The Buried Read online

  Turning away from her, he raised his car window and put on his directional preparing to turn into traffic, when she had a change of heart. Perhaps she had somewhere she needed to be. Perhaps she noticed the kind smile on the man’s face, his calm manner. Perhaps she thought: He seems okay, not at all frightening.

  She tapped on the car window. “Well, it would be a relief to get home on time for a change.”

  “So, you think this looks like her?” I held up the sketch. “Do we have her face right now?”

  His lips parted until he showed a sliver of perfect white enamel. “Yes. That will do. Sarah, you really are quite good at this.”

  “You have an exceptional recall of faces,” I flattered, as pleasantly as if he were anyone else I’d dealt with over the years. I’d done this many times, pulled out a sketch pad to document a face based on the memory of someone who observed a crime.

  Yet Liam Kneehoff wasn’t a witness, at least not in the traditional sense.

  “Do you remember this young woman’s name?” I asked.

  “No. Like I’ve explained, I never paid attention to names.”

  We’d played this game many times, Kneehoff and I, a perverse one where he offered up pieces of the puzzles but omitted important facts. Habitually, he gave me enough information to get the faces right. When I pushed, he reluctantly added a few fragments of details, tiny impressions, but rarely more.

  Each time, he gave me just enough so that I would tell those in charge that he cooperated. A trim, elegant man of fifty-one with greying dark blond hair and a nearly patrician profile, Kneehoff had made a bargain with those in power. Under the agreement, he had to collaborate with me on the faces. He had a lot riding on it.

  “Come on, Liam. You know her name. I know you do.” I held up the sketch yet again, this time at arm’s length thrusting it toward him. “This woman had her purse with her, with her driver’s license inside. You must have seen her picture in the newspapers and on TV.”

  Kneehoff’s face blank, he said nothing.

  Despite my determination to keep it at bay, I felt the rage bottled inside me building. On any day with Liam Kneehoff, it took all my efforts to hide it. I lowered my voice and smiled at him. “I know that you know who this woman is.”

  Across from me, I saw a glimmer of recognition, but his silence endured.

  I could have yelled or screamed. Threatened. But that wouldn’t have helped. I knew from experience, if I wanted any cooperation from Kneehoff, I had to continue the charade. Softly, I asked, “Why not help me?”

  He enjoyed my frustration. His finely drawn lips pulled taut but remained still.

  When I spoke next, despite my intentions, I heard a tinge of anger in my voice. “Why not make this easier for me?”

  He heard it, too, and he smiled. He knew he was getting to me.

  “All I can tell you is what I remember. I’d seen her before, standing on the curb waiting for the bus. I followed the bus, watched, and I knew her stop. Based on that, I can tell you that she probably lived in the Clear Lake area. Nothing more.”

  He was lying.

  I hadn’t expected his cooperation, but I’d hoped. In the past, I’d always dropped the questioning when he clammed up, accepted his limitations. But I felt weary. His evasiveness had gone on too long. I asked again, “Liam, there must be something else you can tell me about this woman.”

  My plea brought a strained smile. Then something strange, a reaction I’d never seen before. In an instant, Kneehoff’s face changed. His jaw grew longer as the corners of his mouth edged down. His eyes froze into a dark, cold stare.

  Small bumps popped up on my arms, and I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  Screech! Screech! His chair’s metal legs scraped the cement and chains jangled as he clawed at the floor with his heels and shuffled toward me.

  My instincts kicked in, and I pushed away.

  Over the sounds emitting from our clattering chairs, a deep voice bellowed, “Stay where you are!”

  Kneehoff slammed to an immediate stop.

  Well over six feet tall, at least three-hundred pounds, the burly sergeant clomped toward him in heavy boots. Simultaneously, two prison guards drew their guns.

  The man-in-charge grabbed Liam Kneehoff by the thick leather belt and heavy steel chains that anchored his chest to the chair. He yanked Kneehoff back with all his strength and planted him not the original distance from me, but a good eight feet away. Then he sneered at Kneehoff and issued a clear warning. “You know the rules! Keep the required distance from Lieutenant Armstrong or this is over!”

