On the medallion Devlin wore around his neck.
Thirty-One
The revelation left me shaken. Devlin was a member of the Order of the Coffin and the Claw, the secret society that had been implicated in Afton Delacourt’s murder.
Not that I believed for a moment he’d been personally involved.
But a memory was stirred of that overheard conversation between Devlin and Camille Ashby. She’d been adamant that the discovery of Hannah Fischer’s body in Oak Grove not be linked to Emerson or to the first murder. Had she expected Devlin to cover up whatever connection to the university he might find because he was a Claw?
Only the crème de la crème of Emerson students were extended membership, those from privileged backgrounds like Devlin. While he was at Emerson, the Order would have had every reason to believe he would one day become a mover and shaker in his family’s powerful law firm. Undoubtedly he’d been a legacy pledge with a long Devlin tradition in the society behind him. No wonder he said they couldn’t touch him. He was one of them.
I didn’t have a chance to confront him when I arrived at Oak Grove. There were too many people around. Above and belowground, the cemetery teemed with cops. Devlin himself spent most of the morning in the tunnels. I walked the cemetery alone, searching for signs of fresh digging, disturbed graves, clues hidden within imagery and epitaphs. Like Dr. Shaw, I had no idea what I was looking for, but I had a feeling I would know it if I saw it. At least I hoped so.
By noon, I was a hot mess. The sun was brutal overhead and I still felt a bit weak from my encounter with Devlin the night before. I had on my usual cemetery attire of boots, tank and cargoes. The large pockets in the pants provided convenient storage for my tools, but they were hardly the most flattering fit. My hair was plastered to my head, and I wore no makeup or sunscreen—a foolish lapse because already I could feel the sting of sunburn on my cheeks.
Devlin, on the other hand, looked fresh and well put together—suspiciously revitalized—as he emerged from the web-laden tunnels. As he headed toward me, Ethan Shaw approached from a different angle, and their paths converged directly in front of me. Unlike Devlin, Ethan looked a little worse for wear after his foray belowground. He walked up brushing dust and cobwebs from his sleeves.
The two men couldn’t have looked more different: Devlin with his black hair, piercing eyes and brooding demeanor and Ethan, a sun-streaked brunette with an easy smile and gold-flecked hazel eyes.
Night and day, I thought, and for some reason the analogy made me uneasy.
“I’m getting ready to head back to the lab,” Ethan said. “But if you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you about the remains we exhumed from the grave yesterday.”
The conversation was a little awkward for me. I didn’t know whether I should back away and let them have privacy or stay and hear what Ethan had to say.
Neither of them seemed too concerned about my listening in so I decided to stay put.
“She’s a female Caucasian, early twenties,” Ethan was saying. “Somewhere around five feet nine inches tall and a hundred and twenty pounds. Give or take.”
“PMI?” Devlin asked.
“Five to ten years. I’m saying closer to ten.”
Devlin frowned. “She was in the ground for a long time.”
“Normally, that would make identification a lot more difficult, but we’ve got plenty of dental work to go on and extensive premortem injuries.”
“How premortem?”
“Months. Cracked ribs and clavicle, fractured vertebrae, pelvis and right femur. My guess is she was in a severe accident, probably a car crash. She was on the mend, but I would imagine she suffered from chronic pain and was facing months, if not years, of physical therapy.”
“That narrows the field considerably,” Devlin said.
“We’ve already put her in the system. Should be just a matter of time.”
Devlin’s phone rang and I watched him walk off as I made the calculations in my head. Afton Delacourt had been murdered fifteen years ago. The remains dug up yesterday had been in the ground from five to ten years. Hannah Fischer had been dead only a matter of days. I wondered if another pattern was emerging or if we’d yet to find all the bodies.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asked and I shook myself out of my reverie.
“I’m just tired.”
He gave me a careful appraisal. “You look a little flushed. Are you sure you’re not overdoing it out here?”
“No. I’m fine. Why?”
“I heard you and Devlin were the ones who discovered the hidden room and tunnels. And the skeleton,” he added grimly. “That couldn’t have been easy on the nerves.”
“It was a little traumatic,” I admitted.
“Did you get any sleep at all last night?”
I thought about Devlin, slumbering so peacefully in my office while I lay fully clothed in bed, staring at the ceiling and fretting. “Not much.”
“And here you are back out here today. I see at least half a dozen cops standing around who could be walking this cemetery.”
“I know the terrain and I know what I’m looking for, sort of.”
He shrugged. “Okay. But if you need a break, take it. John pushes himself hard, but that doesn’t mean you have to.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Devlin had disappeared down one of the walkways and was out of earshot. “You’ve known him a long time?”
“Yes. He can seem a little taciturn at times, but he wasn’t always like that. The accident changed him. I don’t think he’ll ever get over it.”
“I can see why. He lost his whole family.”
Ethan sighed. “It’s not just the grief. He’s consumed by guilt.”
I looked around anxiously. “I’m not sure we should be talking about this.”
“You’re wrong, Amelia. You’re the one person who needs to hear it.”
