Authors: Kathy Reichs
Squaring his already square shoulders, Burkhead pointed the crowbar. “The vandalism occurred over here.”
Burkhead led us to a tiny concrete cube centered among a half dozen graves, each with a headstone bearing the middle or last name Redmon. The name also crowned the tomb’s front entrance.
Handing me the crowbar, Burkhead colapsed his umbrela and leaned it against the crypt. Then he produced a key and began working a padlock affixed at shoulder height to the right side of the door.
I noticed that the lock appeared shinier and less rusted than the nails and hinges embedded in the wood. Adjacent to it, deep gouges scarred the jamb.
After freeing the prongs, Burkhead pocketed both lock and key, and gave the door a one-handed push. It swung in with a trickle of rust and a Holywood creak.
As one, we puled out and flicked on our flashlights.
Burkhead entered first. I folowed. Slidel brought up the rear.
The odor was dense and organic, the smel of earth, old brick, decayed wood, and rotten fabric. Of moths and rat piss and dampness and mold.
Of Slidel’s pastrami breath. The space was so smal we were forced to stand elbow to elbow.
Our flashlights showed built-in ledges straight ahead and to the left of the door. Each held a simple wood coffin. Bad idea for riding out history. Good idea for a quick dust-to-dust sprint. Each box looked like it had gone through a crusher.
Wordlessly, Burkhead unfolded a photocopied document and stepped to the shelves opposite the door. Shadows jumped the wals as his gaze shifted back and forth from the paper in his hand to first the upper, then the lower coffin.
I knew what he was doing.
The dead do not always stay put. I once did an exhumation in which Grandpa was three plots over from the one in which he was supposed to have been buried. Another in which the deceased lay in a plot containing two stacks of three. Instead of bottom left, as shown in the records, our subject was second casket from the top right.
First rule in a disinterment: Make sure you’ve got the right guy.
Knowing the vague nature of old cemetery records, I assumed Burkhead was checking photos or brief verbal descriptions against observable details. Casket style, decorative hardware, handle design. Given the obvious age of the coffins, I doubted he’d be lucky enough to have manufacturers’ tags or serial numbers.
Finaly satisfied, Burkhead spoke.
“These decedents are Mary Eleanor Pierce Redmon and Jonathan Revelation Redmon. Jonathan died in 1937, Mary in 1948.”
Moving to the side wal, Burkhead repeated his procedure. As before, it took him several minutes.
“The decedent on top is Wiliam Boston Redmon, interred February 19, 1959.”
Burkhead’s free hand floated to the lower coffin.
“This is the burial that was violated seven years ago. Susan Clover Redmon was interred on April 24, 1967.”
Like her relatives, Susan met eternity in a wooden box. Its sides and top had colapsed, and much of its hardware lay on a piece of plywood slid between the casket and the shelf.
A crack ran a good eighteen inches along the left side of the cover. Over it, someone had nailed smal wooden strips.
“Mr. Redmon declined to purchase a new casket. We did our best to repair and reseal the lid.”
Burkhead turned to me.
“You wil examine the decedent here?”
“As per Mr. Redmon’s request. But I may take samples to the ME facility for final verification.”
“As you wish. Unfortunately, the coffin key has gone missing over the years.”
Stepping to one end of the shelf, Burkhead gestured Slidel to the other.
“Gently, Detective. The remains are no longer of any great weight.”
Together, the men scooted the plywood forward and lowered it to the floor. The displaced casket filed the tiny chamber, forcing our little trio back against the wals.
With scarcely enough room to maneuver, I opened my pack and removed a battery-operated spot, a magnifying lens, a case form, a pen, and a screwdriver.
Burkhead observed hunched in the shadows of the easternmost corner. Slidel watched from the doorway, hanky to mouth.
Masking, I squatted sideways and began to lever.
The nails lifted easily.
21
SOUTHERNERS DON’T ATTEND WAKES. WE ATTEND VIEWINGS. Makes sense to me. Drained of blood, perfumed, and injected with wax, a corpse is never going to sit up and stretch. But it is laid out for one final inspection.
To facilitate that last, pre-eternity peek, casket lids are designed like double Dutch doors. Finney and his gal pal had taken advantage of that feature, prying open only the hinged upper half.
OK for a snatch and run in the night. I needed ful-body access.
