Death & the Gravedigger's Angel

by Loretta Ross

  “Well, while I’ll admit I’m not too clear on the legalities of researching a property on a single warrant, I do know that the warrant didn’t cover this house, and that, even if it had, you wouldn’t be authorized to execute it. So go away or I’ll execute you.”

  The man with Eric drew himself up to his full height and deliberately stepped into her personal space. “Woman, we’re coming in. Now step aside.”

  “No. You’re not.” She turned back to Farrington. “Who the hell is this anyway?”

  “That’s Tyler Jones.” It was Robin who answered her. “The religious guy? The, uh, murdered guy’s father? I’ve seen him on TV.”

  “Oh.” Wren looked at the man again, with sympathy this time, expecting to see grief under his anger. “I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t know what Eric has told you, but this is private property and there’s nothing here that has anything to do with your son’s death.”

  “We’re looking for the victim’s cell phone,” Eric said.

  “1 Corinthians 11:3!” Jones said. “Step aside!”

  Wren blinked and frowned at him, confused. “What?”

  “1 Corinthians 11:3!”

  Robin looked it up on his phone. “He said because he’s a man and you’re a woman, that he’s the boss of you.”

  Wren frowned. “That isn’t the way it works around here. Goodbye.” She tried to close the door, but he blocked it open with his foot. He thumbed through the Bible and found a page.

  “Matthew 16:23!”

  Robin sneered. “You had to look that up?”

  “Even I know that one,” Wren said. “And I am not Satan and I will not get behind you.”

  Jones leafed through the Bible once more. “Deuteronomy 22:5, you besom!”

  “Besom?” Wren cocked an eyebrow at him. “Did you just call me a broom?”

  Robin was searching the reference. “He said you’re an abomination unto the Lord because you’re wearing men’s clothes.”

  Wren glanced down at herself. She was wearing one of Death’s old USMC T-shirts over a pair of faded jeans. She snickered in spite of herself. “Yeah, I bet that’s what Madeline thought when I ran into her this morning.”

  Jones had gone back to his holy book.

  “Ezekiel 16:17!”

  Robin Googled it. “He said you’re a hooker and you’re wearing his jewelry.”

  “Now, look,” Wren said, “I sympathize with the loss of your son, and I’m cutting you a lot of slack because of that. But this property has already been searched by the authorities.”

  “They didn’t search inside the house,” Eric Farrington piped up.

  “That’s because they searched outside the house the morning the dead man was found on the trail and they were able to determine that no one had been inside for years. There is nothing in this building that either of you need to see. This is private property. You have no business here and you need to leave.”

  “Leviticus 15:19.”

  Robin looked it up and blushed. “He said that you’re, erm, unclean because you’re on your period.”

  Wren pointed a stern finger at Jones. “Mister, you’re crossing lines that you do not want to cross.”

  Tyler Jones searched through his Bible again, finding his passage and marking it with his finger. “Defy me, a servant of the Lord, thou harlot, and thee shall be as Jezebel in 2 Kings 9:33-37.”

  Wren looked expectantly to Robin, who was already manipulating his phone. He looked back at her.

  “He said he wants you to get thrown off a wall, trampled by horses, and eaten by dogs.”

  Wren gasped and glowered at him. “Well now. That’s just not very nice!” She pulled out her own phone and selected a name from her contacts list. “You asked for this,” she told Jones sternly. “Hello, Doris? Tyler Jones is here. He’s trying to get in the house. I told him he can’t come in and now he’s scripturing at me. He called me an abomination and said he wanted me Jezebeled!”

  She listened for a second and looked up with a glint in her eye. “She says Matthew 12:34.”

  Jones eyes widened. He scowled ferociously at Wren and consulted the Bible.

  Robin was already searching it. “She said he and his people are a nest of vipers and evil and that they can’t say anything good because their hearts are full of bad stuff.”

  “1 Timothy 2:11-12,” Jones said.

  “Doris? He said 1 Timothy 2—wait. What?”

