Gin bristled at his words and tried to pretend it was only indignation. But there was something undeniably appealing about his concern for her—and about his firm grip on her hand as he helped her over an icy patch.
“I’m perfectly capable of buying a new set of tires without anyone’s help, Tuck,” she said crisply.
He put his hand on her shoulder and gazed directly into her eyes. “Then do it. I’d prefer to know that you and my daughter are safe on the road. Which . . . by the way, thank you again.”
“You’re welcome, again,” Gin said. “It’s not . . .”
Her words trailed off as awareness of how close Tuck was standing somehow interfered with her ability to speak.
“Looks like you’re mending,” he said, his voice going low and hoarse as he finally released her arm. “I talked to Griffin Rudkin today. He swears he wasn’t anywhere near Trumbull last night. But I’m going to follow up with his brothers.”
“I—I suppose that’s a good idea,” Gin said, trying to focus on Tuck’s words and coming up short. She could feel his breath, warm on her face. He was standing too close—she could practically count the teeth in the zipper of his parka, see the flakes of snow caught in his eyelashes before they melted.
What was she doing here, lingering under a star-studded sky in the twinkling light of the holiday decorations lining the street, like a scene in a romantic comedy? Gin’s flash of guilt was tempered by the knowledge that Jake was in another city tonight, meeting with an attorney he’d never mentioned to her, discussing problems he wouldn’t share with her. It wasn’t fair to compare him with the man in front of her, but she had a brief and unwelcome flash of wondering what Tuck’s lips might feel like on hers, his shadow of beard scraping along the hollow of her neck, his hands . . .
Gin shook her head, banishing that train of thought. “I need to go,” she blurted. “I’ve—it’s late and—”
Tuck cleared his throat and stepped backward. “And I got the fire investigators’ preliminary report back,” he said in a gravelly voice laced with regret. “They found traces of the accelerant around the perimeter of the house. It’s going to be ruled deliberate, Gin. You should let Jake know that it’s going to be a while before the investigation is over.”
Gin’s heart sank. The moment was broken—and it was a good thing too, because she’d been in danger of forgetting that Jake’s fate rested at least partly in this man’s hands.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured. “Especially because I know that he’s innocent of anything except trying to make an honest living.”
Tuck gave a stiff nod, then hesitated. “Look, I’m probably out of line,” he said, “but this isn’t the first time you’ve gotten dragged down by Crosby. I’m the last person to accuse anyone before they’ve been proven guilty—but I can’t help noticing that you don’t seem happy.” He searched her eyes with his own, unspoken emotions plain on his face. “You deserve better, frankly. You deserve a man who has the desire and the means to give you what you need.”
Abruptly he turned away, walking around to the back of the Land Rover to get the girls’ gym bags out of the back. “All right. Thanks again,” he called, not turning back. “I’m sure we’ll talk soon.”
Gin watched him walk back down the street, his back ramrod straight, carrying the two bright-pink bags.
The evening was over. She was headed home to an empty house, feeling no more settled about any aspect of her life than she had when the day began.
* * *
Jake was back from the city the next morning by a little before ten.
“You got your Dad’s car?” he asked when he came through the door. “Don’t you think you’d be better off with a rental?”
That made two men who wanted to tell her what to drive. “It’s fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I like it.”
“Okay, sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just want you to be safe.”
Gin regretted speaking so sharply. “I picked up muffins in town. Would you like me to heat one up?”
“No thanks. I need a shower,” he said. “I’ll be back down in a few minutes.”
“How was your meeting with the attorney?” she asked when he returned, dressed in work clothes, his face shadowed by several days’ growth of beard.
“Fine. All good. Look, I’m sorry, but I need to get over to the site. Can we talk more later?”
Gin kept her hurt to herself. She watched him drive back down the hill, his truck making fresh tracks in the snow, and decided to bury herself in work. She needed to catch up on e-mail and arrange a time to speak with the professor who was studying the uniform.
The hours ticked by slowly, Gin’s mood improving as she delved further into the e-mails that had accumulated in her in-box. Work had always been a reliable salve when she was feeling down, and it was no different now that she was working as a consultant. She was reviewing the soil analysis that Stephen had forwarded when her phone rang. She glanced at the time and was surprised to see it was already midafternoon.
She checked her phone’s screen: Jake. Maybe he’d be ready to knock off early, and they could catch dinner in town. Maybe they could even see if there were any movies playing that were worth seeing.
“Hello?”
“Gin . . . something’s happened.” He sounded tense, his voice clipped.
“What?”
“They’re protesting. A dozen of them at least, at the site. They showed up on a bus half an hour ago.”
“At the construction site?” Gin repeated. “Why?”
“They want the whole thing shut down for good.” Jake sounded like he was struggling to stay calm. “They’re claiming it’s historically significant. They’ve called in the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission—I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Apparently if they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that events of historical significance took place on that land, the National Park Service can get it a protected designation.”