Thanks to the vandalism and to natural deterioration, the top of Susan’s coffin had colapsed into a concavity running the length of the box. Experience told me the cover would have to be lifted in segments.
After prying loose Burkhead’s makeshift repair strips, I hacked through corrosion sealing the edges of the lid. Then, like Finney, I laid to with the crowbar.
Burkhead and Slidel helped, displacing decayed wood and metal to unoccupied inches of floor space. Odor oozed up around us, a blend of mildew and rot. I felt my skin prickle, the hairs rise along my neck and arms.
An hour later the casket was open.
The remains were concealed by a jumble of velvet padding and draping, al stained and coated with a white, lichenlike substance.
After shooting photos, I gloved, uneasy about Hewlett’s assessment that nothing in the coffin had been violated but the head. If that was true, what of the femora I’d found in Cuervo’s cauldron? I kept my concerns to myself.
It took only minutes to disentangle and remove the funerary bedding covering the upper half of the body. Slidel and Burkhead observed, offering comments now and then.
Susan Redmon had been buried in what was probably a blue silk gown. The faded cloth now wrapped her rib cage and arm bones like dried paper toweling. Hair clung to the cushion that had cradled her head, an embalmer’s eye cap and three incisors visible among the long, black strands.
That was it for the pilow. No head. No jaw.
My eyes slid to Slidel. He gave a thumbs-up.
I colected a sample of hair, then the incisors.
“Those teeth?” Slidel asked.
I nodded.
“Do you have dental records?” Burkhead asked.
“No. But I can try fitting these three into the sockets, and comparing them to the molars and premolars stil in place in the jaw and skul.”
Teeth and hair bagged, I continued my visual examination.
Susan’s gown was ripped down the bodice. Through the tear I could see a colapsed rib cage overlying thoracic vertebrae. Three cervical vertebrae lay scattered above the gown’s yelowed lace colar. Four others nestled between the soiled padding and the edge of the pilow.
Gingerly, I peeled away coffin lining until the lower body was also exposed.
The wrist ends of the radi and ulnae poked from both sleeve cuffs. Hand bones lay tangled among the folds of the skirt and along the right side of the rib cage.
The gown was ankle-length, and tightly adhered to the leg bones. The ankle ends of the tibiae and fibulae protruded from the hemline, the foot bones below, in rough anatomical alignment.
“Everything’s brown like the Greenleaf skul,” Slidel said.
“Yes,” I agreed. The skeleton had darkened to the color of strong tea.
“What are those?” Slidel jabbed a finger at the scattered hand bones.
“Displaced carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges. She was probably buried with her hands positioned on her chest or abdomen.”
As I snipped and tugged rotting fabric, I imagined Donna thrusting a hand into the covered lower half of the coffin, fingers groping blindly, grabbing, tearing, amped on adrenaline.
“Overlapping hands is a standard pose. Either on the bely or the chest. Often the departed are interred holding something dear.”
Burkhead was talking to be talking. Neither Slidel nor I was listening. We were focused on the fragile silk covering Susan’s legs.
Two last snips with the scissors, then I tugged free the remnants of the skirt.
One lonely kneecap lay between Susan’s pelvis and her knees.
“So Hewlett screwed up,” Slidel said.
“Both femora are gone.” Relief was evident in my voice.
“I’m going to fry that pissant Finney. And his sicko girlfriend. We done here?”
“No, we are not done here,” I snapped.
“What now?” Slidel’s thoughts had already turned to tracking Donna Scott.
“Now I check for consistency between this skeleton and the skul and leg bones found in Cuervo’s cauldron.”
“I gotta make a cal.” Pivoting, Slidel strode from the tomb. In seconds, his voice floated in from outside.
Folding back the torn edges of the bodice, I lifted the right clavicle, brushed and inspected its medial end. The growth cap was partialy fused, suggesting a young adult with a minimum age at death of sixteen.
I lifted and inspected the left clavicle. Same condition.
I was scribbling notes on my case form when Slidel reappeared.
“Asked Rinaldi about a query I popped through to LAPD before heading over here. About Donna Scott and her daddy, Birch.”
“I thought Rinaldi was canvassing in NoDa.”
“Chicken hawks went to ground. He’s at headquarters, plans to head back out when they resurface after dark.”