  “11-12,” Jones repeated.

  “11-12. 2:11-12.”

  “He told her to shut up and not argue with a man,” Robin offered.

  “Doris says Job 19:17-19.”

  Jones’ complexion darkened and he rifled his pages with furious haste.

  “She says he’s got bad breath and no one can stand to be around him.”

  “Zephania 3:1.” Jones was almost shouting now.

  “Zephania 3:1,” Wren echoed.

  “Hey!” Robin, who was getting fast with the Google, snarled at Jones. “Don’t you call my grandma filthy and polluted!”

  “Doris says Judges 3:21.”

  Robin searched it and blinked. “I think she just threatened to stab him in the stomach and make him poop his pants!”

  “Revelations 17:1-5!”

  “He called her the Whore of Babylon.”

  “Deuteronomy 23:1.” As quickly as Doris was shooting back the Bible verses, there was no way she wasn’t doing this from memory. Even Wren, who’d known the older woman for years, was impressed.

  Jones shook with rage. His dark eyes bored into Wren with an intensity that made her think of comic book villains shooting flames with the power of their minds. He turned back to his own book with a grim fury.

  “She said he can’t go to Heaven because he doesn’t have any balls,” Robin reported, a trace of awe in his voice.

  “Revelation 14:11,” Jones spat.

  “He told her to go to hell.”

  Wren repeated Jones’ verse, then relayed Doris’ response. “Genesis 38:9.”

  “Grandma!” Robin yelped when he’d looked it up.

  “What did she say?”

  “I can’t tell you! I’d get my mouth washed out.”

  “Revelation 21:8!”

  “Doris? He says Revelation 21:8.”

  “He just told her to go to hell again,” Robin said. “I think he’s running out of stuff.”

  “Exodus 9:15. Doris says Exodus 9:15.”

  Jones consulted his Bible. “Ha,” he said. “As if I fear that.”

  “She said that she’s gonna smite him for his wickedness,” Robin explained when he’d looked it up.

  Wren waved her hand like a schoolchild seeking permission to speak.

  Jones glared at her. “What?”

  She pointed behind him. He and Eric Farrington turned around slowly.

  Leona Keystone was standing on the porch behind them with a baseball bat.

  She tapped the tip of the bat on the doorframe beside Eric’s head, not hard, just a couple of light knocks, and his ruddy cheeks paled to the color of milk. He stumbled back, making a wide circle around her.

  “You can’t scare me,” he said in a choked whisper. “I’m the law around here.”

  “Boo!” Leona said.

  Eric turned, fell off the porch, picked himself up, and ran away. They stood for a minute, watching him climb the fence rather than take time to wrestle the gate open, tumble to the ground again, and hare off down the path between the lilacs.

  Leona turned back to Jones. “You see that little man run away?” she asked. “He’s not always as stupid as he looks.”

  Jones pulled himself up to his full height, a gaunt scarecrow of a man towering over her and glaring down balefully. “Get thee to a nunnery!”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Wren objected. “That’s not from the Bible. That’s Shakespeare. You can’t switch from the Bible to Shakespeare just because you’re losing.”

  “I’ll see your Shakespeare and raise you Oppenheimer,” Leon
a told him.

  Jones blinked. “Who?”

  She tapped the barrel of the bat on the palm of her left hand. “I am become Death,” she said, “the Destroyer of Worlds.”

  The self-proclaimed prophet opened his mouth and closed it several times but nothing came out.

  “I think the grandmas broke him,” Robin whispered to Wren.

  Tyler Jones pulled himself up with great dignity. “It does not do for the righteous to remain in the presence of the wicked and unholy,” he announced. He turned and marched away. They watched him leave.

  “I should start carrying my atlatl,” Wren said drily. She turned back to the phone. “Doris? He’s gone now. Thanks!” She listened for a minute. “Okay. I’ll tell her. Bye!”

  She turned the phone off and tucked it away. “Doris is going to call Chief Reynolds and talk to him about this. I have a feeling Eric’s going to be in trouble. Oh, and she wants you to pick her up a sweet tea on your way back.”

