Cemetery Dance

Chapter 43

Proctor pulled the Rolls into a deserted parking lot behind the baseball fields at the edge of Inwood Hill Park and killed the lights. As Pendergast and D'Agosta stepped out of the car, Proctor walked to the trunk, opened it, and hauled out a long canvas bag holding tools, a plastic evidence box, and a metal detector.

"You think it's okay to just leave the car?" D'Agosta asked dubiously.

"Proctor will watch it." Pendergast took the canvas bag and handed it to D'Agosta. "Let us not dally here, Vincent."

"No shit."

He slung the bag over his shoulder and they set off across the empty baseball diamonds toward the woods. He glanced at his watch: two am. What was he doing? He had just promised Hayward he wouldn't let Pendergast drag him into any more sketchy activity — and now here he was, in the middle of the night, on a body — snatching expedition in a public park without permit or warrant. Hayward's phrase rang in his head: The way he goes about gathering evidence, I doubt Pendergast could ever convict his perps in a court of law. Maybe it's no coincidence they end up dead before trial.

"Remind me again why we're sneaking around like grave robbers?" he asked.

"Because we are grave robbers."

At least, D'Agosta thought, Bertin wasn't along. He'd dropped out at the last minute, complaining of palpitations. The little man was all in a panic because Charrière had managed to get a few of his hairs. It seemed unlikely the high priest got any ofhis hairs, at least, D'Agosta thought with grim satisfaction: one advantage to going bald. He thought of the little scene that had played out in the evidence annex and frowned.

"What the hell was your pal Bertin demanding?" he asked. "Sipping syrup?"

"It's a cocktail he prefers when he gets, ah, overly excited."

"A cocktail?"

"Of sorts. Lemon — lime soda, vodka, codeine in solution, and a Jolly Rancher candy."

"A what?"

"Bertin prefers the watermelon — flavored variety."

D'Agosta shook his head. "Christ. Only in Louisiana."

"Actually, I understand the concoction originated in Houston."

Past the playing fields they ducked through a gap in a low, chain — link fence, crossed some fallow ground, and entered the woods. Pendergast switched on a GPS, the faint blue glow of its screen casting a ghastly light on the agent's face. "Where's the grave, exactly?"

"There's no marker. But thanks to Wren I know the location. It seems that, since the groundskeeper was a suspected suicide with no family to speak of, his remains couldn't be buried in the consecrated ground of the family plot. So he was buried close to where his body was found. An account of the burial says it took place near the Shorakkopoch monument."

"The what?"

"It's a marker commemorating the place where Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Weckquaesgeek Indians."

Pendergast took the lead, D'Agosta following. They headed through the dense trees and underbrush, the rocky ground underfoot growing increasingly rugged. Once again, D'Agosta marveled that they were still on the island of Manhattan. The ground rose and fell, and they crossed a small brook, just a trickle of water running in its bed, then some rocky outcroppings. The woods grew thicker, blotting out the moon, and Pendergast produced his flashlight. Another half a mile of gradual descent over very rocky terrain, and suddenly a large boulder loomed up in the circle of yellow light.

"The Shorakkopoch monument," said Pendergast, checking his GPS. He directed his light to a bronze plaque screwed into the boulder, which described how at this spot, in 1626, Peter Minuit had bought Manhattan Island from the local Indians for sixty guilders' worth of trinkets.

"Nice investment," said D'Agosta.

"A very poor investment," said Pendergast. "If the sixty guilders had been invested in 1626 at five percent compound interest, a sum would have accumulated many times the value of the land of Manhattan today." Pendergast paused, shining his torch into the darkness. "According to our information, the body was buried twenty — two rods due north of the tulip tree that once stood near this monument."

"Is the stump still around?"

"No. The tree was cut in 1933. But Wren found me an old map giving the location of the tree as eigthteen yards southwest of the monument. I've already entered the data into the GPS unit."

Pendergast walked southwest, keeping a careful eye on the device. "Here." He turned south. "Twenty — two rods, at sixteen point five feet the rod, is three hundred sixty — three feet." He punched some buttons on the GPS. "Follow me, please."

Pendergast set off again into the darkness, almost spectral in his black suit. D'Agosta followed, hoisting the heavy bag higher onto his shoulder. He could smell the marshes and mudflats along the Spuyten Duyvil and soon he could make out, filtering through the trees, the lights of the tall apartment buildings perched on the bluffs of Riverdale, just across the river. Abruptly, they came to the edge of the trees, which opened onto an expanse of matted grass, dropping down to a half — moon pebbled beach. Beyond, the river swirled and eddied, the lights of the Henry Hudson Parkway arching overhead and the apartment buildings across the water caught in the swirling tide, glittering and dimpling as the water flowed past. A low — lying mist drifted in patches across the water; the rumble of a boat could be heard.

"Wait a moment," Pendergast murmured, pausing at the verge of the trees. A police boat came slowly churning down the Spuyten Duyvil, its ghostly form sliding in and out of the mist, a spotlight mounted on the hardtop sweeping the shore. They crouched just as the light passed over them, lancing through the woods.

"Christ," muttered D'Agosta, "I'm hiding from my own damn men. This is crazy."

"This is the only solution. Have you any idea how long it would take to get the proper permissions to exhume a body buried, not in a cemetery, but on public land, without a death certificate, and with only a few newspaper articles as supporting evidence?"

"We've been through that."

Rising, Pendergast walked out of the trees and down through the sea grass to the edge of the cobbled beach. To the east, halfway up the cliffs, D'Agosta could just make out the vast ramshackle structure of the Ville's central church, rising like a fang above the trees, a faint yellow glow peeking from upper — story windows.

Pendergast stopped. "Right here."

