The Gravedigger's Ball

by Solomon Jones

  “Are you sure?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Ellison said. “In order for Clarissa to even come within sight of a gun, she would’ve had to be in fear of losing her very life, and as far as I could see, she wasn’t.”

  “Maybe she didn’t tell you about it. I mean, you were trying to divorce her.”

  “That’s true,” Ellison said, his tone pensive. “We didn’t share much these days. Some things she simply tried to hide.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She seemed to spend a lot of time online doing some kind of research. Whenever I’d come in, she’d close the page she was looking at. I found that odd, because she’d never tried to hide things before.”

  “Was there anything else strange about her behavior?”

  “Well, there was the trip she took a few days ago.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Somewhere in upstate Pennsylvania. I found her hotel reservation the day before she left. When I asked her about it, she told me she was going to see some friends, but she never told me who they were.”

  “Do you remember the name of the place?”

  “Of the hotel? No. But maybe where it was located—it was a unique little name,” Ellison said, closing his eyes as he tried to recall it. “Had a small-town ring to it.”

  Coletti’s mouth went dry, and his heart began to beat faster. He knew the name of the town before Ellison Bailey even spoke it.

  “She went to Dunmore,” Coletti said.

  “Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

  Coletti glanced at him. “I had some friends there once, too.”

  He drove in silence for the next few minutes and thought of the stories Mary had told him about the town. He thought of the bad memories of Dunmore that Lenore had shared with him. He thought of the people he’d heard so much about, and of the ones about whom he’d heard nothing. Coletti thought of Clarissa, and he realized that if she’d gone to Dunmore, she’d gone to great lengths to find out what she could about Lenore.

  “Had you ever noticed any kind of tattoos on Clarissa’s body before?” Coletti said.

  “Tattoos? No.”

  “The ME found one on the back of her neck when he examined her,” Coletti said. “It looked like it was done fairly recently—maybe even in the last few days.”

  “A tattoo of what?” Ellison asked, sounding bewildered.

  “A series of letters and numbers. Could’ve been a code of some sort.”

  “I can’t imagine Clarissa doing anything like that.”

  Coletti glanced at Ellison and surmised that he was telling the truth, primarily because Ellison’s grief now seemed to be genuine. Coletti thought that Clarissa’s death was probably the first thing in a long time that Ellison had been forced to feel.

  “Mr. Bailey?” Coletti said as they pulled up in front of the house.

  Ellison was looking out the window, his mind in another place as he tried to process his sorrow.

  “Mr. Bailey!” Coletti repeated, louder this time.

  Ellison snapped out of it. “Yes, Detective?”

  “I think we’re going to need your help with the investigation.”

  “Whatever you need. Just let me know.”

  “I need Clarissa’s computer and her phone charger,” Coletti said. “And while we’re at it, I’ll need your computer, too.”

  Ellison seemed to hedge a bit. “How am I supposed to write?” he said.

  “You weren’t doing much writing anyway, Mr. Bailey.”

  Ellison thought about all the porn sites he’d visited in the past year. He wasn’t sure he wanted the police seeing that.

  Coletti saw the wheels turning. He didn’t want to give Ellison time to think. “I could get a warrant if you prefer,” Coletti said. “It’s up to you.”

  Ellison sighed heavily. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Believe it or not, I want Clarissa’s killer caught as badly as you do.”

  “Good,” Coletti said.

  As he and the two cops who’d followed them went into the house to take out Clarissa’s and Ellison’s laptops, Coletti hoped that whatever he found would help piece together the last few days of Clarissa’s life. Experience told him that a victim’s last few days always told a story, and the story, more than anything else, always solved the crime.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sandy Jackson drove from the park and headed to police headquarters while trying to clear the image of Smitty’s dead body from her mind. She told herself she was going to headquarters to drop off paperwork. In reality, she was going to see Charlie Mann.

  She hoped he could say something that would help her stop thinking about how closely this case resembled that of the Angel of Death. She wanted him to make her forget how another murderer in black had changed their lives for the worse, but deep down she knew that Charlie could do nothing to erase the images from her mind. He was coping with demons of his own.

  As Sandy turned onto Race Street and made her way to the Roundhouse, she thought of how the Angel of Death had come to her in dreams on a night she’d hoped to spend with Charlie. She still remembered falling asleep and dreaming of jogging on Kelly Drive, the road that wound along the western edge of the cemetery. In that dream, she had jogged beneath a bridge and watched in horror as geese turned to vultures and the river turned to ice. Then she had awakened and found messages from the killer in her house. Those messages frightened her at first. Then they made her angry. She had used that anger, along with her penchant for finding the truth, to help bring a killer to justice.

  It seemed like years had passed since then, but it had only been two months. A lot had changed in that short time, but as Sandy pulled into the parking lot of police headquarters, she realized that certain things were starting to resemble old patterns.

  Instead of walking into homicide with Mary Smithson, Charlie and Coletti had driven Mary’s younger, prettier sister back to the office. True, she was a witness in the latest set of murders to rock the city, but Sandy didn’t want her man to spend too much time around her; not without a reminder of the woman he already had.

