The Gravedigger's Ball

by Solomon Jones

  When he thought of that trip, he remembered seeing Mary in the very same seat where Kirsten sat now. He’d sat next to her and realized that he felt something far deeper than the collegial relationship he’d tried so hard to maintain. He remembered resisting the feelings he harbored for her, even as he let himself go in a haze of all the things he liked best: blond hair and blue eyes, Quarter Pounders and laughter, flirting and french fries.

  Mary had sat where Kirsten was now, and from there she had asked about his dreams. Coletti surprised even himself by sharing them. He’d told her of his nightmares about the Confessional Murders. He’d told her of his doubts about the priest’s guilt. He’d told her that he wanted to make it right. And when he made that admission, he knew that Mary had reached him in a place down deep. For that reason alone, he couldn’t forget her. In truth, he didn’t want to.

  “Detective Coletti?” Kirsten said, shaking him from his thoughts. “Did you hear me? I asked if you thought we were close to solving the case.”

  He smiled nervously. “Yes, I heard you. I was just…”

  “Just what?”

  “I was thinking, that’s all.”

  She observed him as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and fixed his eyes on the road. He was rumpled and gruff, a cop’s cop, and yet he was so comfortable with himself that he could eat burgers with a reporter. She wanted to know more about him, both for the story and for herself.

  Coletti glanced at her, too. If nothing else, she was interesting to watch. With her intense brown eyes and curly hair to match, she looked like a woman who could juggle a million tasks while still holding herself together. She was dressed in clothes that were functional, but not alluring, and while her face was unremarkable, it was welcoming. In short, Kirsten Douglas was confident in who she was, and she could question herself openly without feeling stupid.

  “I guess it was silly for me to ask if you were close to solving the case, huh?”

  “Let me put it this way. If I was close, I wouldn’t be riding to Dunmore with you.”

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

  “Anytime,” he deadpanned. “I aim to please.”

  She looked out at the road flying by as Coletti drove way over the sixty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. “How ’bout we start here,” she said, kicking off her shoes and curling her feet underneath her. “What were you doing at the cemetery this morning?”

  “Obviously, I was there to catch a murderer,” he said as they turned onto I-476. “And obviously, I failed.”

  “No, I mean before all that happened. You were there visiting a grave, weren’t you?”

  Coletti shot a look in her direction. “You ask that question like you know the answer.”

  “You give that answer like you’re avoiding the question.”

  He tensed up and hesitated a beat before he spoke. “I’d rather not talk about it, that’s all.”

  “Well, is it all right if I talk about it?”

  Coletti clenched his teeth and silently cursed himself for agreeing to travel with her. “It’s a free country,” he said tersely. “Talk about whatever you like.”

  “Okay,” she said, turning in her seat to face him. “I know you went to Fairgrounds to visit Mary Smithson’s grave.”

  She studied his face to gauge his reaction. He was clearly hesitant to share his true feelings about Mary. When he spoke, he sounded uncomfortable.

  “You must have really great sources,” he said with a pasted-on grin. “The only people I saw there were Clarissa and Lenore. Clarissa’s dead, and Lenore’s under police protection. So who told you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not really. No matter who you heard it from, it’s still none of your business.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to pass judgment on you,” she said softly. “I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from, because frankly, I don’t see why you’d go to visit the grave of the woman who tried to kill you. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “So, why didn’t you ask me about it earlier?”

  “I didn’t find out until after we’d talked.”

  They rode in silence for the next few seconds while Coletti considered whether to answer her. He thought he might, but first he had a question of his own.

  “Have you ever wondered why somebody came into your life, and then wondered why they were gone?”

  Kirsten thought of a loss that haunted her still. The memory of it was painful enough that she kept it locked away in a secret space in her heart.

  “Yes, I’ve wondered about that,” she said quietly.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Five years ago,” she said, staring out the window as she spoke. “My mother had an aneurysm and died suddenly. It was awful, especially because we’d spent a lot of years angry at each other for basically no reason. Our relationship had been getting better, though, and then she was gone.”

  “That was five years ago, and I can tell it still hurts for you to talk about it,” Coletti said. “I’ve only had two months, so whether I hated Mary Smithson or felt something else for her, don’t you think it hurts me to talk about it, too?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That’s the one thing I’ve never understood about reporters. You get people at their most vulnerable moments, then you stick microphones in their faces and ask them to talk about the things that hurt them the most. And for what? To make your story juicy? To create some kinda scandal? To make people laugh at the poor old cop and the killer who pretended to…”

  He stopped himself there, knowing he’d said too much, but it was too late to pull it back.

  “If you don’t want to answer my questions, it’s okay,” Kirsten said. “I can tell by the way you’re acting that there was something more than hate between you and Mary, but that’s all right. Keep it to yourself. Just remember that feelings are like acid. They can eat through the toughest surface if you give them enough time, even if that surface is a crusty old detective like you.”

  Coletti was in no mood to admit that she was right, so he drove the next two miles in silence. When he spoke again, she was surprised, not by what he said, but that he’d said anything at all.

  “That’s why I went there, you know.”

