by David Martin
“Well, we can continue talking the rest of the night about what we might find, what it’ll mean, whether we should even be here, what our alternatives are — or we can simply do it.”
“Right. I guess I just start digging, huh?”
“Yes.”
The project turns out to be nothing at all like it is shown in the movies, where graves are dug up in the middle of the night with seemingly little effort, the dirt loose and sandy, in one scene the digging is started and then in the next scene the gravedigger is at the bottom of a neatly rectangular six-foot hole, his shovel blade hitting dramatically against the coffin.
Lyon soon discovers that the reality of opening a grave is brutally hard work, jumping on the shovel to get the blade in and then struggling to wrest free a clump of dry clay soil. After a half an hour of it Lyon is exhausted, totally soaked through with sweat, and discouraged by what he has created, a roughly oblong hole about the size of a bathtub and barely a foot deep. Now he knows why he was needed for this project.
The flashlight Claire is holding for him is going yellow. Lyon rests there in his modest hole as the sounds of a school band drift up from the field far below. He looks around, the large trees and well-kept grounds striking him as peaceful rather than scary.
Claire suggests that he had better start digging again, he still has a long way to go.
Muttering, Lyon shovels, using the pick when that becomes necessary, coming across tree roots that he has to cut out with the axe, shoveling some more, discovering at one point that he has piled the dirt too close to the hole, disheartened when a bushel of that dirt falls into the hole and he has to take it out a second time. He digs and sweats and rests and digs. Claire takes over for a while but Lyon is frustrated watching her bring out only a handful or two of dirt with each trip of the shovel. He gets back in the hole and digs some more.
Lyon is waist deep into the ground when he tells Claire that at this rate it’s going to take him all night to reach the coffin. “And speaking of coffins, I never did find that little white one your grandmother gave me. She said as long as I kept it in my possession, Quinndell couldn’t hurt me.”
“I took care of it.”
“How so?”
“Just dig, John — this town has eyes.”
He somehow knows what she means by that, Lyon resuming the digging, grumbling and digging, expanding the hole’s perimeter, throwing dirt up and over the pile that threatens to slide again into the hole, shoveling and picking, back muscles tightening, going deeper, finding rocks that have to be dug around and then pried loose with the crowbar and lifted up over the edge, Lyon unaccustomed to prolonged physical labor, digging and finally resting in a hole that is now chest deep.
Claire is sitting on the ground, leaning back against the infant’s headstone, occasionally hitting the flashlight in an attempt to jar some life into its failing beam.
Leaning on the shovel, Lyon says, “You always read that murder victims are found in ‘shallow graves.’ I know why that is now — because the murderers get too goddamn tired to dig a deep grave, that’s why. I mean, if we were burying someone tonight instead of digging someone up, I would’ve stopped a long time ago. Push the body in, kick some dirt over it, go home and have a drink. Enough of this shit.”
“More digging, less talk, John.”
He goes back to it, eventually finding himself in a hole over his head. When the shovel hits against something hard, Lyon thinks it’s another rock, but as he digs away more dirt he realizes he has uncovered the domed top of a small brass coffin.
“Claire!”
She peers in over the top of the hole.
“Give me the flashlight.”
“You found it?” she asks.
“Yes! It’s set in some kind of form, I’ll need the crowbar too.”
She passes down the crowbar and the flashlight, telling Lyon that the batteries are almost shot.
He continues digging and prying, handing debris up to Claire, finally exposing enough of the coffin that he should be able to pry it open.
“I’ll have to smash off the latches.”
When she realizes he’s hesitating, Claire tells him, “Go on, John, you can’t hurt that baby anymore.”
“Yeah.” He pounds the latches until they break, working the edge of the crowbar under the lid, prying and grunting and straining until he feels something like a sigh: the lid giving. “This will be the second coffin I’ve opened in the past three days, I don’t know if I want to —” Hearing a brief commotion overhead, Lyon grabs the flashlight and shines its yellow beam upward, seeing nothing. “Claire?” No answer. She couldn’t have left him again, not now.
Finish this business with the coffin first, he tells himself, getting his fingers under the edge of the lid and lifting slowly, holding his face back, excited and curious and scared all at the same time, Lyon’s heart bass-drumming as he opens the lid enough to shine some light in.
