Through the windshield, a hill in the distance rose like a phantom through the fog, tombstones standing on its rise like little gray soldiers.
When she was outside the car, the smell of wet grass and musty, turned earth filled her lungs.
Together they crossed the wet cemetery grass to join the three men from the crime scene unit who were disinterring the body. Hailey recognized two of the three though she didn’t know either well. On the far side of the gravesite, Shelby Tate was working at the back of the unit’s van, probably readying their kits for evidence collection.
Already Fredricks’s headstone lay off to the side. It was a simple rectangle made of granite. Its inscription offered no clue as to who might have paid for it. The etching, in simple, clean script, said only his full name: Nicholas Adam Fredricks and the dates of his life: November 19, 1951 to April 2, 2004.
He had lived to be fifty-three. John only made it to thirty-four. What would those nineteen years have brought them? Would John have gone into politics? Would their marriage have survived that?
Hailey picked up one of the shovels from a stack and helped dig. Her digging was awkward, the shovel nearly as tall as she was, but she didn’t stop. There was something soothing about the continuous motion.
For those moments, she could stop thinking. This was why people ran. She needed to get more exercise. John always ran. She hated running.
Beside her, Hal stopped shoveling. “Hailey?”
“What?”
“Uh, we might be quicker if you don’t help. No offense—”
She returned the shovel to the stack and stood in the grass, stomping her feet to stay warm. Shelby Tate was still occupied at the van.
Her cell phone rang. Bruce. She didn’t answer.
A few minutes later, her cell rang, unanswered again.
Surrounded by the cemetery’s cold, dank smell, Hailey felt John the way she sometimes did when the house was perfectly still, the only sound a lonely creak from inside the old walls or a car passing on the road below.
She lay in bed silent and unmoving, focusing on the sounds and searching out a rhythm, like a Morse code she could translate.
She had promised to call Bruce, but the last twenty-four hours had been nuts, and standing in the cemetery—so close to where John was buried—Hailey couldn’t bring herself to talk to Bruce.
She felt like she was holding her breath as the men dug. The exhumation of Fredricks’s body would inevitably cause a renewed media storm around the murders. If this dig didn’t lead them to any usable evidence, they would be subjecting Tom and his family to reliving the deaths without gaining anything.
The wind lashed its icy hand across her neck. For several minutes, she didn’t move and allowed the dampness to seep into her bones.
It was oddly comforting, the cold numbness.
Across the lawn, the massive tires of a backhoe dug into the gravesite, while mud squished through the tread like the innards of thousands of earthworms. They were supposed to have help from the cemetery, but the cemetery’s workers were busy digging new graves and had no time to help the police dig up an old one.
The men shoveled in rhythm, each digging his corner of the plot, the dirt making whooshing sounds as it slid off the shovels and landed with a crunch, like ice striking the cold grass.
Whoosh crunch, whoosh crunch.
No bodies were buried in San Francisco County, the land too valuable to hold the dead though it still provided them. Instead, the bodies came to Colma. About ten miles south of San Francisco, Colma was a city of cemeteries—one after the other and new ones going up all the time.
Dead people were a rising commodity in San Francisco.
Hailey was all too aware of the number of murders in her city. So far, this year’s homicide rate was the highest in a decade.
Gangs were primarily to blame, but the increase made life in Homicide busier and more stressful. The spotlight burned hot on them to solve the murders the moment they happened.
The guys on CSI did it, why not SFPD?
There was nothing unusual about the gun dealer they’d found dead in the closet. His rap sheet was standard for guys like him.
Hailey had also sat with a police artist to create a composite of the white guy who’d gotten away, she didn’t think the image would yield any suspects. He was too far away, the glance too quick. All Hailey saw was white skin and a brownish red beard. At best she was narrowing it down to a white man, but a woman in disguise could have done it convincingly.
Her cell phone buzzed and she pulled it from her pocket with stiff, frozen fingers, her teeth chattering slightly as she answered. “Wyatt.”
“I want to see you this week. No excuses.”
Hailey shoved her hand into her pocket and fingered the inhaler. “Okay. Maybe a drink tonight.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“At my house?” he asked.
She pictured Bruce’s house, as it had been the few times she’d been there since John died. For the first six months, Hailey hadn’t allowed herself in.
They talked on the phone often—sometimes twice or three times a day—but she refused to go there. Worse, Hailey was unable to express her worst fear—the one that was ridiculous when she thought of saying it out loud.
Hailey worried John would see them.
Then, two months ago, Jim and Liz had taken the girls to their home in Sea Ranch for a long weekend and Hailey had stayed to work. Bruce and Hailey had met up for a drink at Bix, a bar not far from his house. It was the first time they’d met in public—ever—though it no longer mattered.
Hailey was a widow. Even if people thought it was early for dating, surely a drink with a man wasn’t a cardinal sin. They both knew the confidence they felt wasn’t because of John’s death but because the chances of running into anyone from the department were close to nil. Bix wasn’t a police bar. It was too fancy, too far from the department and much too quiet to entertain the group of cops who went out almost nightly after work. They had ended up spending the night at his house, two nights in a row and she hadn’t been back since.