D'Agosta looked around the shingle beach. "No way. Who would bury a body here, in such an exposed location?"

"Easier digging. And a hundred years ago, none of those buildings on the other side of the river had been built."

"Nice. How are we supposed to dig up a body with the whole world watching?"

"As quickly as possible."

With a sigh, D'Agosta dropped the bag, unzipped it, and hauled out the shovel and pick. Pendergast screwed the rods of the metal detector together, donned a pair of earphones and plugged them into the device, then turned it on. He began sweeping the ground.

"A lot of metal here," he said.

He swept the detector back and forth, back and forth, walking slowly forward. After proceeding about five feet he turned, came back. "I'm getting a consistent signal here, two feet down."

"Two feet? That seems awfully shallow."

"Wren tells me the general erosion of the ground level in this area would be about four feet since the time of the interment." He laid the metal detector aside, removed his jacket and hung it on a nearby tree, grasped the pick, and with surprising vigor began to break up the ground. D'Agosta pulled on a pair of work gloves and began shoveling out the loose dirt and pebbles.

Another rumble heralded the return of the police boat. D'Agosta hit the deck as the spotlight licked the shore, Pendergast quickly falling prone beside him. When the boat had passed, Pendergast rose. "How inconvenient," he said, dusting himself off and grasping the pick once again.

The rectangular hole deepened — twelve inches, eighteen. Pendergast tossed the pick aside, knelt, and began working with a trowel, scraping off layers of dirt that D'Agosta then shoveled out of the way. The pit exhaled the cloying smell of brackish seawater and rotting humus.

When the grave had deepened to about twenty inches, Pendergast swept it again with the metal detector. "We're almost there."

Five more minutes of work and the trowel scraped across something hollow. Pendergast quickly brushed the loose dirt away, revealing the back of a skull. More scraping revealed the posterior side of a scapula and the end of a wooden handle.

"Our friend appears to have been buried facedown," Pendergast said. He cleared around the wooden handle, exposing a guard and rusted blade. "With a knife in his back."

"I thought he was stabbed in the chest," said D'Agosta. The moon broke through the mist, and he glanced from the corpse to Pendergast. The agent's face had gone very grim and wan.

They worked together, gradually exposing the back of the skeleton. Rotting clothing came to light: a pair of shriveled shoes peeling off the foot bones, a rotting belt, old cufflinks, and a buckle. They cut the earth down around the skeleton, exposing the sides, whisking dirt off the old, brown bones.

D'Agosta rose — one eye toward the river and any sign of the police boat — and shined his light around. The skeleton lay face — down, arms and legs arranged neatly, toes bent inward. Pendergast reached in and lifted off a few rotting pieces of clothing that clung to the bones, first exposing the upper part of the skeleton, then pulling pieces of canvas off the legs, laying everything in the locker. The knife stuck out of the back, having been driven to the hilt through the left blade of the scapula, directly above the heart. Peering more closely, D'Agosta could see what looked like a severe depressed fracture on the back of the skull.

Pendergast bent low over the makeshift grave, taking a series of photographs of the skeleton from various angles. Then he rose. "Let's remove it," he said.

While D'Agosta held the flashlight, Pendergast pried up the bones one by one with the tip of his trowel, starting with the feet and working upward, handing them to D'Agosta for stowing in the evidence box. When he reached the chest, he slowly worked the knife out of the soil and handed it over.

"Do you see that, Vincent?" he asked, pointing. D'Agosta shined his light over a piece of wrought iron, like a long spike or rod, with an end that curved over the bones of the victim's upper arm. The long end of the spike was buried deep in the ground. "Pinned into the grave."

Pendergast pulled the spikes out and set them with the rest of the remains. "Curious. And do you see this?"

Now D'Agosta shined the light on the victim's neck. The remains of a thin, twisted hemp cord could still be seen, horribly constrictive around the neck bone.

"Strangled so hard," said D'Agosta, "it must have half decapitated him."

"Indeed. The hyoid bone is nearly crushed." Pendergast continued with his grisly task.

Soon all that was left to be exposed was the skull, which remained facedown in the dirt. Pendergast undermined it and the jaw with a small penknife, wiggling them loose, then freeing them as a single unit. He turned them over with the blade of his pen — knife.

"Oh, shit." D'Agosta took a step back. The skull's mouth was closed, but the space behind the teeth, where the tongue had been, was packed with a chalky, greenish white substance. A curled — up thread lay in a tangle in front, one end clamped between the teeth.

Pendergast picked out the thread and looked at it, then carefully placed it in a test tube. He then leaned in gingerly, sniffed the skull, pinched up a minuscule amount of the powder, and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. "Arsenic. The mouth was filled with it and the lips sewn shut."

"Jesus. So what's a suicide doing strangled, with a knife in his back and a mouth sewn full of arsenic? You'd think the people who buried him would have noticed."

"The body wasn't originally buried like this. Nobody buries their kin facedown. After the relations buried the body, someone else — those who had presumably, ah, 'reanimated' it — came back, dug it up, and prepared it in this special manner."

"Why?"

"A common enough Obeah ceremony. To kill him a second time."

"What the hell for?"

"To make sure he was very, very dead." Pendergast stood up. "As you've already noticed, Vincent, this was no suicide. Or victim. In fact, since he was killed twice, the second time with arsenic and a knife in the back, there can be no doubt at all. After his initial burial, this man was dug up — dug upfor a purpose — and, when that purpose was accomplished, buried again, facedown. This is the perpetrator — the 'reanimated corpse' of theNew York Sun — of the Inwood Hill murders of 1901."

"You're saying the Ville kidnapped or recruited him, turned him into a zombii, made him kill that landscape architect and parks commissioner — all to keep their church from being razed?" Pendergast waved at the corpse. "Ecce signum."