A Grave Search (Bodies of Evidence)

by Wendy Roberts

  “Wes is not going to be happy about digging up dirt in this hot weather.” Abel chuckled. “But he’ll be thrilled to finally get the go-ahead to get his guys in here and start the job for the garden.”

  Abel’s grandson had a landscaping company and had been given the approval to dig up the land and install a ground sprinkler system for the future garden. With it already being late July it was too late to be planting veggies this year, but they’d prepare the plot. From what Abel had told me, his grandson was a lazy son of a gun who liked to give the grunt work to his underlings while he supervised, but he’d agreed to help us uncover any graves by hand before bringing in equipment.

  Abel leaned against the building to take advantage of the shade and resumed the game on his phone. I opened my pack, took a long drink from a water bottle, then pulled out my divining rods. They were not the rods I’d been given as a child. Those had been given an unexpected retirement. The new ones worked just the same though, and the copper felt cool, light and reassuring in my hands.

  “You do the devil’s work because Satan is inside you.”

  I flinched as an imagined lash from Grandma’s whip cut a deep groove into my back.

  I took a deep breath and concentrated on the cool rods in my hands and the sun hot against my skin.

  “Oh hell in a handbasket!” Abel grumped at his game, snapping me out of my exercise.

  I laughed at him. “Just give up.”

  “Never,” he mumbled with a determined set to his mouth.

  I snagged the satchel that contained a dozen bright orange ten-inch marker flags on tiny aluminum poles. I pulled the canvas satchel over my head and the strap crossed over my body so that bag rested on my hip. While Abel continued crushing candies on his phone, I went to work.

  Here goes nothing.

  I was just beginning my walk when a pickup truck zoomed up the drive with a roar and a short, stout man about the same as my mid-twenties hopped out.

  The paunchy man came over and hugged Abel.

  “This is my grandson, Wes,” Abel said.

  “Hi ya,” Wes said.

  He had crooked teeth and an oily salesman smile that set me on edge. He was dressed a little too fine for a landscaper in freshly ironed khakis and a buttoned-down shirt. I walked over, transferred the rods to my left hand and gave Wes’s thick, sweaty hand a shake.

  “So-o-o...” Wes nodded to the quarter acre lot. “Gramps tells me ya going to find bodies using some sticks.”

  The nickname “Gramps” gave me a jolt that stung from my running-shoe-clad feet to the top of my Mariners cap.

  My fingers clutched the canvas satchel at my hip.

  The bag is smooth and cool and light and bumpy because of the flags inside and... My mind fumbled and kept going back to “Gramps.”

  “And Wes here will help with anything you need.”

  “I will indeed.”

  I was surprised at the offer because Abel had told me his grandson, and a lot of people in the town, thought the grave-dowsing idea was a stinky pile of bullshit. A money grab. Although I wasn’t charging much. I figured Wes agreeing to help was more because he was just anxious to get on with the part of the job where he could install his sprinklers and make some cash of his own.

  “Thanks. I don’t need help with the search,” I replied but then offered, “but if I find any unmarked graves, you can check if there are any buried markers.”

  His smile broadened in the kind of way that said there was no chance I was finding a damn thing with my little copper rods, but he’d be polite and humor both me and his grandfather.

  Gramps.

  Shit.

  As I took my place on the right side of the lot, Wes went and got out a couple lawn chairs and a small cooler. He set Abel up with a lawn chair and a Coke in the small sliver of shade offered by the church and put his own lawn chair beside, snagging a beer for himself. Maybe Wes wasn’t so bad.

  I stuck the rods straight out in front of me and started my slow, steady walk up and down the lot in long rows. The L-shaped rods would cross if there was something to tell me. As I sometimes did while strolling and waiting for the dead to announce themselves, I thought up a random story. Abel and Wes were so different and maybe they weren’t related at all. I devised a tale of secret love. Maybe Abel and his son were polygamists with a half dozen wives and Wes called six different women Mom. If that were the case, Abel would be running from woman to woman trying to get them all to help him beat the next level of Candy Crush. I laughed. My scenario wasn’t going to win any awards for creativity but it kept my brain distracted.

