Deeper Than the Grave

by Tina Whittle

  I pocketed the radio. “Where’d he go?”

  “One of his men called and said he’d found something.”

  “The bones?”

  “He thought it was a piece of the coffin, but he needed Richard to make sure.” Trey hooked his own radio to his belt. “Call off when you’ve cleared an area, and I’ll keep track on the main grid.”

  I hoisted the metal detector and the accessory bag. “Got it.”

  “Good. Channel nine. Keep to your quadrant.” He tilted his head, examined me thoroughly. “And be careful.”

  ***

  The woods were dark this morning, and deep. I paced off the coordinates Trey had given me, which took me from the edge of the cemetery to a small ravine. Here, the anemic light grew thin and gray as dishwater. I was glad I’d worn heavy work boots. The red clay mud sucked at the soles like something from a horror movie.

  I pulled the headphones from my pocket and plugged them into the detector. I also had a small trowel and handheld probe, but didn’t expect I’d be needing them. Tornadoes flung things around, but they didn’t bury them too deeply. The detector penetrated to three feet, definitely enough for this particular mission.

  The detector wouldn’t find bones. That would require a sharp eye, especially since I knew Private Amberdecker’s might not be the only remains around, thanks to the nearby battlefield. The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain had claimed over four thousand Confederate and Union casualties, including hundreds of men missing in action, like the Private. And although the Piedmont soil of the Kennesaw area wasn’t especially conducive to preserving body parts, the Amberdecker lands created an exception. With loamy soil and red clay deposits veining the earth, this particular landscape coddled bones like a cradle. It was private land, off-limits to looters. That didn’t stop the relic-obsessed, however, a fact Richard knew all too well.

  I settled the headphones on my ears, listened to the whine of the machine. No, bones would not register, but one of those buttons or buckles would. And if I found one of those things, with any luck, the bones would be nearby.

  I straightened up, swung the detector left and right, then set off into the woods.

  The tornado’s initial impact was precise and obvious. After that, the damage grew more sporadic. There was a petulance to the destruction, like a temper tantrum, but I knew it was only physics at work. Here the trees stood, but the tumbled branches in the pine needles were proof that a lacerating wind had ripped through. I kept my eyes on the ground, swinging the detector back and forth in a neat arc.

  Thirty minutes later, all I had found were pull tabs and broken tool parts. None of the private’s burial goods, and not a sign of Rose. I was beginning to think Richard’s faith was misplaced, that any second now I’d be stumbling on the unfortunate corpse of a little old lady, pearls clutched to her crushed chest…

  The metal detector threw off a high-pitched whine, the signature of something big. I looked down. A muck-covered length of metal lay at my feet. I nudged it with my toe. A pry bar, probably from some unfortunate resident’s toolshed. I marked an X on my map and kept searching.

  I didn’t have to search long. The detector whined again, this time in a short sharp burst. I knelt at the foot of a massive oak and parted the top layer of leaves with my fingers. They were cold and slimy and smelled of ripe decay, but they covered something solid underneath. I peered into the mulchy mess. Then I cursed and snatched my fingers back fast.

  The brown-stained skull grinned up at me, dead leaves in its teeth, a chunk of its cranium caved in at the back. I didn’t even try to brush the mud off. I reached for my radio.

  “Trey? You there?”

  It sputtered and crackled. “Ten two, Seaver here.”

  He was in SWAT mode, all last name and ten codes. I pressed the talk button. “I found the skull. Bring the rest of the metal detectors, and we’ll grid this area with an intensive.”

  “Copy that. Text me the coordinates.”

  “Will do.” I dropped my voice. “I love it when you talk cop, have I ever told you that?”

  A tiny pause. “Copy and out, Tai.”

  I tucked the radio back into my pocket and started to move some more leaves out of the way. But before I could, I heard a stomach-dropping noise to my left—the unmistakable “ka-chunk” of a pump action shotgun. And then a woman’s voice, cold and authoritative.

  “Hold it right there, you goddamned thief!”

  Chapter Nine

  I put my hands in the air so fast I almost fell over.

  The woman came striding toward me—tall, purposeful, her shearling coat pulled tight around a sturdy figure. She stopped fifteen feet from me, the shotgun swung into firing position, the butt tight against her shoulder. I saw it was a twelve-gauge, and whether it was loaded with cartridges or slugs, it could cut me in half before I could take a step.

  “Stand up!” she said. “Real slow.”

  I did as I was told. An ice-gray braid fell over her shoulder, and her eyes flashed pale blue. Despite her tanned skin, I could see spots of color riding high on her cheekbones, and her mouth was a flat line in a square, tightly set jaw.

  I kept my hands high. “I’m not a thief. And I’m not armed either. So if you could just put down the shotgun—”

  “I’ll put it down when I’m good and ready. Who are you?”

  I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “Tai Randolph. Richard asked me to help with the search.”

  “What search? Where’s Richard?”

  “He’s with my boyfriend—”

  “Your boyfriend is tromping around too? This is private property, girl, and what you’re doing is trespassing. Didn’t you see the POSTED signs?”