“Hailey?” he pressed.
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” Just then a shovel struck the casket with a loud thwack. “Hey, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you when I’m back in the department.” Hailey paused, about to hang up. “Still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I think your house will be okay.” As she hung up, though, she had no idea why she had said that. Lifting the evidence kit off the wet grass, she moved toward the ditch as the men cleared the dirt off the coffin.
“Move back, boys,” the cemetery guy yelled and Hal and the others stepped away from the hole. He joined her at the periphery as the worker brushed his hands off on gray overalls and climbed back into the forklift. They watched as he maneuvered the machine with ease, lowered it into the ground and after a few jerky motions, returned to the surface with the casket and set it gently on the damp grass. She stepped forward, snapping latex gloves over her icy hands before pulling the camera from her evidence bag and aiming it at the casket, a solid deep wood box with elegant curves.
Hal whistled. “Look at that beauty.”
“You know something about caskets?”
“I know mahogany. We priced it when Dad died. No way I was affording that. I bet not many folks do.”
Hailey stared at the wood, picturing John’s casket. She’d never considered the cost of it. It was just another thing Jim had managed. “I wonder who paid for this.”
“It’s a good question.” Hal reached forward to unlatch the box when the cemetery worker jumped out of the forklift. “Hang on,” he shouted, pulling a cell phone from his pocket and punched. “The director’s coming out. He needs to be here when we open it.”
“Then he should’ve been here,” Hai
ley said.
“He’s real busy. We’ve got six burials today.”
“We’re pretty busy, too,” Hal retorted.
A long black town car parked at the curb a few minutes later. A man in a dark suit stepped out of the driver’s side. Though he wasn’t much taller than five-ten, he had to weigh north of two-fifty.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dubavich. I truly am,” he said, talking into a tiny phone held in his pink, fleshy hand. “I am available for whatever you need.” He nodded without looking up. “Yes, absolutely. I think Lipetsky Brothers do a wonderful job. I am certain that’s the right choice.” He waited, nodded, stopping just feet from them. Hailey started toward him, but he put a hand up to stop her. Hal arrived beside her and the director gave him a quick glance before putting up a single finger and adding a forced smile as though to plead with Hal not to strike him. “Yes, Mrs. Dubavich. I will call you tomorrow morning to make the final arrangements. Good-bye, then.” He slid the phone into his inside coat pocket and looked up, scanning Hal and the other men before settling his gaze on her.
“I’m Inspector Hailey Wyatt. We spoke earlier. This is my partner, Inspector Hal Harris.”
“Hailey and Hal. Department alliteration, how fun.”
Hal and Hailey exchanged a glance, but the director paid them no attention. He smiled, lips only, a show of politeness from someone studied in the art of dealing with unhappy people, then nodded to his employee. “Go ahead, Miguel.”
Miguel hesitated just slightly before reaching for the lid.
“Whoa,” Hal interrupted. “We need to do that.”
Handing the camera to Hal, Hailey stepped forward and held up her gloved hands. “If I may.”
Miguel looked to the director who nodded. “Of course.”
The hinges keened like a cornered cat as Hailey lifted the lid of the casket.
The director let his breath out, blowing the bitter smell of onions and something spicy like sausage or pepperoni over her shoulder. “See,” he said. “It’s just as I thought. Totally undisturbed.” He turned to Miguel. “Let’s get it back in the ground.”
“Not so fast,” Hailey said. From the corner of her eye, she saw Hal give the director a sideways glance that said as plainly as words that he should stay out of her way. The inside of the mahogany casket was covered in heavily padded walls of off-white satin, small buttons adorning the spots where the fabric was attached to the wood with perfect pleats. Spores of mold covered the surface.
“The mold is all quite normal,” the director said.
It was true. In Homicide, Hailey had seen plenty of mold on bodies, buried or not. The casket was still in good condition, as was Fredricks’s corpse. Though the layers of fat had deteriorated, Fredricks’s skin remained undamaged. The result was that the skull appeared to be covered in a layer of thin, tanned leather and the eyeballs protruded like smooth golf balls, still in their sockets. The almost transparent eyelid lay like a sheet of wax paper molded over them. Bits of greenish-gray mold encircled his mouth and the lower edges of his eyes. Hailey had seen corpses only hours old in much worse condition.
“He looks good,” Hal said, echoing her thoughts as he snapped pictures.
“We do wonderful work,” the director said, still breathing heavily behind her.
Fredricks had been embalmed and it had been done well, which brought her back to the question Hal had raised—who paid for his burial? Hal lifted Fredricks’s arm and Hailey noticed the fabric at the elbows was flattened from wear. “Hold that,” he said and Hailey did while he photographed.
“Suit doesn’t match the casket or the quality of the embalming,” Hailey said.
Hal turned to the director. “You have records on payment?”
The director shrank into his suit. “Payment?”
