Cat's Eyewitness (18 page)

24

O
n December 9, Friday, the few lovely days of the temperature climbing to the forties ended. Clouds, steel gray, unfurled from the west, winds led the clouds onward, and a low-pressure system made animals and humans tired. The temperature headed down, down.

A small crew stood around Brother Thomas’s grave as Travis Critzer sank the big claw of the front-end loader into the earth, aided by Stuart Tapscott. Travis could operate anything with a motor in it. Skilled as he was, he was glad to be digging up the coffin before the hard frost returned, and he was glad to have his father with him. Although not his blood father, Stuart was the man who had raised him, taught him his trade.

Brother Frank and Brother Prescott stood, faces sour. As it was Friday, the day of public execution for centuries, it became considered the devil’s day. It was devil’s work disturbing what was left of a good and godly man. As the number-two man in the monastery, Brother Prescott volunteered to oversee this disgusting task. Brother Handle, overwhelmed with the response to the statue, gratefully accepted this offer. Dealing with the hordes of people, with unrest among the brothers themselves, made Brother Handle wonder why he ever thought becoming a monk would steer him clear of the world’s follies. In fact, the pressures increased to the point where he offered no protest at the exhumation. Once a grave was consecrated, Brother Handle believed it should not be touched. However, Brother Thomas’s family, under the leadership of Susan Tucker, was insistent. Brother Handle knew Ned Tucker had been elected to the state senate in November. Best to keep a Tucker happy.

Susan, Harry, and Deputy Cooper also watched the yellow claw dig into the flinty earth. A thin cover of soil was quickly stripped away; the subsequent layers were poor. That’s why this corner of the monastery held the mortal remains of the brothers. No sense in wasting good soil.

The county coroner, Tom Yancy, waited, too, glad for a chance to escape the lab. He and Cooper had worked together over the years, a healthy respect developing between them.

Although it was Coop’s day off, she accompanied Harry and Susan. She’d seen enough exhumations to know that they can be disturbing to next of kin or friends of the departed. Also, Harry had promised that afterward they’d drive up Interstate 81 to Dayton’s furniture store, just south of Harrisonburg. Coop had saved enough for a sleigh bed, her Christmas present to herself, and Harry said Dayton’s would have the best—not the cheapest, but the best.

Susan tightened the scarf around her neck. “Wind’s come up.”

“An ill wind that blows no good,” Harry quoted the old saying.

“You’re full of Christmas spirit,” Tom said.

“Sorry. Kind of hard to be cheery at an exhumation.”

“Look at it this way.” The coroner grinned. “If the old fellow died a natural death, that will be good news. I know you two ladies haven’t witnessed an exhumation. Brother Thomas won’t be in that bad a shape; he hasn’t been in there long enough. His nose might have crumbled a little, his cuticles might have receded, which will make it look as though his fingernails are still growing, but it won’t be all that bad.”

“What about the stench?” Harry wasn’t one to mince on reality.

He waved his hand. “He won’t smell like Chanel Number Five, but remember, it’s been cold up here, and even though he’s below the frost line, it’s plenty cold down there. Might be blowing up some, but just step back and hold your nose. That way you won’t get a blast and if you faint you won’t fall into the coffin.”

“I’m not going to faint.” Harry’s pride flared up.

“Might puke, though,” he genially replied.

“Good God, this is so gross.” Susan’s eyes misted over. “I feel like I’m violating him.”

“I don’t know about that, but Susan, if he was murdered then we have to find his killer. Brother Thomas deserves that, at least. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

“There’s a lot to be said for simple justice.” The lanky deputy took a long draw on a Camel, then gratefully exhaled a plume of blue smoke.

“Cooper, might I bum a cigarette off you?” Susan implored.

“Of course.” Coop reached in her parka pocket and fetched out the familiar white pack covered with thin cellophane, the camel, facing left, dutifully standing at the ready.

“Cheater,” Harry teased Susan.

“Can’t help it.”

“Kills the smell,” Tom cheerfully added.

“Uh, Coop, give me one, too. I’ll buy you a pack.” Harry reached for the offered cigarette.

The three women drew on their cigarettes. Nicotine, calming in most circumstances, worked for Cooper and Harry, who rarely smoked. Susan, however, remained nervous and wished she was inhaling a mentholated cigarette.

The claw scratched the top of the pine coffin.

Within minutes, Travis carefully dug around the edges of the handmade coffin.

Brother Prescott and Brother Frank stepped up to the grave site. They dropped two stout ropes down into the pit. Travis, being much younger than the two monks, hopped down, slid the ropes with a little wriggling under the coffin. Stuart Tapscott grabbed the ropes on the edge of the grave to keep them from sliding back into the pit.

The coroner and Brother Frank took opposite ends of one rope, Brother Prescott and Travis the other. Stuart stood well back. He didn’t want to see the body.

“All right, one, two, pull,” Travis commanded as the coffin lifted up with relative ease.

