Bitter Reckoning

by Heather Graham

  They would have picked up any scrap of paper, cigarette butt, bottle, can, or anything else at all that had been cast off or pushed aside—including the straw that still littered the area.

  Straw—for scarecrows.

  The medical examiner—a man of about fifty with white-blond hair and a serious, competent look—looked back at them from the ladder as he surveyed the bodies.

  “No one has touched these bodies before I got here, right?” he asked, frowning.

  “No, sir,” Ellsworth said, and the others nodded.

  The medical examiner climbed down—and then back up between the last two “scarecrow” victims. He took a few minutes and stepped down.

  He walked the few feet to where they were standing. “This is…well, I need to do the autopsies. But I’m going to go out on a limb and saying cause of death was exsanguination, and method was a very sharp knife or blade of some kind.”

  “They were killed last night?” Quinn asked, not offering to shake the M.E.’s gloved hand.

  The man shrugged. “Two of them, anyway. Sometime after midnight. Except…sorry, who are you?”

  “Sorry,” Ellsworth muttered. “Danni, Quinn, this is Dr. Glenn Harper, best man in the parish,” he said. “Michael Quinn and…”

  “Danielle Cafferty,” Larue said. He paused just a second and added. “She’s an expert.” He didn’t say exactly what it was she was an expert in.

  Harper nodded and looked curiously at Danni as well. “The Cheshire Cat?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “My dad started the shop. You’ve been there?”

  He nodded. “I knew your father,” he said simply. “Good to see you here; you could possibly shed some light on a mind that could come up with something so brutal and…”

  “Also, preplanned,” she said.

  “Have you ever come up against anything like this?” he asked.

  “Like this…no,” Danni said.

  “Dr. Harper, you said two of them after midnight. And then you added the word except. What is the except?” Quinn asked.

  “Except for the first corpse,” Harper said. “That man has been dead at least a week; he has been embalmed—and interred or buried somewhere, I would assume. And then…well, dug up or dug out. And turned into a scarecrow.”

  “But there’s blood all over him. And his face is gone,” Danni said.

  “The blood is borrowed, and if you look close, you’ll see it was easy enough for the killer to hack away flesh and get down to bone. There are three bodies, but two murders here. As to the third body, I have no idea. As soon as I do know something, you’ll know it. I’ll be starting on the bodies first thing tomorrow.”

  “May I take a closer look at them now?” Quinn asked him.

  “Of course. My assistants will step back when you need; the photographer will be taking more pictures,” the M.E. said. “Mr. Quinn, your reputation precedes you.”

  Quinn turned to look at Danni, a guarded look of query and surprise on his face. She shrugged, indicating Larue was walking right behind them, heading toward the bizarre display of the dead.

  She watched as the morgue assistants stepped back, letting Quinn come close to the bodies; he didn’t touch them, lest he contaminate any evidence that was found.

  One by one, he began to slowly inspect them.

  As he did so, Danni found she had to turn away.

  Their strange—and under the radar work and perhaps their lives in general—had brought her to many an old cemetery and graveyard.

  Because of it, she had also had a chance to witness the dead, the remains of the human shell, sometimes still in a semblance of life, sometimes with that human shell torn to ribbons.

  This strange, abandoned cemetery seemed exceptionally odd all on its own. There was no old church—in the past, burial grounds and graveyards surrounded churches. In general, people had started to discover that burying the dead near the living could cause illness; and thus cemeteries, or burial grounds, began to be moved out beyond the lines of a city. But in the Christian world, the dead were to be buried in consecrated ground; and it was customarily in the late 1700s or early 1800s that the separate and individual cemetery—privately or municipally run—found popularity. In Victorian days, the concept of a cemetery being as pretty as a picnic ground, a good place to come to honor the dead, gained hold, and many such cemeteries were filled with exquisite tombs and statuary and benches where the visitor could long sit and remember those lost.

  This was…

  An abandoned mishmash. A quick glance showed her most of the old stones could no longer be read—no esteemed historians had been here to re-etch words of commemoration. There were numerous statues in many sections. Behind her and to her right, there was group of brick mausoleums, all of them looking like little hills, since time had sunk them deeper into the earth and nature had covered them with grass and weeds. Here and there, crosses rose high above an in-ground grave or a tomb, and there were the customary lambs here and there—indicative of children’s graves—along with saints, obelisks and more.

  Detective Ellsworth was standing by Danni and apparently noted the way she was looking around. “Thirty acres,” he told her. “Started off hundreds of years ago with the first wave of French immigration. Back in those days, the French were settling southern Louisiana even before you had the ‘L’Acadians’ coming down from Canada. I don’t think there are many surviving tombstones from then. Though over there—those brick vaults that go into the ground—those are very old tombs started up by some of the first settlers to this area.” He gave her a semi-smile. “I happen to know this because my mother’s family goes way back here from the French. Those vaults were originally for immediate families. If you lost children at a young age, they would fit just fine. Usually room in those vaults for four or five large coffins and a little altar. At one time, people went into the vaults and visited their dead and prayed at the altars. Most are probably trashed by now. Grave robbers and vandals have been around since recorded history.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen similar vaults before,” Danni said.

