Chapter 14: GARDENS OF THE DEAD
The forest clearing smelled wrong—not decay exactly, but something organic and invasive, the scent of growth feeding on death. Yellow crime scene tape marked a perimeter that local deputies watched with expressions suggesting they'd rather be anywhere else.
I ducked under the tape and stopped.
Nine mounds of disturbed earth formed a rough circle in the clearing. Thin shoots of something pale and fungal emerged from each one, connecting the burial sites in a web of organic threads. It looked almost intentional. Artistic.
Because it was.
"Mikaelson." Beverly appeared at my elbow, evidence kit in hand. "You look like hell."
"Rough night." I forced my attention away from the mounds. "What do we have?"
"Nine victims, buried alive based on preliminary assessment. Connected by some kind of fungal growth the botanist is losing his mind over." She handed me a pair of gloves. "Will's already done his thing. He's over there looking like he wants to vomit."
I followed her gesture to where Will Graham stood at the edge of the scene, shoulders hunched, staring at nothing. The posture was familiar—I'd worn it myself in that hospital bathroom, processing experiences that shouldn't fit inside a human mind.
"What did he see?"
"He won't say specifically. Just told Jack that the killer 'kept them alive as long as possible' and that 'the connection mattered more than the death.'" Beverly's voice carried professional detachment, but her eyes showed concern. "Sometimes I think this job is killing him."
It is, I thought. And someone's helping.
I approached the nearest mound, keeping my breathing steady. The Scene Reading would come whether I wanted it or not—that much I'd learned. The only control I had was over when I let it wash through me and how much I retained afterward.
I knelt beside the disturbed earth and opened myself to what it wanted to show me.
Fragments: hands digging in darkness. A woman's face, mouth full of dirt, screaming without sound. The patient pressure of burial, the slow sinking into black. Above her, a man watching—not with cruelty, but with something like reverence. He was planting a garden. She was the seed.
I pulled back before the vision could deepen, gasping slightly. The control was better than it had been—I could touch the reconstruction without drowning in it. Progress, at a cost.
"You okay?" Beverly had moved closer, watching me with that assessing gaze I was learning to recognize.
"The killer came back," I said, standing slowly. "After burial. Multiple times. He watched them grow. This took time—days, maybe longer. He wasn't killing them. He was cultivating them."
Beverly's eyebrows rose. "That matches Will's assessment almost exactly."
"Different methods, same conclusions. That's why Jack wanted both perspectives."
She studied me for a long moment—longer than professional curiosity required. I could see the questions forming behind her eyes: How do you know what you know? What are you hiding?
I didn't have answers she'd believe, so I changed the subject. "What's the timeline on identification?"
We worked the scene for hours. Jimmy Price cataloged the fungal connections with a combination of scientific fascination and professional horror. Brian Zeller processed soil samples, making exactly one joke about mushroom pizza that earned groans from the entire team. Jack Crawford moved between groups, coordinating, directing, driving everyone forward with the focused intensity that made him effective and exhausting.
Will Graham stayed at the periphery, offering insights when asked, retreating into himself when not. I watched him watching the burial mounds and wondered what he saw that the rest of us couldn't. Probably nothing good.
Around noon, Beverly dropped onto a fallen log beside me and unwrapped something that might generously be called a sandwich.
"Vending machine?" I asked.
"Cafeteria." She took a bite and grimaced. "Somehow worse. I think the bread predates the colonial era."
I opened my own sad lunch—a protein bar that tasted like chocolate-flavored cardboard—and ate it anyway. The body needed fuel even when the mind wanted to reject everything.
"FBI catering," Beverly said, "is a war crime."
I laughed before I could stop myself. The sound surprised me—genuine, unforced, a moment of human connection in the middle of a garden of corpses. Beverly grinned, pleased with the reaction.
"You're not what I expected," she said.
"What did you expect?"
"The reputation said difficult, brilliant, and antisocial. You're at least two of those, but antisocial doesn't fit." She wadded up her sandwich wrapper. "You actually seem to like people. Specific people, anyway."
"I like competent people. There aren't many."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Take it how you want."
Her phone buzzed. She checked it, frowned, and stood. "Lab results coming in. Pharmacist with access to paralytic compounds—we have a suspect profile." She started toward the command vehicle, then paused. "Coffee. Tomorrow. I have questions about your Minnesota insights that won't wait."
"Questions about what specifically?"
"About how you knew things you shouldn't have been able to know." Her eyes met mine, direct and challenging. "You can prepare your explanations tonight. I'll know if you're lying."
She walked away before I could respond.
I sat on the fallen log, protein bar forgotten, thinking about Beverly Katz and the questions she wanted to ask. She was too smart, too observant, too good at her job. Eventually she'd see something I couldn't explain away.
The question was what would happen when she did.
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