Honeymoon

Chapter 55

SIX FEET UNDER?

I really don’t know where that expression came from. Definitely not from the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in Westchester County. With six feet of soil dug up next to Connor Brown’s tombstone, there was no sign of a coffin. Only when the dirt pile was twice as high did I finally hear the flattened thud of shovel hitting wood.

At least I wasn’t doing the digging in this famous old cemetery, where Washington Irving and several Rockefeller ancestors are supposedly buried.

“They should’ve called that TV series Twelve Feet Under,” I said to the chain-smoking cop standing alongside me. I guess he didn’t get HBO, because he didn’t get the joke. Of course, the cop’s blank stare might have just been the humorless combination of fatigue and resentment.

My objective was to get in and get out as quickly and discreetly as possible. That meant a pared-down crew, no loud machinery, and a two A.M. start time. Broad daylight and a big production was the last thing I wanted.

In addition to the stone-faced cop, I had three workers from the cemetery. After setting up a couple of small floodlights, they dug for about an hour. The only other person with us was a driver from the FBI’s pathology lab. He looked barely old enough to have his license.

I glanced again at the cop next to me. “Talk about your graveyard shift, huh?”

I got no laugh or chuckle in return. Be that way, I thought.

So I turned my attention back to the gaping hole in the ground. Standing on top of Connor Brown’s half-exposed coffin were the three guys from the cemetery. They were about to secure straps around the handles, which didn’t look sturdy enough to me.

“You sure those things are going to hold all that weight?” I asked.

All three looked up. “Should,” said the tallest one, who was under five foot six. His English was okay, though. The other two were fluent only in nodding.

The straps were tied and the three guys climbed out of the hole in the ground. They lifted an aluminum frame with a crank attached to it, straddling it over the pit before hooking up the other end of the straps.

There was a sudden noise.

What the hell was that?

No one actually said those words and yet our collective looks made it clear we were thinking the same thing. It sounded like twigs snapping, footsteps maybe. The Headless Horseman out for a late-night ride?

We all froze and listened for it again. Above us the thick oak branches swayed, creaking and moaning. But the noise didn’t return.

The three cemetery guys—not quite as spooked as the rest of us—got back to work and started to crank.

Slowly, Connor Brown’s coffin began to rise.

Almost on cue the wind picked up even more. There was a sudden chill in the air that raced up my spine. I wasn’t terribly religious but I couldn’t help wondering about what we were doing. Disrupting the dead. Toying with the order of things.

I was getting a bad feeling about this.

Snap!

The sound ripped through the wind, echoing in the night. Not twigs. This was ten times louder. The handles on one side of the coffin had splintered, forcing the hinges open with a horrific nails-on-blackboard screech. Out spilled the contents in a slow-motion roll. The corpse of Connor Brown.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” the cop beside me yelled.

We rushed to the edge of the pit and were met with a putrid smell. My gag reflex kicked in, seizing my throat, and I had to step back—but not before catching a glimpse. A decomposing face; white, stringy flesh; eyeballs bulging in hollowed-out sockets, glazed over but staring right up at me.

The cemetery guys were cursing in a mix of Spanish and English as the kid from the pathology lab just shook his head. Next to me was the cop. Puking.

“What the hell do we do now?” I asked.

The answer came in the shape of a ladder. The diggers had to go back down into the hole. The only way to get the body up now was to carry it.

“Please, we need help,” said the cemetery crew spokesman.

It was the easiest decision I’d ever made.

I turned to the cop, who was still bent over and coughing up the last remnants of his dinner. He looked back at me with the most incredulous, pale face. “Me?” he gasped. “Down there?”

My smile said it all.

Sorry, pal, but you should’ve laughed at the G-man’s jokes.