The Sinner (7 page)

My heart pounded as I turned to the doorway where Angus hovered. He wouldn't come inside the room and his reluctance, even more than the sound, sent a warning thrill down my spine. I might have succumbed to my earlier curiosity and thrown back the rug to search for bloodstains, but my cell phone rang just then and I left the room in relief to hurry down the hallway to answer.

A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good omen, but since I didn't recognize the number, I expected it was just a misdial.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” I said, a trifle impatiently.

Nothing. Not even so much as a hitched breath. But someone was there. Someone who knew that I was in the house alone.

Nine

I
didn't sleep much after that phone call. I returned briefly to the front bedroom, but I didn't hear, smell or see anything untoward. Whatever I'd sensed earlier had faded with the interruption. I was glad for that. Still, I made another round through the house before going back to bed. When the alarm went off at dawn, I was tempted to burrow under the covers, but I dragged myself out of bed, showered and headed for the cemetery at my usual time.

I was alone for the early part of the morning and the quiet gave me time to think. About those caged graves. About Darius Goodwine's proposal. About the tattoo on the dead woman's arm, the anonymous phone call in the middle of the night and Annalee Nash's strange behavior at the edge of the orchard. So much for a peaceful summer.

A little after midmorning, Malloy and another officer showed up to resume searching the woods and the area surrounding the circle. One of the officers the day before had found another route to the clearing without having to pass through the cemetery and I was grateful for that. They'd been respectful and mindful of the graves, but the constant disruptions left me unsettled. Now it was easier to pretend they weren't there.

I'd been working steadily for hours with only a brief break for lunch when I heard a shout erupt from the direction of the circle. The broken silence startled me and I lifted my head, momentarily struck by the unmistakable note of excitement in the officer's voice. Then I returned resolutely to my work, reminding myself that I needed to keep a low profile. The less attention I drew to myself, the better, especially if I intended to conduct my own discreet investigation.

A few minutes after I heard the shout, two police cars careered down the gravel road and crunched to a halt. Then came the coroner's van. These new arrivals and the scurry of activity I sensed from the circle threatened my resolution. Curiosity and dread niggled but still I kept my head down and continued to scrape away at the layers of moss and lichen.

Detective Kendrick arrived next with a man I recognized as James Rushing, a forensic anthropologist from Charleston. We'd never met, but I'd seen Rushing around town at various functions and Temple had spoken highly of him and his credentials when he'd replaced Ethan Shaw as consultant to the county coroner's office. And Temple being Temple, she'd also noted how easy he was on the eyes. I'd never given James Rushing more than a passing thought, but his presence today, along with that of the coroner's, could only mean one thing—human remains had been discovered, presumably in the caged grave where the body had been removed.

Still, I kept myself in check until the sun hovered just above the treetops and then I could resist no longer. I tossed down the brush, peeled off my gloves and left the cemetery by way of the back gate. I told myself that a quick peek from a distance would do no harm. After all, it was only natural that I'd be curious. It might even seem more suspicious if I acted disinterested.

The closer I got to the clearing, the more anxious I became. As I rounded the first bend, I could see the uniformed cops milling about the circle. I put a hand to my eyes as my gaze went around the cages, resting briefly on the second mortsafe, which remained open from the excavation. But the officers' focus was no longer on the caged graves. Instead, Kendrick and the coroner stood in the center of the clearing staring down at something I couldn't yet see.

As if sensing my presence, Kendrick turned and nodded when he saw me. Then he motioned for me to join them. I hesitated for a moment before making my way through the tall weeds to his side.

“Are you sure it's okay for me to be here?” I asked reluctantly.

“I wouldn't have asked you over if it wasn't.” He shifted his position to make room for me. Again, I braced myself for the possibility of recognizing the deceased, but I needn't have worried. The remains were skeletal.

The unmarked grave site had been carefully staked and gridded and now the skeleton lay completely exposed in a shallow grave. A tattered cloth had fallen away from the torso and I could see bits of old leather that might once have been shoes. I wasn't particularly squeamish about bones, but these remains bothered me. My hand lifted automatically to the key at my neck as I realized why.