“Claire! Do you see this? Claire!”
Still holding the coffin lid open with one hand, Lyon is looking up when a brilliant light fills the grave, blinding him. He thinks Claire has found another flashlight somewhere — but why is she shining it right in his eyes?
“Claire?”
And why doesn’t she answer him? Damn her anyway.
“CLAIRE!”
Then something reaches down into that grave and grabs Lyon by the collar of his shirt.
CHAPTER 33
He is hauled up out of the hole, dragged over piles of dirt, and deposited facedown on the grass with his shirt ripped open and half the buttons torn off.
Held to the ground with a boot on his back, Lyon is staring at Claire’s bare black feet. She’s on tiptoes.
“Har … har … asshole.”
Then Carl removes the boot from Lyon’s back and kicks him in the ribs, getting him to turn over. The deputy is holding a huge flashlight in one hand, his other fat arm tight across Claire’s neck, keeping her up on her toes, Claire’s eyes white with fear.
When Lyon asks her if she’s all right, Carl tells him to shut up, shining the light in his eyes, blinding him.
“Goddamn it, Carl, you have no idea the trouble you’re causing for yourself. I got that coffin opened! Tomorrow morning this place is going to be crawling with reporters, I’ll have lawyers all over your fat ass —”
Carl kicks him hard in the stomach and then sniggers.
Lyon is back over on his hands and knees, trying to get his breath, waiting to find out if he’s going to vomit. He feels impotent, threatening Carl with reporters and lawyers. He should stand up and knock the fat man on his ass, that’s what he should do.
“Doc was right all along about this nigger girl being with you. Doc’s always right,” Carl says, shaking Claire back and forth like a rag doll. “Now I’m taking the two of you over to his place. Start walking to my car, asshole.” He nudges Lyon with the toe of his boot.
Lyon finally struggles to his feet and puts one hand in front of his eyes, trying to shade them from the blinding beam of Carl’s flashlight.
“John,” Claire says with a strangled voice, “don’t let him take me there, please.”
“All right, Carl, let her go.”
The deputy backhands him, delivering the blow casually, the way he might strike a woman. Blinded by the light, however, Lyon didn’t see the blow coming and the surprise of it causes him to drop back to his knees.
“Get up, pussy boy!” Then Carl increases the pressure on Claire’s neck, causing her to choke.
Remembering the Pomeranian’s attack, Lyon grabs for one of Carl’s legs, hugging it with both arms, Carl trying to kick free as Lyon starts biting the man’s massive calf muscle.
“Son of a bitch!” Keeping Claire in that choke hold, Carl begins beating on Lyon with the flashlight.
But Lyon holds on, still biting even though the heavy flashlight has opened wounds on his head, Lyon feeling the blood warm and sticky as it flows over his scalp.
; Claire manages to slip out from under Carl’s arm but he immediately grabs her by the hair. He keeps beating on Lyon until the flashlight’s lense shatters, extinguishing the light. He tosses it away and draws his revolver.
“No!” Claire screams.
Lyon turns loose of Carl’s leg and looks up. Even in this darkness, he can make out the tiny black O of the muzzle’s mouth.
“If it wasn’t for Doc wanting the both of you,” Carl grunts, “I’d blow you away right here. And I might do it anyway, asshole, so get moving.”
The deputy’s pudgy fingers are buried in Claire’s hair, keeping her well away from Lyon.
“Move!”
Not seeing that he has a choice, Lyon stands and begins walking up the hill toward the cemetery’s entrance.
Claire is trailing the deputy at arm’s length, being pulled along by her hair. “My God,” she says, “it’s my grandmother!”
Carl and Lyon both stop.
“My grandmother! Over there by her grave, she’s wearing her nurse’s uniform — can’t you see her?”
Lyon looks where Claire is pointing. “There is someone!” he says, trying to reinforce what he takes to be Claire’s effort to distract and frighten the deputy.
But Carl just laughs. “Doc believes in that voodoo shit, not me.” Then he jerks violently on Claire while keeping the revolver pointed in Lyon’s direction.