  Kneehoff said nothing, and the sergeant bent down and goaded, “You understand, you piece of shit?”

  A tick of his head to the right, Kneehoff signaled agreement.

  For a moment, the sergeant glared down at the chained man. Then he fell back and reclaimed his position.

  As if this were a minor misunderstanding, Kneehoff turned toward me. The rage I’d witnessed moments earlier had vanished. He chattered amiably. “Touchy, touchy.”

  Catching my breath, I said nothing.

  Kneehoff shook his head. “I just hoped for a better look at your drawing, to make sure I described her correctly.”

  “That’s all?” I asked.

  He craned his neck to get a better look at me, and the chains across his chest rustled. “Oh, I did want to smell your perfume. I caught just a whiff of it earlier. Something with lilies, I think?”

  He waited. I didn’t answer.

  After an uncomfortable silence, he again relaxed in the chair. “That was nothing,” he dismissed. “I just wanted to get a better look at the drawing. To make sure my memories of this woman are right, that they go with the face.”

  “What memories?” I asked. “I thought you said you didn’t remember anything else?”

  “The memories I’ve already told you,” he said. “I only meant those.”

  My heart had finally stopped battering my rib cage, but my stomach churned. Chains or no chains, despite the armed guards, it terrified me that Kneehoff had gotten so close. I fought an impulse to stand and walk out. But when I considered what had just happened, I realized that it could work to my advantage.

  “Liam, I’m sure the sergeant would understand if you were truly trying to help me,” I said. “Perhaps he wouldn’t be upset with you for breaking the rules if you do have more information for me.”

  Kneehoff said nothing.

  After a pause, I went on, “I hear those strip searches before they put you back in your cell aren’t fun.”

  His eyelids lowered to slits.

  As innocently as I could manage, I asked, “Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

  He glanced at the sergeant, who had an enforcer’s reputation inside prison walls. “You better help the lieutenant,” he ordered. Leaning closer, he said in a low, hoarse voice, not much above a whisper, “I’d say it’s in your best interests.”

  Frowning, Kneehoff turned back to me.

  “Of course, I’ll help you, Sarah. As I always do,” he said.

  I waited, and when the silence again grew awkward, he offered, “I think this particular young woman said she had a husband and a child.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was something to work with. Another clue. “A husband and a child? You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at the sergeant and nodded, but got no acknowledgement from the man. Again, Kneehoff turned back to me.

  Saying nothing, I stared at him.

  Other men might have been unnerved by my silence and the sergeant’s eyes boring into him. Instead, Kneehoff remained as calm as if we sat at a courtyard table sharing a pleasant lunch. His smile returned. “You know, Sarah, I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re the only one who visits. I consider you a friend.”

  Friends? Not a chance. But it was true that Kneehoff and I had gotten to know each other well.

  For the past two months, we’d spent many hours together
in this barren room with its grey cement block walls. We sat across from each other, Kneehoff handcuffed and shackled, belted and chained to a metal chair, with the sergeant and two other armed guards monitoring his every move.

  Such security may seem excessive, but only to those who didn’t understand Liam Kneehoff. Given the opportunity, I had no doubt that he would happily do to me what he’d done to other women who’d crossed his path.

  For fifteen years, Kneehoff worked for Houston’s giant oil companies. An exacting man with an incredible eye for detail, he had a flourishing career as an engineer designing offshore oil rigs. The rewards were grand, including a meticulously furnished Memorial Drive mansion he shared with his wife and young children. The couple attended charity fundraisers and museum openings.

  These days he spent his time in a cell, meals slid in through a slot in a solid steel door. One hour each afternoon, he exercised in a small outdoor courtyard. Kneehoff’s wife hadn’t written or visited since he arrived in prison.

