Buried Secrets

by Kate Anslinger

  “Gosh, I can almost taste the gin and tonic in my mouth right now,” Officer Lucerto joked as he made his way toward the sidewalk, directing both viewers and participants.

  “Maybe it will be too hot for people to stick around and cause trouble,” Grace yelled as he walked away. She shrugged. “You never know, you might just get off early.”

  Grace hightailed it to the end of the parade, less than a mile from the starting point. From there she would be able to see all the floats come in and get the best view of people on the sidelines cheering them on. For a small town, there was certainly a respectable turnout for the traditional parade. Clusters of kids sat on the curbs, their legs extending into the street, while they pointed out their friends on the various floats, not far behind where Grace walked.

  In some sense, Grace felt like she was leading the parade. She could feel the first float catching up to her fast as if racing to the finish line. Babies sat perched on hips and swung from carriers strapped to their parent’s chests, reaching their chubby arms toward the flutter of activity. Grace could hear American songs blasting from the truck that held the Jellybean Jugglers, and she turned to see a woman toss out a handful of jellybeans to a row of kids with open palms ready to catch. That will make for a fun cleanup later, Grace thought to herself, although the residents had a good reputation for taking pride in their beaches, streets and many parks, and there were more trash committees than any other committees in town.

  Before Grace knew it, she was on the sidewalk walking alongside The Cycling Andersons. She had trouble keeping her eyes off them—the random family spent its summers scouting out local parades to participate in and were hard not to stare at.

  Leading the pack was a man with long, grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. He had an even longer beard that extended beyond his chin and down to his pelvis and managed to ride the unicycle with ease and grace. A woman many believed was his wife rode beside him in a long, flowery dress on a matching unicycle. Two long, gray braids snaked down her back. She circled around to ride backwards while blowing into a party horn between waves to the people applauding on the sidewalks.

  Grace found an empty spot along the wall that separated the beach from the street and leaned up against it, taking it all in. With all the visions that caused her a web of chaos and pain and all the times she’d felt defeated about a criminal, like at this very moment, there was something special about how this community came together. How everyone looked out for one another and rallied in a way Grace had never seen before. Moments like this made Grace think she could possibly live in this town.

  “Detective! Detective!” Grace was pulled out of the brief Bridgeton fantasy that she was having and had trouble deciphering who was calling to her. Amongst all the chaos, she saw Christie hunched over, grasping her stomach and slipping from her parade spot. Scott, right behind her, looked like a deer in headlights—a rare look for the man who always seemed to have it together.

  Grace started running across the street, stopping the parade in its tracks. While the music continued, the event paused in slow motion. The Jellybean Jugglers stopped mid-throw to absorb the scene, and the Cycling Andersons even paused their pedals, hovering in one spot. Just as Grace was in front of the boat that held the many sea creatures in Miriam’s float, she saw Kloe screaming for Christie. “Mama!”

  Grace looked to Miriam, whose eyes penetrated hers, leaving a flash of Stephen Cassidy sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Keep her calm!” Grace, in the middle of a crisis, shouted the words to Miriam as she pointed to Kloe.

  When Grace got to Christie, she radioed Officer Lucerto, instructing him to keep the parade moving.

  “I’m not due for three weeks!” Christie screamed, falling forward into Scott as she tried to breathe through the pain. While Grace was trained in delivering a baby, she had never had the bad fortune of needing to actually do it and she prayed today wouldn’t be her first time. Christie’s face looked as pale as the dead faces in Grace’s visions, and she knew she had to move fast when she saw a darker section on Christie’s khaki pants where her water had broken.

  “Stay here with her, I’ll get my car.” Grace nearly collided with a group of people trying to help in any way they could. She pumped her arms and zigzagged her way through the various crowds on the sidewalk that spilled out into the street. With the flip of a switch, she turned on the lights in her patrol car and split the street crowds as she made her way to where Christie, Scott and half of the town were bunched together. Grace directed Scott to guide Christie into the car before she reversed and headed down Margaret Street in the opposite direction. “Which hospital are you delivering at?”

  Christie was beyond the point of talking, so Scott answered for her. “Mass General.”

  Grace remembered one question she was taught to ask if God forbid she was ever in this situation. “How far apart are the contractions?”

  “NOT……FAR,” Christie whispered between deep breaths. “Okay, I’m good right now, I think that one eased up.”

  “Breathe, honey, now is the time to breathe.” Scott tried to push Christie’s hair back from her face that had escaped the little mermaid clips Kloe was likely responsible for, but Christie batted Scott’s hand away with one hard swat. Her expression was one that Grace would always remember and could quite possibly be a reason why, she herself would never have children. The pain looked horrendous, and nothing like how they made it appear in movies. Scott looked like a frightened school boy unsure what to say or what to do, and for the first time Grace realized just how useless men must feel when their wives gave birth.

  Thanks to her siren and the thin 4th of July traffic on the streets and in the tunnels, Grace pulled up before Mass General in record time. “Get out here. I’ll park the car and meet you up there.”

