The Gravedigger's Ball

by Solomon Jones

  He spent most of his time rousting couples who stayed in the park after the ten o’ clock curfew or writing tickets for people who raced their cars along the park’s winding roads.

  In Smitty’s mind, two years of park duty was ample punishment for his sins. Now, he wanted to get back to doing real police work, and if finding a pasty-faced man wearing old-fashioned clothes was his ticket back, the cop was determined to do that.

  He’d spent the past twenty minutes riding through the park with his head on a swivel, looking through the trees for signs of anything unusual. He’d checked the locked doors on the mansion that housed Smith Playground and the historic home on the other side of Reservoir Drive. He’d checked the hiding spaces along the sides of the roads and the open spaces in the fields.

  Smitty took one more swing through his sector, riding past a statue of General Ulysses S. Grant and beneath a bridge that connected Kelly Drive to the park. When he turned right on Mt. Pleasant Drive, a sliver of road that ran near the reservoir, he passed Smith Playground and saw something in the woods to his right. It appeared, at first, to be a large animal of some kind—a deer, perhaps. When he looked again, he was sure that what he’d seen was a man.

  He parked his car and looked into the forested area known as Sedgley Woods. In warm weather, it was a mix of fallen trees, worn paths, and metallic baskets that served as a disc golf course. On rainy fall days like this one, the woods were largely abandoned, which made the man’s presence there all the more unusual.

  Smitty got out and walked past what would have been the third hole on the disc golf course. As he moved farther into the woods, he saw the man again. Breaking into a trot, he grabbed his radio to call for backup, but when he pressed the transmit button, nothing happened. He tried again with the same result, and when it was clear that his handheld radio was out, he didn’t go back to his car. He drew his gun. He wasn’t going to let whomever he’d seen get away.

  The skies grew darker, and Smitty followed the man as he veered off the dirt path and into a thicket of fallen trees, moss-covered rocks, twisted vines, and uneven earth. Along the way, the cop stumbled over fallen branches and sunk into piles of leaves. With each step he took, he caught another glimpse of something that appeared to be the suspect. He churned his legs harder in an attempt to catch up to him, but as the woods surrounded Smitty, both his legs and his eyes began to betray him.

  He tripped and fell over a discarded beer bottle. He fell again on a slippery rock. And when he got up, trotting past a tree with the names of long-dead lovers carved into its bark, a pasty white face flashed in front of him and disappeared. A second later, the face was visible to his left. Then it showed up on his right, staring at him with those coal-black eyes.

  Each time Smitty looked in the direction of the face, he saw only the suspect’s black coat. The black of the coat gave way to the high-collared shirt, then the floppy bow tie, and again, the face. The images appeared and disappeared in a deluge of black and white, assaulting the cop’s eyes like fists.

  Smitty looked in front of him and thought he saw the suspect again, nearly fifty yards away in a deeper section of the woods. He ran to catch up, trudging through a patch of dead vines so thick that they looked like tangled yarn. He fell once more, dropping his hat in the process. Then, with sweat trickling down his face, Smitty struggled to his feet and beat back the vines as he moved deeper into the woods.

  He was breathing hard as he jogged through the wilderness, hoping all the while that he’d catch another glimpse of the suspect. The farther he ran, however, the more useless the chase seemed to be. The trees were more numerous than they’d been just seconds ago, and their branches seemed to weave together to blot out all signs of daylight.

  “Hey!” Smitty yelled, but the woods simply swallowed his voice. “Hey!” he yelled, louder this time, and still, to no avail. “Hey!” he screamed, his voice now tinged with panic.

  The answer he received was darkness, punctuated by the sound of a stick breaking in front of him. He raised his gun and aimed in that direction. Then a tree branch was brought down on his arm with such force that it knocked him off his feet and made him drop the gun.

  Smitty yelled in agony and grasped his forearm, knowing that it was broken. When he looked up to see where the branch had come from, the man he’d been looking for was standing over him, preparing to swing again. Rolling to his right, the cop eluded the heavy branch and scrambled to his feet before the man could swing a third time.

  Smitty dove for the gun, but the man kicked it away before he could reach it. If he was going to win this battle, he’d have to do it the old-fashioned way.

  Smitty slowly rose to his feet and circled left in a fighting crouch. “Come on,” he said through clenched teeth.

  The man simply looked at him, his coal-black eyes, crooked mustache, and unsmiling mouth fixed rigidly in his ghostly white face.

  Smitty charged with his nightstick in his left hand and managed to land a glancing blow before the man sidestepped him. He tried to swing again, but the man blocked the nightstick with his much heavier tree branch and grabbed the cop’s broken forearm with his other hand.

  Smitty screamed and fell to the ground clutching his arm. The man tried to stomp on him, but Smitty swept his adversary’s legs from under him. Fists flew as they rolled among sticks and fallen leaves, each struggling to overcome the other.

  Scrambling to his knees, Smitty caught the man with a hard left hook that temporarily swung the battle in his favor. The man rolled onto his back. Smitty tried to jump on top of him. The man put both feet into Smitty’s stomach and pushed with all his might, sending the cop sprawling.

