shape of the hole seemed odd to her. The end where she was standing was dug in a pointed wedge shape. The other end reflected that same shape, only inverted.
It looked like the killer had gone to a certain amount of trouble about it.
But why? Riley wondered. What could it mean?
Just then, she heard Bill’s voice call out from somewhere behind her.
“I’ve found something. You’d all better come over here for a look.”
Chapter Seven
Riley whirled around to see what Bill was yelling about. His voice was coming from behind the trees off to one side of the path.
“What is it?” Chief Belt called out.
“What did you find?” Terzis echoed.
“Just come here,” Bill yelled back.
Riley got to her feet and headed in his direction. She could see broken-down brush where he had left the path.
“Are you coming?” Bill called out, starting to sound a little impatient.
Riley could tell by his tone of voice that he meant business.
Followed by Belt and Terzis, she waded through the thicket until they reached the small clearing where Bill was standing. Bill was looking down at the ground.
He’d found something, all right.
Another piece of erosion cloth was stretched over the ground, loosely held in place by small pegs at the corners.
“Good God,” Terzis murmured.
“Not another body,” Belt said.
But Riley knew that it had to be something different. For one thing, the hole was much smaller than the other, and square in shape.
Bill was putting on plastic gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints on whatever he was about to find. Then he knelt down and gently pulled the erosion cloth away.
All Riley could see was a circular piece of dark, polished wood.
Bill carefully took hold of the wooden circle with both hands and pulled it upward.
Everybody except Bill gasped at what he slowly brought out of the hole.
“An hourglass!” Chief Belt said.
“Biggest one I ever saw,” Terzis added.
And indeed, the object was over two feet tall.
“Are you sure it’s not some kind of trap?” Riley warned.
Bill rose to his feet with the object, keeping it perpendicular, handling it as delicately as he might handle an explosive device. He set it upright on the ground next to the hole.
Riley knelt and examined it closely. The thing didn’t seem to have any wires or springs. But was anything hidden beneath that sand? She tilted the thing to one side and didn’t see anything odd.
“It’s just a big hourglass,” she muttered. “And hidden just like the trap on the trail.”
“Not an hourglass, exactly,” Bill said. “I’m pretty sure it measures a longer period of time than an hour. It’s what’s called a sand timer.”
The object struck Riley as startlingly beautiful. The two globes of glass were exquisitely shaped, connected together by a narrow opening. The round wooden top and bottom pieces were connected by three wooden rods, carved into decorative patterns. The top was carved into a ripple pattern. The wood was dark and well-polished.
Riley had seen sand timers before – much smaller versions for cooking that counted off three or five or twenty minutes. This one was much, much bigger, over two feet tall.
The bottom globe was partially filled with tan sand.
There was no sand in the upper globe.
Chief Belt asked Bill, “How did you know something was here?”
Bill was crouching beside the sand timer, examining it attentively. He asked, “Did anyone else notice something odd about the shape of the pit on the trail?”
“I did,” Riley said. “The ends of the hole were dug in kind of a wedge-shaped manner.”
Bill nodded.
“It was roughly the shape of an arrow. The arrow pointed to where the path curved away and some of the bushes were broken down. So I just went where it was pointing.”
Chief Belt was still staring at the sand timer with amazement.
“Well, we’re lucky you found it,” he said.
“The killer wanted us to look here,” Riley muttered. “He wanted us to figure this out.”
Riley glanced at Bill, then at Jenn. She could tell they were thinking just what she was thinking.
The sand in the timer had run out.
Somehow, in a way they didn’t yet understand, that meant that they weren’t lucky at all.
Riley looked at Belt and asked, “Did any of your men find a timer like this at the beach?”
Belt shook his head and said, “No.”
Riley felt a grim tingle of intuition.
“Then you didn’t look hard enough,” she said.
Neither Belt nor Terzis spoke for a moment. They looked as though they couldn’t believe their ears.
Then Belt said, “Look, something like this would surely have stood out. I’m sure there wasn’t anything like it in the immediate area.”
Riley frowned. This thing that had been placed so carefully just had to be important. She felt sure that the cops had somehow overlooked another sand timer.
For that matter, so had she and Bill and Jenn when they’d been on the beach. Where could that one be?
“We’ve got to go back and look,” Riley said.
Bill carried the enormous timer over to the SUV. Jenn opened the back, and she and Bill put the object inside, making sure that it was braced and steadied against any sharp or sudden movement. They covered it with a blanket that was in the SUV.
Riley, Bill, and Jenn got into the SUV and followed the police chief’s car back toward the beach.
The number of reporters gathered in the parking area had increased, and they were getting more aggressive. As Riley and her colleagues made their way through them and past the yellow tape, she wondered how much longer they would be able to ignore their questions.
When they reached the beach, the body was no longer in the hole. The ME’s team had already loaded it into their van. The local cops were still combing the area for clues.
Belt called out to his men, who gathered around him.
“Has