  It wasn’t until after Grace parked the car, fought with the hospital staff, and ran down the hall toward the room where they were hooking Christie up to various IVs, that it dawned on Grace that she should leave. But she felt compelled to stay with the family she knew so little about but whose world she was quickly learning the good and bad of.

  Just as the nurses were about to tell Grace she couldn’t be here, Christie yelled, “Wait! Let her stay for just a minute.” She flagged Grace over to her bedside and, in an unexpected gesture, took Grace’s hand in hers, squeezing tightly. “Whatever you do, don’t, please don’t let Miriam know what I told you, please. She will ruin my life.” Her eyes bore into Grace’s; just like that, a promise was made.

  “What’s going on?” Scott picked up on the frantic gesture as he walked back into the room, pulling his scrub top over his head.

  “Nothing, she just wanted to thank me for getting her here….in time…but I’m gonna head out, unless you need something.”

  “I think we’re good. Thanks, Grace.” Scott pulled the face mask down over his nose and mouth, making his eyes even more prominent against the light blue.

  The sound of Grace’s cell phone added to the many beeps and buzzes in the room. Not surprisingly, it was the station calling her, probably to alert her to a quarrel amongst the parade contestants. Sometimes quarrels got heated and Grace could see those Jellybean ladies getting mad if they didn’t get first place in the most creative or most beautiful category. She wasn’t sure whether the categories even meant anything, considering she’d seen the same float win in two different categories back to back. One was ‘most beautiful’ and the other was ‘most unique.’ But Grace was certain this town had some sort of method to its madness.

  “McKenna.”

  “Grace, you need to get down to the Bridgeton Yacht Club now. Remains of a dead body just got called in.” The words came from Barb, and Grace knew she was in serious mode since she hadn’t called her Princess.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Grace’s heartbeat, which had slowed after Christie’s pregnancy emergency, sped back up at the sound of the words “dead body.” The last dead body she’d encoun
tered was Jenny Silva, the artsy high school teacher who had gone missing.

  “I’m on my way. Do you know anything about it?”

  “I know nothing, we just got the call at the station from a frantic woman on the events committee. That’s all I know. Get your ass down there.”

  The one good thing about responding to emergencies in the town on the 4th of July was that the entire town was down on The Notch, allowing for quick access to every other part of the town. By the time Grace made her way out of the city and back into Bridgeton, the 4th of July activities in the park were in full swing; faces were being smashed into blueberry pies, kids were engaged in three-legged races, and the parade winners would have already been announced.

  The parking lot at the yacht club only had a few cars and a few people walking about, tending to their sailboats and appearing to prepare for the day of festivities. Grace started walking to the club’s back door but noticed a figure flagging her down by the section of the parking lot that joined the water. It didn’t take long for her to figure out that the figure was Lottie, looking frazzled in a red, white, and blue dress complete with a headband with stars attached to springs that rocked them forward and backward even as she stood still and frozen. Grace would remember that sight forever: the look on Lottie’s face, full of pure shock as all of her normally animated features froze in place, unrelenting.

  “Grace? What, what are you doing here?”

  “Lottie. I just got a call that a dead body was found here; I’m a detective at the Bridgeton Police Department.” She felt compelled to hold up her badge, but the woman was already so disturbed by what she had seen that Grace didn’t want to confuse her any more.

  “But, how did I not know that…I…it’s…” Her words ceased and all she could do was point to the small section of shoreline flush with the sea wall. “I… I came out here to take the trash out… I was getting ready for our annual BBQ …and I took a moment to just stand here and look out at the water like I always do, to really take it in before the day got too hectic and before I was pulled in a million different directions. And well, I saw it… God, Grace. It’s a human.”

  Hesitant, Grace walked closer to the edge of the wall just as an airplane rumbled overhead, taking off from Logan Airport. People were going about their lives, taking family vacations for the summer holiday, while Grace was here, about to get even more wrapped into the depths of a case that still made little sense to her, and now she had remains to deal with. There was no easy way to get down to the shore below, where the tide had pulled out, exposing a good chunk of sand. Grace didn’t even have to trudge down the rocks to see it. Right on the sand amongst the pebbles, shells and strings of seaweed, was a human skull, tilted to the side, as if it was looking right at Grace. She tried her best not to make a scene in front of Lottie but was instantly hit with a wave of nausea. Seeing dead bodies never got easier, even for the oldest and most experienced cops.

  “I just froze when I saw it and I called the police and I tried not to make a scene cause there are a few young volunteers in the club… I just can’t imagine if they were to see that… Those little memories would be scarred for life.”

  “Thank you for keeping it quiet. You did the right thing, Lottie, by calling us right away,” Grace said. “Alright, you can go back to what you were doing; I’ll handle it from here. I imagine this isn’t how you expected your 4th of July to turn out.”

  “Well, you neither, by golly, Grace, when I was talking to you at the yacht club, I knew you looked familiar but I never put two and two together. You’re that famous detective. I must’ve sounded like such a fool.”

  “To be honest, it’s nice to not be recognized sometimes.”

  She guided Lottie back to the club and headed to her car for an evidence bag while she made a call to the station.

