The Restorer

Twenty-Three

I didn’t see or speak to Devlin again until the next day at the exhumation and we only had time then for a quick word. I explained about the epitaph posting on my blog and he agreed it was a curious development, though hardly a smoking gun.

“I doubt it’s enough to warrant a court order to access the ISP’s logs, and I’m willing to bet the poster used an anonymizer service, anyway. That information can’t be subpoenaed because they don’t store it. Or so they claim.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“I’d like to go over the Oak Grove images with you again, though. I think you could be right. You may have captured something in one of those shots that we just haven’t found yet. We need to spend some time with them.”

“Sure. Whenever you want.” He seemed to be over his anger with me, and I was happy about that, although a part of me had to wonder if his improved state of mind had something to do with the company he’d kept the previous evening.

He was more casually attired today than I’d ever seen him—jeans, a cotton shirt rolled up to the elbows and a lightweight jacket that he’d removed in the heat to reveal a belt holster and sidearm.

Carefully, I averted my gaze from the weapon, but I was transfixed by it just the same. It tied in so well with the persona Temple had painted of him as a dangerous man.

“I’ll also see about getting the patrols in your neighborhood beefed up.”

“So you do think the killer posted that epitaph,” I said in alarm.

His eyes were hooded, as though he was trying very hard to disguise whatever concern he might have. “I think it’s always better to be safe than sorry.”

Hardly a comforting platitude under the circumstances.

A small crowd had started to gather and Devlin went off then to speak to one of the other detectives. I moved into the shade and watched as Ethan laid out a grid pattern over the grave. Then he and Temple set to work with trowels, easing away dirt from the skeleton, while his assistant manned the screen and Regina Sparks shot stills.

At one point, she came over to stand beside me, her red bangs plastered to her forehead in the heat, the underarms of her T-shirt stained with sweat. “Another hot one.”

“Sweltering.”

“Not a good day to be digging up human remains.”

“Is there a good day for that?”

She grinned. “I’ve seen just about every imaginable thing that can be done to a body—and some things you don’t want to imagine—but this business still creeps me out.”

“An exhumation? That surprises me.”

“I know.” She fiddled with her camera as we talked. “It’s weird, but if the body is fresh—like the other night—I don’t mind as much. But digging someone up who was planted there by loved ones…prayed over, grieved over…that just seems wrong.”

“So you’d rather deal with a murder victim than a body that was formally interred?”

“Told you it was weird.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “You seem pretty cool about all this. Have you ever been to one before?”

“Yes. When I worked for the state archaeologist’s office, we moved a whole cemetery once.”

“How many bodies?’

“Dozens. One of the caskets was cast iron and shaped like an Egyptian sarcophagus. It was perfectly preserved and weighed a ton. I’d never seen anything like it.”

“Did you open it up?”

“No, not a good idea. Back in the nineteenth century, embalmers experimented with a lot of interesting fluids, including arsenic.”

“Now that would make for a nice batch of coffin liquor, wouldn’t it?” she said, referring to the viscous black liquid sometimes found in burial containers.

It was a little surreal standing there in the shade conversing so casually about something so gruesome, but I supposed it was a fitting enough topic, considering. My gaze went back to Ethan and Temple. They were backlit by the sun so that from where I stood, they were mere silhouettes, a pair of grim reapers with trowels and sunglasses.

The skull was already exposed and facing me, the stare of those empty eye sockets chilling even in broad daylight.

All around the grave, cops spoke in hushed tones or watched the excavation in silence. I heard someone laugh and turned to glance over my shoulder. No one was there. It was the oddest sensation.

“Devlin sure seems to be keeping an eye on you,” Regina remarked.

“What?” I turned in surprise.

She nodded in his direction. “He’s always looking over here.”

It took some willpower not to glance at him. “How can you tell? He’s wearing sunglasses.”

“Oh, I can tell. I can always tell.” She cocked her head as she regarded me. “You wouldn’t be the first to succumb to his charm, you know. Devlin’s one of those men that makes us women overly aware of our biological clocks. It’s the pheromones, I suspect.”

“Have you worked with him a long time?” I tried to ask casually.

“Long enough to know that it’ll take a far stronger woman than I to crack that shell.”

“Did you know his wife?”

She eyed me curiously. “I met her once. That was enough.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hard to explain. It was the way she would look at you…like she knew things about you even if she’d just met you. Strange woman. Beautiful…but strange.”

I thought of Mariama’s ghostly hands in my hair, the touch of her frigid lips against my neck, and shivered. What did she know about me?

I was brimming with questions, but I didn’t want to seem too obvious, so I let the matter drop. After a bit, Regina wandered off and I turned my attention back to the digging. I’d worked for Temple long enough to know what she would be looking for as evidence of formal burial preparation: bits of coffin lining and fabric clinging to the bone, tacks or pins that had held clothing in place, and in graves as old as this one, copper pennies that had been placed over the eyes.

Ethan would be looking for more grisly evidence—soft or mummified tissue, muscle, ligament, insect inclusions, the color of the bones and the odor of decay.

I didn’t smell anything from where I stood. On such a hot day, I was pretty grateful for that.

By late afternoon, a partially intact skeleton had been recovered, along with teeth, bits of clothing and some jewelry. Everything went into the body bag to be transported to Ethan’s lab.

Once the remains had been carted away, the crowd began to disperse. Temple and I stayed behind to take stock of the damage to the grave. Then she, too, left and I found myself alone as I opened my bag and removed the tools of my trade.

Using a soft-bristled brush and a wooden scraper, I cleared away as much of the moss and lichen as I could from the marker without damaging the fragile stone. Then, positioning a mirror to reflect light, I adjusted the angle until I could just make out the imagery and the epitaph:

How soon fades this gentle rose,

Freed from earthly woes,

She lies in eternal repose.

I read it once, then again more slowly. With each word, I felt something sinister pressing down on me.

Hands trembling in haste and excitement, I took out my phone, logged on to the internet and opened my blog, scrolling quickly through the comments.

There it was, published a few minutes after the first epitaph had been posted. I searched through all the other anonymous comments, then logged off and put away my phone.

I read the lines a third time, the tickle of gooseflesh lifting the hair on my neck.

The inscription on a grimy headstone could stay hidden for decades, but if viewed in a proper light from a certain angle, the markings would sometimes pop through the layers of crud. It could be quite eerie, in fact.

But who would know to do that?

Someone with an interest in graveyards. A cemetery restorer like me. A taphophile like those who posted to my blog. An archaeologist, perhaps.

Or a desperate man looking for a door to the other side.

All those thoughts raced through my head in the space of a heartbeat.

As I stood watching, the light shifted and the epitaph disappeared.