  Parking her cruiser near the back of the parking lot, Sandy teased her hair, fixed her makeup, and thought of all that she and Charlie had been through together.

  She remembered how she’d met him three years before, after stopping him for a traffic violation. She recalled how he’d badgered her for a date after that, and how, when she finally gave in, their every interaction seemed like magic.

  In their first few months together, she glowed like a candle in his presence. Her voice went from wool to velvet when she spoke to him. Her brown eyes brightened each time they focused on his. As time went on, the magic was tempered by the reality of their lives and careers as police officers in a department where secrets were hard to keep. Still, they loved each other enough to settle their arguments in private and, to the extent that they could, leave their personal lives at home.

  In the two months since the Angel of Death investigation, Charlie seemed to be the same on the outside: warm and gregarious; funny and charming; smart and loving. In quiet moments, however, he would sometimes withdraw to a place where Sandy couldn’t reach him. In those moments she would simply hold his hand and tell him they could talk when he was ready. At times like those, Sandy cursed the name of the woman who was there both times Charlie had to kill, because killing had damaged Charlie in ways Sandy had never expected.

  Sandy couldn’t blame Mary Smithson for all their problems, though. Just as Charlie had changed, Sandy was changing, too. She was a lieutenant now, and while that didn’t affect who she was in private, it changed who she was in the department. Charlie sensed that, and it made him more distant than he used to be.

  As Sandy put the final touches on her makeup and prepared to get out of the car, she tried to clear all that from her mind. She just wanted to see him and whisper that she loved him.

  Coletti wanted to see Charlie Mann, too, but as he pulle
d into the space next to Sandy’s, love was the last thing on his mind.

  Coletti got out of his car with a paper bag in his hand. Sandy looked at it and knew from the way the numbers were arranged that it was an evidence bag from the ME’s office. Two more cops pulled up next to Coletti in a patrol car. They got out carrying plastic bags.

  “I see you’ve been busy,” she said as she got out of her car and followed the three of them into the building.

  “Somebody’s gotta work while you’re hanging out in the parking lot,” Coletti said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “For your information, I came to drop off some paperwork,” she said, looking away so he wouldn’t see her eyes.

  “Yeah, right.” Coletti smiled as he walked through the door to headquarters and was buzzed in by the sergeant behind the glass. He started down the hall toward homicide.

  Sandy tried to act as if she was going the other way, but Coletti stopped and looked back at her, winking and nodding his head in the direction of the office. Sheepishly, she followed him.

  They walked in and saw that the office was virtually empty. Only a few detectives were there. Lenore was nowhere in sight, and Charlie Mann was on the phone wearing the frustrated expression of a man caught in automated phone system hell. He waved at them while mouthing a silent hello.

  Coletti looked at Sandy and saw that he’d guessed right about her reason for coming. “I’ve gotta go log this evidence in,” he said. “Why don’t you two chat until I get back? I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  Coletti beckoned for the two uniformed police to follow him to the evidence room as Sandy sat down at Charlie’s desk.

  Mann put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and whispered to Sandy. “Hey honey,” he said, smiling weakly as he listened to yet another automated voice telling him to press two.

  She returned the halfhearted smile.

  After following prompts and pressing numbers for the next five minutes, Charlie slammed the phone into the cradle.

  “That good, huh?” Sandy asked with a forced smile.

  “I’m trying to find the owner of an e-mail address,” Charlie said. “It would’ve been easy if the e-mail had been sent from the address, but it wasn’t, so I had to call the hosting company and try to get to a live human being. That’s like trying to get water from a rock. But enough about me. How’s your day going?”

  “It’s been a tough one,” she said with a sigh. “Smitty was one of the few guys in the department I really respected. It’s hard knowing that he died the way he did, and even harder knowing we almost had the guy who did it.”

  “Are you gonna be okay?”

  “I will if I get a piece of Smitty’s killer,” she said, her eyes smoldering with barely concealed anger. Then she looked at Charlie, and her eyes softened. “It’s hard losing one of my friends like that—almost as hard as watching someone I love slip away.”

  He immediately understood what she meant, but this wasn’t the place to get into it. “Maybe we can get together in the next few days and talk some things over,” he said. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve done that.”

  “It’s been a while since we’ve done a lot of things,” she said plainly.

  “I know. I’ve just been really busy with work and—”

  “How ’bout this?” Sandy said. “When this is over we can take some time, just the two of us, to work on something other than homicides.” She looked at him suggestively as she spoke. “I’ve got a lot of work for you to do.”

  Charlie licked his lips and thought of all the images she’d packed into those words. Then he looked into her honey-brown eyes and thought of how fortunate he was to have her. She was sexy and self-assured. She had curves that the uniform couldn’t hide. Her face was so pretty it glowed, and at thirty years old, she was wise enough to provide counsel when he needed it. With all she had to offer, he wasn’t sure why they were drifting apart. He just knew that they were, and like Sandy, he didn’t know what to do.

  Before he could respond to her, Coletti walked in. “I’ve got some goodies for you,” he said as he deposited Clarissa’s laptop and phone on Mann’s desk. Both items had been bagged and tagged.