  Our conversation lagged, and it appeared he decided we’d finished our official visit. Giving me a friendly gaze, he asked, “How’s Bobby these days? Well, I hope.”

  I looked over at him and reminded myself that I still needed his cooperation. I couldn’t tell him to back off. Not yet.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Bobby Barker, my mother’s fiancé, is a well-known oilman, and he and Kneehoff once traveled in the same circles. The chained man sitting across from me brought that relationship up regularly. He seemed to think that gave us a connection beyond my current role in this strange drama.

  It didn’t.

  “Listen, Liam, we don’t have a lot of time together, so we have to stay focused,” I reminded him, keeping my voice even. “We need to concentrate on our work, why I’m here.”

  My suggestion ignored, he ventured, “Your mother’s wedding must be coming up?”

  I took a long breath.

  “I saw their announcement in the newspaper. Bobby’s a lucky guy. A summer wedding will be lovely.”

  By virtue of his well-funded commissary account, Kneehoff had a few perks in his life behind bars: the ability to buy sodas, candy, chips and salsa, magazine subscriptions and a daily delivery of the Houston Chronicle. He grinned at me. “They’re getting married on the twentieth, right?”

  “Yes. But again, our time is limited. Tell me about the woman in the sketch.”

  Kneehoff frowned.

  “What did she say?” I asked. “I’ll be the judge as to whether or not it helps.”

  “Ah, yes. Getting back to business,” he said, visibly annoyed. “The profiler will profile.”

  Kneehoff was right about my job. A lieutenant in the Texas Rangers, I’m one of only a handful of women rangers and the organization’s lone criminal profiler. When any law enforcement agency in the state needs help narrowing down a list of suspects, diagnosing a crime scene or a case file, I respond.

  That’s how Liam Kneehoff and I first met.

  Twelve years ago, young women began disappearing south of Houston, one after another. It went on for two years. Local law enforcement asked for help, and I entered the investigation, analyzed the clues – chiseled down the possibilities. I drew up a profile of the suspected serial killer, age, education, habits, where in the city he most likely lived and worked.

  We got a break when Kristilynn Cavanaugh, a college student Kneehoff abducted, correctly analyzed her dire situation. She jumped out of his black Mercedes SUV on the freeway. Battered and bruised, she suffered damage to her spinal cord that put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But she survived, and she gave us a description. I drew a sketch of her abductor and added it to what I’d surmised about the man. Before long, tips rolled in, and we had our main suspect.

  Once we had Kneehoff on our list, we showed Kristilynn a six-pack, a photo lineup of six men. Tears in her eyes, she pointed at Kneehoff with a trembling finger and whispered, “That’s the man.”

  That same day, we dropped out of the sky from a helicopter onto an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Kneehoff led us on one hell of a chase that took us through every twist and turn of a jungle of pipe. He’d built the platform and knew where to hide, and he succeeded until we cornered him and pulled him out, clicked on the handcuffs, and read him his rights.

  In the end, Kneehoff ended up with a date with death imposed by a jury and signed by a judge. His appeals failed. The clock ticked, and his lethal injection approached. Then the call came into my office. Kneehoff had written a letter to the DA’s office claiming he had fourteen victims in all, when we only knew of five. He offered to trade information about the additional nine in exchange for pushing back his execution date.

  I felt elated. I never doubted that there were more bodies. Then Kneehoff announced that he’d talk only to me.

  I’d hoped to never see Liam Kneehoff’s face again except in a photo under a headline announcing his execution. My encounters with him ranked high on the list of events in my life I’d prefer to forget. But I ultimately agreed to head the investigation, not for myself but for the yet-to-be identified victims and their families.

  So our sessions began, and as much as I abhorred being anywhere near the man, I quickly noticed that Kneehoff seemed more forthcoming if I kept the conversation between us friendly. He wanted to be treated as he once was, as a professional, a peer. I could give him that, if he gave me what I needed to do my job.

  My role? To give the dead their faces back.

