Why does NetBSD grep slow down nearly 15x on subsequent calls

I'm working through examples in APUE. On a NetBSD 9.0 system, under no major load, I time a call to grep and get an unremarkable result:

apue$ cd /usr/include
apue$ time -p grep __POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         0.73
user         0.01
sys          0.63

However, if I repeat the experiment several times, the system time spikes drastically (up to 15x):

apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         0.57
user         0.02
sys          0.54
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real        10.06
user         0.01
sys         10.04
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         3.57
user         0.01
sys          3.56
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         4.58
user         0.00
sys          4.58
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         5.56
user         0.02
sys          5.53
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         6.57
user         0.00
sys          6.56
apue$ time -p grep _POSIX_SOURCE */*.h > /dev/null
real         2.56
user         0.01
sys          2.54

Is this expected behavior? What could be causing such wide variance? **Update** Based on the answer given by @Tim, I took a look at my Buffercache, and saw that it was fully allocated at 100% when grep was struggling with my search. After restarting the VM, the buffer usage had dropped down to around 95%.

$ sysstat bufcache
                    /0   /1   /2   /3   /4   /5   /6   /7   /8   /9   /10
     Load Average   |

      603 metadata buffers using                5565 kBytes of memory ( 0%).
    15512 pages for cached file data using     62048 kBytes of memory ( 3%).
     3034 pages for executables using          12136 kBytes of memory ( 1%).
     6460 pages for anon (non-file) data       25840 kBytes of memory ( 1%).
   468172 free pages                         1872688 kBytes of memory (93%).

File System          Bufs used   %   kB in use   %  Bufsize kB   %  Util %
/                          577  95        5378  97        5418  97      99

Total:                     577  95        5378  97        5418  97      99