An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  The man next to him laughed. “You drunk idiot. I told you it was just a deer bone.”

  “That weren’t no deer bone,” Oaks said. “I know what I saw.”

  Auburn asked him where it was. The man turned and pointed at a dead tree, with black bark that was crackled and peeling away like burnt skin. Auburn started toward the tree, waving for his officer to follow. “Be careful not to touch anything else we find, Paul,” he said.

  “What good’s it going to do?” Paul replied. “Anything out here’s been rained on, snowed on, and shit upon by every living thing under the sun, especially if it’s sat long enough.”

  “You never know,” Auburn said, eyeing the tree and the fresh uncovered dirt all around it. Roots poked through clumps of upended earth, writhing with fat worms and grubs, where the dog had ripped up the ground to bury its find. Laying at the center was what looked like a fossil, some kind of ancient artifact covered in soil. It was gray, with long thin bones connecting its toes and knuckles to the length of the small foot. It was no bigger than a dog’s chew toy, or the carcass of a small game bird. But it was unmistakable. The moment Auburn’s eyes set upon it, all the air left him like he’d been punctured.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Paul whispered.

  “Be quiet,” Auburn hissed, feeling the trickle of sweat thicken. He wiped his face with the flat of his hand and dried it against his uniform shirt. He glanced back at the hunters, who had crept forward from where they’d been told to stay, trying to listen. Auburn waved to them and gave a thumbs-up. “I think you found the rest of that deer I shot when I was twelve years old, Willie.”

  The other hunters laughed, slapping Willie Oaks on the back. He rolled his eyes and laughed with them. “I swear to God it looked just like a child’s foot.”

  “To be honest, I can’t tell exactly what it is. Nothing to get excited about, though,” Auburn called out. “You boys run on home now. Me and Paul will have a look around. I’ll swing by the bar afterward and let you know what we find.”

  Auburn watched the men leave, then leaned in close to Paul and whispered, “Go back to your car and radio for the fire company. Get as many of them out here as fast as you can. I want lights up here, big as they can find. Then call the State Police. Tell them I need their helicopter in the air, helping us search.”

  Paul didn’t move, unable to look away from the foot. Auburn smacked him on the chest. “Keep this whole thing quiet, you hear? Otherwise, these woods will be crawling with people before we know it.”

  “Okay,” Paul said, blinking, his mind racing through the series of calculations necessary to make sense of what he was being told. “What do you need the fire company for?”

  “To see if we can find the rest of the remains,” Auburn said. “God knows if we don’t, the Boy Scouts and everybody else will be out here looking. We’ll have people bringing pieces of the body into our station for the next two years.”

  Paul looked down at the foot, face drained of light. “It’s Hope Pugh, isn’t it? I went to school with her. I was in her class when it happened. Christ, I thought she just ran off, like everyone said. I never believed any of it. It’s her. She was just a little girl, Steve.”

  Auburn wiped his face again. The inside of his Stetson was soaked in sweat. He took it off, feeling the cool air blow across the back of his head. Paul was muttering a prayer. Auburn whacked him and told him to shut up. “On second thought, you just stay put. One look at your blubbering face and people will start thinking this actually was some kind of murder,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  It had been months since Jacob Rein’s last operation, and he was still wearing the bandage around his hand and wrist. Carrie knew he didn’t need it. Some days he covered the scar with a black neoprene wrist brace, switching the disguise the same way he wore baseball hats or pulled his hair back into a knot. All of the photographs used in the newspaper articles were from his days as a detective, or sometimes from the mug shot when he was arrested. No one recognized the bearded, long-haired man. Not unless they saw his hand, and the scars around his wrist. Everyone knew about that.

  Carrie watched Rein come through the diner’s door, then step out of the way as someone walked past. He lowered his head, using the baseball hat to cover his face. Carrie held up her finger for the waitress and said, “My friend’s here now. Can you bring him a coffee?”

  Rein made his way to the table and slid into the seat, keeping his left arm out of view.

  “I tried to call you,” Carrie said. “It said the number’s no good now?”

  “I ran out of minutes,” Rein said. “I’ll get more soon.”

  She knew better than to offer him money. “Are you hungry?”

  The waitress set a mug of fresh coffee in front of Rein. He sat back against the booth, studying Carrie. “You look tired.”

  “You look homeless,” she replied.

  “I am homeless,” he said.

  “I’ve offered you a thousand times to come stay with me. There is no reason for you to be sleeping on people’s couches.”

  Rein reached with his right hand for the nearest packet of sugar. He tried ripping it open with his teeth. “Give that to me,” Carrie said, and took it from him. She tore the rest of the packet open and dumped it inside his coffee. “I thought you were supposed to be using that thing,” she said, cocking her head toward his left side.

  “It’s sore today,” he said.

  She picked up a creamer and spilled it into Rein’s coffee. “You still have to use it. The doctor said.”