  She looked up, uncertain how to respond to what seemed like a random statement. “That’s why you went where?”

  “To the cemetery,” he said. “I went so I could get out whatever it was I was feeling.”

  “And what exactly was that?”

  “I don’t want to call it love or hate,” Coletti said. “To be honest with you, I really don’t want to call it anything at all. I just don’t want to be damaged by that acid you talked about. That’s why I visited the cemetery. I was looking for closure.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No,” Coletti said. “I didn’t find closure. In fact, I opened a whole new can of worms. I just hope I can close it back up before more people get killed.”

  “Me, too,” Kirsten said while looking out the window. “Me, too.”

  * * *

  The gray, nondescript car had been left for him in front of the pizza place on Ogontz Avenue near Limekiln Pike. On a block where gunplay was lethal, where stickups were commonplace, and where death was ever-present, the sight of a man switching cars was not worth anyone’s attention, and neither was the sound of sirens.

  Under the fading light of day, the Gravedigger had maneuvered the car through traffic on the wide and winding street, slowly making his way onto the side roadways that extended like veins from Philadelphia’s main arteries.

  On those roads he’d made his way back to the art museum area, and now that it was completely dark, he would make his way back underground.

  He sat in the car on Fairmount Avenue, looking at the dried blood on his clothing and hands, silently cursing Workman for his refusal to tell what he knew. A simple act of submission would have saved countless lives, but now th
e Gravedigger would be forced to carry out the next phase of his plan, and even in his diminished mental state, he knew that the final phase wasn’t something he wanted to do.

  He told himself he would sit for a few minutes more, waiting for an opportune moment to walk away from the car. He was tired, though, and after his head bobbed for the third time he heard a loud pop at the entrance to Kelly Drive. His eyes snapped open to find that all the streetlights were out.

  The Gravedigger looked calmly around him, waiting for the light to return. It didn’t. Instead, the air began to move in a slow, whirling motion, causing sound and color and texture to spin like a top. He grabbed the car door in an effort to steady himself, but the spinning continued to whip everything in a circular motion. It continued for what seemed like an eternity. Then suddenly it stopped.

  He was still for a few seconds before opening the car door and staggering out into the darkness, his equilibrium thrown off by the spinning. He couldn’t see two feet in front of him, but he knew that he had to get to the underground, so he walked with his hands in front of him, groping for something to grab on to.

  He listened for the croak of the raven, hoping it would circle overhead and guide him as it had done in the daytime. But in his heart the Gravedigger knew that Prophet couldn’t guide him through this. No, this he had to face on his own, and if he survived it, perhaps he would be worthy of the treasure he so desperately sought.

  He walked cautiously, hoping to find a wall, or a curb, or a sidewalk, or anything that would give substance to the darkness. He found nothing at all, and the more he pushed, the more he stumbled and flailed against the void.

  As a sliver of light made its way through the dark, the Gravedigger could see that he had walked along Fairmount Avenue to Kelly Drive. He was now rounding the curve and approaching Boathouse Row. There were no lights on the iconic boathouses, however. Tonight there was only the blackness, and the statues that dotted the drive.

  Behind him and to his right was Joan of Arc, riding on a golden horse while holding the banner of her armies. To his left was a crusader holding a cross, his helmeted face upturned. In the distance was a knight whose sword and shield were slung over his shoulder. Around the bend were a cavalry soldier and a Quaker with a massive bible.

  The Gravedigger looked at the statues and wondered where the people were. As he tried to understand what he was seeing, there was a creaking sound. It stopped. There was a metallic squeal. It faded. For the next few seconds there was absolute silence. Then suddenly, there was the terrible grinding of metal.

  The Gravedigger looked up and saw a horse and rider emerging from the darkness. He squinted, knowing that what he was witnessing was impossible, but when he heard the thunderous sound of hooves in the air, he knew that it was real. The statue of the cavalry soldier had come to life, and as it raced toward him through the blackness that surrounded him, the Gravedigger turned to run. The soldier fired a single shot. The killer dropped to his knees before rolling onto his back in agony.

  A half minute later, as the Gravedigger’s life’s blood ran out from the bullet wound, the horse stopped, the rider dismounted, and the sound of heavy footsteps shook the ground.

  The soldier stood over the Gravedigger with gun in hand, his upturned hat revealing a face whose scowl was permanent. The soldier pointed his rifle at the Gravedigger’s face, and when the bullet exploded from the barrel in a flash of white-hot fire, the Gravedigger’s eyes snapped open.

  His face was covered with sweat and his breathing was rapid and shallow. He looked around quickly to get his bearings. He was sitting in the car. It was parked on Fairmount Avenue. The dream of the darkness was over.

  The Gravedigger sat still, his heart beating wildly as the nightmare faded from his consciousness. As his mind returned him to the moment, he knew what he had to do. He would go underground and wait until he received word from his benefactor. Then he would move quickly to retrieve the treasure he’d been waiting for.

  With that thought in mind, the Gravedigger slipped out of the gray car and into the darkness. Moments later, he was on his way back to the place where he felt safest.