  “Barb, can you send me an officer with a camera? Make it stat, we need to get photos before the tide comes in.”

  “On it.” Grace could hear Barb already making demands as she hung up, and in less than two minutes, Lieutenant Sullivan was handing her the station’s only camera.

  “Jesus H…” Lieutenant said. “I been on the force for years, but I never seen one like this. That body must’ve been eaten by sea life in just a few days, it’s gonna be hard tracking down how long this guy’s been in there.”

  “What makes you think it’s a male?” Grace looked up as she slipped on a pair of gloves.

  “It’s always a male, Gracie, always. Ninety-percent of murders are caused by men, and everybody I’ve heard about washing up on the shores of Massachusetts are men.”

  “You’re forgetting Margaret Miller.”

  “I stand corrected, yes, little Margaret Miller. Glad I wasn’t on the force or alive for that one. It’s one thing to see a grown man wash up on shore, but a little girl, just days after her death… Now that is something that could cause trauma in anyone.”

  Grace crouched down in front of the skull, and she picked it up with both hands and surveyed it like a piece of artwork she didn’t quite understand. Who are you and why are you here? she asked the face, looking into the sockets where the eyes had been. She took in the upturned nose, indistinguishable from any other skeleton she had seen before—a simple point accompanied two nostril holes like that of a turtle snout. She felt the sharp angles of the chin and jawlines beneath her grip. While most officers would look at this as science, Grace thought about the history behind this skull. She thought about the smile that once peeled across the face and the laughter that may have erupted as a result; she imagined what color eyes had lit up this once very alive face. Surely this person had made someone smile in their lifetime.

  “So, what’s next, detective?”

  ***

  “Someone by the name of Harris Whitaker is on the phone for you, McKenna. Says he wants to talk to you about the remains found last week.” Officer Lucerto’s voice came through Grace’s speakerphone as she was in the middle of crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s on the paperwork for John Doe. So far, the medical examiner determined that the skull belonged to a white male, which did essentially nothing for tracking down a deceased person in the state of Massachusetts. Thanks to modern advanced computer graphics, they were also able to calculate the amount of soft tissue John Doe had on his facial features and distribute a photo that somewhat resembled the guy. Just when Grace thought she was at a loss and ready to give up, she picked up the phone to hear a crusty voice.

  “Detective McKenna.”

  “Hi, um…this is Harris Whitaker,” the man said. Grace could hear a lisp in just those few words. “I, um, I just saw a photo of your John Doe, and I think I might know who it is.”

  “Harris, any chance you can meet up?”

  “Yeah, I don’t have to be at work until 4:00. But I don’t have a car. Could you meet me in the city?”

  “Name the place and time and I’ll be there.”

  “How about the park bench closest to the Old State House at the intersection of Washington and State Street, say, around 2:30?”

  “I’ll see you then.” Grace didn’t ask any questions and brushed aside the odd choice for a meeting place. It was 2:00 now; she had thirty minutes to get there.

  She darted up from her desk and flew out the station door before anyone could ask questions. It had been two weeks since the skull had been found and she was sick of everyone asking her about the identity. As soon as the image was posted publicly, she’d been interrogated by everyone, like she had some magical potion that allowed her to match a skull with the proper identity of an unknown person.

  ***

  The summer months always brought on the worst smells in the train station, and since it had been a particularly hot season, Grace felt like she had to cover her nose with her hand when she walked up the stairs leading out to State Street. Stepping out into the hot air was no better. From what Grace could tell, the city’s aromas consisted of a peculiar blend of urine, seafood, and cotton candy. The only bench in
the vicinity was being utilized by a homeless man feeding a dog who lay at his feet. Another man sat, leaning up against the corner of a building playing a guitar, the instrument case open in front of him to collect tips. A few dollar bills and change were sprinkled on the worn lining.

  The man sitting on the bench made no effort to make eye contact with Grace, so she was convinced it wasn’t Harris Whitaker. While he didn’t sound completely stable on the phone, he didn’t sound as bad off as the guy on the bench looked. A grocery cart filled with random pieces of clothing and canned goods was parked beside the bench, and a small bottle of liquor perched between his legs. The man lifted it up to his lips, and as if in slow motion, tipped his head back and took a long, hearty swig before he burst into a fit of coughs, choking on his own phlegm. Grace started to approach the bench when her eyes drifted over to a man who had turned the corner and was walking fast in the direction of the bench.

  “Detective McKenna?” The man questioned her with confidence, extending a hand. He wore a long-sleeved, white button-down shirt that hung off his body a little too much, the sleeves rolled up and making their way to circles of moisture where his armpits where. He wore black cotton pants with a few dark red stains scattered along the leg.

  “Harris Whitaker?”

  “That’s what they call me.” He extended an arm toward the bench. “Take a seat, Calvin here won’t bite. Calvin, do you mind?” Harris sat down on the bench, his body so tall and thin that he looked to be all right angles when he sat.

  The man on the bench let out a grumble under his breath and adjusted himself at a snail’s pace so there was just enough room for the three of them to sit.