  “But you’ve never been out here?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve spent time in Broussard, New Iberia, Lafayette…but I’ve never been here before.”

  “So, what do you make of this? You know, a killer could have stuck a few bodies into one of those old vaults—they’re all falling apart, and I’m willing to bet the corpses have long been with nothing but bone-dust and bits and pieces of whatever metal they were buried with. Here, the murders could have been easily hidden. This guy…”

  “Display was important,” Danni said.

  “Yeah, so he cut up a man and woman—and then dug up a corpse to go with them. There’s no I.D. on the man yet, but half of his face is gone. And as you know, we only have Miss Caldwell’s identity because the couple who wanted to explore the cemetery found the bodies and sent pictures right away—thankfully, to the cops and not so thankfully to Miss Rankin as well. Glad she wasn’t out here—she might have been trying to pull the corpse of her friend down to resuscitate.” He paused, nodding to the corpses. “But had you met this woman at all, this Allison Caldwell?”

  “I saw her briefly when I met Colleen at her offices,” Danni said. “I didn’t really know her, I only knew about her.”

  “Was she into any kind of…?”

  “Any kind of?” Danni asked.

  “Witchcraft, rituals, rites, vampirism—anything like that?”

  Danni hiked her brows in surprise. “I don’t know anything about her personally. I do know she’s been an assistant to Colleen for a long time. She’s a vice president of the company. Sorry, she was a vice president of the company. Colleen loved her and she, along with a few of her other top employees formed her inner circle, because Colleen is a people person herself—not much of a business woman. From what I understand, Ally was an incredible whiz at business.”

  “Seems like Colleen’s done well,” Ellsworth noted.

/>   “Yes, she’s done well, but she always wanted people around to keep her in check—to see she didn’t give everything away. Colleen started her site because she had minor criticisms of most of the other sites out there. She especially felt it didn’t matter what it said on paper—you were only compatible if you met and all the right chemistry was there.”

  Ellsworth turned to look at her. “So, the dead woman—her assistant. Allison Caldwell. Most of the daters or ‘Meet Me’ people wouldn’t have known her. Only other employees.”

  “The new lodge welcomed its first guests yesterday at a mixer. Colleen had it set so people could come in a day or two before her Harvest Festival ball. Ally was so much more than an assistant. A VP. She was held up at the NOLA office and left New Orleans late. A car service came for her, and she should have arrived last night,” Danni said. “That’s my understanding.”

  Ellsworth stared at Quinn as he investigated the bodies—the three aligned, like human scarecrows, complete with straw.

  “What kind of a mind does this?” he asked.

  “Someone apparently making a statement,” Danni said. “As I said,” she added softly, “someone created a display to make that statement.”

  He turned back to her. “What would that statement be?” he asked. “How the hell—and why?—would anyone create such a statement in a small NOLA cemetery and then here?”

  She forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Detective Ellsworth, I just don’t know. The number three seems to have meant something—either that, or the image perhaps being religious—Christ on the cross, flanked by thieves. The killer committed two murders—according to the M.E. Gruesome murders, with a knife. I’m thinking male because biologically, males tended to be stronger and better at wielding a knife quickly and efficiently. That doesn’t, however, exclude a woman. Two murders were committed—one body was dug up. I didn’t know interments or burials still took place here, but—”

  “They don’t,” Ellsworth said flatly. “The parishes and the state have been arguing over this place for at least a decade. It’s been so out of the way until now that no one really cared. The nearest town, Perryville, is so small it barely had a name. Except Colleen Rankin has now put it on the map. Still, if you’ve been around, you’ve seen. It’s really one main street with a bank, a few restaurants, grocery store, doctor’s office—a few other businesses, including a major retailer of heavy hardware and tools for local farmers and ranchers. The cemetery straddles two parishes, making it hard for anyone to get it all together and do anything. This…”

  His voice trailed. He looked at Danni, as if waiting for her to speak.

  “You are here because you research this kind of thing, right? You’ve seen the bizarre over the years, because of your father’s collecting?”

  She shrugged, took a breath and decided he really wanted an answer from her—and it would mean something to him.

  “I’m going to suggest this scene resembles the work of a narcissist. It’s a tableau that says, ‘you will see me.’ The killer appears to have been organized—this took time and thought especially since there are two crime scenes—here and New Orleans. The straw came in from somewhere else—just as the man who was already dead was brought in from somewhere else. The medical examiner said the old man had been embalmed—so that would suggest he was buried or interred somewhere near. I imagine they will discover his identity fairly quickly.”

  “Well,” he said at last. “I’m sorry for your friend. All her plans for a grand, romantic opening, and she winds up with a dead employee. In addition to whoever the murdered man is—and whoever the already-dead guy might be. Anyway, so much for romance. Cops of all kinds will be prowling around everywhere—and mostly at the resort.”

  “You’re going to have to do whatever is necessary,” Danni said. “Excuse me. I’m going to take a bit of a walk around—out of the crime scene, of course.”