  Both of them rushed to get to their feet, and, for the first time, the cop got a good look at the man he was fighting. His eyes were black and bottomless. His mustache was brittle and his flesh was devoid of color. His face showed no signs of life. Even the drop of blood that trickled down his forehead appeared to be black instead of red. He looked dead and alive all at once.

  Smitty took a step backward as the man in black approached. He took another when the man moved closer. The cop looked behind him and saw a mound of dirt. Then he looked once more at the man in front of him. As Smitty’s face twisted in fear, the man’s lips parted, revealing a black-toothed smile. Smitty yelled and tried to charge him, but the man swung mightily and the cop stumbled backward toward the mound of dirt. Smitty tried to stop himself, but before he could regain his footing, the ground beneath him gave way.

  He fell into a freshly dug hole that had been covered by leaves and sticks. He tried to crawl up the side of the narrow opening, but his broken arm betrayed him and he quickly slid down the dirt wall.

  Again and again he tried to crawl out of the hole. When he couldn’t try anymore, he looked up and saw the man in black watching him. He was holding a shovel, and when he dropped the first pile of dirt into the hole, Smitty screamed out for help, but the makeshift tomb muffled his voice.

  As the man in black methodically filled the hole, Smitty continued his desperate calls for help. In twenty minutes, the hole was filled. Smitty was silent. The man was gone.

  The only thing that remained was a single black bird, perched high above the scene. When the bird finally flew away, one thing was abundantly clear. The Gravedigger’s Ball had begun.

  CHAPTER 2

  By ten o’ clock, the cemetery was abuzz as officers looked among the dead for evidence to assist the living. Thus far, they’d failed to find anything to prove that a gun had even been fired—not a bullet casing, not a bullet hole, not even a trace of gunpowder.

  They’d also been unable to contact Mrs. Bailey’s husband. Coletti wasn’t one to wait for answers, however, so he asked a uniformed officer to stay with Lenore while he questioned the manager of the cemetery.

  The slightly built man in the black suit and bowler hat had been standing off to the side, watching intently as investigators went about their work. Coletti knew from the manager’s anxious dem
eanor and troubled facial expression that he was deeply invested in the cemetery.

  The detective was willing to bet that nothing happened at Fairgrounds without the manager’s knowledge. That was why Coletti, when questioning him, repeatedly made him go over their procedures for digging graves.

  “Please tell me again how a grave could be left open like this,” Coletti said for the third time.

  The manager sighed in frustration. “As I told you before, there would normally be heavy metal poles holding the Astroturf in place over an open grave, and the area would be blocked off so no one could access it.”

  “So what happened here?”

  “Apparently someone moved the poles!” the manager snapped.

  Coletti looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Then the manager took a deep breath and spoke more calmly.

  “Look,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “I’m as bothered about this as anyone, but you have to know I had no idea there was an untended open grave on the grounds. We tend to take that type of thing very seriously.”

  Coletti could see, from the troubled expression on his face, that the manager was genuinely concerned about what had happened. But that didn’t mean he was off the hook.

  “What about her?” Coletti said, nodding toward Lenore. “Are you sure you’ve never seen her here before?”

  “I’m certain,” the manager said, sneaking a look at her while nervously adjusting his glasses. “Mrs. Wilkinson visited for the first time today. Clarissa was so excited that she sent out an e-mail about it. I can show you if you’d like.”

  “Sure, I’ll take a look at the e-mail,” Coletti said as the manager fumbled with his BlackBerry. “But I’m more interested in knowing what was so special about having Mrs. Wilkinson here.”

  “She was going to help us with the Gravedigger’s Ball.”

  Coletti nodded slowly. “I’ve seen the banners. What is the ball, exactly?”

  “It’s an annual event that raises funds to help maintain the cemetery,” the manager said as he continued searching his BlackBerry for Clarissa’s e-mail. “This year it’s taking place at Tookesbury Mansion, less than a mile from here in the park.”

  “Is the ball some kind of tradition or is it something new?”

  The manager stopped scrolling through his e-mails and looked at Coletti, his beady eyes deadly serious. “It’s a tradition that began with a gravedigger who worked here during the Civil War,” he said. “Ironically, the incident that started the ball was pretty close to what happened today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The gravedigger’s job was burying Union soldiers’ remains, so you can imagine there was always work for him to do. Well, one day, when there were literally dozens of bodies lined up and waiting for burial, the gravedigger didn’t show up for work. People were annoyed, but nobody thought much of it at the time. Rumor had it that he was a bit of a drunk. He’d disappeared on binges before. This time was different, though. He wasn’t in any of the taverns or flophouses he usually frequented, and he never showed up at home that night. Eventually, they gathered a search party to check the cemetery. Shortly after that, they found him crumpled in a freshly dug grave. His neck was broken. There were those who said he fell in because he was drunk, but most people didn’t believe that. Most people thought he’d been murdered.

  “The evening after they discovered him, a few neighbors got together to raise money for his widow to give him a proper burial, but the night they were supposed to bury him, his body disappeared. No one ever saw him again, and legend has it he was never really dead at all.”

