by Jan Burke
We nodded.
“Gently. One . . . two . . . three . . .”
There was a crackle as we began lifting.
“Easy . . . easy . . .”
Ben was watching me as we began to feel the weight. I tried not to let my uneasiness show. The remains weren’t heavy, but knowing what we were holding was unnerving.
“Slowly. . . . What do you think, David?”
“It will hold,” David said.
There was a sloshing sound. The plastic moved as if it were alive, rippling toward me.
“A little higher, Andy and J.C.,” Ben said calmly. “Easy . . .”
We continued lifting, Ben guiding our way, watching one another, listening to the slight shiftings, the small rustling sounds of the plastic.
When it was above the burial pit, we slowly straightened our backs, so that we were sitting up over our knees, and the plastic was stretched a little tighter. Ben waited a moment, then he asked Bob Thompson and Andy to step away. The four of us edged the body away from the pit. Next, Ben and David briefly managed the body alone, placing it in the body bag. The bag was zipped up and locked with a crimped metal seal. The stretcher was already beneath the bag.
I turned to look back into the grave. “Oh, Jesus!”
The others hurried over, stood next to me, peering down.
Stained and moldy, but laid out in neat array, were articles of women’s clothing: a black jacket and skirt, a once white blouse, black pumps and purse. Underwear. A bra. A slip. There were other objects as well — some candles, some wire, a knife. A gold necklace.
Some objects were loose, some encased in clear plastic bags.
The Polaroid photographs were in bags.
As much as I knew that they were photographs that never should have been taken, of things that never should have happened to anyone, I could not keep myself from staring at them, all the while not wanting them to be there.
They stared back.
She stared back.
I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and someone said, “Come away. Come and sit next to Bingle. Come on. He’s worried about you.”
Ben, I realized. He pulled the mask off my face, kept talking to me. I don’t know what he said. I let him lead me over to Bingle. The dog nuzzled me as I sat down next to him.
I held on to Bingle, and looked back toward the grave, toward the black body bag.
I thought of a girl who had once wished her mother dead, and knew that Julia Sayre must have wanted her daughter’s wish to come true long before it did.
12
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, MAY 17
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
I sat at the edge of my tent that evening, listening to laughter. The gathering around the campfire had been quiet and solemn at first. After a long day of laboring over the grave and its artifacts — photographing, mapping, collecting, and labeling its grim contents — the team of workers was tired and subdued.
Parrish, now being watched by Duke and Earl, was kept away from the rest of the group. He was taken to a tent after Merrick had another flare-up with him, this one undoubtedly resulting in Parrish receiving a bruise or two.
It had started when Parrish, handcuffed, had seen a moth fluttering not far from his face. He watched it intently, then snapped at it with his open mouth, and exaggerated the act of chewing and swallowing it. “Why the hell did you do that?” Merrick asked, disgusted.
Parrish stared at him, smiled, then glanced at the body bag. “It reminded me of someone.”
Merrick tackled him to the ground before Manton could stop him. Later, even Merrick acknowledged that Parrish seemed pleased to have goaded him into that loss of self-control.
No one blamed Merrick for his edginess. While yesterday Parrish might have been guided to a place and told to take a seat, today he was shoved down, and roughly yanked up again when his guards were ready to go. We didn’t protest at all. A line, it seemed, had been moved. Having just seen photos of Parrish pouring hot wax into one of his victim’s ears, I was not willing to champion his civil liberties.
All day, Parrish had met with increasing hostility and disgust; while most of us kept our tempers in check, no one wanted to be anywhere near him.
I looked toward the body bag, which had been brought to the camp and now lay nearby. J.C. sat next to it, taking his turn watching over it. David had told me that from now until it reached the lab, the body would always be guarded — not just from Parrish, whose request to see it had been denied — but also from any animals that might be attracted by the smell. “And it’s evidence, of course,” he said, “so we have to be able to account for it during every moment that it’s in our possession.”
Still, its nearness was unnerving. Again and again, I found my eyes drawn to it. I tried to force my thoughts along other channels, but before many minutes passed, I was thinking about it and its contents.
Duke, who was whittling a little wooden horse for his grandson, would stop every so often, look toward the long black bag, then return to his carving with a vengeance.
The others, I noticed, often looked toward the body, too.
David started the clowning. It began during dinner, while Ben was on duty near the stretcher. David gave Bingle a command to do a headstand, which — without lifting his hind legs — the dog attempted. The dog not only looked ridiculous, with his head upside down on the ground and his forepaws flattened next to it, he “talked” the whole time he held this position, making a sort of half-howling, half-barking sound. He brought the house down.
David said, “Bien,” and Bingle raised his head up, glancing around the laughing group with that grinning look that dogs sometimes get on their faces, wagging his tail, seeming for all the world to be enjoying the joke with the rest of us.
This set off a round of dog stories, and then a round of cop and forensic anthropologist stories, and next a round of bizarre homicide stories. The humor was often dark, and most of the tales would, I knew, never be repeated around those whom this group thought of as civilians.