  My hope? To discover their identities and notify their families of their fates. To find the victims’ remains and allow their families to have the funerals they’ve been long denied.

  If I succeeded, for the first time, all Liam Kneehoff’s victims would have proper graves.

  The woman in this drawing, the one I’d just completed, had high cheek bones, arched eyebrows, one eye slightly larger and higher than the other. Her dark hair fell softly around her face, parted on the side, ending just above her shoulders.

  “Liam, there must be more you can tell me. I need to know everything you know about this woman,” I said, yet again.

  Dressed in his white jumpsuit with DR on the back for Death Row, he squirmed as much as he could manage in the chair with the chains cinched tightly. He bristled at my insistence. “You know I’m not the one in charge here,” I reminded him. “I have people I report to. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have no choice other than to tell the warden that we’re finished. He’ll tell the governor, and your execution date will be reset. I have no wiggle room. I have orders.”

  Kneehoff frowned. He didn’t want the clock to start ticking again, and I was his only way to prevent that. I noticed that he swallowed. Hard.

  “Like I said, no name. If she told me one, I don’t remember it. And I don’t know where she lived. I was only supposed to drop her at the Park & Ride when we got off I-45. I assumed she had a car there or someone was picking her up. But, of course, I took another route. I had another destination in mind.”

  I had to admit that some of it rang true. Kneehoff buried most of the bodies in the woods around the Addicks Reservoir. Others were in wooded lots, in open fields around the city. I gave him a look, urging him to continue.

  “As you can imagine, once this one realized I wasn’t taking her home, all casual conversation stopped. She wanted to know why I had a gun in my hand and what I planned to do to her.”

  I blanched at the way he referred to the woman as “this one.” I should have been used to it, but I wasn’t. Some things I don’t think most folks ever get used to.

  As to what he did to the women he lured into his car? In the newspapers, Liam Kneehoff was known as the I-45 Strangler.

  In my office at Ranger headquarters, off the 610 Loop, I had photos of Kneehoff’s original five victims hanging on a wall and next to them sketches of the first seven women I drew at his direction.

  Twelve women in all.

  So far, we had a perfect score. We’d recovered the
remains of all twelve. Using dental records, DNA, and missing persons reports, we’d identified ten of the women. Their cases were closed, and their bones were returned to their families for burial.

  The other two victims?

  Their facial characteristics didn’t match anything we had in our files. When I ran their DNA profiles through the data bases, I came up dry.

  To my deep regret, the remains of those two Jane Does resided in bags inside cardboard boxes on a shelf in the morgue.

  Until we had a name to call her, this new woman, the one whose sketch I held in my hands, would be known only as Victim Thirteen.

  “And the location where you buried this woman?” I asked. “How’s the map coming?” Along with faces, Kneehoff had an exemplary recall of directions. After I completed each sketch, he drew a map to help us find where he buried the woman.

  “I’ve started it,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I excavated in a field a mile or so from the site of the third one, the blonde with the slight scar above her lip.”

  “Lynn Jenkins. She was a graduate student, had a young son.”

  It was important to me that he heard their names, as if that could force him to acknowledge their humanity. Kneehoff wasn’t interested. “Yeah, she’s the one. I picked her up in a convenience store parking lot.”

  “Okay. That gives us some idea. But I need you to pin it down. I need the map to Number Thirteen’s burial site,” I said. “Let the warden know when it’s ready and he can e-mail it to me.”

  Kneehoff nodded. I looked into his eyes, bottomless and emotionless.

  “So this is it?” I asked.

  “It?”

  “The last one? No more women to draw?” When we’d begun this process, Kneehoff claimed fourteen victims, but as we started this drawing he’d mused that perhaps he’d been wrong. Instead, he said he thought that Number Thirteen could be the last.

  “I’m not sure.” He became quiet, thoughtful. “But I think that I included that Cavanaugh woman when I counted fourteen.” When he talked about the lone survivor, his mouth curled in disgust. It was easy to see how much he hated her. That she survived rankled him.