“The skull is missing,” I said under my breath.

I didn't think I'd muttered it loud enough for even Kendrick to hear, but I felt him tense beside me and Rushing glanced up from his work.

His dark eyes took me in for a moment before he said, “I know you. Amelia Gray, right? The cemetery restorer. Temple Lee speaks very highly of you.”

I murmured a polite response, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as I possibly could.

Kendrick turned back to Rushing. “You were saying?”

“You asked about scavengers. Always a likelihood, but the rest of the skeleton is in remarkably good shape for such a shallow burial and there isn't as much evidence of predation as I would have expected.”

“Can you tell how long it's been here?”

“A decade at least, probably closer to two, although the proximity to the marsh can speed up decomposition. I'll have a better idea when I get him back to the lab.”

“Him?”

“The remains are definitely male,” Rushing said.

Kendrick hunkered in the grass, putting himself closer to the skeleton. “Any chance the skull was removed before burial?”

Rushing shifted his position so that he could point to the upper vertebrae. “Decapitation, either post-or perimortem, would leave deep cuts. Skulls have a natural tendency to disarticulate from the body. While I don't rule out scavengers, there is evidence of a prior excavation, which leads me to believe the skull was intentionally removed after decomposition.”

“What's the evidence?” Kendrick asked.

Rushing nodded toward the cloth that had fallen away from the torso. “As you might expect after all this time and in this environment, very little of the clothing remains. There's some bits of leather and not much else. But this swath of linen is still mostly intact. My guess is, the shroud was added after the exhumation. Once the skull was removed from the grave, the remains were wrapped and reburied, which suggests a certain amount of respect, if not reverence, for the deceased.”

I didn't feel the absence of air in the clearing today, but suddenly I found it difficult to breathe. Something was going on here. Something frightening and perverted. I couldn't help but remember Darius Goodwine's warning that there would be more deaths unless I, and I alone, unmasked the killer.

“Was there a marker or any identification in the grave?” I heard myself ask.

“Not a marker,” Kendrick said. “But we did find a partially buried medallion, which is how Malloy discovered the grave. I'm glad you showed up when you did. Maybe you can help us identify the symbol.”

He removed an evidence bag from the collection beside the grave and handed it to me.

Given my conversation with Darius, I almost expected to see a claw entwined with a snake like the one Devlin wore around his neck, but no. The symbol on the medallion was even more disturbing.

“Do you know what it is?” Kendrick asked. I could feel his gaze on me as I turned the evidence bag over to study the back of the medallion.

“It's a triskele.”

“Celtic, isn't it?” Rushing said.

“I've been told this particular symbol dates back to the Egyptians. Some believe it represents the cycle of life. Birth, death and resurrection.”

“Resurrection.” I heard a note in Kendrick's voice and glanced down. His gaze was still on me and I again felt those icy prickles at the base of my spine. “An odd symbol to be placed in the grave of a man missing his skull.”

Almost as strange as a
memento mori
tattoo on the wrist of a woman who had been buried alive.

As our gazes locked, I heard chanting, distant and dreamlike. It was all I could do to tear my gaze away to glance at the mortsafes. Twelve caged graves and an unmarked grave in the center. A young woman buried alive and a skeleton with a missing skull. What on earth had I gotten myself into this time?

“What about the other graves?” I asked, striving for a disaffected tone. It wasn't easy. Not with that phantom chant echoing in my ears. Not with Kendrick's compelling eyes measuring my every move. “Did you find any evidence of exhumations or fresh burials?”

“The ground is so overgrown with weeds and vines, we wouldn't be able to tell unless we remove the mortsafes,” he said.

“Will you remove them?”

He hesitated. “We plan to start with the one that's already open and see what we find. The one thing we know for certain is that the victim didn't lock herself in that cage, nor did the skull vanish of its own accord. Someone has been using this place for a long time. Decades, most likely. To what end...” He trailed off as he rose and glanced around the circle. “That's what we have to figure out.”

