Absolute Instinct (20 page)

He sat Indian fashion just staring at the box between his legs for a long time. Minutes passed. The trash chute out in the hallway was mere feet from his door, a straight shot to the incinerator. Why not burn the fucking box and send it back to Hades? asked his loving father. Why not get shed of it forever. Why not take some action, my helpless Hamlet? came the soothing father's voice.

He grabbed hold with both hands and rushed to the door, tore it open. Eyes wide, he rushed toward the trash chute, but Mrs. Parsons, the eighty-year-old hag from down the hall was standing there with three trash bags, working each in one at a time.

“
Hello, Giles!” she called out.

“
Mrs. Parsons.”

“
Nice weather we're enjoying.”

“
Yes ma'am indeed.”

“
Whatcha-got-there-inyer-hand?”

“
Ahhh... this? This old box? Nothing... nothing, really.”

“
Interesting box. Can't get boxes like that anymore. Find it in an antique shop? Seen some file boxes with ties wrapped round them, but they were just cardboard. That's a fine box.”

“
Hell of a box.”

“
Wanna part with it? My granddaughter would love it. How much would you want for a thing like that?”

“
I'm... ahhh... afraid... you see, if it wasn't a gift maybe...”

“
Oh, really? An heirloom! How enchanting.”

“
Ahhh... you could say so. It was gifted to me by... by Mother... upon her death.”

The landlady's hands shot instantly up in a mock gesture of surrender. “Oh, dear, I'm so sorry for your loss. You can't possibly part with a thing like that, and I certainly understand.”

“
Thank you.”

“
Just that last time I saw one like that, it was in a library, housing important papers.”

“
Yes... I keep all my important papers close,” he lied. “I've got to finish packing now, Mrs. Parsons. I gotta go.” He began disappearing from the hallway as he spoke, inching spiderlike back into his apartment.

“
You sure created a ruckus in there last night!” she called after him. “Making that art of yours. My, but it must take a lot of perspiration indeed, all that banging! Makes a body go loco to hear all that incessant hammering.”

But Giles had safely returned to his apartment and closed the door on the woman's ranting. He dropped the box into one of the crates. He'd move it again, put it away at the new place, and perhaps one day he'd have the guts to open it and look on every word, every item collected by his mother.

He stared around at his studio and slid down the side of the crate, exhausted. He pulled the phone to him and called UPS to come get the boxes and crates he'd be shipping.

“
Chicago, City of Blues and Dirty Politics, here comes Giles Gahran, and as for professor of art, Keith Orion, get ready Dr. 0, for a visit from an old flame.”

He looked across the wood floor of his studio apartment and saw a fleck of blood he'd missed with his cleaning fluids, and while on the phone with UPS, ordering them to pick up his crates as soon as possible, he saw a trail of other specks he'd overlooked, mocking him. Lucinda's blood. He lifted a jar filled with red fluid, already labeled LW. He remained on the line, on hold, listening to “Sweet Lorraine” in its original Nat King Cole version. Annoyed by the culmination of these circumstances, he located his concoction of ammonia, bleach, Mr. Clean, and that muriatic acid the Ace hardware man had assured him could clean a gravestone of a hundred years of accumulated mold, and he sprayed the powerful, nose-pinching, eye-gouging concoction over the last remnants of Lucinda's blood.

WHEN Jessica lifted her ringing cell phone from where she had left it beside the bed, she stood shower refreshed and staring out at the terrace where Darwin Reynolds had wandered to stretch and to lift his face into the early morning rain.

She opened the phone, careful not to allow the camera to see anything but herself. When she pressed to receive Richard's incoming call, the first noise she heard was the sound of a working backhoe.

“
Richard? Is it you?” She could hardly hear him over the backhoe's grunting and bawling hue. “What the hell's that noise?”

“
Backhoe!” he shouted.

“
Are you in the middle of a construction zone?”

“
Exhumation-in-progress zone!” he shouted back.

“
What're you talking about, Richard? And what time is it? And what kind of a gin mill're you in?”