  “I was going to anyway,” Leona said. She smiled at the autumn yard, balanced the baseball bat across her shoulders like a slugger stretching before an at-bat, and leaned back against the wall. “We always have made a good team, me and Doris. She calls down Heaven and I raise Hell.”

  ten

  “Have you ever ridden a horse before?”

  “I saw the Clydesdales in a parade once. Does that count?”

  Kurt Robinson snickered. “Not exactly.” Taking hold of the saddle horn, he swung his leg over Sugar’s back and dismounted. “Here. Climb up here and I’ll give you a riding lesson.”

  Death backed up a couple of steps. “Actually, I just need to talk to you.”

  Robinson sighed. “I know. We can talk while you ride.”

  “Why do you want me to sit on your horse? And have you asked the horse how he feels about it?”

  “Sugar doesn’t mind. He’s a good guy. Riding is good therapy. It can help you with trust and confidence issues, develop muscles … it’s just a good thing.” The Army vet ran one hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “Look, man. This is what I do. I don’t know what else to do now.”

  And Death had been there, that point where you don’t know what the hell to do, so you do the only thing you know. He reached out one hand and tentatively petted the big gray horse on its nose. It nuzzled him, turning its head to press its forehead against his palm.

  He took a breath and stepped forward. “Okay, so how do I get on this thing?”

  “You’re on the left side, so that’s okay. You always mount a horse from the left. Gather the reins in your left hand, grab the saddle horn, put your left foot in the stirrup, and swing yourself up.”

  Death gathered the reins and grabbed the saddle horn as instructed. He was a tall man, but even so the stirrup was knee-high and it was awkward getting his foot up. He got his foot in it and hopped around on his right foot, trying to find his balance and get into a good position to haul himself up.

  Robinson steadied him with a hand on his back. “If you’re having trouble, you can climb the fence and mount or we can get you something else to stand on. We deal with a lot of people with a lot of physical challenges. There are ways to work around them.”

  “I’m not physically challenged,” Death huffed, out of breath.

  “Sure you’re not.”

  Death glowered at the other man, took as deep a breath as he was able, and hauled himself up. He paused, standing with his left foot in the stirrup and leaning over Sugar’s back, until he caught his breath again, then shifted his body around and got his right leg over so that he was sitting up in the saddle.

  “See?”

  Robinson walked around the horse and put Death’s right foot into the other stirrup.

  “Good job,” he said. “You can let up the death-grip on that saddle horn any time now.”

  “Ha, ha.” Death relaxed his grip on the saddle horn and sat back in the saddle, feeling out his balance. When he felt marginally secure, he released the saddle horn and sat there holding the bunched reins and feeling vulnerable and stupid. “Now what do I do?”

  “Just relax. Hold the reins loosely in your left hand. I’m going to walk him around a bit so you can get the feeling for motion.”

  Death tensed up, gripping the reins tighter and holding the horse with his knees. “I don’t think he likes me sitting on him. I wouldn’t like him sitting on me. Probably I should get down now and give him a break.”

  “Don’t worry. If he didn’t want you riding him, you’d be on your ass in the dust by now.” Robinson smacked Death’s leg with the back of his hand. “Relax.”

  He took hold of Sugar’s bridle and got him moving slowly around the yard. The big animal made for a rocking platform, moving with a gentle rhythm that reminded Death of being on board a ship. He did begin to relax then, settling into the rhythm.

  “See? I told you. That’s not so bad now, is it?”

  “Nobody likes someone who goes around saying ‘I told you so.’”

  “That doesn’t make me wrong. It just makes me unpopular.”

  Death rode along in silence for a few yards. “I need you to tell me about Dexter Wallace,” he said finally.

  Robinson’s shoulders tensed. “I don’t know anything,” he said.

  “You gotta know something. He’s one of your best friends, right? Driving around with a guy who’s about to get murdered. That’s the kind of thing that best friends tend to gossip about.”

