“No need to take any chances,” I tell her. “We don’t actually want to run away from these people, do we? They’re the ones who can help us find your killer.”
“Fair enough,” Clothilde mumbles, but her gaze goes back to the place she turned back, a slight frown forming on her forehead.
Evian asks the people transferring the caskets from the hearse to the morgue to hurry up, frequently looking around, though I doubt anyone knows to care that she’s bringing in two caskets instead of one.
As we finally enter the building, she seems to let out a long breath. “Welcome, friends,” she says while patting Clothilde’s casket. “Let’s see what we can do to find you justice.”
Six
They place our caskets side by side in an examination room. Looks like it was planned for only one casket but they manage to squeeze us both in. Evian has a word with the people who followed us in, probably making sure they won’t talk to anyone about the second casket. She also negotiates the right for her and Malik to be the ones to open the caskets and without anyone else present.
I’m impressed she gets what she wants.
Then it’s just Evian and her colleague left. And two ghosts, of course.
“I’m most curious about the tag-along,” Evian says as she turns to grab what seems to be a tiny crowbar from the bench behind her. “But let’s start with Mademoiselle Humbert.” She fits the crowbar into a small crack in Clothilde’s coffin and pulls until the wood creaks. She moves the crowbar ten centimeters farther down the lid and repeats the maneuver.
“Feel free to help, Malik,” she says to her colleague, one eyebrow arched.
Malik seems to shake himself out of some sort of trance. “Right. Sure.” He leans over the bench filled with various tools and grabs a second crowbar. “I’ll take the other side?”
In no time at all, they have the lid of Clothilde’s casket loose.
While they work, we ghosts move to the side along an empty, white workbench. I’m standing, leaning against the bench, while Clothilde is of course sitting on it, with her feet dangling through the cabinet doors below her.
“What should I expect?” Malik asks as he puts aside his crowbar. His eyes roam the casket and I’d say it might be his first time seeing a body that’s been dead for thirty years. He seems nervous but I’m sure he won’t chicken out.
Evian places her hands on the casket lid but takes the time to meet Malik’s gaze and answer instead of just throwing it open like I’m sure she wants to. “It’s a body that’s been dead for thirty years, Malik. It’s not going to pretty, but nor should she be recognizable. I’m guessing a skeleton with clothes.”
“Gross,” Clothilde says. Her eyes are intent on the casket and her attempt at humor is half-hearted at best.
“You don’t need to look,” I tell her. I know my turn is coming up, but right now I’m focused on my friend and I’m not sure what seeing her own decayed body will do to her. Unlike me, she wouldn’t have seen a lot of dead people before she got killed—and only their ghosts in the thirty years since.
“Oh, I’m looking,” she replies, but there’s less bite in her tone than normal.
The two police officers grab hold of the casket’s lid and lift it up on three. They carry it to the opposite wall and drop it gently in a corner.
“Oh, the horror!” Clothilde exclaims, now leaning over her casket to see what’s inside.
I rush up next to her and look inside, expecting a gaping skull with empty eye sockets and lots of worms.
A mummified corpse lies there serenely, skin dark and tight over the skull, but the eyelids are still present, as are the lips, and the hair is most definitely Clothilde’s, only with less shine and bounce.
She’s in the traditional burial pose, with her hands crossed on her abdomen. The dress, a demure light yellow affair that covers her arms and legs all the way down to the ankles, is intact and could probably be reused if we found anyone who didn’t mind a little grave robbing.
I’d have thought Clothilde had a sturdier stomach, but I guess seeing her own mummified body is a little much.
“That dress!” she exclaims, pointing at the yellow fabric. “Why would they bury me in that? My mom bought that when I was eighteen and we had the worst fight over it. It’s horrid and ugly and…awful! I told her over my dead body—”
Her eyes widen and her hands clench at her side. “Ooooh! Really?!?”
“Horrid dress,” Evian says as she bends over the casket.
The comment makes Clothilde deflate a fraction, enough to make her stop screaming. “Thank you,” she says to Evian.
Malik makes a sound that makes me think his first reaction was to laugh but tried to keep it back.
Evian looks up at him, assessing him with a glint in her eyes. “No, it’s probably not relevant to our case. But look at that thing.” She waves a hand over Clothilde’s corpse. “No young girl in her right mind would want to spend eternity dressed like that. Not even in the eighties.”
Clothilde groans and pulls at her hair with both hands. “I’ve been wearing that monstrosity for thirty years, Robert. Thirty years! How could she? I’d kill her if she wasn’t dead already.”
“I thought it was your uncle who organized your funeral?” I say while keeping my eyes on Evian’s assessment of the casket. At the moment, she’s touching nothing but makes a slow circuit around the body, taking everything in.
“And he would have asked my mom for a dress. And she chose that.”
I shrug. “You can yell at her once we figure out what happened to you and you join her on the other side.”
Clothilde snorts at that idea but she seems to have calmed down. She steps back to let Evian past and we both go silent as the captain starts talking to her colleague.