“
Six-fifty... ahhh... no, seven here now... Minnesota time. What is it there? Same time zone, isn't it? Sorry to wake you, but wanted you to know...” The backhoe won out over several of his words, but she caught the single-most important one: exhumation.

“
How did you get... embroiled... in an exhumation?”

“
Hold on! Hold on!” He stepped away from the rhino-bellowing machine and found a quiet distance beneath a tree. There he informed Jessica of events at the Milwaukee M.E.'s office that led to the exhumation. She took the bad news about the lack of DNA evidence on file with Krueshach's office in relative stride, but Richard could not hold back. He took a moment to get his ire off against Millbrook authorities.

She shook her head as his camera phone revealed a grimace. “But it sounds—from the backhoe—as though they are fully cooperating with you now?”

“
Well, yes, but only after I threatened them with more FBI descending on them. 'Fraid I woke up Eriq before you. Still, at least the lead investigator—Brannan—is onboard with us, entertaining the thought that Towne could possibly be innocent of the murder in Oregon.”

“
God, an exhumation. Difficult task. How're you holding up, sweetheart?”

He sighed heavily into the phone. “I'm standing in a drizzle the middle of a rank old cemetery since before 6 A.M. and have been up all night... Now I'm amid people with whom I wouldn't share a pint and don't particularly like, and I am missing hell out of you, but otherwise... You know very well that I am managing.”

“
Like the professional, I know.”

“
Yes, and here digging up the sad remains of one Louisa Childe.”

“
I'm so sorry you're being put through this, Richard, really I am. An exhumation, Richard? I could never have predicted you'd have reason for—”

Sharpe ordered her to stop. “I'm fine, really. I'm a big boy. I got myself here where I stand all on my own, dear, sad details of law enforcement in Millbrook notwithstanding.” He finished with a good Christian curse against ineptness that ended with “and may your Herefords sire no calves nor give milk nor sustenance to you and yours, Dr. Krueshach!”

This made her laugh. She asked that he keep her apprised.

In Millbrook, he replied, “I'm switching off now, and I'll be letting you know what, if anything, comes of this horrible morning's effort by we resurrection men.”

“
Richard, you've gone above and beyond for me again. Thank you, dear, so much.”

“
Not at all. A man's life is at stake. I begin to believe with each moment ticking away that this fellow in Oregon is innocent.”

“
Proving it may be impossible, Richard. I'll tell you what I told Darwin. Don't build your hopes up so high that when they are dashed that you can't ever hope again.”

“
Kind advice... The kind I might expect from an angel.”

“
You're so sweet, Richard. I so miss you.”

“
And I you.” Richard again said good-bye and put away his cell phone.

Jessica hung up, breathing a sigh of relief that Richard had seen nothing and heard nothing of Agent Reynolds in her room at this hour.

# # #

ALTHOUGH Sharpe had presided over a number of exhumations in Great Britain, it was never an easy process nor easy on the nerves. Still, it had been his call, and he felt he had to remain aloof. He tried to show some élan by nonchalantly leaning against a large headstone marked curiously enough with the bold name of Churchill 1893—1933, about the average lifespan of the day, when the headstone moved under his weight. “Shit,” he muttered, quickly readjusting his stance, taking his weight off the stone.

Overhead, flapping in increasing anger or parody, the banner strung across the ancient wrought iron whipped in the breeze, distorting the good name of The Henry Knox Memorial Cemetery. The place looked to be a sad patch of earth far from the center of Millbrook on a winding country road that multiplied the ruralness of this Minnesota haven just west of the Twin Cities tenfold. Brannan had explained that the cemetery had been the old settlers' plot, but when the town was at a loss for things the city council might do with funds found leftover from the various bake sales, the city fathers had ceremoniously renamed the weed patch in honor of President George Washington's Secretary of War, General Henry Knox, commander of the first American Artillery placed in the field against the British. The tale of the Boston Siege of 1775 was postscripted with the heroic story of how Knox made the arduous overland journey that brought the guns of Fort Ticonderoga, New York, to bear on the British at the Siege of Boston in dead of winter. The entire story seemed a reminder to Richard that he was a guest in this Land of Nod, and that his host was an Irishman whose ancestors enjoyed killing British soldiers. No love lost there. The surreal circumstances only enhanced the notion that the differences dividing Americans and the Crown remained intact after nearly 230 years.

