Page 67 of Long Gone

The first thing I did was check out the mixer. It was gray with plenty of rust spots, about four feet tall and three feet wide. Remnants of concrete stuck to the outer walls. A squarish-shaped box sat on one side, and an industrial-looking electric cord hung out of the box.

“As you suggested, it needed electricity, but I don’t see anything around here that could power it,” I said.

“They probably used a generator,” Malcolm said. Walking past it and stopping a few feet away, he surveyed the ground.

I stood next to him. “No hole for a pool.”

“There’s a whole lot of nothing here.”

He was right. There were weeds, but they weren’t as tall as the ones in the other parts of the property. They were also sparser. The land was flat and had plenty of space for a pool, but the wall of trees to the west would have made the pool shaded in the afternoon. We both walked around the area for several minutes.

“I haven’t found anything,” I said. “You?”

“No, although if kids were partying out here, they surely would have found a body,” he called out from the other side of the clearing.

“I want to check the trees.” I held up a hand. “Yeah, I know they would have found him in there too, but maybe he was buried, and the grave became unsettled.”

Malcolm started walking back to the Jeep and I watched as he headed to the back, then emerged a few seconds later with two long metal poles. He handed one to me. “If a body is buried out there, then it’s decomposed, and the ground is liable to have sunk or sink if you stand on it. If you find a suspicious area, prod it with this.”

I took it and gave him a hard look. “Spoken like a man who has experience.”

“Everyone’s into true crime these days,” he said, then turned and headed to the trees along the western edge of the property.

I made my way to the northern side. A quick glance at the map told me I should find a small creek that fed into Meadow Creek.

Young saplings were mixed in with more mature oak trees. The ground was covered in a thick layer of fallen and decaying leaves, making the ground slippery. I plunged the metal pole into the ground in front of me with every step, but all I felt was uneven ground. After about fifteen minutes of poking and prodding, I headed back to the clearing. I could still see Malcolm in the western woods, so I went over to find him.

“I’ve found nothing,” I said as I started prodding the ground a few feet away from him.

“Same.”

“The concrete mixer doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“It does if you want to really hide a body.”

“But Anton says it wasn’t here after his father disappeared, and why would they leave it? Those things have serial numbers. It could be tracked down.”

“Ten-to-one it was stolen,” he said, his gaze on the ground as he continued to move forward, poking the dirt. “They brought it in to encase the body in concrete.”

“Is that why you’re really poking the ground? Looking for concrete?”

“Maybe a bit of both.”

We searched a few more minutes before I noticed an object on the ground. It was brown and blended in with the leaves. I could have easily missed it. Stopping, I leaned over and picked it up.

“What’d you find?” Malcolm asked, turning to face me.

“It looks like a leather business card case.”

The bifold felt wet and slimy, and I wished I had a pair of gloves. I opened it up and found a slit to insert business cards, but it was empty.

“No cards,” I said, holding it up. “No name.” I was about to toss it back onto the ground when my thumb ran along an indent in the bottom right corner. I rubbed at it with the pad of my thumb and could barely make out an H. If there had been any other letters, they had worn off.

“There’s an H on the outside,” I said. “It looks like it was personalized but there aren’t any other letters.”

“H for Hugo.”

“Possibly.” Then I acknowledged, “Okay, probably, but it’s not proof.”

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