  “Want a Coke or a beer?”

  Wes’s shout startled me from my revelry. I was surprised to see I had already covered three-quarters of the lot.

  My throat was dry and parched from the heat. I could imagine how good an ice-cold beer would taste right now. The liquid gold would slide over my tongue and hit the back of my throat and...

  “I’m good,” I called back, bending my head to the task at hand. “Thanks though!”

  There was always the chance that Abel had been wrong. Maybe there’d never been bodies buried behind the old church. If that was the case, I’d cut my rate for him since I was sure he’d already taken flack for hiring me in the first place. A salty trail of sweat dribbled into my eye. I removed my cap, wiped my brow with the back of my hand and then tugged the hat down lower.

  “Let’s just get this done,” I mumbled.

  It was in the farthest left-hand corner of the lot when the rods first crossed. They crossed in a listless, lackadaisical manner, which I’d come to learn was a sure sign of someone buried long ago. I took a few steps back and walked forward again to be sure of the spot, then pulled out my first flag, poking it into the grass. I could feel curious eyes burning into my back. Wes called out a comment to me but I didn’t hear and didn’t care. After a few more steps the rods crossed again. Slow, easy and languidly as if the long dead barely sighed in the announcement of their presence. I punctured the grass with another flag. By the time I was finished walking that final segment of the grid, I’d put out four flags.

  My pack was on the ground just a couple feet from where Abel and Wes sat in their lawn chairs. I dropped my copper rods into the satchel on my hip, walked back and held up my hand to stop their questions while I pulled a now warm water bottle from my bag and drank long and deep until the bottle was empty.

  “Oh gosh-all-Potomac!” Abel cried at his phone, then angrily stuffed the phone and readers back in his pocket and regarded me with a smile. “How’d you do?”

  “Four graves,” I said, panting a little as I dropped the empty water bottle on top of my bag. “How about you get out a shovel or spade so we can do a quick check for grave markers,” I told Wes.

  He rolled his eyes and finished off the beer in his hand.

  “If Gramps here says you know graves, then that’s fine. We don’t need to do nothing else. The part ya dropped your flags on is a small area of the lot.” He waved to the corner where my bright orange marker flags punctuated the green. “Wa-a-ay in the back. No need to dig it up over there. I’ll stake that area off and just dig up the rest for the garden.”

  “But we want to pay them due respect,” Abel said gently. “If there are markers there they should be uncovered and—”

  “For God’s sakes, Gramps, if there are people buried there they’ve been gone so long nobody even cares.”

  Anger and a torrent of curse words burned the back of my throat and I clenched my teeth. Wes didn’t get it and never would. A lot of people were like that. They didn’t see the point of honoring the dead. They were the same people who would never lead an exhaustive search for the body of a loved one to bring them home for proper burial. I didn’t need Wes to understand why it was important to his grandfather but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand back and watch him disrespect Abel’s wishes.

  Wordlessly, I walked the dozen yards to Wes’s pickup. In the bed of the truck there were g
ardening tools and I snagged a long-handled square-point shovel. With the tool hoisted over my shoulder I marched across the lot and suddenly Wes was on his feet.

  “Never mind, I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to.” The sour scent of hops and bad teeth wafted out of his mouth and into my nostrils.

  “Shut the hell up,” I said through gritted teeth. My voice was just loud enough for Wes to hear but quiet enough that Abel could not.

  The old man was on his feet and slowly walking over to join us.

  I placed the tip of the shovel into the sod next to the first flag, kicking down the blade with the heel of my running shoe until it sank a couple inches down. I turned over a few inches of soil, the satchel on my hip bouncing with my movement and the dowsing rods inside poking me in the side. After I dug up a small patch, I moved a few inches over and did the same. It was on the third attempt that you could hear the distinct sound of metal on rock. I looked over my shoulder to Abel and nodded.