“She was probably embalmed,” Evian explains. “The casket is high quality but still wood and it was placed in dirt, not a cement chamber like it’s done in some places. It means most of the body tissue has rotted away but some parts, like the skin, have mummified. Hair can hold for a surprisingly long time.”
Malik nods along at her explanations and bends down to peer closer at Clothilde’s hands and her head and hair. He holds his hands behind his back, probably to make sure he doesn’t touch anything rather than a natural tendency toward parade rest.
Evian slips a phone out of an inner pocket of her jacket and starts taking pictures of the dead body.
I’ve seen this a couple of times in the cemetery. The phones are replacing cameras. And from what I’ve been able to see over our visitors’ shoulders, the quality is surprisingly good. Still, this can’t have taken the place of the painstakingly detailed photos that coroners used to take in my time?
“The coroner will take lots of official photos,” she explains to Malik, making me wonder if I’d voiced my question. “But I like to make some of my own, in case I need to remember some detail while on a scene elsewhere.”
She puts her phone back in her pocket and picks up the crowbar again. “Shall we have a look at our Monsieur X?”
Seven
I had no qualms about seeing Clothilde’s dead body, but now that it is my turn, it feels like I have a stomach again, and it’s filled with butterflies. I have no idea what to expect—or, actually, I do. But the decayed bodies I saw when I was a police officer all belonged to other people. This is my body. Or whatever is left of it.
Malik and Evian stand on opposite sides of the casket, crowbars poised. On Evian’s nod, they both push down.
A small creak, a slight pop, and the sound of tumbling wooden planks and the entire casket disintegrates.
It seems like the lid was essential for the continued solidity of my casket and once the nails pulled free, all four sides fell outward and to the floor.
Evian must have expected it—or she has lightning quick reflexes—because she catches the lid b
efore it smashes into whatever it has been protecting for the last thirty years, and pushes it to the floor with the rest of the casket.
A skeleton. Some dirt. And something that might have been hair.
That’s all that’s left of my body.
“Has this one been dead longer?” Malik asks Evian.
I’m suddenly afraid that Evian will think her colleague is right. She’ll think my body has been in the ground for a lot longer and will send me back to the cemetery without trying to figure out who I am and why I was in an unmarked grave.
I don’t want to be sent back.
Evian shakes her head. “I can’t guarantee anything and will let the coroner do his job, but I’m guessing this body was buried pretty much at the same time as the other one.” She waves a hand to encompass the scattered remains of my casket. “He was buried in what was basically a wooden box, which has been buried in dirt for a long time. It’s a wonder the box has held as well as it has. He probably wasn’t embalmed so the body will have decomposed pretty quickly.”
Malik keeps his hands behind his back, his knuckles white from clenching his fists, as he stares at his boss with a frown marring his forehead. “He?”
Evian’s brows draw together quickly. She looks at the skeleton’s pelvis. “Well,” she says slowly. “I think it is a man—though I’ll let the coroner confirm that, too, as I’m by no means an expert—but…” She trails off, her frown deepening.
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. She made an assumption. Without looking for the information when she first saw the skeleton, she assumed it was that of a male. If I’m reading her correctly, I’m even willing to bet she made the assumption before seeing the body/skeleton.
A professional like Evian shouldn’t make assumptions like that.
Could my presence here have influenced her somehow? As ghosts, we have very little influence over the living, but it is possible. However, the only times I’ve made a difference in the living world is when I’ve worked for it actively. Like in the cemetery earlier, when I talked in the gravediggers’ ears to get them to think it was no big deal to have found an extra casket and body.
I haven’t tried to influence Evian in any way.
And yet, she knew the dead body belongs to a man.
Evian shakes out of it and straightens so she’s standing at parade rest right next to the skull—my skull. She casts an assessing glance at Malik, probably to figure out if he’ll tell anybody that she’d made an assumption based on instinct instead of fact.
I’m guessing he won’t. He probably hasn’t really realized that it is a mistake on her part.
And there lies the problem, if Evian wants to continue training and working with him.
“I made an assumption that it was male, Malik,” she says and my respect for her raises another notch. “Which I shouldn’t have. You should always listen to gut feelings when you have them, but never assume they’re right until you have proof. Ignoring or foregoing facts, proof, or science is sure to lead you down the wrong path and to incorrect conclusions.”
Malik’s eyes widen in surprise as he realizes his boss is admitting to making a mistake but he’s also taking in what she’s saying. The boy has great potential.
“Still.” Evian is looking at the parts of the skeleton that will reveal the sex of the deceased. “I think my assumption was right—but I have no idea why I formed such an assumption.”
She heaves a frustrated sigh. “I’m guessing it would greatly help the case if I do figure that out.” She shakes her head.
I know why, of course. But I don’t think whispering in her ear that she made the assumption because she’s in the company of both dead bodies’ ghosts will go over all that well. She’ll just have to keep wondering.
Malik hesitates for a moment before speaking up again. “Did this one not have clothes on?”
