  “A good question. Despite what you see in movies, there was a great deal of religious variation across the ancient Greek world. But the stereotypical sacrificial ritual would involve binding the victim, then decorating them in ritual vestments like ribbons or fine gowns. They would bring the victim to the altar and ritually slit their throat, possibly catching blood in a shallow basin. From there, they would often process the femur or tailbone and eat only the meat from that part, burning the rest.” She squinted at the handle. “Hamza, do you have a magnifier?”

  Dr. Suvari handed her his reading glasses. “Will these do?”

  She grunted approval and she squinted at the handle through the thick glasses, turning the sword in the light.

  “Aha! This is a real kopis.”

  “A real one?”

  “Yes, it’s possible to get a modern kopis from a speciality shop, but I think this one is genuine.”

  “As in an actual ancient Greek sword?”

  The historian looked like a kid with a new toy. “Exactly.”

  “How hard would it be to buy something like this?”

  “A good question. The answer all depends on how long ago it was purchased. Right now, no way you could find anything like this legally, so you would have to buy it on the black market. Did you know that the antiquities black market almost rivals drugs and guns? Billions of dollars a year. But twenty or thirty years ago, looting laws were virtually nonexistent. How else would museums have any exhibits?” She laughed at her own joke. When no one else laughed, she looked up. “Because most of what you see in museums was stolen.…” She paused. “Anyway, it would have been fairly easy to find something like this maybe twenty years ago.”

  “That’s really useful—”

  “You’ll also probably want to know what this says,” the historian interrupted Sayer, pointing to the curved handle.

  “What what says?”

  Dr. Schneider turned the sword, and at just the right angle, Sayer could see faint scratch marks. Unlike the fine craftsmanship of the kopis, the symbols were crudely etched into the metal. “Is that Greek?”

  “Indeed. Ἔχιδνα. Ekhidna, the she-
viper.”

  “Echidna, like the spiky little Australian animal?” Max asked.

  The Greek historian looked up at Max, annoyed. She did a double-take, as if noticing him for the first time. “The animal is named after a Greek monster. Echidnas are marsupials, half mammal, half amphibian. The Greek Ekhidna was half fair maiden, half snake. The she-viper,” she repeated, as if they were children.

  “Okay.” Sayer let that roll around in her mind. “So we’ve got a Greek sword and a Greek monster. What can you tell me about Ekhidna?”

  “She was a drakaina of ancient Greek mythology—half serpent, half human. She was known as the mother of all monsters.”

  “The mother of all monsters…,” Sayer said.

  “Here, let me quote Hesiod’s Theogony.” The historian closed her eyes as though reading from an invisible book. “She was an unmanageable monster like nothing human nor like the immortal gods either, in a hollow cave. This was the divine and haughty Ekhidna, and half of her is a nymph with a fair face and eyes glancing, but the other half is a monstrous serpent, terrible, enormous and squirming and voracious, there in earth’s secret places. For there she has her cave on the underside of a hollow rock, far from the immortal gods, and far from all mortals.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “That was all a quote?” Max asked.

  “Yes, a direct quote. Photographic memory comes in handy as a historian.” She tilted her head and smiled at Max. Sayer realized she was trying to flirt. Poorly.

  “So, Ekhidna was a monster who lived in a cave.…” Sayer couldn’t help but think about the cave where they’d just found human remains.

  “Correct. Or at least in some kind of underground lair. Various quotes also have her living off the flesh and blood of the innocent. She gave birth to quite a few famous mythological monsters—Hydra, Cerberus, and so on.”

  Sayer glanced at the time and realized they were due in the profiler’s office. “We’ve got to get going, but thank you both. Could I call you if I have more questions?” Sayer said while plucking the kopis from the historian’s hands.