These Shallow Graves (37 page)

Jo entered her room and flopped onto her bed. She was exhausted. The funeral reception at the Beekmans' was over. It had tired her, and so had her uncle's lecture.

He wanted the best for her and for his own children—good marriages, happy lives. He wanted them to be surrounded by people like himself—decent, kind, and upstanding. She understood that and loved him for it, but she wondered if perhaps money and privilege had made him blind to the realities of the world.

Don't let the darkness that's been visited upon this family pull you in so deeply, you cannot get out. Turn back from it, darling Jo … ,
he'd warned her. He didn't seem to understand that turning your back on the darkness didn't mean the darkness would turn its back on you.

Jo stared up at the ceiling. It was late afternoon and already the light was fading. The Aldriches had dropped Jo and her mother at their home. Anna had asked Mrs. Nelson to send a supper tray up to her room. She was worn out, too, and wished to dine alone and retire early. Katie had drawn Jo a hot bath and made her a fire, and Jo was grateful for both. In a few minutes, Katie would return to help her undress.

Jo sat up, wanting to get into the tub before the water cooled. Two dozen cream roses in a vase atop her vanity table caught her eye. She hadn't noticed them before but knew without looking at the card tucked between the blooms that they were from Bram. He sent roses to her every week now. Propped against the vase were several buff-colored envelopes.
Invitations,
she thought,
to parties for us, the newly engaged couple.
There would be dresses to order for them. In shades of gray, and then mauve. The thought did not excite her.

Sighing heavily, Jo took her boots off and carried them to her wardrobe. As she bent to put them away, she noticed the newspaper that she had folded up against the side of her wardrobe had flopped over. It was a copy of the
World
—the one Oscar had given her at Child's Restaurant. She'd hidden it in her wardrobe. As she pulled it out now, it seemed to her like a souvenir from a faraway place.

“No need for this anymore,” she said, carrying it to her fireplace.

Printed on the front was the article about Kinch's arrest. In the photo, he was frozen in time with the police officer Dennis Hart on one side and the orderly Francis Mallon on the other.

Jo pulled the fire screen away from the hearth, but just as she was about to toss the paper onto the flames, she stopped. She knelt down on her carpet, smoothed the paper flat, and scrutinized the photo.

It wasn't Kinch she was staring at now, but Mallon. Even though his face was blurred, there was something familiar about it. Her eyes followed the thin shadow that crossed one cheek. She traced it with her finger.

And suddenly she knew.

“Oh dear God,” Jo said aloud.

She scrambled to her feet. She knew where she had to go. Her mother had retired for the evening and wouldn't be asking for her. She could get out of the house unnoticed if she was quiet.

She wrote a note to Katie explaining her absence, folded a dollar inside it to buy her silence, and left the note on the vanity. She tiptoed downstairs, got her coat and hat, and let herself out the front door. As soon as she turned off Gramercy Square, she ran as fast as she could to Irving Place and hailed a cab.

She wasn't worried about the scar-faced man attacking her if she left her house. Not anymore. He was done with her. Eddie, too. He'd thrown them off the scent.

“Park Row, please,” she said as she climbed inside the cab. “The
Standard.
”

“Nope. Not happening. It's over. Really and truly this time. Kinch is dead.”

“Forget it's me who's asking.”

“That's kind of impossible.”

“Please. You
have
to,” Jo said. “Because if I'm right, then the theory we came up with at Madam Esther's was wrong: Kinch and Scarface
weren't
working together. So why were they together when Beekman was killed?”

Eddie relented. “All right, let's see the page,” he said.

Jo was sitting by Eddie's desk in the
Standard
's newsroom. It was a Friday evening, and most of his coworkers had left. She'd been lucky to catch him.

She pulled the newspaper out of her purse now. “It's him,” she said, smoothing it on Eddie's desk.

“How can you tell? The image is totally blurry.”

“See that?” she said, pointing to the discoloration across the man's face. “I thought it was a shadow. It's not. It's a scar. Were any other photos taken? That's what I need to know. If so, he might be in them. And we might be able to see his face more clearly.”

“All right, we'll take a look. Come on.”