I noticed that the stories and jokes never touched on this day’s work or this victim — subjects that by some unspoken agreement were taboo — and that the most any of them got out of Ben was a soft smile.
I called it a night long before most of them were ready to do the same. Now I sat wondering if I would ever get the smell of decay off my hair and skin, wondering if another day or so spent in proximity with the body would permanently mark me with its scent of death.
I heard footsteps in the darkness and gave a start.
“Ms. Kelly.”
I sighed in relief. “You scared the hell out of me, Dr. Sheridan.”
“Oh.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
It must have nearly killed him to say it.
He came a little closer. “Ms. Kelly, you’re married to a homicide detective, right?”
“Yes. Frank Harriman. He’s with the Las Piernas P.D.”
“Then I suppose you understand . . . I suppose you’ve heard him tell stories or make jokes about things . . .”
“Dr. Sheridan, I’ve not only heard him make this sort of joke, I’ve joked with him. If you think I’ll misjudge what’s happening around that campfire, you misjudge me. But, come to think of it, that seems to be a specialty of yours.”
There was a long silence.
“They’re just releasing tension,” I said. “I know that. Under the circumstances, it’s probably one of the healthiest things they could do.”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“I know you think that I’m one of a species other than your own — one of an unfeeling life form that crawled out of the sea a little later than the one that became forensic anthropologists — but miraculously, maybe sometime during the Paleozoic Age, reporters developed a sense of humor, too. Someday I’ll have to sneak you into a newsroom, Ben Sheridan, so that you can hear our own brand of sick humor. We’re getting pretty good at it; you should hear how quickly the jokes start whene
ver a particularly shocking story comes over the wire. And it works almost as well as it’s working over by that campfire.”
“Well, yes, I just—”
“You just thought I might write that these guys didn’t show proper respect for Julia Sayre. Just thought I wouldn’t understand that this really has nothing to do with her — that I lie in wait for anyone in this group to make a mistake or betray a little human weakness so that I can trumpet it to the world. That I don’t understand the horror and the strain of . . .” I suddenly felt that horror, that strain, and stopped talking.
He didn’t speak or move.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture you,” I said. “And I owe you my thanks.”
“For what?” he asked, and I could hear the surprise.
“At the grave, when I — I kind of lost it there for a little while. I hadn’t expected to see — what I saw.”
“Your reaction was understandable, Ms. Kelly. And you don’t owe me thanks — I owe you another apology. It was cruel of me to ask you to help.”
“I’m not unwilling to help,” I said. “I just wasn’t ready for . . .”
“No one ever is,” he said. “No one.”
He started to walk off, then said, “David will want to keep Bingle with him tonight. Will you be all right?”
“Yes.”
He looked up at the sky. “Better put the rainfly on your tent.”
13
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 17
Las Piernas
When Frank arrived at Phil Newly’s hospital room, he found the lawyer looking disconcerted.
“Bad news about the foot, Mr. Newly?” he asked as he walked in.
Newly was frowning, but when he recognized Frank, he smiled broadly at him. Not exactly the reception Frank had expected. Outside of testifying against a couple of his clients, Frank had never spoken to Newly. There had been nothing personal, Frank knew, in Newly’s attempts to discredit his testimony on those occasions. Newly was better than most on cross-examination, but his efforts against Frank’s testimony had been unsuccessful. Each man had just been doing his job. He hoped Newly thought of it that way, too.
“Detective Harriman!” Newly said. “You cost me the Beringer case, and one other, as I recall.” He didn’t seem especially bothered by it. “You’re also Irene Kelly’s husband, right?”
“Yes, I am. That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping you can tell me how she’s doing.”
There was the slightest hesitation before Newly said, “Fine. She’s fine — at least, she was when I left the group. Listen, Frank — may I call you Frank?”
He was surprised, but said, “Sure.”
“Great. And please call me Phil.” He smiled again, this time in a way that Frank was sure was calculated to be disarming. “Now that we’re on such friendly terms,” Newly went on, “may I ask a favor of you?”
“Nothing that will cause me to be busted down to traffic division?” Frank asked warily.
“No, nothing like that. I just need a ride home.”
“You’re going home already?”
“Yes, they only kept me overnight for observation. If I weren’t a lawyer, they probably would have sent me home yesterday. Always afraid we’ll sue, I suppose. Anyway, I’ll have to wear this cast for a while, but there’s no reason for me to take up a hospital bed.”
He figured giving Newly a ride home would allow him the time he needed to talk to him, so he said, “Okay.”
“Great! And — if you don’t mind — my clothes — in the backpack there? Would you mind handing that to me?”
He supposed that Newly was probably perfectly capable of getting it himself, but he humored him.
The lawyer began emptying the pack out on the bed, which was soon covered with a camp stove, a cooking set, a flashlight, a poncho, a water bottle, matches, a roll of toilet paper, and all sorts of other gear, including an impressive array of clothing. It must have killed him to march around in the mountains with all of that on his back, Frank thought, making an effort to control his amusement.
Newly smiled up from the middle of the mess he had made. He held a pair of jeans in his hands. “Would you mind taking these to the nurses’ station and asking them to cut off the bottom half of this pant leg? The left one. Otherwise, I’ll never get these on over the cast. I’ll start getting dressed while you do that.”