  Rein brought his left hand out from under the table and looked down at his fingers, straining to force them to move. He forced them to curl inward, like he was gripping an imaginary ball. “There,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”

  “It’s going to get easier,” she said. “You just have to keep at it.” She picked up a spoon and stirred the coffee for him.

  “What was the case?” he asked.

  “What case?”

  “The one you went out on last night. Your eyes are red and your right eyelid is swollen, meaning you didn’t get enough sleep. You’re in jeans and a T-shirt, but you’re wearing your gun,” he said, indicating the weapon under her T-shirt. “Pretty obvious you went to work late last night and never made it home.”

  “Got anything else?” she asked.

  “You’re cranky. You’re hiding it by smiling and appearing cheerful, but I can see it. You’re always cranky when you don’t get enough sleep. What was the case?”

  Carrie sighed, defeated. “A woman claims a cop raped her last night. From what I can tell, he pulled her over and ripped her out of the car. She was freaking out at the hospital, screaming at me to get away from her. All I was trying to do was help.”

  Rein listened, running the tip of his finger around the mug’s rim. “Go on,” he said.

  “I asked for DNA from all the cops who were working in the area last night.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Like you’d expect.”

  “It’s understandable why they weren’t happy being asked to do that.”

  “Why?” Carrie said. “If they didn’t do anything wrong, all I’m doing is helping them clear their names. For God’s sake,” she said. “Anyway, no cop could have done this. I know all the guys who were working last night. None of them are rapists. Maybe Kenderdine is right, this chick is just a whack job.”

  Jacob picked up the mug and took a long swig. He set it down, turning it on the table, watching the handle go past. “What kind of people seek to become police officers?”

  “Going by the ones at this table? Crazy, pain-in-the-ass people,” she said.

  “I mean the majority.”

  “Former soldiers. Guys looking for a good-paying job that doesn’t require much education. People who want to serve their community.”

  “Agreed,” Rein said. “But there’s another group who specifically seek out the job because of the power. The badge and gun. The abili
ty to degrade and dehumanize others. We weed out a lot of them during the background checks, but a few slip through. They’re like enemy insurgents.”

  “So you think it could be a real police officer?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I? Because it’s terrible? You’re right, it is terrible. And terrifying. The same way when a teacher or doctor or celebrity or grandparent does something so horrific it is hard to even think about. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue.”

  “Listen, I know you don’t want to get involved, but can you come with me to talk to this victim?” Carrie said. “Please, I think you’d be able to communicate with her. Crazy person to crazy person,” she added, smiling.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s something happening,” he said, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “Something I can’t talk about just yet.”

  “Well is it good or bad?” she asked. “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  She leaned close. “Just tell me what it is. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I shouldn’t even have brought it up,” he said, moving back against the seat. “Forget I said anything.”

  The alert on Carrie’s phone sounded. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. “Just give me one second. This conversation isn’t over.” She read the brief message on the bulletin’s header, raised an eyebrow, and dropped it back in her pocket.

  “What is it?” Rein asked, back to turning the mug in circles.

  “Some chief out in Liston-Patterson is asking for any departments with a helicopter to give him a call, asap. I’ve never even heard of that place.”

  The mug stopped spinning. Coffee splashed over its sides and dripped onto the table, but Rein didn’t notice. “It’s over an hour away, out in the country. Why do they need a helicopter?”

  Carrie grabbed a napkin and mopped the spill. “An hour away? I hope Harv doesn’t send me out there. Did you and Bill used to get sent out into the boonies to cover bullshit investigations?”

  He pointed at her phone. “What else does it say?”

  Carrie scrolled through the rest of the e-mail. “Okay, hang on.” She kept reading, then said, “Who does this guy think we are? Law enforcement agencies with actual resources? It says he’s also looking for cadaver dogs trained in recovering skeletal remains.”

  Rein slid out of the seat and dropped a crumpled dollar bill on the table. “I have to go. Is this enough for the coffee?”

  “Rein, what are you doing?” Carrie asked. She pushed the dollar out of the way. “I don’t need your money. What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll call you,” he said, turning toward the door and making his way past the rest of the people leaving.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Carrie said, watching the glass door close behind him. She signaled for the waitress and said, “Check please.”

  “No breakfast?” the waitress asked.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” she said. The only thing left to do was go to the office and see her boss. It was never a good idea to do that with a full stomach.

  * * *

  The framed front page of a local newspaper hung outside of Harv Bender’s office. It was only a year old, and already going dull from baking in the overhead fluorescent light. The headline’s typeface and the large color photograph beneath it were fading. Newspapers, the news they contained, the materials they were printed on. Cheap, fleeting, and disposable. Every day, some new scandal, wartime atrocity, or historic collapse of a once sacred institution spewed across the front page of every paper in the country.

  The day the paper was printed, Harv Bender had gone to the nearest mall and bought the only frame he could find to display the article. It came from a sports memorabilia shop, the kind of frame local bars hung over the urinals so patrons could read the latest standings.