* * *

A little while later, we left the burial site and made our way back to the cemetery. Kendrick and I brought up the rear of the procession. As we trudged along the path, I kept thinking how badly I wanted the day to be over, but I knew, in the same way that I knew other unknowable things, that this was just the beginning of many dark days to come. I would need to be constantly on my guard if I accepted Darius Goodwine's proposal, because insinuating myself in the search for a killer, human or otherwise, was no small matter. I would be deliberately placing myself in harm's way on the very slim chance that my great-grandmother's lost key actually existed and could be found.

A part of me—the sensible part—wanted to distance myself from anything involving Darius Goodwine. I was sorry that a young woman's life had been taken and genuinely horrified at the circumstances surrounding her death and burial. But I didn't know her. This was not my business.

Someone or something seemed intent on making it my business, though. Why else had I been summoned to that clearing by the watcher in the woods? Why else had I stumbled upon that meeting between Annalee Nash and Martin Stark? According to Darius Goodwine, only I could end this. But how? And at what price?

My heart started to pound in earnest at the prospect because no matter how suspicious I found Darius Goodwine's proposal, no matter how many times I resolved to keep my distance, a fascination was starting to grow. Already I could feel myself getting caught up in the intrigue and I knew how things would go from here on out. All too soon I would become absorbed in the secret societies that Darius Goodwine had spoken of and I would obsess over their deep roots and entangled alliances as I tried to painstakingly piece together a connection. I would become engrossed in
memento mori
art and the placement of those cages and the identities of the remains inside. I would study the triskele and its convoluted meanings and then I would delve as deeply as I dared into the concepts of soul transference and raising the dead.

And all the while I conducted my stealth investigation, I would spend many a sleepless night worrying about Devlin's involvement even though I knew that Darius had purposely planted that seed of doubt to torment me.

I was so deeply contemplative that I didn't see the tree root snaking across the path in front of me. I tripped, half expecting Kendrick to grab my elbow to balance me, but he seemed not to notice. I supposed that, like me, he was lost in his own churning thoughts. After a bit, though, I could sense his attention.

When I glanced at him, he said, “What do you make of all this?”

“You're asking me?” I gave an uneasy shrug. “I'm not a detective. What I think hardly matters.”

“If your opinion didn't matter, I wouldn't have asked for it. And I would have sent you on your way the moment you turned up at that grave site. I'm asking because you know about burials and symbols. You're the closest thing I have to an expert on those cages.”

I took a moment to consider his question. “The presence of the mortsafes in such a remote location still puzzles me. I can't imagine where one would go to buy such a device in this day and age, let alone a dozen of them. They must have been custom-made. But how they were transported into the clearing without being seen, I have no idea. There's a sense of isolation out here, but we're still within the city limits.”

“This area wasn't incorporated until a few years ago and it hasn't changed much,” Kendrick said. “The cages could have been hauled out here by cover of darkness, maybe over the course of several nights or even weeks.”

“But why?”

“That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?”

I swatted a mosquito from my face. “Something else has been bothering me. I told you yesterday that the original purpose of mortsafes was to protect fresh remains from body snatchers known as resurrectionists. The symbol on the medallion you found in the center grave represents birth, death and resurrection. It's probably a loose connection at best, but the word
resurrection
keeps cropping up.” I wanted to ask him if he knew of a group that called themselves the Eternal Brotherhood of Resurrectionists, but I didn't want to explain where I'd heard the name. Something about Kendrick still niggled and I didn't think it a good idea to reveal what I knew of the Brotherhood, especially considering the source. For now, I wanted him to continue thinking of me as nothing more than a cemetery restorer who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“It does seem a loose connection,” he agreed. “But the skull in that grave was certainly resurrected.”

“And what do you make of
that
?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I agree with Rushing. The grave was exhumed, the skull removed after decomposition and the remains wrapped and reburied.”

“But why?”

“Maybe someone wanted a trophy.”