Travis and Brother Prescott pried the lid. Before the coroner picked the lid off the coffin, he said, “You might want to stand back and let me look first, ladies.”

Harry, belligerently, stepped right up to the coffin; Susan stepped back.

Tom looked up at Harry and half-smiled. He picked up the lid.

“Holy shit!” Harry exclaimed.

The coffin contained three fifty-pound bags of potting soil.

Shock registered on Tom’s face as well as those of the two brothers. Susan plucked up her courage to look inside.

Coop was already on her cell phone, punching in Sheriff Shaw. “Rick, we’ve got a real problem.”

Susan’s nervousness, then anger, focused on Brother Frank and Brother Prescott. “What’s the meaning of this? What have you done with my great-uncle!”

Brother Frank, face white as the snow still folded in the deepest tucks of the ravines, stuttered, “Mrs. Tucker, I swear to you with God as my witness, your great-uncle was in this coffin when the lid was nailed shut.”

“One more miracle for the mountain,” Harry cracked.

“What?” Brother Prescott was deeply upset.

“You’ve got a statue crying bloody tears, and now you’ve got a resurrection.” Harry, at that moment, didn’t trust either of the brothers any further than she could throw her lit cigarette.

25

T
he clutter on Sheriff Rick Shaw’s desk didn’t reflect his mind, which was clear and concise in its workings. An avalanche of flyers and bulletins from the county, the state, and the federal government rolled over his desk.

He carefully sifted through the mail, smiling each time junk mail hit the large round metal wastebasket. Anything pertinent he stacked in a steel mesh file box, a gift from Cooper last Christmas.

Now this Christmas pressed on him. He hadn’t bought one present. His wife, whom he dearly loved, shouldered much of that burden, but he wanted to buy her something special and hadn’t one idea.

Three people had missed work today because of the flu, one being the receptionist, who sifted people like Rick sifted mail. Deputy Cooper had some days coming to her. She hadn’t taken any vacation time this year, but he was shorthanded and Coop, being Coop, pitched in. She had one day off, today, and that turned into work. She never made it to Dayton’s.

Rick pushed his chair back when she walked into the office.

“Here.” She tossed a carton of Camels on his desk. Another carton was tucked under her arm.

“Living large. Thank you.” He slid the carton into his long middle desk drawer. “Really.”

“They’re from Harry.”

“Harry?”

“She bummed a fag off me, so she bought me a carton and then one for you. She sends her regards and she’s sorry to hear everyone is flat on their backs with this damned new strain of flu. Jeez, hope we don’t get it.”

“I’m chewing so much vitamin C, I’m about to turn orange. And echinacea. My wife stuffs it down my throat, God bless her.”

“Helen’s a good woman. Everyone needs a wife—even a wife.” Cooper pulled up the wooden chair, an old office chair from the 1940s. “I’d settle for one husband, though.”

“He’d be a lucky man.” Rick had learned to cherish his deputy over the years, although initially he resented a woman in law enforcement and gave her every crappy job that came along. Her upbeat personality, meticulousness, and steadiness in a crisis changed his mind. He fretted that she wouldn’t find the right guy. Many men think a woman cop is gay, and Cooper wasn’t. She wasn’t movie-star beautiful, although she was attractive. She was, however, shy with men who attracted her.

“Thanks, boss.” She opened a fresh pack of Camels. “You won’t believe this—on top of the coffin with bags of potting soil, I mean—but Harry actually smoked half a cigarette. She gagged, but she puffed like a chimney.”

“Did she, now?” He laughed.

“She thought when the lid came off the coffin she’d be puked out by the stench, so she lit up. Not a bad tactic, since smoking compromises your sense of smell. Sticking a gob of Vick’s Vapo-Rub up your nose is better.” Cooper pulled a small jar out of her coat pocket. “Didn’t use it since I figured Brother Thomas would be frozen.”

Rick grunted. “Maybe they intended to plant him and misplaced the body.”

“Very funny.” She tapped the end of the fresh cigarette on the desk. “Anything on Nordy?”

“Pete Osborne copied the last year of Nordy’s assignments. We viewed those segments that Pete thought could possibly inflame someone to murder.” Rick accepted the cigarette Cooper offered him. He sniffed the distinctive rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco, then struck a kitchen match on the large red matchbox. Rick didn’t like lighters. He thought the gas odor filtered into the cigarette. “He made us copies.” He held up a DVD in a blue cardboard envelope, which bore Pete’s distinctive scrawl. “Can’t believe the technology.”

“If I have a good Christmas I’ll buy myself a DVD player. Still have a year of car payments left.” She paused. “Prices keep coming down. Eventually I’ll be able to afford one. Didn’t mean to get off the subject. What do you think about what you saw?”

“The segment where Nordy was outside a supposed drug dealer’s house was volatile. Jamaicans ran out and hit him. The one where he broke the story on the check-kiting scheme shook up people. The trials on that start in March. People have killed for less. There are the usual interviews with victims’ families, with murderers—emotional but not the same payoff.”