They walked out of the
Standard
's offices and down the block to the
World
's. Eddie talked to a fellow reporter, a friend of his, and told him what they were after. He led them to the paper's photography department. The editor was just tidying up for the night.

Eddie showed him the photograph in question and asked if they could see any other shots in the series. A few minutes later, they were staring at three more photographs. Kinch was blurry in all of them, but the man on his right was not.

Jo's blood turned to ice in her veins as she saw the jagged scar, the cruel face. In two of the photos, he had Kinch by the arm. In one, however, he was shielding his eyes from the camera's flash.

“I'll be damned,” Eddie said. “They're one and the same. And look … he's using his left hand to protect himself—his dominant hand. The same hand he used to pull a knife on you. And to cut Alvah Beekman's throat.

“I
knew
it,” Jo said. “It's him. Francis Mallon is the scar-faced man.”

Eddie was walking down Park Row. Away from Jo.

“You know I'm right!” she called after him, not caring who heard her.

“Don't care!” he called back, not bothering to turn around.

“It's not a coincidence that Mallon was Kinch's orderly!”

“Still don't care!”

Mallon had followed them to Walsh's. He'd attacked Eddie and Jo as well. According to one of Della McEvoy's girls, a scar-faced man was the one who'd killed Beekman. And then Mallon turned out to be Kinch's orderly. That was an almost impossible set of coincidences. There was a reason for them, a connection. Jo was certain of it. But what
was
it?

She had to come up with an answer and had only seconds to do it before Eddie turned the corner and disappeared. From her view. From her life. Forever.

“This is finished now, Jo. I mean it. I won't go any further with it,” he'd said, when they were still at the
World
—right after she'd told him she wanted to go to Darkbriar to talk to Mallon.

“If you think we're going to confront Francis Mallon, think again. He attacked us. He may well be a killer, too. Do you really think I'm going to let you put yourself in that kind of danger? And for what? What's he going to do? Confess to three murders just because you ask him to? It's over, Jo. Accept it.”

But she
couldn't
accept it. She felt like she had when she was little and playing Blind Man's Buff and knew her playmates were right there in front of her, only inches from her outstretched hands.

She and Eddie had never been as close to the truth as they were now. They couldn't see it yet, but it was there. Francis Mallon was a part of it, but it was bigger than him. Jo felt it in her bones. If only she could convince Eddie.

Think, Jo, think!
she told herself as she stood on the sidewalk, watching him walk away.

She tried to recall the meeting between Kinch and Scully. Snatches of their conversation came back to her. Could the answer be in those bits and pieces? Where? She'd already sifted through them a thousand times.

She heard Scully's voice in her head:
I would not have known you. …
And then Kinch's
Seventeen years without the company of another Christian soul. … Look upon me and see the monster you have wrought. …
She remembered Kinch explaining how his fellow crewmen had put the tattoos upon him.

“Oh my goodness. That's
it
!” she exclaimed.

But Eddie was nearly at the end of the block and didn't hear her.

“Stop, Eddie,
please
!” Jo called out.

Eddie kept right on going.

“Eddie Gallagher, you stop right
now
!” Jo bellowed.

Eddie stopped, then turned around. “What?” he shouted, annoyed.

Jo ran to him. “Kinch touched his chest!” she said breathlessly. “He touched his chest when he said it!”

“Said
what
?”

“ ‘It's written on my heart, and that's where it will stay.' ”

“So?”

“So he
meant
it! It
is
written on his heart. Don't you see? The man was positively covered in tattoos! ‘They use tattoos to tell their stories. They told mine,' ” she said, quoting Kinch again.

“But, Jo, it doesn't make any difference. Even if the story was written on his heart. Kinch is dead. He and his tattoos are six feet under.”

Jo licked her lips nervously, then said, “How long does it take for a body to rot? Oscar would know.”

Eddie gave her a puzzled look. Then her meaning dawned on him. “No. Absolutely not. You cannot be serious,” he said.

“Two days? Three? Maybe a bit longer at this time of year? We could ask him. We could bring him with us,” Jo ventured.

“
We
are doing nothing. You want to do this, you do it alone.”

