A Grave Prediction (Psychic Eye Mystery) by Victoria Laurie Page B

nothing in the grave that I’d marked off. And yet the feeling of someone being buried there was so strong.
    “I’m not wrong,” I said.
    Perez glanced at Robinson. “Your call,” he said.
    Robinson pointed to the bulldozer. “We’ve got a better tool at our disposal.”
    “No!” I told them. “You’ll wreck the crime scene!”
    But Robinson appeared to be unfazed. “What crime scene?” he asked me.
    Perez climbed out of the hole and stood dirty and sweaty next to Robinson. “He’s right,” he said to me. “Without a body, there is no crime scene, and if there is someone buried here, and she’s buried deep, our best bet is to let the dozer remove some of the dirt so we can take a look.”
    The driver shifted on his feet again. “I can dig you a twelve-foot hole in six minutes,” he said.
    “Do it,” Robinson and Perez told him.
    I pressed my lips together, so angry at their willingness to destroy a crime scene just because they didn’t believe me. I hoped they’d be sorry when the first girl was uncovered.
    The driver moved back to his rig and started up the engine. The agents and I stepped well out of the way so that he could do his work, and he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told us he could dig a deep hole in relatively little time.
    Within a matter of minutes we were staring at a square hole, a good fifteen feet down in exactly the spot I’d indicated. Thehole dug by the bulldozer was wider than the grave, so it should’ve exposed the other girls buried next to our target, but there was nothing in the earth. Nothing but dirt.
    My brow furrowed when the driver backed his rig up again and for the first time since I’d seen the graves, I started to get really nervous. We should’ve discovered at least one of the bodies by now, and no way would the murderer risk being seen burying a dead body by standing around for an hour or two digging a hole that was below six feet.
    “I don’t get it,” I said to myself, and moved over to the edge of the hole.
    “There’s nothing down there,” Robinson said, his voice now filled with disgust. “You led us on a wild-goose chase and wasted the whole morning.”
    “No,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I’m not wrong.” Stubbornly I moved to the edge of the hole, ready to jump in and start digging myself, but when I reached for the shovel, Robinson caught my arm and held me back.
    I looked up at his angry face, then pointedly down at his arm. “Oh, hold me closer, tiny dancer,” I snarled.
    He tightened his grip and snarled back, only his was perhaps a weensy bit scarier than mine.
    “Darnell,” Perez said softly. “If she wants to dig some, let her.”
    Robinson’s hand unlatched itself from my arm and he turned away in disgust. I glared at him for a moment before picking up the shovel and very carefully made my way down to the bottom of the pit. The hole dug by the bulldozer sloped a little as it got deeper, which allowed me to half shuffle, half slide down to the bottom. It smelled mossy and dank and I wondered how my intuition could insist there was a dead body buried someplace that showed no evidence of that. I mean, I
can
be wrong, and I have been, but not about something that felt so certain.So definite. So substantive. I couldn’t reconcile it and I didn’t know even how to explain it.
    Still holding the shovel, I made a few attempts to move aside some dirt, which was very difficult, given that it was so packed in at this depth, but at least I wasn’t hitting bedrock. I figured centuries of mud and dirt rolling down the mountain during the rainy season had deposited quite a bit more earth here than just a little further up. It was obvious that a murderer hadn’t dug a grave here, but I felt compelled to keep scratching at the ground and stall for time while I tried to think about what else to do. If I went back to Rivera after having claimed to have visions of four dead girls who didn’t seem to exist, I’d be sent home with