  She was angry, but calm. I relaxed a little. Itchy trigger fingers made for deadly trouble, but there was nothing itchy about this woman.

  I lowered my hands a smidgen. “First of all, my boyfriend is a highly trained security operative, so to say that he’s ‘tromping around’ is highly inaccurate. Second, Richard called me and asked me to come. So if you don’t like that, your problem is with Richard, not me.”

  She kept the shotgun leveled at my head. “You always talk back to someone holding you at gunpoint?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. It’s a character flaw. But I only do it when I’m not really worried about getting shot. And I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not doing anything worth shooting me over. And you don’t strike me as a woman who wastes ammunition, Mrs. Amberdecker.”

  She scowled, then lowered the gun. “Put your hands down, you look ridiculous. Where’s Richard?”

  “Back at the chapel. There was a tornado—”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Damn thing came through like a freight train. Did it hit the chapel?”

  “The roof lost a few tiles, but Richard said he can fix it.”

  She huffed in relief. She came forward, the wet leaves crunching underneath her boots. Her expression was still hard, but curious. Matter-of-fact instead of angry. She hadn’t released the gun, though, so I kept my hands where she could see them.

  “Then what did Richard call you for?” she said.

  “The chapel may be fine, but your great-great-grandfather’s tomb isn’t.”

  She froze. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough that Richard’s got me out here looking for bones. One of which I’ve just found, by the way.”

  “What? Where?”

  I pointed with the toe of my shoe. She followed with her eyes, but didn’t turn her head or gasp or even act startled. She just stared at the skull the same way she’d stared at me.

  “I think they found the coffin too,” I said. “We’ll know when we get back to the chapel. Richard wanted to get the remains located as soon as possible. He knew you’d want that too, so he called me.”

&nbs
p; She shook the rain from her eyes, squinted at me. “You’re Dexter’s girl, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. His niece.”

  “I remember. Your uncle helped us bury Braxton the first time we found him.” She nodded toward the skull. “Where’s the rest of him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She knelt and examined the skull, her shotgun butt-first on the ground beside her. She looked up at the sound of voices behind me, then footsteps. Trey and Richard coming up the path. She hoisted the gun and went to meet them.

  Richard hurried over at a jog. “Rose! Where have you been? I was two seconds from calling the police!”

  “Goddamn coyote got one of the new kids—I heard it bleating and screaming all the way from the kitchen. So I tracked the varmint down and blew it to kingdom come. Then the damn twister came through and I had to lay low in the culvert over by the south field. And now I come back to this mess.”

  Trey came forward—cautiously, deliberately—a borrowed rain slicker dripping water on his shoes. He directed a top-to-bottom assessment Rose’s way, then mine. Only when he was satisfied that the situation wasn’t about to erupt in gunplay did he speak.

  “You said you found the skull?”

  I nodded toward the tree. “Underneath the leaves. I haven’t had a chance to look around anywhere else, but…”

  “But?”

  I knelt at the base of the tree. “A skull wouldn’t set off the metal detector, not by itself. There’s something else down there.”

  Richard came over and stood at my shoulder. “Probably one of the buttons.”

  “This was too big for a button.”

  I moved my fingers through the detritus around the skull, suppressing a quirk of disgust. It was just leaf mold, I told myself, rainwater and mulch. And the bones were just ossified calcium, one hundred and fifty years old. But there was something about this skull, something…not right.

  Trey crouched beside me, pushing back the black plastic hood of his rain gear to take a closer look. He pointed at a tangle of roots. “Is that what set off the detector?”

  I followed his index finger, dug my own fingers into the leafy muck until they brushed something hard. I wiped the leaves and dirt away, then bent closer. And then I got a chill. It was a piece of metal, rusted and mud-choked. And it had no business being where it was.

  I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Looks like you need to call the police after all.”

  Rose frowned. “Why?”

  “Because that’s not your great-great-grandfather’s skull.”

  “How do you know?”

  I pointed. “Because there’s no way Braxton Amberdecker was buried with a NASCAR belt buckle.”

  Chapter Ten

  The interior of the chapel would have been a welcome spot in the summer—a cool place of stone and shadow—but this winter’s day, with rain slashing against the window, it was dreary and depressing. It seemed designed to be intentionally dark, with only three windows, all of them stained-glass pieces at the front of the church. There was no electricity; we had to make do with the guttering light of paraffin candles.

  Trey and I were the only occupants at the moment. Richard’s crew had been sent home for the day, leaving Richard behind to assist the sheriff’s deputies, who were treating the area like a crime scene, not an archaeological artifact recovery. Not that there was much difference in my book—both prioritized procedure, preservation, and hasty meticulousness—but I was sure there would be quibbles.

  Trey paced in front of the windows, his footsteps echoing, leather against slate. He’d converted one end of the front bench into a makeshift office, covering it in papers bearing his meticulous notes in the margins, his research into resilient security systems. He’d tried to explain. He’d talked of tolerance fluctuations via design parameters, redundancy and diversity, reactive versus proactive control. Now he was trying to have a conversation with his boss, but the connection was spotty, and he kept repeating himself.

  His voice held a twinge of frustration. “No, I did not find the body, Tai did.”

