Maybe there was something to the “exposure therapy” that Paula had referenced. Whatever the reason, Gin was glad she hadn’t let the incident with the intruder put her off the case. Here in the sunshine and balmy weather, the scent of fresh-cut grass mixing with blooming jasmine and lilies, it was almost impossible to believe anything threatened her or her family.
Gin had planned to stop in the office to find out the location of Gluck’s grave, but when she drove through the gates she spotted a county cruiser parked on the lower, newer area of the cemetery. Standing nearby were four men, two of them wearing orange vests.
As she came closer she saw that one of them was Bruce. He was talking to a man in a suit, ignoring the two men in vests a few paces away. One of the men had his hand on a large sheet of plywood, holding it upright, and the other held the handles of two shovels.
“Ah, there she is,” Bruce said. “None other than the doc herself. Gin, this is Mel Pinkston, he’s in charge around here. Mel, this is Dr. Gin Sullivan.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the man said, shaking her hand gently, as though she were delicate. “My official title is actually Managing Director of East Riverton Cemetery. We are, of course, extremely distressed at the possibility of any disturbance of an interment space.”
“That’s what they call graves here,” Bruce said.
“I … believe I would have figured that out.”
“So, this is it,” Bruce said, pointing at the ground behind him, where there was an unplanted area of dirt roughly ten by four feet, at the edges of which a few weeds had sprouted. A small metal marker had been installed flat on the ground, but there was no headstone. “Mel here says that if we’d come two weeks from now, it would have been sodded over.”
“Should have happened already,” Pinkston said anxiously, looking around as though he expected someone to come out of nowhere to complain. “But the thaw came so late this year, we’re behind. At this rate we won’t be caught up until the fourth of July.”
“So a winter burial means the plot stays like this—raw dirt—until conditions are warm enough for planting?” Gin asked.
“Yes. And it’s even worse than that. In a bad winter, like the one we just had, the ground freezes solid to a depth of four feet or more. Used to be we couldn’t dig at all until spring, and we had to keep the bodies in the receiving vault until after the thaw. You can use a jackhammer hooked up to an air compressor, but it still takes a really long time to get down through the frost. A few years ago we invested in frost teeth for the backhoe—it’s like a big two-tined fork that breaks up the dirt—but they came out with something this year that’s really made a difference. It’s a large warming blanket that you hook up to a generator—leave it overnight and the next day the ground’s soft enough to dig. It adds to the price, of course, but if a family chooses it, as in Mr. Gluck’s case, we do our best to accommodate their wishes.” He cast a respectful glance at the grave. “We find that our families appreciate it. They don’t like to think about their loved one waiting.”
“Like purgatory!” Bruce said. “Right? Neither heaven or Hell.”
Pinkston frowned but said nothing to contradict Bruce. “Shall I have the gentlemen begin?”
“They’re just using shovels?” Bruce said dubiously. “Isn’t that going to take forever? Can’t you use a bobcat or something?”
Pinkston tented his hands and managed to look even more serious. “The soil depth is not actually as great as you might assume. The days of digging ‘six feet deep’ are long gone—today’s burial vaults are strong enough to withstand a great deal of weight, and don’t shift under the soil, so there’s no need to go that far.”
“Burial vault?” Bruce echoed.
“It’s an outer chamber for the casket,” Gin explained. “Generally they’re made of concrete or fiberglass. Their use is why you don’t see depressions in the soil where the earth has caved into the casket, like you sometimes see with older graves.”
“And, of course, they offer additional security for the casket, creating a sealed environment that is resistant to the elements.”
“No shit? Nice. Okay, let’s get moving.”
Pinkston signaled the workmen. One laid the sheet of plywood next to the grave, while the other began digging, piling the dirt on the plywood. He’d only moved a few shovels full of dirt, however, when the shovel’s blade plunged deep into the soil, as if it were loose grains of sand rather than densely packed earth. Even stranger, the soil began to cave in on itself, as though there were a hollow space underneath.
“What the … hang on there, George,” Pinkston said. “Can you see what’s down there?”
The larger of the two men knelt next to the hole and used a hand spade from his tool belt to widen the hole until it was roughly a foot across, opening into … blackness.
“What the fuck is going on?” Bruce demanded. “Anyone have a flashlight?”
“I have one in the shed,” the other man volunteered.
“Why don’t you go get it, Angelo,” Pinkston said. “Detective, doctor, I must ask you to stay back until we figure out what is going on here. We can’t have you getting hurt, heh.”
“No shit,” Bruce said.
“Would it be wise to get a crime scene team here to photograph this before we go any further?” Gin asked, trying to conceal her frustration. She’d been surprised Bruce hadn’t made the arrangements already, though she could guess at his reasoning: the mortuary would insist on using their own staff to dig; the process would be routine; and most importantly, there was no reason to expect something like a hollow space above the vault where the dirt should have been. And finally, since there was no guarantee that Gin’s hunch was correct regarding the identity of the John Doe, it would be a better idea to wait until there was confirmation of grave tampering before assigning valuable resources.