Still looking toward the grave, Lyon sees what appears to be a shooting star traveling the wrong way, shooting from the ground into the sky. “Jesus,” he whispers.
Just then a massive explosion high over their heads lights up the cemetery in a brilliant red. All three of them duck. Then another explosion, this one blue, followed by a series of white-bright detonations so loud that the three of them bend instinctively into crouches as all around them rain sparks and then burning chunks of paper and cardboard and wood.
Before anyone can speak, there’s another explosion, a blinding white light just ahead of a concussion that causes a piercing pain in their eardrums.
Carl tries to order Lyon to run for the patrol car but a quick series of overhead detonations leaves all three of them disoriented, blue and green and red sparks hitting the ground around them, one flaming chunk landing just a few feet in front of Lyon and then burning there like a small campfire.
This is why the cemetery was closed off. The town of Hameln is surrounded by high hills well-populated with houses and trailers. When fireworks are launched from the valley floor they are aimed up at the cemetery where the burning debris can fall without endangering anyone’s property.
After a brief pause the explosions resume, more than they can keep track of, rockets and starbursts and those white-bright detonations that hurt their ears and shake their flesh, each explosion producing the relatively harmless shower of sparks and then the more dangerous debris, some of it aflame and some of it merely charred, falling with heavy thuds all over the cemetery.
Although Carl is no longer pointing his pistol at Lyon, the deputy still has Claire by the hair, jerking her around with him as he steps back and forth in a futile effort to keep away from what’s raining on both of them.
Lyon jumps Carl. He hasn’t planned this attack, operating on instinct as he puts his arms around that fat neck, trying to bulldog the deputy to the ground, but of course Lyon weighs half of what Carl does and the two of them end up dancing in a tight circle, Lyon holding on to Carl the way a child might, flaming pieces of cardboard landing on both of them, the deputy finally falling backward on his ass but then managing to roll over on Lyon, trapping him beneath his suffocating bulk.
“Told you I was going to fuck you!” Carl screams, pressing more of his weight onto Lyon, who can’t breathe, who can’t even get enough air to speak, to surrender.
But then the deputy realizes that in the confusion of Lyon’s attack, Claire has escaped. Carl raises up in time to see her running away, Claire’s flight across the cemetery illuminated by a brilliant overhead display of red and blue starbursts.
Driving through the streets of Hameln, Carl is grim. “Doc is going to be pissed I ain’t bringing in your girlfriend, and it’s all your fault. I hope he kills you real slow.”
Bruised and burned, exhausted, his clothes torn, handcuffed, Lyon is behind the wire mesh in the backseat of the patrol car. “What you should do, Carl, is just keep driving. Take me to the nearest state police office. Turn yourself in. If you agree to testify against Quinndell they’ll go easy on you. I opened that coffin. Do you know what I found — or is Quinndell keeping you in the dark about that?”
But Carl’s not listening. “He was going to pay me twenty-five thousand dollars to bring the two of you in, now what am I getting, jack-shit, that’s what.”
Lyon can’t resist the cliché: “You won’t get away with this.”
“Doc’s been getting away with it for years.” He pulls into the driveway to the side of Quinndell’s house. “And now you got an appointment with Mr. Gigli.”
“Who?”
The deputy laughs.
CHAPTER 34
“You smell of dirt, Mr. Lyon. Of the grave.”
Still handcuffed, Lyon is standing in Dr. Quinndell’s darkened office. Carl has been sent out on another assignment, something to do with that hermit, Randolph Welby, and Lyon feels oddly confident, being left here alone with the doctor. Even if those double doors are locked, Lyon thinks he can probably kick them open or go through a window. How difficult can it be, escaping from a blind man?
“Where’s your friend?” Quinndell asks casually. “Her name is also Claire, right? Named after her grandmother.”
“Yes.”
“I knew the family. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Claire, though — your Claire. On this visit she’s been terribly elusive, hasn’t she? Sheriff Stone couldn’t find her and now he’s turned up missing. Carl couldn’t find her when he first went out to the cabin and then tonight, when he finally met up with the two of you, she escaped. The deputy has his uses but he is a bumbler. I’m hoping you can tell me where Claire escaped to, Mr. Lyon.”