Brannan told the story of Knox with a boastful pride, but Richard knew it was to also cover his nervousness in this place, doing this work, to help pass the time while the backhoe desecrated the ancient earth they stood on so many miles from Boston and Washington, D.C., hallowed as it was by the local citizenry and given sanctity as result.

“
Why was Louisa Childe buried here?” Richard asked. “I mean, rather than in the large cemetery in Millbrook? Was she D-A-R?”

“
D-A-R?” Krueshach then asked.

“
Daughters of the American Revolution, Herman,” explained Brannan.

“
Oh, far from it I'd say,” replied Krueshach, his arms tightly wound about his shoulders. “No ties really to any organization. Rather a recluse, wasn't she, Dan?”

“
Then why the burial in Fort Knox here if you're all so proud of this... ahhh... cemetery?”

Brannan glared for a moment at the aspersion to the cemetery. Pointing to one side of the field, he said, “This section is the old settlers' graveyard.” Then wheeling, continuing to point to where the deafening backhoe continued its work, he added, “While this other section is a potter's field.”

“
Potter's field, as in a place for John and Jane Does— called A.N. Others in England.”

“
If you mean by that the anonymous John or Jane Doe,

yes.”

“
But you knew her identity.”

“
Louisa Childe had no burial insurance, nothing other than a health insurance policy, and no one came to claim the body. City couldn't house her indefinitely in Hotel Krueshach's refrigerated suite, so the city paid the freight. She had a great huge turnout at the church service at the Unitarian chapel though, didn't she, Herman?”

Krueshach nodded successively. “Folks from every county within a fifty mile radius came to show their respects.”

“
I'm sure they did.” Richard wondered how many came out of curiosity to see the woman whose spine had been ripped from her by a brutal monster. He was reminded of stories he'd read of the old American West where outlaws were not only hung, but as in early English history, their bodies put on display. The display tickets paid the local undertaker's wage, and sometimes he sold the display, body and all, to a traveling carnival. Ironically, the criminal made more “honest” money as a dead man than he had earned in a life of crime, but it was his reputation as a criminal that got people to pay. The larger the reputation (often created for the show), the larger the take.

Knowing human nature and the criminal tendencies of the mind, Sharpe felt instant skepticism as he tried to imagine the motives of the fifty-mile-radius people who'd ostensibly come out of genuine concern or pity. Had that been the case, why had they not raised enough money to give Louisa Childe a decent burial? Still, he knew that in rural areas of England, say Bury St. Edmonds, such a death would be equally poorly handled and made the more curious by the local authorities and press. Little difference at all. Rural was rural and parochial parochial the world over, Richard just hadn't been braced for it in America, not even in Minnesota, not in the year 2004.

Rather than be contentious and ask more pointed questions surrounding the woman's burial, Richard, turning to his military training, decided to allow Brannan's smalltown-cop illusions about human nature to remain intact, as he saw no tactical advantage to stripping them away.

Sharpe thought briefly of Jessica, wishing he could be with her now, in her bed, rather than here with the gloom and grim wail of the backhoe. The unnatural noise amid all the surrounding trees and foliage felt so like a desecration. To push off the chill, Sharpe again ruminated about Jessica and the warmth of her body close to his; he recalled how they had first met: how he had approached her for help, hat in hand, and how from the moment he saw her that he'd been struck by the need to have her, and how he tried to resist, and how futile was the attempt.

Sharpe glanced now from Dan Brannan's red-splotched drinker's face to the sullen Dr. Herman Krueshach's raw-boned German features. Both Millbrook men had agreed that the matter should stay in their jurisdiction after all. Still, a nervous agitation wound around the predawn light as thick as the cemetery fog.