  She smiled weakly at him and turned, fascinated by the brick mounds that were so covered with grass and bracken that they might have been tiny hills.

  Old. Very old. Nature had all but reclaimed them. There were three; she walked around them once and then again.

  It was on the second return that she saw the small opening at the base of the first, as if it were a small crevice into a cave.

  She glanced back to where the medical examiner and his assistants were now taking down the corpses, and Quinn was in conversation with both Larue and Detective Ellsworth. They were a bit of a distance away.

  She knew she should get one of them before exploring, but their conversation appeared to be intense, and Ellsworth seemed very curious regarding her opinions—when she really shouldn’t have been giving any.

  And she wanted to see more.

  Having spent so much time with Quinn, she never went anywhere without a small but powerful flashlight; she was also armed with a bottle of pepper spray she could draw from her bag with a speed that might well rival the draw of many a seasoned agent. She just wanted to peek in.

  Danni waved her light at the hole then hunkered down to look in. By moving the light around, she could get a good look at the space within. Whatever burials had taken place here, there were not as many bodies as there might have been at one time. There were several tombs in the room, but they didn’t hold bodies, only bones, crushed by time and the elements. The slabs which had lain over the tombs had been shoved aside, their seals broken, each in various stages of crumbled dust and broken chunks.

  Danni frowned curiously—she couldn’t see if anything remained in the tombs down deep.

  Her mind was racing.

  Why dislodge the dead?

  Some, at least, had been rudely disinterred. Bones, bone fragments, and skulls lay about the walls of the vault, haphazardly tossed about, eerie in the pinpoint light, caught in strange shadows by way of the focused light.

  Then, of course, the more pressing question.

  Did this vandalism of an old and abandoned tomb have anything to do with the horrific display of victims upon poles, created to resemble a macabre tableau of bloodied scarecrows?

  The cemetery was crawling with police and crime scene personal. That should make it fine for her to crawl into a hole—within easy screaming distance of all the law-enforcement. She hesitated just a minute—she could get someone to come in with her. But they were all busy, deep in conversation, theory, and argument. She was close enough to help should she need it, and so she crawled through the tomb opening, carefully aiming her light about as she did so.

  The tombs or vaults had not been created as anything grand like the great pyramids of Egypt, no long shafts of any kind—and it was a short distance to the ground from the opening hole.

  Running her light over the inside of the vault—half beneath the ground and half above it—she saw it contained five concrete tombs. Each designed originally, she assumed, to hold one body, or possibly, two, maybe even three.

  She heard a noise and a skittering sound, causing her to jump. Training her light around, she saw one small rat scurrying into a pile of dead leaves and dust. She’d make sure any rat in the tomb knew she was coming. She wasn’t terrified of the little creatures, but she didn’t really want to be bitten either.

  Walking over to the first tomb, she trained her light into it. There were no bones, no earthly remains of the original occupant.

  Instead, there was straw.

  The same straw used to create the “scarecrows” of the dead displayed in the cemetery?

  Moving from tomb to tomb, looking within the first three, she found more and more.

  More and more…straw.

  Puzzled, she restrained from moving the straw; it was time to get Quinn and those working the crime scene.

  She was tempted to pick up a bone to shift the straw around but decided there had been enough disrespect done to the dead here—while others would surely examine the bones here in time, she didn’t want to disturb the tomb in any way.

  Had this been long in the planning? Or
had something been going on here long before they had heard about the murder of Allison Caldwell?

  Had they found straw at the murder scene in NOLA?

  She started to head over to the fourth tomb, certain all would be the same.

  But that time, as she shifted her light, a shadow seemed to loom high against the far wall of the vault. Shadows were natural with her small light in the darkness of the tomb, but there was a sixth sense inside her shouting that the shadow had been too big, it hadn’t fallen into the realm of what should have naturally occurred.

  Time to get out.

  It was possible a killer lurked here. That he had waited, eager to watch the result of his handiwork.

  She backed carefully in the direction of the hole in the earth by which she had entered. When she reached the hard earth and stone wall, she paused and turned, ready to crawl back out.

  But she froze.

  There was darkness covering the entry, as if the sun had fallen, or…

  As if someone had come to cover it over, to prevent her from ever leaving this realm of the dead.

  Chapter 3

  “We usually get the bodies checked in on one day, and start the autopsies on the next,” Dr. Harper said, removing his gloves as he joined Quinn, Larue, and Peter Ellsworth where they stood, about five feet back from the staked “scarecrows” that held the three bodies, “but, in this case, I’m going to get started as soon as I can get them back, photographed, and cleaned up.”

  Two assistants had come along with the M.E., and they were busy working with two of the crime scene techs to get the bodies down and into ambulances to convey them to the parish morgue.

  “Thank you,” Peter Ellsworth told him. “Expediency in this might be everything.”

  “You think it has something to do with old harvest fest sacrifices, or voodoo—or some other weird cult?” Dr. Harper asked.

  “Nothing to do with the real religion of voodoo,” Quinn said. Dr. Harper looked at him, frowning.

  “I, uh, didn’t mean to offend,” Harper said, frowning.