“He could come back.”
Ethan turned facing the path. “I’ll see him if he does.”
“Even so, this feels intrusive to me.”
“It makes me uncomfortable, too. Whatever is going on between you and John is none of my business. You’re both adults and maybe I should leave it at that. But you seem like a nice person and John is like family.”
I glanced at him in surprise. “I had no idea the two of you were that close.”
“We’re not anymore,” Ethan said. “After the accident, he cut most of his friends out of his life. I think he wanted to rid himself of all the reminders. But there was a time when he, Mariama and I were inseparable. I was Shani’s godfather.”
“I…didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He nodded, his eyes bleak. “I was with John when he got the call about the accident. We’d all been together earlier that day at their house. Mariama had planned a barbecue. She’d been looking forward to it all week and then John got called into work unexpectedly. They’d been bickering on and off all day, but that phone call was the trigger.”
“A trigger for what?”
He hesitated. “Mariama was a passionate, impulsive woman. Her unpredictability was part of her charm, and I think it was one of the reasons John fell for her so hard. She was so different from him. But she could also be jealous, vindictive and possessive, even about his career. She knew how to push his buttons and she came to enjoy it. She said some things that day, nasty things that she knew would set him off.”
“And did they?”
He ran a hand through his hair and glanced away. “Yes. The argument got pretty ugly. Nothing physical, of course, just words spoken in anger that could never be taken back. The worst part was that Shani heard everything. I remember the way she kept tapping on John’s leg to get his attention. I think she was trying to console him, but he was too angry…too caught up in the moment to notice. He stormed out of the house, and when he drove off, Shani was standing at the window waving goodbye. That was the last time he saw her alive.”
I thought of the way the little ghos
t clung to Devlin’s legs now and I wanted to weep.
“I can’t even imagine,” I said softly.
“Who can? I’m sure John would give his own life to go back to that one moment. If he could just hold Shani in his arms one last time…”
This was too much. I didn’t want him to go on and yet I was in too deep. I had to hear the rest.
“After he got off work, he called me and we had drinks. He needed an ear. At some point, Mariama tried to reach him on his cell phone. He saw her name on the display and ignored it. He later learned that she’d placed the call within seconds of reaching a 911 operator. Her car had gone off a bridge and she was trapped in her seat. Trapped in a sinking car, she and Shani. Maybe Mariama knew help would arrive too late. Maybe she called to give John a chance to say goodbye. And he didn’t pick up.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, shivering.
“This is what he lives with,” Ethan said. “This is what he carries with him, always. There isn’t much room in his life for anything else, I’m afraid.”
“For me, you mean.”
Ethan’s gaze was gentle. “I just thought you should know.”
Ethan’s disclosure had upset me badly and for the rest of the day, I’d avoided Devlin. I just couldn’t face him yet. Not after all that. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. I didn’t want to imagine it. And yet it was all there in his eyes and on his face and in the ghosts that clung to him.
By the time I got home, I decided it might be good for my mental well-being to immerse myself in the mundane for a change, like laundry and grocery shopping. When I returned from the store, I fixed myself a glass of iced tea and carried it out to the patio where I could sit and enjoy the garden.
The morning glories had long since wilted, but the pink four o’clocks by the house were open and swarming with honeybees and hummingbirds. I meandered out to the edge of the garden, sat for a moment in the swing where I’d seen Shani’s ghost and then bent to examine the little mound where I’d buried her ring. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but the ground was undisturbed, the heart exactly as I’d left it.
Mariama’s visit had been even more disturbing than Shani’s, so I shut out the image of those ghostly eyes peering at me through the darkness and tried to concentrate on the glorious scent drifting up from the peonies.
As I bent to pick one of the blooms, I noticed that the out side door to the basement was ajar.
That was odd.
That door was always kept locked even though nothing of value was stored there. The inside basement entrance had been bolted shut—along with the door at the top of the stair case in the entrance hall—when the space was divided into apartments.
The idea of an intruder, even in broad daylight, frightened me, especially with everything else that had happened lately. I’d left my phone inside. I’d have to go in the house to call the police, but I didn’t want to be too hasty. It was possible the lock hadn’t caught and the wind had blown open the door.
I approached just close enough to peer down the steps. I saw a light on inside and heard a series of thuds and thumps as storage boxes were shuffled around.
Then the door opened and I retreated back into the garden.
A moment later, Macon Dawes strode up the steps with a black suitcase in his hand. When he saw me standing in the yard, he stopped and waved.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I pressed a palm to my heart. “You scared me half to death. I thought someone broke in.”
“No, just me looking for this.” He held up the bag. “Sorry to startle you. I guess you wouldn’t be expecting to see me around this time of day. Or anytime. I’ve been a phantom these past few weeks.”
“Busy schedule at the hospital?”
“Killer,” he said with a grimace. “I’m just coming off a seventy-two-hour shift.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Caffeine and desperation. I’ve amassed too much debt to turn back now.”