“But I won't be,” Jo said, her eyes locked on his. “You'll be there. You want your story, Eddie. I know you do. That's who you are.”

“This is not a trip to the goddamned morgue, Jo!” Eddie said angrily. “It's not a trip to Esther's or the Tailor's. This is a
crime.
Do you have any idea what will happen to us if we get caught?”

“Please, Eddie. One last time.”

Jo had told herself
one last time
before, when she found him at Child's and convinced him to go to Madam Esther's with her. This trip would truly be their last together. She could see in his eyes that it would.

Eddie looked up at the sky for quite some time. When he finally met Jo's eyes again, she saw a fire burning there that matched the one inside her. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Corner of Irving and Fifteenth. Ten o'clock. I'll be waiting.”

“The thing is, you can't ever really know just how rotten someone will turn out to be,” Oscar Rubin said philosophically. “It's always a surprise.”

“And who doesn't love a surprise?” Eddie muttered darkly.

Jo, Eddie, and Oscar were shoveling dirt off a newly mounded grave in Darkbriar's cemetery.

They'd met Flynn, the gravedigger, an hour ago at the asylum's tall black gates, timing their arrival to coincide with the watchman's nightly trip to the main kitchens for a cup of hot coffee. Flynn had them through the gates and into the wooded grounds by the time the watchman returned to his hut.

Oscar had made the arrangements. Eddie had filled him in about the photograph and told him that Francis Mallon and the scar-faced man were one and the same. Oscar knew Flynn and offered him twenty dollars of Jo's money to let them dig up Kinch. Flynn had provided them with a small lantern, shovels, a crowbar, had walked them to the grave, and then he'd left them on their own.

Darkbriar mainly catered to rich clients. The bodies of patients who died there were almost always whisked away for burial in a family plot. The few that went unclaimed were buried in a lonely patch of land at the farthest reaches of the asylum's extensive grounds.

From the graveyard, Jo could see the asylum buildings silhouetted against the moonlit sky. A mournful wind moved through the trees, rattling their bare branches and sweeping dead leaves across the cold ground. A moment ago, her courage had failed her. She'd wanted to run from this place, and from what she was about to do. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was crossing a final and terrible border, and that once she opened Kinch's coffin, there would be no going back. And yet she hadn't run. Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.

As she, Eddie, and Oscar all continued to dig, Oscar continued to talk.

“There are so many variables. Age. Weight. Manner of death. Time of year,” he said. “Say you pull a ten-day-old corpse out of a warehouse in January … you'll get discoloration, some odor—mainly from the bowels evacuating. The eyes will be gone. The nose, too. Rats
love
noses. But pull the same corpse out in July? You've got liquid putrescence then. Maggots. Bloating. Slippage—that's when the skin comes off when you try to move the guy. And the stench? Indescribable.” Oscar chuckled heartily. “You'll lose your lunch. I guarantee it.”

“I'm about to lose my dinner, so can you stop?” Eddie asked.

“I'm only trying to point out the fact that Mr. Kinch might be well preserved,” Oscar said. “He died only four days ago, and the weather's been cold. We're lucky the ground isn't frozen or we wouldn't be able to do this.”

“
Lucky
isn't the first word that comes to mind,” Eddie grumbled. “I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm a grave robber now. And so are you two.”

“Technically, we're not. Not unless we take Kinch with us. We're
disturbing
a grave, certainly, but not robbing it.”

“Really? That's so great, Oscar. I feel much better. You know something? You're as crazy as she is,” Eddie said, nodding at Jo.

“I'm not crazy; I'm curious. That's why I came. What if Jo's right? What if the answers
are
written on Kinch's heart? Imagine that—a dead man who
does
tell tales. I'm certainly adding this to my casebook.”

“Let's pick up the pace, shall we?” Eddie said. “The faster we dig him up, the faster we can get out of here.”

Jo tried her best to keep up with the two men, but it was impossible. She'd never held a shovel in her life except for the little tin one she'd played with as a child on the beaches of Newport. The one she'd been given was heavy, and digging out a hole with two other people was awkward. As soon as they'd shoveled down a foot, it became too hard for all three of them to maneuver around the grave. Eddie asked her to stop digging and hold the lantern instead.

