Eleven (Brandon Fisher FBI Series)

Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1

NOTHING IN THE TWENTY WEEKS at Quantico prepared me for this.

A crime scene investigator, who had identified himself as Earl Royster when we first arrived, came out of a room and addressed my boss, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper. "All of the victims were buried—" He held up a finger, his eyes squeezed shut, and he sneezed. "Sorry 'bout that. My allergies don't like it down here. They were all buried the same way."

This was my first case with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, and it took us to Salt Lick, Kentucky. The discovery was made this morning, and we were briefed and flown out from Quantico to the Louisville field office where we picked up a couple of SUVs. We drove from there and got here about four in the afternoon.

We were in a bunker illuminated by portable lights brought in by the local investigative team. A series of four tunnels spread out as a root system beneath a house the size of a mobile trailer and extended under an abandoned cornfield.

A doorway in the cellar of the house led down eleven feet to a main hub from which the tunnels fed off. The walls were packed dirt and an electrical cord ran along the ceiling with pigtail fixtures attached every few feet.

We were standing in the hub that was about fifteen feet by seven and a half feet. The tunnels were only about three feet wide, and the height clearance was about the same as here, six and a half feet. The bulbs dangled down from the fixtures another eight inches.

I pulled out on my shirt collar wishing for a smaller frame than my six foot two. As it was, the three of us could have reached out and touched each other if we were inclined.

"It's believed each victim had the same cuts inflicted," Royster began. "Although most of the remains are skeletal so it's not as easy to know for sure. But based on burial method this guy obviously had a ritual. The most recent victim is only a few years old and was preserved by the soil. The oldest remains are estimated to date back twenty-five to thirty years. Bingham moved in twenty-six years ago."

Lance Bingham was the property owner, age sixty-two, and was currently serving three to five years in a correctional facility for killing two cows and assaulting a neighbor. If he moved in twenty-six years ago, that would put Bingham at thirty-six years at the time. The statistical age for a serial killer to start out is early to mid-thirties.

The CSI continued to relay more information about how the tunnels branched out in various directions and the ends came to a bulbous tip.

"There are eleven rooms and only ten bodies." Jack rushed the briefing along as he pulled a cigarette out of a shirt pocket. He didn't light up, but his lips suctioned around it as if it was a life supply.

Royster's eyes went from the cigarette to Jack's face. "Yes. There's one tunnel that leads to a dead end and there's one empty grave."

"What do you make of it?" Jack spoke with the cigarette bobbing in his mouth and turned to me.

"Of the empty grave?"

Jack's smile slanted higher on the right, his eyes pinched, and he removed the cigarette from his mouth. "That and the latest victim."

Bingham had been in prison for the last three years. The elaborate tunnel system he had going would have taken years to plan and dig, and it would have taken strength, leaning toward Bingham not working alone. "He had help. Someone followed behind him."

Jack perched the unlit smoke back in his lips. "Hmm."

"Anyway, you'll want to see it for yourself. I haven't seen anything like it," Royster continued.