by J. R. Rain
David didn't know what the extenuating, extraordinary circumstance were, but I suspected the judge had simply pulled a few strings.
Now with her help, he was able to track down his mother all the way to Los Angeles, only to discover that she had been slain two years earlier. A mother who had left behind two children and a vast fortune. Those two children were being raised by grandparents; the father, of course, was currently awaiting execution at San Quentin.
The superior court judge next got hold of the will. In the will, Evelyn Drake, his birth mother, in an extreme act of generosity, had set up a significant trust fund for him, should he ever come looking for her.
David, who was already making arrangements to live with his adopted mother's sister here in southern California, was set to inherit a good deal of money.
But state law insists on a DNA test. So one was set, and when it came time to administer the test; meaning, extracting DNA from his mother's corpse, the body had been discovered missing.
Which is where I came in.
"That's a helluva story, kid," I said.
He looked away, nodded.
A shapely rollerblader came blading by. She was followed immediately by a stumbling bum, either drunk or high. The bum was followed, in turn, by a limping golden retriever. The retriever stayed close to the bum and I was briefly touched by the creature's loyalty. I suspected the dog was the only thing keeping the man alive through sheer love, devotion and protection.
There were tears in David's eyes. It's bad enough losing one mother, but this kid had lost two.
The bum curled up in the fetal position on the grass near the lake, using his arm as a pillow. The golden retriever curled up next to him, ever watchful, keeping his drunken owner safe. A woman nearby immediately got up from the grass and left, shoving one of those e-reader thingies into her purse.
"I don't really care about the money," said David.
I nodded. The dog lay its fuzzy muzzle across the back of the unconscious man, who was now snoring loudly.
"I just want to know what happened to her," he said.
I nodded again, and watched the dog close its eyes, although its ears remained ever alert.
Chapter Five
I was with my girlfriend, Roxi, at a restaurant called Fred 62.
A weird name for a place with great food. I'm sure the restaurant had all sorts of history, too, although I didn't know it. But I was willing to bet that guys like Cagney and Hudson and Rooney all had eaten here at one point or another. Maybe Elizabeth Taylor had gotten shit-faced drunk in a back booth. Or John Wayne had punched out some asshole for asking too many lame questions. Maybe. I didn't know, but the place had an old Hollywood feel to it. Ancient vinyl booths. Old wood paneling. Old posters. Hip energy. And set right in the heart of Los Feliz, itself just north of bustling Hollywood.
"I think David Schwimmer is eating behind us," said Roxi. She sounded very excited.
"You mean Ross?"
"Yeah, Ross. And don't say 'Where's Rachel?'"
"Where's Rachel?"
"Dumb ass. "
But she was right. At least I think she was right. Behind a head of neatly trimmed dark hair flashed the occasional profile of the Friends' star. He was with a beautiful woman, and they were sitting across from another beautiful couple.
"I think you're right," I said. "It's all very exciting. "
"You don't look very excited. "
"I live and work in L. A. I see stars all the time. So far, I have yet to see one of them levitate or turn water into wine. "
She pouted. "You're such a party-pooper. " But even as she said those words, I saw her brain turning. Steam practically issued from her ears.
"Oh, no," I said, catching on. "He doesn't want to read your screenplay. "
"But he's a director now. This could be my big break. "
"I doubt it. "
"You don't believe in me?"
"Oh, I believe in you, but I doubt this is your big break. "
She pouted some more and seemed to refocus on her menu. "It's a good screenplay. "
"I know," I said. "I read it. " Which was mostly true. I had skimmed it. I found that focusing on anything for too long was nearly impossible these days. It's hard to read words when you still hear your son screaming.
The waiter came by and took our order. I got a big breakfast sandwich, minus the ham, even though it was after 9:00 p. m. Roxi liked the sound of it and ordered the same, plus the ham. In fact, she made the waiter put my displaced ham on her sandwich.
He wrote everything down like it all made perfect sense, and when he left, Roxi asked me what I was working on. I told her about it, or as much as I knew.
"Wild," she said.
"About as wild as it gets. "
"And you're doing it all for free?"
"Not quite. For two tacos. "
She shook her head sadly. "You give away too much of your time. You could be doing paying work, you know. " She next held up her hand, stopping me. "Wait. I already know what you're going to say. "
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah," she said. "You're going to tell me that it's not about the money, that it's about helping those who can't help themselves, about making things right in the universe. "
"That, and I want those tacos. "
"You can't help everybody, Spinoza," she said, using my last name like most people do.
"Nope, but I can sure as hell help some. "
"But this case is. . . gross. You're looking for a corpse, for Christ's sake. "
"And giving a young man peace of mind, and perhaps setting him up for the rest of his life. "
"Because his birth mother left him an inheritance. "
"An inheritance that is rightfully his. "
"After the DNA testing confirms it," she said.
"Right. "
"So how does one look for a corpse?"
"No clue," I said, as the waiter came by with our food. My breakfast sandwich looked glorious. Huge and leaning and dripping with hollandaise sauce and ripe avocado slices. Roxi's looked even bigger, with her two fat slices of ham.
