Free Forgotten by Mariah Stewart

can’t even imagine what it’s like, waiting all these years, like this kid’s mom has had to do,” Elena said softly. “If it was my kid, I’d have dug up half the state by now.”
    “You have children?” Portia asked.
    “Two sons. Seven and twelve.” Elena shook her head. “Just about the same age as…” She pointed to the spot where the digging was under way.
    “Usually we’ve found the body by now,” Alvin said to no one in particular after they’d dug for another twenty minutes. “Most of the time, the body’s in a shallow grave. We’re two feet down, and there’s nothing.” He glanced up at Portia. “You sure this is the right place?”
    Portia removed the tape recorder from her bag. After rewinding for a moment, she played back Woods’s words.
    “There’s a cluster of pine trees off to the left, and a sort of rock pile behind the trees. Again, you can’t miss it. You’ll find what you’re after between the tallest two trees, right in front of the rocks. They sit about ten feet apart.”
    “Okay,” the tech nodded. “Asked and answered.” The digging resumed.
    Portia noticed a light-colored SUV approaching the top of the hill and parking near the monument.
    “That your ME?” she asked the chief.
    “That would be him.” Elena got off the wall where she’d been sitting for the past fifteen minutes and waved to the man who was exiting the car, but he didn’t appear to notice.
    She took off in the direction of the new arrival. Portia squatted and sat on her heels, watching the techs remove shovel after shovel of dirt.
    If he lied about this, if this is all a game to him, I will personally find a way to make that little shit fry,
she thought.
If he thinks putting Madeline Williams through this is fun…shit, if doing this to John is his idea of a good time, I will…
    “Agent Cahill, meet Tom Patton, the county medical examiner.” Elena returned, leading the way for a portly man in his sixties for whom the walk up the hill had not been an easy one.
    “Thanks for coming out.” Portia stood and extended her hand. He took it in his own fleshy, overly warm one.
    “That’s the job.” He took a deep breath and tried to get his breathing under control. “Asthma,” he told her. “Asthma and allergies. All these damned dandelions, the wildflowers, tossing their damned pollen in the air, this blasted humidity…”
    “Dr. Patton…” Elena began.
    “Tom. How many times have I told you all to call me Tom?” He grumbled and stared down at the hole in the ground. “Where’s the body?”
    “It’s still in there,” Portia said, gesturing toward the hole. “We think it’s in there.”
    “This is the emergency that had me tracked down at the dentist’s office?” He raised an eyebrow.
    “We thought the remains would have been closer to the surface,” Portia told him.
    The ME frowned at Elena across the open excavation. “What makes you so sure there’s a body here?”
    “The killer told Agent Cahill he’d buried a boy here,” Elena explained.
    “How long ago?” he asked.
    “Sometime between 1997 and 1999,” Portia responded.
    “We’re looking for old bones?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, for cryin’ out loud, Elena, you brought me out here to look at something that may or may not even be here, that may be ten, eleven years old?” He glared equally at the two women.
    “Got something,” Joanna said, and three heads turned to look at the same time. “Looks like a hand. A very small hand.”
    The detective, who’d been sitting on the wall watching the dig, picked up the camera and began to shoot as each new bone was uncovered.
    “Gonna get my people out here to get the remains ready for transport,” Patton said. He took the phone from his pocket and made his call.
    “Yeah, Harve, I’m up here on Turner’s Hill with Chief Duffy and a couple ’a her people and the FBI. Got us some bones. Bring me up a bag to bring them back in.”
    “Two,” Joanna said. “Tell him