I resumed my analysis by removing and inspecting the right pelvic half. The shape was typicaly female. The pubic symphysis had deep horizontal ridges and furrows, and a slender crest of bone was in the process of fusing to the upper edge of the hip blade.
I made notes on my form, then picked up the left pelvic half. Adipocere, a crumbly, soaplike substance, clung to its borders and symphyseal face. Ten minutes of cleaning revealed characteristics identical to those on the right.
More notes.
I was examining the rib ends when Slidel’s phone shattered the silence. Yanking the device from his hip, he shot outside. As before, his words were lost, but his tone carried in through the open door.
Slidel’s second conversation was longer than his first. I was repositioning a vertebra when he reentered the tomb.
“LAPD got back to Rinaldi.”
“That was quick,” I said.
“Ain’t computers grand?”
Burkhead had gone motionless. I could tel he was listening.
“Birch Alexander Scott purchased a home in Long Beach in February of 2001, moved in that summer with his wife, Annabele, and two daughters, Donna and Tracy.”
“That squares with Finney’s story,” I said.
“Things didn’t go exactly as the old man intended. Two years after relocating, the guy was taken out by a massive coronary. Wife’s stil enjoying the house.”
“What about Donna?”
“Sounds flaky as ever. Enroled in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California in 2002.” Slidel put a sneer into the program title. “Dropped out in 2004 to marry Herb Rosenberg, age forty-seven. Ever hear of him?”
I shook my head.
“Guy’s some bigwig freelance producer. Marriage lasted two years. Donna Scott-Rosenberg now lives in Santa Monica. Since July she’s been working as a researcher for a TV series.”
“Did Rinaldi get a phone number?”
“Oh, yeah.” Slidel waggled his cel and disappeared again.
“Who is Donna Scott?” Burkhead asked.
“She may have been involved in the vandalism.”
One by one, I assessed the maturity of the long bones.
Neck and shoulders screaming, I finaly sat back on my heels.
Clavicles. Pelves. Ribs. Long bones. Every indicator suggested death between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.
Age. Gender. Height. Robusticity. Preservation. Staining.
Cuervo’s cauldron contained the partial remains of a black female who’d died in her mid to late teens. A black female now missing her head, jaw, and thigh bones.
Susan Redmon was a perfect match for the girl in the cauldron.
It was ful night when Slidel and I left Elmwood. Thick clouds blanketed the moon and stars, turning trees and tombstones into dense cutouts against a background only slightly less dense. A cold rain was stil faling, and legions of tree frogs matched vocal offerings with armies of locusts. Or maybe they were crickets. Whatever. The sound was impressive.
Burkhead assumed responsibility for securing the remains and locking the crypt. I promised to return Finney’s jaw and the cauldron skul and femora as soon as I’d satisfied my boss that they were, indeed, Susan Redmon’s missing parts. He promised to do his best to persuade cousin Thomas to cough up for a new casket.
Slidel was restless and grumpy. Though he’d left messages, Donna Scott-Rosenberg had not phoned him back Slidel caled Rinaldi again as I was buckling my seat belt.
I looked at my watch. Nine fifteen. It had been a very long day. I’d eaten nothing since the turkey and Cheddar sub at headquarters.
Leaning back, I closed my eyes and began rubbing circles on my temples.
“Broad isn’t burning up the line getting back to me. I’l give her til morning, then bring down some heat. Let’s focus on Klapec. Anything new up there?”
Rinaldi said something. From Slidel’s end of the conversation I gathered he’d returned to NoDa.
“Oh, yeah? This guy’s realy credible?”
Rinaldi spoke again.
“And he’s wiling to share?”
More listening on Slidel’s end.
“See you at ten.”
Slidel’s mobile snapped shut.
We rode in silence. Then, “Ready to cal it a day, doc?”
“What’s Rinaldi got?” I mumbled.
“His hawk is wiling to dish on this Rick Nelson john.” Slidel stopped. “Know what I liked about Nelson? His hair. Guy had hair like a Shetland pony.”
“What’s the kid’s story?” I brought Slidel back on track.
“Describes the guy as average height and build, white, a conservative dresser, not a talker. Says he used to do Ricky-boy until he got the crap beat out of him.”
I opened my eyes. “The man was violent?”
“Kid claims the asshole tuned him up good.”