"Do me a favor," she said, as she picked up her sandwich. "Let's not talk about corpses while we eat. "
Chapter Six
I started looking for the corpse at the only place I could think of: the cemetery where David's birth mother, Evelyn, had been buried. Where her coffin had been exhumed. And where, later, it had been found to be empty.
Weird shit.
It was early the next morning when I pulled over to the side of one of those narrow cemetery roads and parked my Camry under an elm tree. I was tired but alert. I don't sleep well these days, and if I was a betting man, I would bet that I would probably never sleep well again.
The Forest Lawn Cemetery here in Burbank, on the other side of the infamous Griffith Park, is epic, covering an entire hillside. If I had to be buried anywhere, it would be here. Granted, I would want to be buried near my son, but I doubted he would want anything to do with me, even in the after life, and especially for all eternity.
There were a few others here. This is greater L. A. , after all, with nearly 30 million people, and so one rarely, if ever, finds themselves alone. Anywhere. About seven or eight people were presently brushing off burial plaques or standing solemnly in the early morning light. I heard the faint sound of weeping from somewhere. Most were dressed in business attire, no doubt on the way to work.
Myself, I was here for work.
Sipping a latte something or other from Starbucks, I made my way through the cemetery, picking my way carefully behind grave markers. I've never put much stock into the supernatural (well, that is, until recently. . . long story), but walking over somebody's grave just seemed wrong. After all, everything they had ever done and everything they ever were was summed up into one spot of earth. The least someone could do was avoid walking over them.
Lik
e a good investigator, I already had Evelyn's plot location in hand, and after studying a map of the grounds upon entering the cemetery, I had a fairly good idea where I was going.
Fairly. This was still confusing as hell.
My breath misted before me. Steam billowed up from that little hole in the Starbucks lid. Birds flitted overhead and the sun was rising to the east, casting my elongated shadow over the gently sloping hill. Hard to believe that within such a beautiful hillside were thousands upon thousands of corpses.
An old poem came to mind: The ghosts of the tribe/ Crouch in the nights beside the ghost of a fire/ They try to remember the sunlight/ But light has died out of their skies.
But not on this hillside. Here, the morning sun blazed full force, galvanizing the dead.
I took in a lot of air and found breathing suddenly difficult. It was impossible for me to walk through any cemetery without thinking of the little boy I had condemned into one for eternity. My little boy.
When I found my breath again, I moved on, feet crunching over the dewy grass. Soon, after a handful of false starts, I found the correct row, and five minutes after that, I was standing over a freshly turned grave.
The casket, I knew, was gone. It was now marked evidence somewhere. Grave robbing is serious business. No one wants to think they're loved ones may not be where they're supposed to be. Although cranky and bitchy, I knew that Hammer was still approaching this case seriously. Except he was already overworked as it was. I wasn't overworked. I was underworked if anything. And Roxi was right. The last thing I needed was to take on a charity case.
Say that to my conscience.
I got into this business to help. To give back. To heal. To stop the pain. To ease the pain.
To be anything other than what I had been before.
A small wind, which flapped my loose jeans at my ankles, brought with it the subtler scents of nature. But mostly I smelled the freshly turned soil at my feet.
What the hell was going on here?
I knelt down and looked closely at the ground around me, picturing in my mind what must have happened here. Someone, or perhaps many someones, had dug up the body and removed it from this very spot. Later, the grave had been officially exhumed and found to be empty.
I considered the possibility that perhaps her body never made it to the grave site. Seemed a good question, and one that I would follow up on.
For now, though, I studied the grave site, noting where a tractor had recently sat. No doubt a small crane had been used to raise coffin. No doubt the caretakers also used some sort of backhoe to dig up the site. And, for all I knew, there was some sort of machine that could do both. The Ford Gravedigger 1000 or something. Digs, lifts and buries - all in one.
I stood and walked around the site, not sure what I was looking for, but keeping my eyes on the ground, looking for anything that stood out. Nothing stood out. No graverobbing business cards left behind. No broken-handled shovels. No deep shoe impression with, say, a rounded inside heel to indicate someone had recently walked through here with a noticeable limp.
I stood on the hillside and soaked in the sun. A bluish light seemed to dance before me, but that was probably just an odd refraction of the sunlight, the mist and the green grass.
The blue light was smallish, about the size of a little boy. It seemed to hover before me briefly, before I blinked and it disappeared.
If it had been there at all.
Chapter Seven
I was in a strange office.
It was the Forest Lawn's groundskeeper's office, and it was a little creepy. There were exactly three open coffins lined up along the far wall. Mercifully, the coffins were empty. There was a pile of marble grave markers on one side of his desk, and a pile of bronze markers on the other side his desk. The bronze markers were empty. Meaning, they were awaiting names to be engraved. Names of those who were not yet dead. Someone, somewhere was going to die, and his name was going to appear on that bronze plaque.
Creepy.