As if echoing Gin’s thoughts, Bruce snapped, “Well sure, Captain Obvious. I was planning to just as soon as we confirmed that there was actually something to your theory. Gotta admit, I didn’t expect this—I sort of thought you were full of shit.” He turned to Pinkston. “I don’t suppose you’ve got video surveillance of this area?”
“No, only the gates and the offices. Our grounds are simply too large, and there are too many areas obscured by trees and buildings.”
Bruce turned to George. “What about you guys? Did you dig this one back when he was buried? You didn’t notice anything strange?”
“No. We dug the hole and filled it back in same as every time.”
“And what about after? You must drive by here what, every day, two at the most? I mean come on, this place is big, but it’s not that big.”
George shrugged. “It was winter, man. We don’t mow, we don’t do much of anything with the lawns.”
“They use the winter months to prune and do routine maintenance on the equipment and facilities,” Pinkston said, sounding slightly peeved. “Mr. Gluck was interred in February. That month they were painting the interior of the restrooms, and if memory serves they were also doing fence repairs—”
“So you don’t even bother to take a look?” Bruce said incredulously. “I mean, you have to drive your golf cart by here to get to the restrooms when you need to go. Don’t you look around, take stock, make sure there isn’t vandalism, trash, whatever?”
George shrugged. “It’s always the same, every day. I don’t see nothing different.”
Angelo came jogging back, holding a large flashlight. He was out of breath from the effort.
“I’m sure you know this already,” Gin said hastily, “but given that we don’t know what is under there, you could be putting yourself in danger of injury.”
“From a little hole in the ground? Come on,” Bruce said. “I mean, seriously, does this guy look like he’s going to get hurt in a hole that’s only a few feet deep?”
Gin resisted rolling her eyes. “In Srebrenica,” she said tersely, “we sometimes encountered pockets created by the way
the bodies fell. There were several occasions where our colleagues whose job it was to move the earth were injured, sometimes seriously, when they couldn’t anticipate the ground giving way. I’m sure we don’t want to risk injury to George and Angelo.”
“Okay, Gin, way to be a buzz kill,” Bruce said sarcastically, as the two workers glanced at each other. “Okay, look. I’ll call for CSI support. I’m sure Wheeler will move the pegs around on the board, given the shit show this is turning into. Jesus, with Paula barfing every five minutes, I don’t know who she can get out here, but she’d damn well better find someone.”
“I can be safe,” Angelo said. “I’ll lie down on my stomach, like this?” he gestured to show that his body weight would be well distributed.
“How long until your team can arrive?” Pinkston asked Bruce.
“I’ll know in a few, buddy,” Bruce responded, his phone pressed to his ear. “Oh hey, Captain, listen, we got a situation here.”
As he walked a few paces away to speak to Wheeler, Pinkston nodded at Angelo, who crawled gingerly onto the earth. He shone the light into the hole, then reached down into it, his arm disappearing nearly all the way to his shoulder. He inched forward a little more and peered in, immediately turning his head away. “It—it smells awful,” he said, visibly shaken. “Sorry. Just give me a second.” He took a deep breath and tried again, shining the light in the hole. After a moment he drew back on his haunches and expelled the breath he was holding.
“It’s … it’s a big box,” he said. “Like a refrigerator box or something. And—and I think there’s a body in it.”
18
By the time two technicians arrived in a Westmoreland County van forty minutes later, Pinkston had ordered his staff to set up additional plywood to protect the manicured lawn around the grave. While the CSI team was suiting up and unloading their equipment, George came over for a quiet word with Gin. “Thank you, you know, for what you said before. Most people don’t think much of what we do, but we really try to show respect and make it easier for the families.”
“I’m sorry for the detective’s choice of words,” Gin said. “Naturally we are all focused on understanding what happened here, but it is also important to remember that we are in a sacred place.”
“You really did that? Helped out with those mass graves over there?” George shook his head. “Man, I can’t even imagine.”
Gin removed a card from her purse. “If you are ever interested in serving in a similar capacity, please call and I’ll tell you more about the program. It’s thanks to the hard work and sensitivity of people such as yourselves that we can honor the dead in these war-torn countries.”
“Okay, if you two are done exchanging recipes, the team is ready for you,” Bruce called.
The CSI technicians, who’d introduced themselves as Bill Bromwich and Lorna Fuller, worked efficiently alongside George and Angelo. After taking photos from several angles and collecting samples of the soil near the surface, the four began removing the dirt, loading it into a pile on the plywood. In twenty minutes they’d cleared the top of what was indeed a large box, though smaller than a refrigerator. Gin estimated the top was about six by four feet and made of a hard fiberboard that had begun to disintegrate in the damp conditions, which explained why it had caved in so easily. The smell had also grown stronger. Gin knew that the odor was due to a decomposing body, and she assumed the others probably knew it too.
“We’ll need to test this whole surface for prints,” Bill said, while Lorna took photographs. “but I’m not too optimistic, given the conditions.”
“Do you have to do it while it’s still in the hole?” Bruce asked.
“We’ve got a drywall saw in the van,” Lorna said. “We could probably take the whole top off. Take it with us.”