  He was on his way back to the grave.

  * * *

  Mann placed a call to one of his old professors at Penn, who promised to try to put together a list of students from the creative writing program.

  Then he and Sandy walked over to the captain’s office, where they sat with Commissioner Lynch and the captain, listening as a young computer technician walked them through the information that had been pulled from Clarissa Bailey’s hard drive.

  They understood some of it, like the bank records confirming that Clarissa had been tattooed at a South Philly shop, bought a gun at a Bucks County gun store, and stayed at a hotel in Scranton, all in the last week. They understood the e-mails indicating that she’d been in steady communication with Workman, Lily Thompkins, and Violet Grant about historical finds around the city. They understood that she kept records about the Gravedigger’s Ball and Tookesbury Mansion in a file on her desktop. But there was much they didn’t understand, because the computer technician spoke in the geeky jargon of a techie.

  As he blathered on about the various bits and pieces they’d gleaned from the gigabytes of information on Clarissa’s computer, even the tech-savvy Charlie Mann found himself lost. After a few minutes of listening to words like code and algorithms and surrogate keys, Mann had had enough.

  “Do me a favor,” he said. “Can you just tell us in plain language what we need to know?”

  “I’m sorry,” the young man said with a nervous laugh. “Sometimes I get a little excited. Where do you want me to start?”

  “Start with the cryptogram,” Commissioner Lynch said.

  “Sure, no problem. We found the cryptogram in Mrs. Bailey’s ‘My Documents’ folder, along with some other things she’d stored in a subfolder called ‘Poe.’ It was a handwritten document that was scanned and saved as a PDF, and it contained a chart with two sets of symbols representing each letter in the cryptogram’s code. The first set was the alphabet backward, so the letter a was represented by the letter z and so on. The second set was numbers, so the letter a was represented by the number 1 and so on. The cryptogram was pretty simple, really. It alternated between the letters and numbers. The method confused the computers, but anybody who was really into cryptograms should’ve been able to solve it pretty easily.”

  “And the solution to the cryptogram was written on that same document?” Mann asked.

  “Yes. On the document, right under the cryptogram, was the answer. It said, ‘Start at the evergreen tree.’ Underneath that, someone had written three words, ‘The Gold Bug.’”

  Sandy glanced at Mann. “Isn’t that the name of the story the ranger gave you back at the Poe house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there a map in the story?” the computer tech asked.

  “Yeah,” said Mann.

  “Well, you might want to take a look at this. It was in the Poe folder on Clarissa’s computer, too.”

  He handed them a picture of a map containing what appeared to be an overhead view of Fairgrounds Cemetery, complete with symbols for headstones, monuments, and mausoleums. In the upper-left-hand corner was a picture of a tree. A dotted line extended from the tree and wound around headstones and mausoleums in the graveyard. The line ended almost exactly at the point where Clarissa’s body had been found that morning.

  “Maybe this map leads to the secret Poe supposedly hid at the cemetery,” Sandy said.

  “But if Clarissa had a map, why would she need Lenore Wilkinson?” Mann asked. “Why would the whole thing about a seer even matter?”

  “Maybe she tried to use the map and it didn’t work,” the captain said.

  Mann turned to the computer technician. “When were these documents created?”

  “The first one was created September fourth at nine A.M. The second was created about five minutes later. The properties in both docu
ments list Clarissa Bailey as the author, which means she’s the one who scanned them and saved them as PDFs.”

  “But that doesn’t mean she created the documents, right?”

  The technician nodded.

  “So, in theory, she could’ve gotten these documents from anywhere and scanned them into her computer,” Mann said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then we need to figure out who created these documents for Clarissa.”

  “Not only that,” Sandy said. “We need to figure out why she scanned them. If these documents were supposed to be the key to this secret and someone gave them to her on paper, she probably wouldn’t have turned them into PDFs unless she intended to pass them on.”

  “Did she pass them on?” the commissioner asked the technician.

  “Not by e-mail,” the technician said.

  “Maybe she got killed before she got the chance,” said the commissioner.

  They were quiet for a moment as they contemplated what it would mean if the commissioner was right.

  “What else did you find on the computer?” the captain asked.

  “E-mails. Lots of them.”

  The technician placed three sheets of paper on the captain’s desk and began to explain. “Most of them were to and from Violet Grant and Lily Thompkins. She sent a couple to the cemetery manager, mostly about the Gravedigger’s Ball. And then, of course, there was the e-mail address you asked us to try to trace—the fifth address Clarissa e-mailed with the information about Lenore Wilkinson coming to town.”

  “Were you able to find out anything about it?” Mann asked.

  “Not based on the e-mail Mrs. Bailey sent, but when the person e-mailed Mrs. Bailey later that day, we were able to trace the IP address of the computer they used.”

  “What did the e-mail say?” Mann asked.

  “It just said, ‘Thanks.’”

  “That’s it? No signature?”

  “Nope.”

  “So who sent it?” Sandy asked.

  “We don’t know. All we know is that the sender e-mailed Clarissa Bailey from a computer at the Free Library’s central branch.”