Suppressing a desire to tell him what he could do with his pant leg, remembering that he needed the lawyer’s help, Frank said, “All right.”
“So your friend thinks I’m a tailor,” the nurse said, but took the jeans from Frank. She was a young, slender redhead — a woman with an air of self-possession that he thought must serve her well in this job.
“Don’t feel so sorry for yourself,” he answered, which made her look up at him. “He thinks I’m his chauffeur and valet — but he knows he’s not my friend.”
She held her head to one side, studying him, and smiled. “No, I don’t suppose you are his friend. What puts you in charge of his pants — dare I ask?”
“Just trying to get him out of here. I’m giving him a ride home.”
“Thank you! We can’t wait for that pain in the ass to leave.”
“I can understand that,” he said, smiling back at her.
She glanced at his left hand, saw the ring, and went back to cutting the pants.
He did his best to repack the backpack while Newly finished dressing. He had just fit the cookset in when he came across something that, at first glance, he thought was a cellular phone — but he quickly realized it couldn’t be.
“Is this a GPS receiver?” he asked.
Newly looked up from his efforts to put a sock on his right foot — although not broken or in a cast, it was badly blistered. Seeing it, Frank didn’t feel so bad about fetching the backpack.
“Yes,” Newly answered, holding out a hand. “Here — I’ll show you how it works.”
He spent a few minutes proudly demonstrating the unit, then asked Frank to help him put one of his hiking boots — the only shoes he had with him — on his tender right foot.
The nurse Frank had met earlier brought a wheelchair in and offered to escort them down to the hospital lobby.
“Everybody knows that you don’t let patients leave without wheeling them out of here,” Newly said.
“Undoubtedly thanks to people in your profession,” she said.
He laughed and cheerfully admitted that it just might be so. As she helped Newly out of the bed, Newly put an arm around her shoulder and winked broadly at Frank. Frank ignored it and answered the nurse’s question about what he did for a living. This resulted in an animated conversation that lasted until they reached the lobby. He left them to get the car; by the time he brought it around to where they waited, Frank could see that in another few minutes, she might have gladly rolled Newly out into traffic.
Frank had already put the backpack on the backseat, and now he opened the car door as the nurse was bending to lower the wheelchair’s footrest. Newly said, “Frank is married to a good-looking brunette, you know. But I’m available!”
“Phil,” she said, helping him to stand up, “as surprising as that news is to me, I have to tell you this: There are lots of women who would pursue Frank even though he’s married. But even though you’re single — well, let’s just say, I hope you’re rich.”
She was moving away before he shouted, “I am!”
She didn’t look back.
“Well, how do you like that!” he said, laughing.
He joked about himself when recounting the tale of blistering his feet. “And the worst part,” he said, “is the number of lectures I’ve endured from this foot specialist at the hospital.”
He proceeded to give an imitation of the man; it made Frank laugh, and in this good humor he gave in to Newly’s request that they stop off at a pharmacy not far from the lawyer’s home. Newly insisted on trying to walk into the store on his own.
“Look,” he said, �
��while I’m in there, could you rearrange my pack a little? I left the GPS on top, and I’m afraid it will fall out and break. Cost me about six hundred, you know, so I’d rather not smash it on my driveway.”
Frank looked at him sharply, and saw, for the first time that day, the intelligent member of the Bar Association he had met in the courtroom — not the clowning klutz of the past hour or so.
Newly smiled and said, “Play around with the GPS if you like. This may take a while.”
He was hobbling into the store before Frank could respond.
Frank knew a clear invitation when he heard one, and hesitated only long enough to try to figure out if Newly was setting him up somehow, or worse, setting the department up for problems by using him in some way. But he couldn’t see how Newly could use this against him, and if it meant he’d know where Irene was right now, he’d risk it.
He wasn’t going to ignore his instincts; he was going up there. If she didn’t need him, fine. She might even be angry with him. At that thought, he smiled to himself. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But the next thought sobered him — it was one thing to imagine that he might hike up there for no real reason, that she was fine. It was another to think of her hurt or in danger. If she was in trouble and he stayed home, he’d never forgive himself.
By the time Newly came out, he had written down every set of coordinates that had been stored in the GPS unit’s memory during the two days Newly was in the mountains, and the GPS unit had been returned to the backpack.
“Did you get everything you need?” he asked Newly.
“Yes. And you?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes. Tell me why you’re helping me.”
“Oh, I could try to make this sound quite innocent, and say I’m returning a kindness; that your wife was very good to me while we were hiking. She even went so far as to doctor my smelly, blistered feet. But it wouldn’t be the truth.”
He fell silent, and Frank wondered if he was going to leave it at that. But then he said, “A policeman comes to my hospital room. A man not connected with the case. He tells me that he is concerned about his wife. I involve him in some foolish business so that I can consider my situation. I have no difficulty believing that he is there for the reason he says he is; he’s willing to take on demeaning errands in order to talk to me. He’s genuinely worried about her. I’m concerned about her, too.”