  Coletti thought of the man he’d seen in the cemetery, dressed in clothes from a time gone by. “What did this gravedigger look like?” he asked.

  “There weren’t any pictures of him, unfortunately, but they say he was short, red-faced, and scruffy. The kind of man you might find on skid row. Why do you ask?”

  “The man I saw here earlier … I was just wondering if the gravedigger…” Coletti was about to go on, but he thought better of it. “Never mind.”

  The manager laughed. It was a squeaky, high-pitched sound. “Of course, none of us believes the legend of the gravedigger, if that’s what you’re thinking. There aren’t any ghosts at the ball. It’s usually just a fancy dinner with a hundred or so history buffs who like national historic landmarks. This year, with the economy being what it is, the ball’s a little more important. If it flops, we’re going to have to make some hard choices.”

  The manager went back to scrolling though the e-mails on his BlackBerry. “Here’s the message from Mrs. Bailey,” he said, handing the device to Coletti.

  The detective read it and was about to hand the BlackBerry back when he noticed Mrs. Bailey’s signature line.

  “What’s this acronym by her name—DOI?”

  The manager looked at it. “It means she was a member of the Daughters of Independence. It’s one of the groups that maintain mansions and other landmarks in Fairmount Park.”

  “Do you know who the other members are?”

  “There were only three, maybe four. Unfortunately I don’t have their names.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll find them.” Coletti fished a card from his pocket and handed it to the manager. “If you can forward me that e-mail from Mrs. Bailey, that’d be a big help.”

  “No problem,” the manager said, twitching his nose.

  Coletti walked toward the spot where the body had been found, but as he watched the crime scene cops work in and around the grave, taking pictures and dusting for prints, it was clear that they hadn’t found much beyond the dirt in Mrs. Bailey’s mouth. Coletti had more than that. He had Lenore Wilkinson, and he didn’t plan to let her go just yet.

  He found her exactly where he’d left her, standing near the crime scene tape and waiting for the body to be lifted out of the grave. When he came alongside her, Coletti could see the grief on her face morphing into a sort of numbness. He knew that she was shocked by what had happened, but shock didn’t exclude her as a suspect.

  “Come on,” Coletti said as he guided her away. “You don’t have to stand here. You can wait in the car.”

  “I want to get out of here,” she mumbled.

  “I’m sure you do. But I’m going to have to ask you a few questions first.”

  “Then ask them.”

  “It might take a while,” Coletti said smoothly. “I think we’d probably do better down at headquarters.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “Does that mean you think I was involved in this?”

  “Sometimes people can be involved in things and not even know it.”

  They stopped at the car and she turned to him as the numbness in her eyes gave way to fire. “I think I’d know if I were involved in a murder, Detective Coletti.”

  “I know you would. That’s why you’re coming back to headquarters. We’re going to find out exactly what you know.”

  “Oh really?” she said with muted anger. “Well, here’s what I know. I know I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. I know I can call my husband and have a lawyer down here in five minutes, and I know that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened here. But I’ll answer whatever questions you have, because I know one more thing.” She stared at him in the same way she’d done at her sister’s grave. “I know you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” Coletti said as he opened the door to his unmarked black Mercury and gestured toward the backseat.

  Lenore searched his face carefully. “I know you don’t. That’s why you’ve been alone all these years.”

  She got into the car and looked up at him with a calm that was almost frightening. She’d spoken her piece, and it was neither opinion nor assumption. It was simply the truth.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Coletti said, sounding more certain than he felt. “But before this is all over, we’re gonna find out all about you. I promise you that.”

  “Good,” Lenore
said defiantly. “When you figure out who I am let me know, because that’s what I came here to find out.”

  Coletti was about to press her, but before he could say anything more, a familiar voice spoke up from behind him.

  “Am I interrupting something?” asked Detective Charlie Mann, his dreadlocks draping over his hoodie as he craned his neck to get a better look at the woman in the car.

  There was silence as Coletti and Lenore stared at each other. “No, you’re not interrupting anything,” Coletti finally answered. “But I do need to talk to you in private.”

  Coletti closed the car door, turned around, and took his young partner by the arm. Then he walked him across the cemetery to the spot where workers from the medical examiner’s office were about to remove the body.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Mann asked as he examined Coletti’s sweaty face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Coletti looked back toward the car, where Lenore sat watching them intently. “Maybe I have.”

  Mann glanced at the woman as she sat in the car and made a call on her cell. “You mean her?”

  Coletti nodded. “Her name’s Lenore Wilkinson. She’s Mary Smithson’s sister.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mann said with a chuckle.

  When Coletti didn’t respond in kind, Mann’s laughter faded. He glanced at the car, and when he saw Lenore’s eyes staring back at him, his expression changed.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Coletti nodded.

  “Have you had a chance to talk to her?”

  “Not as much as she’s talked to me,” Coletti said. Then he paused. “She, uh, seems to know things about me. I don’t know if it’s some kind of parlor trick or if she talked to her sister more than she let on, but it’s strange. It makes me wonder what kind of things she knew about Mrs. Bailey. Or what Mrs. Bailey knew about her.”