  DETECTIVES DEFEAT OMNIKILLER

  Under it was a photograph of Harv Bender, swarmed by reporters, flooded by lights. Framed beneath the article was a photograph that no reporters had ever seen. It was a picture Bender had shown off at every police conference along the eastern seaboard that year. The prize trophy photo. Bender raising the dead killer’s head off the floor, leaning down next to it, smiling for the camera.

  Carrie knocked on the open door, peeking in. “You wanted to see me, Chief?”

  Bender’s office hadn’t been unpacked yet, with most of his things still in boxes. A stack of unreviewed cases sat piled in the far corner, behind his brand-new desk, angled to hold up a worn leather golf bag and clubs that had been presented to him on the night he was promoted. Fresh grass still stuck to the driver’s blade from earlier that morning. The others were dull and scratched from hard use.

  Bender folded his hands on his desk. “Have a seat.”

  Carrie picked up the stack of framed photos from the nearest chair and moved them to the floor. Harv Bender and the state governor shaking hands. Harv Bender and a famous retired athlete. She sat down. “Something wrong?”

  “I heard you got called out last night. Some lunatic is claiming a cop raped her?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Carrie said.

  “Let me guess. Oh, I didn’t get a good look at him. Oh, I’m not sure where it happened. Oh, I’m not going to cooperate with the detectives. Typical bullshit. She’ll be suing every department in the area, just trying to get them to pay her to go away. The sad reality is that most of the stories we hear about sexual assaults are phony. Some chick gets drunk at a party and hooks up with every dude there. Next thing you know her boyfriend hears about it, or somebody takes a video of it and posts it online, and she cries rape.”

  “This lady wasn’t at a party, Chief,” Carrie said. “She was driving home from the gym. She said a cop car pulled her over with red and blue lights, and the guy that did it was wearing a uniform.”

  “What’s that prove? I can buy a uniform on eBay right now. Emergency lights, too,” Bender said. “Hell, I can go to any police auction in the country and buy an actual police car if I want. They won’t even unplug the lights or pull off the decals or anything. Just let me drive it right off their lot and be glad to get rid of it.”

  “I’ll be happy to check to see if there’s any reports on police impersonators in the area,” Carrie said. “But that’s not all we need to do. We have to pull every internal investigation from all the local PDs and see if there have been complaints against any of their officers. Inappropriate contact with women during car stops or arrests. They would keep that kind of thing quiet, but we need to get this guy off the street before he does it again.”

  Bender’s interlocked fingers turned white under pressure from his squeezing them together. His eyes turned upward to the ceiling, like he was searching for help there. “You want to go digging through the internal affairs of every local police department?” he said in slow, clipped measures. “Do you have any kind of idea the shitstorm that would create? This entire county would erupt into open rebellion. And what do I tell the commissioners and DA when they ask me what I based my investigation on? The word of a girl with five whole years’ police experience?”

  Carrie looked down, keeping her mouth shut.

  “You know, I got a call from the Hansen Township chief of police this morning about you. Apparently, you tasked one of his sergeants with obtaining DNA from his fellow police officers. Who in the hell gave you permission to order him to do that?”

  “I didn’t order, I requested it. I was trying to rule people out,” Carrie said.

  “Let me be real clear on this,” Bender said. “You will not do a single fucking thing involving accusing or suspecting a fellow police officer in a criminal investigation unless I give you absolute clearance. Absolute! Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Carrie said.

  “Listen,” Bender said, rolling his head to loosen his neck. He stuck his finger between his tie and his throat, digging for room t
here. “You’ve got the makings of a good cop, Carrie. I know that. You had just as much to do with catching that psycho Omnikiller as anyone in this agency.”

  Carrie took a deep breath, staying silent.

  “But there’s a lot of people who think you don’t deserve to be here,” Bender continued. “They think you got here because you’re a female. They think you got here because your name was attached to a big case. Most folks think you’re here just because you and I are sleeping together.”

  Carrie’s brow raised. “I never heard that last one.”

  Bender sat up and hitched his belt over the lower fold of his gut. “Seriously? That’s all over the place.”

  “I would think they knew better.”

  “What you need to do is lay low. Learn the ropes. Let people know you aren’t trying to make a big deal about every little thing, that you’re not some sort of glory hound, you understand?”

  “That’s all I want to do, sir,” Carrie said.

  “Good,” Bender said. “Listen, I like you. And unlike a lot of the guys around here, I think you deserve to be here, okay? So I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to give you a real simple case that gets you out of the office for a little while. Something nice and easy.” He slid his chair backward and turned, reaching for the top file on the stack behind him, and dropped it on his desk in front of her. “Did you see the bulletin that came in from Liston-Patterson? I want you to head out there, give those boys a hand with whatever they need, and show everybody you can handle a nice, simple call for assistance without turning it into an enormous shitstorm.”

  Harv Bender leaned back in his chair and spun around to look at his golf clubs. “It’s a long drive, so get going. You’ll thank me when this is over. Nobody trusts an animal that tries to eat its own kind, Carrie. Remember that.”