She went to get the saw while Bill got an awl from his tool box and created a small hole. “This stuff’s ready to give,” he said. “It’s really thin. I’m surprised it held the weight of the soil.”
Lorna returned with the saw and knelt at the edge. The cutting went quickly, the damp material giving way to the tool’s sharp teeth, and in a few moments she and Bill were able to lift the top of the box, though it collapsed along the hole in the center as they moved it to a tarp. The odor was much stronger now.
Inside the box, a body lay in the corner, tucked roughly into a fetal position, its face obscured by an outstretched arm. It appeared to be male, with thinning, matted gray hair and soiled, worn clothing. It had only one old, worn leather shoe and no socks; the flesh of the exposed arm was swollen and discolored, the feet blistered and peeling. Insects had burrowed their way in and done their work, as well. Gin noticed beetles and conicera tibialis, commonly known as “coffin flies” for feeding on human flesh.
“That is certainly not Mr. Gluck,” Pinkston said, visibly shaken.
“I hate to ask the obvious question, but where’s the coffin?” Bruce asked. Of everyone gathered, he seemed the least surprised at the discovery.
“It would be underneath,” Pinkston said, recovering his composure. “Directly under the box will be the vault—I believe Mr. Gluck’s family chose the Tribute series, which is constructed of reinforced plastic infused with polyethylene structural foam. It’s lightweight and very strong.”
“So whoever did this just dug to the top of it and put the box on top? Then they covered the box with a foot of soil and no one ever knew?”
“Is there any way someone could dig that all out in one night?” Lorna asked the workmen.
“A couple of guys could,” George said. “Or what I would do, it was me, I’d do it over a couple of nights, real early in the morning when there’s no one around, not even kids messing around. Use a series of boxes if I had to. Dig out like a TV size box the first night, and cover it back up. Then do a little more, uses two boxes maybe. Work my way up to this big box.”
“Yeah,” Angelo agreed. “You’d have to wait until the ground thawed, though. No way you could do it without special equipment in the winter. And we would have noticed that.”
“So where’s all the dirt?” Bruce asked. “I mean, even just what you dug up just now, that’s a pretty big pile.”
Both men looked off into the woods. “Wouldn’t be too hard,” Angelo ventured. “Just bring a wheelbarrow in your truck. Dump it out there.”
“Could you walk with me later?” Lorna asked. “Show me where you’d take it if it was you?”
“Sure,” George said.
“Let’s get photos and then get him out,” Bill said.
He retrieved more equipment from the van while Lorna did the photography work, and then they both got down into the box. It was difficult to maneuver in the small space, but they worked methodically through the collection of evidence, taking scrapings of the box material, fibers and other matter that had accumulated on its surface, and insects and casings.
Gin hung back with the others while the two technicians worked. She was relieved when Bruce wandered away, evidently finding her uninteresting, and from her vantage point it looked like he was badgering Pinkston, because the cemetery director looked distinctly uncomfortable. A handful of cars arrived, and their occupants gave curious glances their way before moving on to visit their own loved ones’ graves, but otherwise the team was able to work in peace.
When the evidence collection was complete, Bill and Lorna retrieved a stretcher from the van and maneuvered the body onto it. Gin didn’t expect to learn anything additional at this point, but felt obligated to stay anyway: since she was already involved with this case, and was also certain to be called in to the autopsy, she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything during this stage of the investigation.
Bruce joined her again as the investigators maneuvered the stretcher out of the box and onto the ground, an intermediate step before they climbed out and carried it to the van.
Up close, the odor emanating from the corpse was strong; despite the great care and attention Lorna and Bill used, mov
ing the body had caused the flesh to split in several locations, fluid seeping out. The face was a grotesque mask; the flesh around the mouth had sloughed partially away, and the nose showed evidence of insect feeding.
“He sure does have a case of the butt-ugly,” Bruce said, whistling. “Any chance he’s got the ecto-whatever thing?”
“I really shouldn’t venture any opinions until the autopsy,” Gin said stiffly.
Most of the body was clothed, other than the extremities and head. The clothing would be removed at the morgue and delivered to the forensic analysts, along with the samples Bill and Lorna had collected. It was too early to draw any conclusions, and Gin certainly wouldn’t share them with Bruce if she had, but if pressed she would say that the man had been living outdoors, possibly homeless, and that he had not been treated at any hospital immediately before death.
“Might want to stick around a few more minutes,” Bruce said. “Once they get the box out of there, assuming the casket’s underneath, they’ll open it up. Who knows what they’ll find in there, now that this whole thing has become one giant freak show?”
George and Angelo maneuvered the heavy box out of the ground, revealing the ivory plastic lid of the burial vault. The lid was considerably easier to lift, given the molded handles along the sides.
There was no sound other than the clicking of Lorna’s camera as she photographed the polished dark wood surface of the casket. Some of the earth slid onto the casket from the sides of the hole, but it held its shape remarkably well. Gin could practically feel the collective intake of breath as George stepped gingerly down into the narrow space between the casket and the wall of the vault, and gave one of the brass handles an experimental tug.
In the Darkest Hour Page 17