“It’s all over, Quinndell. We dug up one of those graves tonight. I got the coffin open.”
The doctor waits a moment in the darkness before speaking, his voice smoothly unperturbed. “And found it empty.”
“What did you do with the bodies?” Lyon asks quickly.
Quinndell chuckles. “Sent them to a far, far better place, Mr. Lyon — I promise you. I’ll tell you all about it, but in exchange you must tell me where Claire is hiding.”
“Go to hell.”
“Undoubtedly. By the way, that grave will be filled in by morning. No one the wiser.”
“Bullshit! I’ll have the network down here tomorrow, the FBI, the fucking National Guard if it comes to that. We’ll have all eighteen of those graves opened.”
“Twenty.”
“What?”
“There are twenty empty coffins in that cemetery, not eighteen. Nurse Cept’s investigation missed two.”
In the darkness Lyon finds an overstuffed chair and collapses into it, groaning.
“Rough night?”
“I don’t care if you tell me what you did with those children, Quinndell, because it’s all going to come out in the morning.”
“I think not.”
When the lights in the office come on, Lyon sees the doctor standing behind his big desk, Quinndell again dressed in a dark and expensively cut suit, wearing a brilliantly white shirt, a hundred-dollar tie — looking like a Wall Street investor. No, more elegant than that, more like a handsome English lord with a superior sense of himself. Lyon, meanwhile, looks nothing at all like someone who once had the nickname His Lordship, because now his shirt is completely unbuttoned, torn and charred, his belly exposed, shoes caked with dirt, pants filthy, his mouth swollen and painful from where Carl backhanded him, both hands blistered, dried blood all over his head from the beating he received with that flashlight.
“Do you
have your frog with you this time?” Quinndell asks, speaking softly.
“I’ll fucking walk out of here anytime I want.” He looks down at his hands in his lap. “If you think these cuffs are going to stop me —”
“How do you plan on reporting this story? Aren’t you worried about sobbing on camera again? You really should have your doctor run some tests, John. Inexplicable and uncontrollable bursts of emotion could be indicative of parkinsonism dementia. How old are you?”
“Fuck you, Quinndell.”
“Such language.” The doctor takes a handkerchief from his suitcoat pocket and dabs at the tears weeping from around his glass eyes. “Let’s begin, shall we? I’ll tell you my story and then, in return, you tell me where Claire is hiding.”
“Go to hell.”
“Yes … well then.” The doctor straightens up. “I began arranging adoptions about twenty-five years ago. As I explained to you, I’d always had certain patients I handled on a gratis basis, girls who were pregnant and unmarried, some of them as young as fourteen. If they chose to give up their babies, I helped make the arrangements and in the course of this I became associated with certain attorneys who specialized in private adoptions.
“It wasn’t until fifteen years ago, however, that I was contacted by attorneys who arranged private adoptions for very wealthy clients. Suddenly I was being offered fees of fifteen or twenty thousand dollars for healthy, white babies. Naturally I put the word out, not only among my patients but to anyone who was pregnant but who couldn’t care for her child or anyone who knew of such a person. Bring me children, that became my motto.”
Lyon laughs.
“You laugh in ignorance, Mr. Lyon. Are you married? Do you have children?” Quinndell waits a moment before realizing that Lyon isn’t going to answer his questions. “Have you ever wanted children? Have you ever had a child you didn’t want, couldn’t afford to care for? Have you ever done any research into this field? And yet you laugh because I say Bring me children was my motto?” The doctor is shaking his head. Then he points toward a photograph on the wall, a framed photograph showing Quinndell surrounded by his pediatric patients holding a homemade banner. “Do you see the photograph I’m pointing to, Mr. Lyon. See what it says on that banner. Bring Me Children. Mothers were happy to bring me their children as patients. And do you know something else? The women who brought me their children so I could arrange for their adoptions, they were grateful. Mothers on welfare burdened with one more unwanted pregnancy, teenage girls facing the prospect of quitting school and embarking on wretched lives, they would thank me for taking their babies out of poverty and delivering them instead to loving couples who wanted children on whom to lavish love and material wealth.