“How do you mean?”

“Emotions run high, and Nordy’s footage creates sympathy for the victim. However, that’s not the same as pointing the finger and accusing someone of guilt. Murder usually isn’t a thought-out crime; most of what we see is spur-of-the-moment. But the check-kiting schemes, mmm, that kind of crime demands thought. It’s usually committed by someone with a higher education, someone who might get off with a good lawyer. To save their own neck, that kind of criminal might murder.”

“But a white-collar criminal wouldn’t kill Nordy. He’d hire a dog’s body, don’t you think?” She used the phrase “dog’s body,” meaning someone who lived for odd or onerous chores.

“Exactly.” Rick swung his feet up to rest on his desk. “Nordy was going to see the check-kiting story to its bitter conclusion. As for the Jamaican drug dealers, again, there’s a lot of money at stake. This is a wealthy county, and people want their cocaine, Oxycontin, and whatever, you know? They’ll get it. There’s motive there and cunning.”

“You’re not convinced.”

He exhaled. “No.”

“It’s the pen in the eye, isn’t it?”

His eyebrows lifted in appreciation. She knew how his mind worked, which was a comfort. “In all my years I have never seen that. I’ve seen torture, I’ve seen infants raped, which is about the sickest goddamned thing I have ever seen, but I’ve never seen this. It’s so simple.”

“Yeah, how do you trace a ballpoint pen? Harry thinks it might have something to do with eyes. That’s a message, the eyes.”

He pursed his lips together. “The carton of cigarettes is a bribe. She’s going to get stuck right in the middle of this. Incorrigible! The empty coffin, so to speak, must have sent her into the stratosphere.”

“It was a jolt.”

He swiveled to face her better but didn’t move his legs much. “Damned queer.”

“Harry is convinced this is linked to Nordy’s murder. Linked to the Virgin Mary’s bleeding eyes. In fact, she said, ‘The eyes have it.’ ”

“These inspirations spare her the legwork, don’t they?”

“She’s not averse to legwork, boss, but she isn’t a professional. She misses things. She gets to third base without touching first or second, but you have to admit, she gets a hit at bat.”

He exhaled in a sort of agreement, “Well, I guess that’s better than being born on third base and thinking you’ve hit a triple.”

His first concern was protecting the public. His next concern was procedure. If he didn’t touch each base on his way to home plate, a lawyer, not even a clever one, would blow all that hard work to smithereens. Harry worried him with her meddling because she endangered herself and others and because she could muck up a carefully built case.

They smoked in silence, then Cooper broke it. “How’s Pete holding up?”

“Good. He’s a strong man. The other on-air reporters are nervous. He’s doing a lot of hand-holding and he’s interviewing for a replacement. He said he feels ghoulish but it’s necessary. The station is understaffed as it is. I can sure appreciate that problem.”

“At least that’s a profitable business.”

“Yeah, right. We’re public servants, and some days I really feel the servant part.”

“Think there is any connection between Nordy’s death and the statue, the monastery?”

“I can’t disregard any possibility. Nordy was making a big name for himself with that story. Pete and I watched everything Nordy did up there, as well as the footage he didn’t use. He didn’t come out and say the tears were false, only that they were an unexplained phenomenon. He was respectful. I can’t disregard the Virgin Mary angle, but for the life of me, I can’t find one thing that computes.”

“I can’t, either. A man in his eighties dies while praying before a statue on a night so bitterly cold even Satan with his built-in heating unit wouldn’t be walking around. Andrew, Mark, and Prescott thaw him out, wash the body, prepare him for burial. They put him in the coffin, nail down the lid—all this is testimony.” She held up her small notebook that she kept in her purse. “He’s afforded a simple service in keeping with the order. Susan and her family attend. They throw earth on the grave and that’s that. I also talked with Brother Handle, the head honcho. He said Brother Thomas was well loved. ‘So why would someone steal his body?’ I asked.” She drew in another long drag. “He did say that the body was possibly sold to a medical school. But who would do such a thing? Surely not one of the brothers. He didn’t believe so, either, but selling to a medical school was his one idea. He’s wound tighter than a piano wire, by the way, and the whole place is overrun by people crying, praying in front of the statue. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Is she really crying blood?”

“I took a sample and sent it off to the lab. Shouldn’t take long even with all they have to do.”

Coop heard a rat-a-tat on the windowpanes outside Rick’s office. She stood up to look. “Damn. It’s going to be another long day.”

He swung his legs down, got up, peered out his office window. “Where’d that come from? I watched the Weather Channel this morning as well as the weatherman on Channel Twenty-nine.”

“Who knows.” Her voice was mournful as the ice pellets struck the window harder.

He sat back down. “If we find Brother Thomas’s body, that will tell us something.”

“The dead tell all their secrets if you know how to ask.”