  “Dex wouldn’t kill anybody!”

  “That’s what you said about Tony.”

  “Neither of them would! Look, I know Dex looks like this big bad biker dude, but he’s just a giant teddy bear. He has a family. He’s got a three-year-old daughter who has him wrapped around her little pinky finger.”

  “Man, just stop, all right? Just stop walking for a minute and turn around and look at me.”

  Robinson stopped the horse and half turned to shoot Death a resentful glare.

  “Where’s Dex now?” Death asked.

  “In police custody. They picked him up at home and took him in for questioning.”

  “When did you find out that he was the one who drove Jones out here on the morning of the murder?”

  “When the police showed up again today, looking for him. I didn’t know. I swear to you. What I think … I think he didn’t even know who Jones was. Just some guy who asked him for a ride. Dex would do that. Give a ride to a stranger, I mean. It doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the guy winding up dead.”

  Death sighed. “I’m on your side, okay? I’m trying to help you. But I can’t do that if you’re not going to level with me.”

  “I am levelling with you!”

  “No, you’re not. You’re being honest when you say that you don’t think he even knew who Jones was and that Dex would give a stranger a ride. But you’re lying when you say that the first you heard of it is from the police today.”

  “I swear—”

  “Don’t. Okay? Just don’t. Don’t lie to me and swear you’re telling the truth. There are tells. When someone is remembering something, they look to their left and down. When they’re trying to remember something, they look to their left and up. When they’re telling something from their imagination, a story or a lie, they look down and to the right.”

  Robinson sighed and deflated.

  “I want to help you,” Death said again. “I just need you to level with me. If you’re really not involved and you really believe your friends are not involved, then tell me what you know so I can try to figure out what did happen.”

  Robinson turned away, shook the horse’s bridle, and started leading him toward the trees. Death considered the questionable wisdom of calling someone a liar while they were controlling the large, unpredictable animal you were sitting on.

  There was a picnic table under the trees at the edge of the woods and Robinson drew to a stop. He took the reins from Death and looped them loosely over a branch.

  “Can you get down
on your own or do you need help?”

  “I can do it,” Death said. He grabbed the saddle horn in both hands again, stood in the left stirrup, and awkwardly pulled his right leg up and over Sugar’s back. He lowered himself until he was leaning against the horse’s side with his right toes touching the ground and his left foot still stuck in the stirrup, and then faltered, trying to catch his balance and figure out how to get his foot loose.

  Robinson came up behind him and caught him, supporting him and slipping the stirrup off.

  “You know,” he said conversationally, “falling actually isn’t the most efficient way to dismount.”

  “You hush.” Death went over to the picnic table and dropped gratefully into the inanimate seat. Robinson took the bench across from him and the two men regarded one another over the expanse of wood.

  “So tell me about Dexter. What happened? Really?”

  “What I said, mostly.” Robinson put his elbows on the table and leaned his head in his hands. “Zahra was a Muslim. They lived up in the city and she belonged to a mosque there, but they spent a lot of time down here after Tony got out of the hospital, and when she died, this is where he wanted her buried. I don’t know how much you know about Muslim funeral customs?”

  “A little,” Death said. “Burial is supposed to take place before the following sundown, right? And don’t they take place outdoors?”

  “Yeah. There are other details, but mostly it consists of prayer. Not really that different from Christian ceremonies, I think. You pray for the dead and you pray for the living. Anyway, the main thing is the time constraint. Zahra was killed at night. She was on her way home from some kind of candle party or something and she got broadsided by a drunk driver. Tony was falling apart. Dex and I got with her imam and contacted the local churches in this area and cobbled together a plan.

  “The members of her mosque met up in the city that morning and prepared her body for burial, then we transported it down here, to the Episcopal Church because it’s the closest to the city cemetery. We had a Christian memorial service there in the afternoon, then the pallbearers carried her up the street to the cemetery just before sundown and the funeral took place there.”

  “That sounds like a reasonable plan.”