  I carefully dug up an eight-inch-square section of topsoil then got down on my knees to clean off the hard, dry earth with my fingers to expose a twelve-inch rectangular gravestone. The name and date were so faded and worn I couldn’t make them out but it didn’t matter. I got to my feet, wiped my filthy fingers on my shorts and roughly handed the shovel to Wes.

  “That’s one down. Took me less than five minutes. Only three more to go. Think you can handle it?”

  He complained under his breath as he turned his back to me and Abel and began to dig.

  “Let’s walk over to the shade so we can talk about your bill,” Abel said with an easy tone that immediately tamped down the fury that had bubbled beneath the surface of my skin.

  I stopped to get my bag and then we walked around the far side of the church, which was banked by the dry creek bed and trees that were over a hundred years old. We stood in the shade of the massive cedars that gave us enough of a break from the sun that the temperature dropped a dozen degrees.

  “My grandson isn’t exactly a rocket scientist but he’s a good boy.”

  He wasn’t a boy. He was a grown ass man with an attitude, and the good part was probably debatable too, but I smiled back, dropped the pack at my feet and leaned against the wooden church with a sigh.

  “The heat makes me cranky,” I admitted. Also the burning desire for booze that never really left. “When you wrote me, I quoted you a few hundred dollars but I’ve been out here less than an hour so let’s just say you owe me one.” I offered him my dirty hand to shake.

  “Not necessary.” Abel shook my hand and his head at the same time. “You performed a service, young lady, and you’ll get paid for your work. You’ll never make it in this world selling your skills short and giving your time away for free.”

  “Okay. I appreciate that. I’ll email you the invoice later today and you can just send me an e-transfer when you get the chance.” But I was already planning on giving him a discount since the work hadn’t taken me as long as I’d expected.

  “I’ll be including your bill with the landscaping costs so the community will pay the whole works anyway.” Abel patted my shoulder with a heavy hand and then strolled back to watch his grandson.

  Full rate it is then. I hoisted my bag and headed to my Jeep parked at the front. A bright streak of sunlight pierced through the cedars and shone on something glinting in the grass. It was a toonie—a Canadian two-dollar coin that reminded me of working at the gas station near the border. That was fifteen months ago but felt like a lifetime.

  When I bent to pick up the coin I felt a twitch of movement from the satchel, which had slid from my hip to my stomach. Slowly I straightened, pocketing the coin in the process. I placed my hand on the bag as it slid back to rest on my hip. Could’ve been my imagination.

  When I took a step forward, the distinct quiver inside the satchel could not be ignored. I dropped my bag and got out my dowsing rods. Immediately both arms of the rods swung to my right. I followed in the direction they pointed. My throat was dry and my chest was tight. The steady hum coming from the rods and the magnetic pull tugged me like a fish on a line through the tall cedars. The level of vibration announced loud and clear that I was not headed toward some long-ago skeletal remains from the turn of the century. The attraction was too strong.

  Pushing my way gently around a thatch of poky blackberry brambles, I stepped onto the small clearing and the rods began to cross. A wide sunbeam pierced the treetops to offer a spotlight onto the partially nude body of a gaunt, elderly man who lay sprawled and twisted on the dry creek bed.

  Dust motes danced merrily in the ray of light around the man’s head as flies buzzed in and out of his gaping mouth.

  Chapter Two

  When the local law arrived I was sitting in my car blasting the air-conditioning and listening to the audio book. The officer was official, enthusiastic and seemed way out of her element. Apparently in this small town old men didn’t usually wind up dead wearing only briefs and black knee socks. I could see the excitement dancing in her eyes even as she tried to keep a serious demeanor.

  Everything seemed to take longer than usual, although I probably had far more experience about the usual police procedures when finding bodies. I didn’t complain about time spent sitting in the hot sun waiting for the officer and those people who dealt with unexpected deaths to do their jobs. I got out of the Jeep and walked her around the scene, describing how I found the body. Surprisingly, she didn’t raise a single eyebrow at the description. As if dowsing rods were a perfectly normal way to start an investigation.