I nodded toward the suitcase. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yep. I have two whole weeks off and a buddy of mine is letting me stay at his family’s place on Sullivan’s Island. I don’t plan to do anything but sleep and eat. And drink. And sleep.”
“Sounds like just what you need.” The small talk was awkward seeing how we barely knew each other. I’d always found Macon Dawes a little intimidating, though I had no idea why. I hardly knew anything about him other than he was a hardworking medical student and a quiet neighbor. A phantom, like he said.
“Do you think you could keep an eye on my place while I’m gone? Not that I expect any trouble,” he added with a grin. “This neighborhood’s mind-numbingly quiet.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Thanks. Remind me to buy you a drink when I get back.”
He bounded up the outside stairs as I stood there ruminating on this latest turn of events. A drink with Macon Dawes?
I wondered if the universe was trying to tell me something.
By nine-thirty that night, the dishes were done, the laundry was folded, furniture dusted, hardwood floors swept, and still the night stretched before me as endless as the tunnels beneath Oak Grove Cemetery.
Loneliness was an old friend, but tonight that friendship was strained. I didn’t want to be alone and I hadn’t a single soul I could call. Temple was my closest friend, but our relationship was still more superior-subordinate than equals. And other than the occasional offhand remark at dinner or over drinks, I really knew very little about her personal life.
I was twenty-seven years old and I’d never had a best friend, never had a real confidant and had never once fallen in love. From the time I was nine years old, the dead that walk among us had isolated me from the living. With that first sighting, my life had been changed forever. Like my father, I’d learned to live with my secret, had even come to embrace the solitude, but there were times, like tonight, when I wondered if madness might not also wait for me behind the veil.
But the loneliness I lived with couldn’t compare to the desolation Devlin must face every time he entered his empty house. I didn’t want to dwell on his tragedy or my plight or why fate might be so cruel as to bring the one man who would always mourn another woman into my life. It had always been painfully clear that Devlin was not the man for me and yet I could imagine myself with no other.
I moved through the house like a ghost, floating from one room to another, endlessly searching. I told myself I wouldn’t turn on the computer. I needed to unplug for a while. I was coming to rely more and more on the company of nameless, faceless strangers. But thirty minutes later, I was all tucked in bed with my laptop propped against my knees. I went straight to my blog and checked the comments section. Someone had posted a new entry less than an hour ago:
A quiet life, a quiet death.
Sleep now, Beloved.
Our secret is safe.
I was almost certain the lines were from an old poem, but I had also seen the verse today, carved in stone, at Oak Grove.
With a quivering hand, I picked up the phone and called Devlin.
Thirty-Two
It was late and the graveyard was quiet. The army of cops had retreated from the tunnels and pathways, leaving behind two sentries at the front gate. The uniforms followed us inside and I led the way through the somber labyrinth of headstones and monuments to the north side of the cemetery, where the seven slot-and-tab box tombs gleamed in the moonlight.
Playing my flashlight over the center tomb, I highlighted the epitaph and imagery carved into the lid. Above the name and year of birth and death was a single tulip—love and passion—and a butterfly, the soul in flight.
“He’s setting them free,” I said softly.
Devlin’s head came up and he stared at me across the tomb.
“The imagery is all the same—the feather, the winged effigy and now a butterfly. The soul in flight. But he isn’t just releasing their souls—he’s freeing th
em from their earthly shackles.” I glanced back down at the stone. “Hannah Fischer’s mother said that her daughter had a history of abusive relationships, starting with her father. She kept the identity of her latest boyfriend a secret because she knew her mother would try to save her. Do you remember the epitaph on the headstone of the grave where she was buried? ‘The midnight stars weep upon her silent grave. Dead but dreaming, this child we could not save.’”
Devlin eyed me silently.
“The remains that were excavated yesterday… Ethan said she’d been in a terrible accident before she died. Her injuries were so severe she probably had chronic pain and months if not years of physical therapy ahead of her. ‘How soon fades this gentle rose, Freed from earthly woes, She lies in eternal repose.’ Earthly woes. Physical pain. And now we have this one.”
The four of us stared down at the tomb. Devlin and I were on either side and the officers stood at each end.
I read the epitaph aloud. “‘A quiet life, a quiet death. Sleep now, Beloved. Our secret is safe.’”
“Damn, that’s creepy,” one of the officers muttered.
I drew a long breath, my gaze still on the symbol. “The lid will have to be lifted straight up off the tabs.”
“Don’t we need a court order for that sort of thing?” the other officer asked nervously.
“Box tombs were built to fool grave robbers. The body, at least the one first interred here, is buried deep in the ground. The remains won’t be disturbed by removing the lid.”
“I’ll take responsibility,” Devlin said, and I fancied I saw the flash of his silver medallion in the moonlight. “Let’s lift it up.”
The top was only a few inches up when the smell came rolling out. I stifled a gag and pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth. The officers groaned, from the weight of the cover and the putrid odor.
“A little higher,” Devlin instructed as he knelt and shined his light inside. He pressed the back of his other hand against his mouth and nose. “Jesus.”
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