  “I’d better go so the two of you can talk,” Sandy said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Coletti said. “We might need you.”

  Sandy glanced at Charlie Mann, wishing he would say he needed her. But wishing couldn’t make their relationship right. If it could, both she and Mann would’ve wished things back to normal a long time ago.

  “What’ve you got?” Mann asked Coletti.

  “There was gunpowder residue on Clarissa Bailey’s clothing. The ME’s pretty sure that the shot I heard this morning was fired by Clarissa, not her assailant.”

  “So where’s the gun?” Mann asked. “Where’s the shell?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Coletti said. “But from what her husband says, it would’ve been really strange for Clarissa to carry a gun. She hated guns.”

  “So do you think she knew someone was going to try to kill her?” Sandy asked.

  “She knew something,” Coletti said. “I’m just not sure what it was. Which reminds me, Charlie, were you able to find out who that e-mail address belongs to?”

  “No,” he said. “Maybe the guys in IT might have better luck. Or we could get a warrant and make the hosting company give up the information.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Coletti said as he donned latex gloves and plugged in Clarissa’s phone using the charger he’d gotten from Ellison.

  He handed Mann a pair of gloves and the phone. Mann put them on and scrolled quickly through Clarissa’s contact list, then through the numbers on her “recent calls” menu.

  “Looks like she hadn’t placed any calls home in a while,” he said as he examined the numbers. “In fact, almost all of these calls are to the same three people: Violet, Lily, and this third one with the 570 area code. Where’s 570?”

  “My guess is Dunmore,” Coletti said. “Clarissa’s husband said she visited there a few days ago.”

  Mann dialed the number on the phone and an answering machine came on. He put the phone on speaker so all three of them could hear.

  “You’ve reached Sean O’Hanlon,” said a voice that sounded hollow through the phone’s cheap speaker. “Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

  Mann disconnected the call and looked at Coletti. “That name sounds familiar.”

  “It should,” Coletti said. “Sean O’Hanlon is Mary and Lenore’s father.”

  * * *

  Commissioner Lynch knew, someplace deep down, that there was something dark about this case—something that he felt, but couldn’t explain. He’d seen it in Kirsten Douglas’s eyes. He’d witnessed it in the raven’s presence. He’d sensed it when he stood in the woods and saw the dead officer who’d been pulled from the ground.

  But it didn’t matter if the style of the killer was unconventional or if the reason for the killings was beyond his understanding. Kevin Lynch was a cop. His job was to solve the crime, and he was going to do that, no matter what it took.

  He couldn’t help replaying Kirsten Douglas’s comments in his head. Even after she left his office promising to share whatever she could find that would help them, Lynch kept thinking of the raven circling above them. He remembered the way the bird soared effortlessly, as if it were taunting them for their inability to act or, worse, daring them to do something more than talk. Whatever the reason for its presence, Kirsten was right about one thing. Not only did the killer show up when the raven did, bodies showed up, too.

  Lynch called the homicide captain and told him to put together a meeting. Ten minutes later, when the commissioner walked into homicide with the captain on his heels, his footsteps echoed through the room like thunder. There was purpose in his gait, and everyone inside knew it. Coletti, Mann, and Sandy stopped fiddling with the laptop they were trying to access, and the two other detectives who were
toiling away in other parts of the office pretended to work harder.

  Both of them acknowledged the commissioner’s presence with mumbled words of greeting, but Lynch wasn’t there for them. He was there for Coletti and Mann, and though he hadn’t come for Sandy, he was glad to see her, because he wanted her in the meeting, too.

  “I need the three of you in the captain’s office now,” Lynch said as he and the captain breezed by them.

  When all five of them were inside, Lynch told Mann to shut the door and looked around at the four chairs in the office. He hadn’t been down to homicide in at least two months, but not much had changed. The offices were still ragged, and there still weren’t enough chairs.

  “Sit down wherever you can,” Lynch said, opting to stand.

  Sandy and Mann sat in chairs while the captain sat at his desk and turned on his computer. Coletti leaned against the wall and suspiciously eyed his commanders.

  “I called you all here so we could get on the same page,” Lynch said. “I know you’re out interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence, and all that’s great, but anytime we cordon off neighborhoods, shut down schools and businesses, send cops door-to-door, and still come up empty, something’s wrong. Either we need to change tactics, or we need to rethink who or what we’re chasing.”

  “What do you mean?” Coletti asked.

  Lynch walked around to the front of the captain’s desk, leaned against it, and folded his arms. “I just had a talk with Kirsten Douglas.”

  “Good, maybe she’ll stop calling me,” Coletti mumbled.

  Lynch glared at Coletti before continuing. “When I talked with Kirsten she was still petrified from this morning. It wasn’t just about the killer, either. It was about the raven.”

  “She saw the raven?” Coletti asked, sounding surprised.

  “Yes, and it was just like when you saw it,” Lynch said. “The body showed up and the bird wasn’t far behind. That’s why Kirsten’s convinced that the raven is somehow tied to this whole thing.”

  “Do you think she’s right?” Coletti asked.