  “It wasn’t a body,” I said, “it was a skull.”

  Trey ignored my protests. He moved back and forth in front of the stained glass. The windows faced east, and during most mornings, the first light of day would have illuminated the reds and golds and blues, firing them into life. But this morning left them as dull and washed out as the rain itself.

  The centerpiece was a cross—not a crucifix, that was too gory and idolatrous for sensible Baptist tastes. White lilies and red roses entwined in profusion around the border, a rising sun piercing the horizon behind it. The other panels told a familiar New Testament story, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, writ large in two scenes—the first, the prideful richly dressed son setting out on his own, leaving his wounded father and stoic dutiful brother behind. The second, the same son’s weeping return to his father’s welcoming embrace. The dutiful son was missing in the second image. Probably off grumbling and pouting, I decided, as older know-it-all siblings were wont to do. Only the father, welcoming the boy with open arms, forgiving him, preparing the feast. I couldn’t help but wonder what that kind of love felt like, that kind of acceptance…

  I shook my head clear. This wasn’t my personal saga. This was another family’s story, and I could not trespass.

  The colors of all three were clear and clean, in stark contrast to the drippy cramped chapel, with its creaky benches and moist cloistered air. I ran a finger along the glass—it was smooth, covered by only a light layer of dust. And then I understood. The windows were new, unlike the rest of the chapel. Not original, a reproduction. I peered at the writing underneath, an inscription in Latin that was a separate window in its own right, making four overall. I didn’t know Latin, but I did catch a familiar Domini in the phrasing. I got a pen and scribbled the sentence down on the back of my hand.

  Trey remained engrossed in his phone conversation. “They did call in an archaeological team, but until the authorities release the scene…No, I don’t know. I won’t know until we’ve completed our interviews. We’re waiting on the detective.” He checked his watch. “At least four hours, that’s my best guess. Because it’s a crime scene now, and…Marisa? Are you still there?”

  I sympathized with his frustration. Already behind schedule, he was trapped in the Kennesaw boondocks until he was officially interviewed—yet again—about a suspicious incident involving me—yet again.

  Trey shook his head. “Because it’s clearly not a historical interment. Because the skull was…” He lowered the phone. “Tai, what was the word?”

  “Grotty.”

  “Not your word, their word.”

  “Putrescent.”

  “Putrescent,” Trey repeated. “Which means it’s now a suspicious death investigation. Because we’re witnesses. No, not like that. Nonetheless.”

  He listened while Marisa continued her diatribe. She was a woman like a Valkyrie, with platinum hair and an imposing figure that reminded me of the prow of a ship, and she had Agendas. But Trey was patient, I had to give him that. Outside I heard the grind and pop of tires on gravel. A new car arriving. I crossed my fingers that it was our highly awaited detective.

  Trey resumed pacing. “I saw Mrs. Amberdecker, but haven’t spoken with her. Tai talked to her. Briefly. She was held at gunpoint, equally briefly. No, Mrs. Amberdecker had the gun on Tai. A twelve-gauge shotgun…No, I can’t say I’ve ever contemplated such.”

  He slid a glance my way, and I was surprised to see a sparkle in his eyes. I smiled and held up a middle finger. For the Boss Lady, I mouthed.

  He looked away quickly. “What was that? Oh. Certainly. I’ll finish up tonight. Of course. Goodbye.”

  He returned his phone to his jacket pocket. With a roof over his head, he was in a better mood. In fact, he was in a damn fine mood considering.

>   “Marisa giving you trouble?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No. She is a bit…baffled, however. She says you’re cursed. Her word. She says I should get a voodoo charm to protect myself.”

  “She’s so sweet.” I sat on the bench and patted the hard wood. “Sit.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “Sit.”

  He sat. The rain-spackled Armani was a little worse for wear, but Trey himself was cool and collected. Not a single hint of hypervigilant paranoia, powder-keg frustration, or control freak shutdown. His expression was placid, no sign of the worrywart wrinkle between his eyes.

  I frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Because we’re trapped in the hinterlands, waiting on cops to quiz us. Because there have been shotguns and tornadoes and grumpy old men, and there’s no good cell phone coverage and Marisa is annoyed and—oh, yeah—there’s this skull. And you have yet to deliver a single grumpy I-told-you-so speech about any of it.”

  “Why would I? You were asked to help, and you said yes. The complications arising from that decision were entirely unforeseeable.”

  “So that’s what annoys you? When I get into trouble that I should have seen coming?

  “It’s not about predictability, per se. It’s…” He glanced over my shoulder to the front door. “Never mind. The detective is here.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Trey stood, buttoning his jacket as he did. I stood too, and the slab of a front door creaked open and a woman bustled inside. She tussled with her umbrella at the threshold, muttering under her breath for a full thirty seconds before giving up and abandoning it on the flagstone path outside. She stamped the water from her feet, then pulled back her rain hood. A cloud of dark brown ringlets fell to her shoulders, kinking and frizzing around her hairline. She smiled—lots of white teeth, like a toothpaste ad—but I couldn’t stop staring at her rain boots. Bright purple. With flagrant daisies.