The caretaker was a middle-aged man with thick glasses. Surprisingly, there wasn't dirt under his fingernails and there weren't clumps of it tracked in from the outside, either.
"Are all cemetery caretakers as clean as you?" I asked.
He asked me to repeat what I had said since I tend to talk beneath the normal hearing range. I spoke up a little louder, always a little nervous at this point in a conversation. It's hell being shy.
He grinned and sat back, which immediately put me at ease. "Ah, yes, the stereotypical myth of cemetery caretakers perceptually covered in clumpy graveyard soil. Actually, very few of us stick our fingers in the stuff. We have equipment for that. "
"Could you describe the day that Evelyn Drake was exhumed?"
"You get right to it, don't you?" he said.
"There are graves to dig. "
"You got that right," he said. "Anyway, it was a weird day. "
"I bet. Were you there when the casket was opened?"
"I was nearby. "
"What happened when the casket was opened?"
"Shit hit the fan. "
"Because it was empty. "
"Yup. "
"Where's the casket now?"
"In the back. "
"The police didn't confiscate it?"
"Nope. But it's roped off. We were told not to let anyone near it. "
I showed him Detective Hammer's card. He took it from me and called the number. A few exchanges later and the caretaker was hanging up again. "He says you're reliable enough. "
"He's always thought highly of me. "
"But he said not to touch anything. "
I felt my gorge rise at the thought of touching the casket. I'm a private eye, after all, not a medical examiner. "Wouldn't dream of it. "
Chapter Eight
My life is weird, I thought, as the groundskeeper led me through a rear wood shop where a guy with goggles was actually building a coffin.
I learned that the cemetery offered these simplified boxes to those who could not afford the more expensive wooden caskets. I found the whole business of death unnerving. The coffin builder stopped working and watched us quietly as we moved through his shop. Saw dust rested lightly on his shoulder and there was a nail in his mouth. His eyes were impossibly big behind the goggles. The hair on my neck was standing on end.
I nodded politely and pardoned myself as we moved past him. He made no sound or movement. Instead he watched us until we exited through a side door. The hair on my neck and shoulders prickled.
"Why do I feel like I just walked onto the set of a horror movie?" I asked in the next room, shivering a little. A very discomfiting experience, to say the least.
"Probably because Boyd is about as weird as they come," said the caretaker. And I figured that if a cemetery caretaker was telling me someone was weird, well, you could damn well take that to the bank.
We walked through a storage room full of gardening equipment. . . and then I saw it. Lying flat on the ground with the lid closed was a freshly exhumed coffin. Yellow police tape encircled it and the staff themselves had placed some cones around it.
With the steady - and disturbing - sounds of coffin-making going on behind us, I found myself slowly circling another eternal bed for the dead.
I said, "How often does your cemetery exhume graves?"
"Not often. "
"How much is not often?"
"Once every other year or so. "
"Was there anything unusual about this exhumation?"
"Other than the coffin being empty? No. It was a routine dig. "
The caretaker stood off to the side of the cones. He looked bored and a little nervous. I would be nervous, too, if a coffin showed up empty on my watch.
"Have you ever experienced anything like this before?" I asked.
"A missing body? No. "
"Have you heard of any recent cases of grave ro
bbing?"
"Not at the cemeteries, no. There were a few cadavers stolen from a research facility over at UCLA, and there were a few misplaced cadavers at a nearby crematorium, but that's all I've heard. "
I nodded like this all sounded normal. Yesterday I had been sitting in my office, wondering if my phone would ring. Today I was circling an empty coffin in a creepy back room of a cemetery.
Yeah, my life is weird.
"Other than the corpse being missing, was there any indication of foul play?" I asked.
"If you're asking if the grave looked like it had been freshly turned, the answer is no. There was old-growth grass. "
"Can I see inside the coffin?"
"The detective said not to mess with it. "
"I won't mess with it. I'm just going to look. "
The caretaker looked long and hard at me. The back room was mostly dark, although a few open doors permitted the bright morning sun in. A single dusty, yellow bulb was on overhead. The caretaker continued staring at me behind his thick glasses. There was sweat on his brow, even though the morning was still fairly cool. If the guy wanted to pull out a nail gun and shoot me between the eyes and then bury me in an undisclosed plot in the cemetery, no one would ever know.
"Fine," he said. "The detective seemed to know you, and I'm not the police. You fuck things up, you can answer to LAPD, not me. I'll be in my office. "
He left the room and I went over to the casket, walking between the cones and stepping over the police tape. I didn't know much about caskets, but it was obvious to me that this one was nice. If I had to guess, I would say the stained, polished wood was solid cherry. Presently, there were clumps of dirt embedded in the various grooves and fittings, caked especially where the poles, the long wooden handles, lay against the sides. Soil wafted up strongly from the whole thing. I thought I would smell death, too, but I didn't. Or maybe, hanging out here all morning, I was already getting used to it.
I stood over the casket for a good minute before I mustered the courage to open it. I took in some air, reached down, grabbed the wooden lip and lifted. . . .