Evian frowns and looks down at the skeleton again and so do I. Clothilde is apparently reminded of her own clothing and stares daggers at the yellow dress her mummified body is covered in.
Since the conditions were so different, it wouldn’t be surprising if my clothes had also rotted away. But usually there would be some trace of it somewhere. Right now I see nothing resembling any type of cloth.
Evian leans in, walks around to study the body from all sides, and looks back and forth between the naked skeleton and the clothed mummified body several times.
“I’m tempted to say he was buried without clothing,” she says, a hint of surprise in her tone. “Good observation, Doubira.”
Malik’s chest puffs out with pride and he smiles at the praise.
“But.” Evian raises a finger and an eyebrow. “Also to be confirmed by the experts.”
“Of course, Madame.”
“On that note…” Evian uses her phone to take more pictures before moving toward the exit. “We’re going to let the coroner do his job and come back once he’s done.”
Two minutes later, they’re out the door.
I make a half-hearted effort to follow them, but the minute the door closes, I’m sucked back to the room where my skeleton lies, effectively closed off from the outside world.
“You’ve been naked for thirty years,” Clothilde says with a shit-eating grin. Then she frowns and puts her hands on her hips. “Why were you buried naked?”
I shrug, but I’m secretly happy ghosts aren’t stuck with wearing the clothes they were buried in. “Beats me. But I’m guessing finding out will get us one step closer to finding my killer.”
Eight
Emeline stands on her brand new balcony, admiring the view. She’s on the Place Jeanne d’Arc, which is primarily occupied by a major bus hub on her left. Straight ahead, the statue of Joan of Arc stands proudly on her bronze horse, and in front of her, the rue d’Alsace Lorraine runs a straight line through the city center.
It’s bound to be noisy, with the traffic from the boulevard, the buses coming and going at all hours, and the music from the merry-go-round at the beginning of Alsace Lorraine, but Emeline doesn’t mind. She’s from Paris, after all, where her apartment is in a place at least as noisy as this.
The balcony is small. She might be able to fit a small table and two chairs out here, not that she’ll even try. She enjoys just standing here, leaning on the balcony and observing the people going past on the street below her, unaware that they’re being watched.
The real estate agent had been surprised when Emeline said she’d take the apartment five minutes after seeing it. Emeline doesn’t care. She wants a place with a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Someplace safe and not too far from the police station. Somewhere central. The fact that it offers such a charming view is a bonus.
She’ll call her contact at the police station in a minute to confirm with them that she’s taking the first listing they offered her. Perhaps it can even count as something in her favor, to prove that she isn’t trying to be difficult.
If she’s causing difficulties for them at work, it’s because she’s doing her job.
Which is trying to figure out if some of their officers were doing a piss-poor job on purpose or if they’re just incompetent—so she’s bound to make a few people unhappy.
Ah, well.
She’s starting to feel the cold of the April evening, so she returns inside the apartment and shuts the balcony door behind her. She can still hear the hum of the cars outside but it’s not too bad. Her bedroom is on the other side, the window giving onto a tiny courtyard, so she shouldn’t have any trouble sleeping at night.
Not because of the noise, anyway.
The place comes furnished. The living room has a small flat-screen TV, a scratched coffee table, and a surprisingly comfortable two-seater couch. The kitchen is open, with two high chairs pushed up against the counter, a small fridge, and an electric kettle that’s going to see some use.
This place will do just fine.
She retrieves the keys from where the real estate agent left them on her way out and stifles a yawn. The thought of a shower and a bed has her eyes watering. She’ll make the short walk to the hotel she’s been staying at until now, get her things and check out, and come back here to crash early.
She has big plans for tomorrow.
Clothilde and Monsieur X—she knows he was a man but cannot figure out why she made that assumption—have secrets to tell her and she needs to be well rested so she doesn’t miss anything.
As she’s locking her door on her way out, the neighboring door flies open with such force that Emeline can feel the air being sucked toward the door as it swings inward.
A tiny woman appears and practically jumps out the door and slams it shut behind her. Her key is halfway to the keyhole when she sees Emeline standing there and freezes.
The woman’s not exactly short, but far from tall. Her nose reaches Emeline’s jaw. The nose in question is soft and a little wide and is framed by two startlingly large and clear green eyes. Her black hair is a glorious tangle of curls reaching not quite halfway down her neck.
“Oh!” she exclaims when she spots Emeline, in a voice too loud for such a small and empty space. “I didn’t see you there. I hope I didn’t scare you.” She glances from the keys still in Emeline’s hand to the door to Emeline’s new apartment. “Are you moving in? I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“Yes, I just got the keys,” Emeline says, jangling the keys before shoving them in the front pocket of her jacket. “Not sure how long I’ll be staying, though.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about this place. It’s great. The neighbors are either nice or basically invisible, the noise level is never a problem—except when the neighborhood cats decide to have a fight in the courtyard but it doesn’t happen too often—and you can get anywhere on foot. You know the metro’s right around the corner, right?”
Beyond the Grave Page 3