“But—how would they ever be able to prove that?” Gin asked. “The ME’s office isn’t anywhere near ready to confirm that the body’s Civil War era. And even if they did—one dead soldier doesn’t mean anything.”
“They want the whole area excavated,” Jake said wearily. “They say that riverine transport patterns support the possibility that this was a burial ground—that boats transporting the dead might have gotten stuck here during bad weather and decided to bury the dead rather than attempting to transport them any farther.”
“But that’s—that’s pure speculation,” Gin said. “They’ve found relics from the war all over the county. What with Pittsburgh being a major hub for rail and river transport, there were troops through here on a regular basis. If they set aside every acre where something happened during the war, this whole town would be a historic site.”
“Well, according to the very brief conversation I had with the protestors, they might like to see that happen,” Jake said. “I don’t think they give a shit that I’m trying to make a living here. I tried to talk to them, but they’re already trying to get an emergency injunction to stop me from building. Maybe forever.”
Gin could hear them now—the indistinct sounds of shouting and chanting. She turned over what Jake was telling her in her mind. Was it possible that the protestors could move the investigation in the direction they apparently wanted—even without confirmation that the evidence backed them up? “I can’t believe they can do that. Can’t your attorney help?”
“I’ve already called him, but it’s not his area.”
“Not his—”
“Look, Gin, he’s a bankruptcy attorney, okay?” Jake burst out. “I didn’t want to talk about—I don’t want to talk about it, at least not until I know I’m going to have to—look, he’s trying to get me a referral, but meantime, I need a favor. I thought your mom . . . maybe she can do something. Make some calls. Talk to the city council. Something.”
Gin tried to come up with a response, but she w
as stuck on what Jake had admitted. She’d had no idea that his finances were so precarious. It explained his moodiness, but there wasn’t time for her to try to adjust to this new information—and he’d made it clear that she was to mind her own business on the subject.
“What about the police?” she finally ventured. “Did you call them?”
Jake cursed. “They’re useless. They’re just standing around, doing nothing. They’re almost as bad as the protestors. I asked them to keep the media out, and they can’t even seem to do that. In fact, just while I’ve been talking to you, another news van just drove up.”
“Okay,” Gin said, thinking fast. “I’ll call Mom, but I may not be able to get a hold of her right away if she’s in meetings. And then I’ll come over.”
“You don’t need to.”
“It’s fine, I don’t have anything going on this afternoon.”
“Seriously Gin, there’s no need. Look, thanks for calling your mom—I’ve got to go.” He hesitated, and the silence stretched between them. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said in a rush. “Talk to you later.”
He hung up before Gin could respond, and she was left staring at her phone.
She walked to the tall windows at the front of the house and stared out at the valley spread out below, the river winding lazily through town, the sun glinting off the bridges visible both up and down the river. The snow from earlier in the week had given way to a bright, bitterly cold afternoon. Snow sparkled, crystalline and brittle, in the branches of the trees. Ice skimmed the windshield of her father’s car.
One hundred and fifty years earlier, the river had teemed with soldiers heading south to fight, as well as the cargo provided by the northern cities. Pittsburgh’s armories and foundries had provided weapons and ammunition, and her passenger tugboats were converted to cargo transport craft. When the war department grew concerned that the South might target Pittsburgh for invasion, forts were constructed around the city to protect it.
What were the odds that the remains discovered on Jake’s jobsite had lain there for so long? Gin was trained to remain objective, and she’d certainly seen her share of cases that defied the conclusions one might draw at first glance. As a medical examiner, she had to resist the temptation to believe she knew what had caused a person’s death, no matter the condition of the body before her.
Her instincts were telling her that the man had died much more recently than the protestors believed. Now her task was to separate that conclusion into what was based on empirical evidence and what was owed to her personal bias. It was a challenge for even the most careful pathologists, one that her mentor had trained her to take seriously.
In addition to the deliberate removal of the teeth and the shallowness of the burial, something else was nagging at the back of her mind, some detail of the body’s condition that didn’t quite fit, but she’d been unable to identify it in the days since she attended the autopsy. Now as she stared out at the wintry scene, the details stored in her subconscious mind shifted and settled . . . and something came to the fore.
Gin ran to the computer to check the autopsy files. She reviewed the photographs, finding the one she was looking for, and grabbed her phone.
She still had Stillman’s number stored in her contacts from when he was investigating her sister’s death. He picked up on the first ring.
“Detective Stillman here.”
“Detective, this is Gin Sullivan. I’m calling because I think there’s evidence that the body on Jake’s land isn’t from the Civil War after all. I think he died sometime in the last century.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“The old injury to his wrist. The Colles fracture—do you remember it?”
“I remember something about a broken wrist, yeah.”
“It was actually a very specific subtype of fracture commonly called a chauffeur’s break. It happens when the scaphoid bone of the hand is compressed against the styloid process of the distal radius. The first time doctors started seeing it in patients was during the early twentieth century when automobiles had hand cranks to start the engine. When the engine backfired, the crank would spin along with the crankshaft and strike the operator with sufficient force to break bone.”