  Abel was helpful because he identified the elderly deceased as a local named Cornelius Dooley. Corny for short. Wes wasn’t quite as helpful because he lost his lunch in the nearby bushes.

  We waited while the officer did some checking and she came back and told us the senior home in town had reported Mr. Dooley missing first thing this morning and the consensus seemed to be that he’d wandered off in the middle of the night.

  The officer who identified herself as Officer O’Keefe played with a strand of bottle-red hair that had escaped her ponytail as she told me, “Corny had the start of Alzheimer’s. They said he’d been doing good though. Still living in the independent living side of the home rather than, you know, in the part that’s more like a hospital. He hadn’t wandered before. Was supposed to meet a friend for a beer last night but didn’t show so that friend drank alone and went to check on him this morning.”

  During the space when she stopped talking I just nodded and shifted on my feet. Sweat had soaked the underarms of my T-shirt and I was getting antsy to leave. When Abel described why we were there she seemed to take it all in stride. I was surprised she hadn’t asked for more information about the grave dowsing and how I’d stumbled on the body.

  “Here’s my contact information.” I handed O’Keefe a business card even though she’d taken my information earlier. “I’m going to head back home but feel free to call me if you need anything.”

  I hoped she didn’t call but she followed me to my car, chatting in my ear about the weather and how it was a good thing we found old Mr. Dooley before he lay there too long in this heat.

  “I’ll let you get back to work.” I pressed the fob on my keyring to unlock the vehicle.

  “I hear you’re going to help find Ava Johansson.”

  My eyebrows went up. “Where on earth did you hear that?”

  “People talk.” She shrugged. “I was part of the early search crews that went out looking for her body. Most of us are keeping in touch on Facebook and some of the people are still going out on weekends, you know, to try and find her.”

  “Search groups have been looking for Ava for a couple months now. Why do you think they haven’t been able to find her?”

  “Maybe he took her somewhere else after he killed her there.” She looked thoughtful. “Or maybe an animal dragged the body off. Lots of bears out that way and coyotes and all kinds of critters.”

  “They found blood th
ere and that’s how they determined it was the crime scene, right?”

  She nodded. “Yup. Testing confirmed it was her. They figured it was just after her mom went up to do the ransom money handoff. Guess something went wrong and he killed her.”

  “Enough blood at the scene that there was no doubt she died?”

  “It was raining on the day and so the evidence was a little diluted. The feds had their hand in the investigation and they confirmed there was too much blood on the ground for her to be anything but dead.” She got out a pen and paper. “You want me to add you to our group online? You know, so you can ask all the other searchers questions?”

  Oh hell no.

  “Actually, I’m not looking for Ava. Her mother has asked but, honestly, I’ve got so many other—”

  “Oh sure, you’re busy, I get that.” She smiled but the curve of her lips didn’t quite meet her eyes and I felt a little judged for not jumping on the find Ava bandwagon.

  Once in my Jeep I was pulling out of the lot when Wes walked directly in front of my vehicle to get to his truck, forcing me to brake. He had his hand on Abel’s elbow in a kindly gesture but the look he shot me over his shoulder was neither kind nor gentle. He was pissed.

  Even though I blasted the a/c all the way home I still felt like a hot, smelly mess. I let Wookie out to pee on my petunias and the second he was back inside he sprawled on the cool tile in the kitchen, and I began stripping my clothes off on the way to the shower. One of the benefits of living alone was being able to leave a trail of clothing down the hall and being naked without a care. Although it would’ve been nice to end the striptease in the bedroom with Garrett.

  The en suite shower in my new house was huge compared to the tiny one in my old trailer. Even though I’d been here six months, I still instinctively reached for my shampoo bottle on the floor before remembering this shower had a built-in shelf. With my hair slicked back and forehead leaning against the tile I hummed along to a song in my head and let the cooler water pound the back of my neck. I tried to clear the picture of an old dead man with flies buzzing out of his mouth.