The two men took turns then, working mostly in silence for the next hour, huffing and grunting in the light of the lantern, their breath visible in the chilly air. And then, when they were about four feet down, Oscar's shovel struck wood. A sickly-sweet smell wafted up. Jo did her best to ignore it.

“A shallow grave,” Oscar said. “Flynn's not only crooked, he's lazy, too.”

Eddie and Jo watched as Oscar cleaned the rest of the dirt off the top of Kinch's coffin and dug out little hollows on either side of it so he'd have somewhere to stand when the lid came off.

“Crowbar,” he said.

Eddie handed it to him. Oscar placed his feet firmly in the hollows. He hooked the crowbar under the coffin's lid, took a deep breath, then yanked as hard as he could. There was a screech as the nails pulled free. The lid flipped up on its side. Oscar nimbly lifted his left leg over the lid, then braced himself against it. He handed the crowbar back to Eddie. The smell of death, punishingly strong, rose like a specter.

Jo gagged. She covered her nose and mouth with her hands.

Eddie swore.

Oscar rubbed his hands together. “Hand me the lantern, kids!” he crowed.

In the glare of the kerosene flame, Jo saw an image she knew would haunt her for as long as she lived.

Kinch's face was purple and grotesquely swollen. His tongue protruded through his lips. His eyes were half closed. Jo wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She stayed where she was by sheer force of will, watching as Oscar went to work.

“You have a pad and pencil on you?” he asked Eddie.

Eddie, looking green, nodded.

“Good. Write down what I say.” Oscar turned back to the body. “Talk to me, Kinch,” he murmured, carefully inspecting the corpse's clothing. “Jacket, shirt, trousers, belt, socks, and boots … According to the papers, Kinch refused to remove his clothing when he was brought to the asylum. Not much blood on them, is there? For a man who allegedly cut someone's throat.”

He parted Kinch's swollen eyelids with this thumb and forefinger. Jo swallowed her revulsion and leaned in, the better to see what he was doing.

“Petechial hemorrhages in both the sclera and inner lids,” he said, pointing to red dots in Kinch's eyes.

He looked at Kinch's fingers and palms next. He pushed his sleeves up and peered at his skin. “No lividity to hands or forearms. Extensive bruising and puncture marks inside the elbows.”

“There's no bruising on his arms besides the inner elbow?” Jo asked. “What about his legs?”

Oscar pulled up one trouser leg, then the other. “Nothing major. Why?” he asked.

“Because he jumped from a window twenty feet off the ground,” replied Jo. “At least, according to the papers.”

“You're right,” Oscar said, frowning. “I remember reading that.”

“What about the puncture marks? Was he injecting himself with morphine?” Eddie asked. “That was the word in the newsroom.”

“Looks like it he was injecting
something.
It also looks like he wasn't very good at it. The bruising is extensive. Looks like he would try for a vein, miss, and try again,” Oscar said. He parted Kinch's jacket and stared at his waist. “Why'd they leave your belt on you, Mr. Kinch? Loonies aren't supposed to have belts or shoelaces.”

He undid Kinch's collar, revealing a deep black groove around his neck. “Horizontal ligature furrow approximately one-half inch deep. Bruises and abrasions above and below furrow.” He gently felt the front of Kinch's neck, probing his Adam's apple. “Suspected fracture to thyroid cartilage.” Next, he examined Kinch's belt. “Belt approximately one and one-half inches wide. Noncorroborative with furrow dimensions.”

Eddie stopped writing. “Hold on a minute, Oscar. …
Noncorroborative?
”

Oscar nodded grimly.

“What does that mean?” Jo asked, looking from Eddie to Oscar.

“It means that our friend Mr. Kinch
didn't
hang himself,” Oscar replied.

“With his belt, you mean. He used something else,” Eddie ventured.

“No. I mean he didn't hang himself,” Oscar said.

“But there's a mark on his neck,” Jo countered.

“Yes, but it wasn't made by a noose,” Oscar said. “Kinch was strangled.”