“So? You’re telling me that the body’s a hundred years old? That seems like pretty thin evidence. There’s no other way to break a bone that way?”
“Well . . . it’s possible, I suppose, if a person fell on their outstretched hand at just the right angle. But extremely unlikely. In all my years of practice, I’ve never seen one happen like that. In fact, I’ve only seen it once before, and it turned out to be in an antique car enthusiast who had tried to crank his vintage Model T.”
“But it is possible.”
“Yes, but there’s more. The fact that the initial break is still visible in the bone without any attendant deformity suggests that it was manipulated surgically—that a doctor went in and realigned the fragments to restore normal anatomy.”
“But if there was a plate or screws or something, you would have seen it, right?”
“Yes, but it’s possible it could have been done completely with casting. There would be no evidence given the condition of the remains.”
“And you’re telling me they hadn’t invented casts yet during the Civil War?”
“Well . . . no, actually. Plaster of Paris casts were first used in Europe in the 1850s, but it took a while for them to gain widespread use here. The odds of the technique being used in a battlefield setting at that time are—well, extremely unlikely.”
“There’s that word again, Dr. Sullivan,” Stillman said. “Unlikely. Which, as you know, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in court. Let me ask you something. Could you be bringing this up because it would be convenient for your boyfriend to be able to send those protestors home? If it didn’t come so close to home, would you have even brought up this so-called evidence?”
“But they don’t have any evidence either,” Gin protested. “The results of the autopsy were inconclusive. There’s simply no way to know the age of the remains.”
“I don’t know about that. The uniform’s real, according to your colleague Stephen Harper.”
“Not necessarily. It’s still being studied, and—”
“Then let’s put off talking about this until you’ve got more proof. Listen, Doc, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news yet, but the media’s loving this story. It’s been picked up nationwide. And Wheeler’s all over the press coverage.”
“Why does she care? If the protestors are right, there isn’t a crime here, other than the arson, and all that press attention is going to dry up fast. And if the protesters are wrong, and it ends up being a murder, that will be the wrong kind of press attention—she’ll want to minimize the coverage of the county’s handling of it, because they’ll look incompetent.”
“We’re on site monitoring the protest,” Stillman said. “Every image going out to the media has county police officers in the picture. Wheeler knows that protestors don’t help when you’re running for office. And even if this is just a bunch of history nuts, she still stands to score a few points if she can make them happy. If she plays it right and gets the Park Service to designate it a historic site, she can ride that publicity for months.”
Gin had a sick feeling in her gut. If the police captain was determined to satisfy the protestors, then she’d have little motivation to press for further investigation.
“When are they going to make a ruling?” she asked.
“They’re asking a judge for an injunction this week,” Stillman said. “Then they’ll try to tie it up in court until they get the official designation. Listen, Doc, you’re just going to have to face the fact that Jake’s project isn’t going anywhere. He needs to accept his losses and move on.”
Gin hung up and resisted the temptation to throw the phone across the room. There had to be something else she could do. She dressed in boots, thick leggings, and layer
s and wound a warm scarf around her neck.
After scraping the ice from the Land Rover’s windshield, she was warm everywhere but her fingers, which felt numb in her thin leather gloves. As she sat in the car waiting for the old engine to warm up, she called her mother, but the call went into voice mail.
“I’ll call you back as soon as I can,” her mother’s recorded voice promised briskly.
“Mom . . . it’s Gin. Um, listen, Jake needs—we need—a little help.” She deliberated about giving more information. She wasn’t sure what Madeleine could do to help. And besides, there was the possibility that the protestors were right. “Look, just call me when you can, okay?”
She hesitated a moment before adding “Love you” and hanging up.
They weren’t a “love you” kind of family. Richard had been preoccupied with work, and Madeleine had been a caring but coolly efficient mother. She showed her love by being present in her daughters’ lives, volunteering in their schools and helping them with their homework and making their after-school snacks. But no one could ever have called her affectionate.
Since returning to Trumbull, Gin had found herself wanting to strengthen the bond between her and her parents. Two decades of a fairly distant familial relationship no longer felt like enough.
And, she thought as she maneuvered the Land Rover carefully into town, there was also nothing like a harrowing brush with death to make a person’s emotions go into overdrive. Though she’d deliberately underplayed the danger when she described her accident to her parents, the small-town grapevine was bound to alert them to the truth.
And when that happened, Gin was going to have some explaining to do.
15
She heard them before she saw them, even through her car’s closed windows. When she rounded the bend at the top of the ridge, the first thing she saw was a bus bearing a hand-painted banner draped from the windows reading, “Respect Living History—Post 133!”
Two dozen men and women—and a handful of children—marched back and forth in front of the burnt skeleton of the house. Some of them were dressed in Civil War costumes, with both confederate and union soldiers represented among their ranks. A few held signs saying, “Don’t Bury Our Past” and “This Is Sacred Ground.”
All the Secret Places Page 15