“Records of who paid for the burial,” Hal repeated.
“I can’t—”
Hailey frowned. “We can get a warrant.”
He nodded. “Yes, you’ll have to do that. I’m sorry,” he added with the same expression he’d had speaking on the phone to Mrs. Dubavich.
It was no surprise that they’d need a warrant. The days of getting anything easy were long gone. Turning back to Fredricks, Hailey spotted a dried white rose on Fredricks’s left lapel, but other than the flower, he was free of adornments: no jewelry and no personal items with him.
Hal and Hailey turned their focus to Fredricks’s hands. If his prints were on those other buttons, then he had either touched them a long time ago and somehow the prints had been preserved or… Hailey spotted the white bandage and lifted Fredricks’s hand where gauze crisscrossed his palm and wrapped up the index finger of his left hand.
Hal snapped pictures and when he was done, Hailey touched the tip of the bandage, felt the end shift. Hal leaned forward and using a pair of scissors from the kit, carefully cut off the bandage.
The director, who had stepped away to take another call, charged at them like a rhino. “What are you doing?” Then, when the end of the wrapped finger fell off, he stumbled back. “Oh, my.”
Miguel spun from the scene.
Something dropped into Hal’s gloved hand and together they stared down at the end of a cork then back to Fredricks’s uncovered left hand, the index finger missing its first joint.
“Now we know where the print came from,” Hal said.
Someone broke into a casket and stole the tip of a dead man’s finger. All to link Fredricks to a series of buttons planted on people who were shot. Killed. Well, Jim hadn’t been killed and Officer Shakley was in the ICU but not dead yet.
So far Jim was the only one who hadn’t been seriously hurt.
Jim. He was being targeted by this killer.
But for what?
Hailey found an evidence bag from the kit at her feet and opened the Ziploc bag so Hal could put the cork inside. She recorded the time, date and location on the side with a Sharpie marker. Marshall had refused their request for an evidence team. There weren’t enough to go around, so they’d have to process this one themselves.
The director glanced at the cork end, frowning. “He probably had wishes to be buried with it,” he said without conviction.
As Hailey shifted the bag in her hand, Hailey noticed the words “Chateau St. Jean” were printed on one side of the cork. The end was stained a dark red. A red Chateau St. Jean made her think of the Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages Jim had been drinking last night. It was one of their favorites.
It wasn’t an uncommon bottle, but it was Jim’s favorite.
Hal saw her expression. “What?”
Hailey shook her head. “Later.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He put an arm over her shoulder and then, in an attempt to make her smile, struck out in baritone and sang Merle Travis.
“You haul Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store”
Hailey forced a smile and seeing it, Hal stopped. “I tried.”
On the way out of the cemetery, Hal turned back into the grounds rather than out toward the street. The shadowy form of the fog hung like a ghost above the graceful curves of the hilltops. When the car stopped, Hailey turned to Hal resting both wrists on the steering wheel and lightly drumming on the dashboard.
Out the window, she recognized John’s grave. Liz and Jim had brought her and the girls on the anniversary of his death, but the rain had been coming down so hard that only Jim had emerged from the car, to place flowers on John’s grave while the women sat in the back of the town car and made their own rain.
The soft mound that had been there the last time Hailey had seen it was now flattened. The dark, wet dirt whose ripe smell was so p
ungent in her memory had been replaced with fall leaves. Even from the car, the marble of his headstone looked dulled, indistinct from the ones all around it, and she found herself shivering under the scorching blast of the car’s heat. “Why are we here?”
Hal stopped drumming. “I thought you’d want to stop. You want me to come with you?”
She didn’t look up. “I don’t want to stop.”
Hal turned in his seat, shut the fan off. “You should.”
“I can’t.”
He waited for her to change her mind or explain her reasons. She didn’t.
He pulled from the curb and paused to stare at John’s grave. When he drove forward, he flipped off the radio and the heat, leaving the car silent except for the rattling hum of the engine and the clank of a coin stuck down in a vent somewhere.
He wanted to talk about it.
Every time, she drew back.
They were partners. She trusted him as much as she would ever trust anyone. Maybe more.
But she didn’t trust anyone enough to speak that truth.
Chapter 6
Fatigue pressed on Hailey’s shoulders and pinched the small of her back like the weight of another person. She and Hal had brainstormed the entire way back to the station and come up with nothing. Fredricks had been dead twelve years, which meant either someone took his finger twelve years ago with the idea that they would want to use it in a future crime… or someone had dug up Fredricks’ body recently.
The cemetery had no cameras on the burial plots, so they had no way of knowing when and if the body had been dug up. The director had assured them that there was no way the body could have been dug up without someone knowing about it. But he also suggested that Fredricks had wanted to be buried with the cork in the place of his fingertip, so they were having a tough time trusting his insights.
For her part, Shelby Tate couldn’t say with certainty when the finger had been removed other than that it had happened postmortem. She had taken some skin samples from near the incision to try to do better, but she had warned them that it was really just a guessing game.
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