Grave Undertaking (2 page)
“Jesus God Almighty, Barney! Stop it, Barney, stop it!” The Tucker who wasn’t Barney punctuated his screams by jumping up on the side of the machine and pounding his brother on the shoulder.
The engine sputtered and died. Barney jumped from the seat and crouched down at the lip of the hole. He looked at the skull and then up at Reverend Pace. “I’m sorry, Preacher. I never felt nothing. I swear to God. I thought it was all dirt.”
“Of all people, it would have to be Pearly Johnson,” exclaimed Pace.
“We’re just to the top of the vault,” I said. I sat on the edge, dangled my legs over the side, and dropped to the bottom. I bent down and worked my hands a couple inches into the soil. “Here’s the vault. It’s not damaged. Somebody get a shovel.”
“You heard him,” ordered Barney to his brother. He was still shaking and sucking in air.
I stood up and watched the other Tucker brother run to the pickup. The ear flaps on his cap bounced with each stride, and he looked like some deformed bird trying to fly. He pulled a spade out of the truck bed and hurried back.
I took the shovel and gently pried its point under the layer of dirt beside the last gouge of the hoe. I rocked the blade up and down, and a broader section of ground moved as if a root or stick had been dislodged. I withdrew the spade and began scraping away soil with its blunt edge. After a few passes, a dark, moldy piece of fabric broke through the surface. I tossed the shovel aside and dropped to my knees. The Tucker brothers and Pace leaned over the hole and watched in silence as I used my bare hands to unearth more of the cloth.
“Nylon,” I said. “Here’s a rusted zipper. Must be a wind breaker or light jacket.” I felt underneath the exposed remnant, careful not to damage the fragile material. I looked up at the preacher. “Clavicle.”
“What’s that?” asked Barney. “More bones?”
“Yes, a shoulder bone,” I said. “I expect an entire skeleton is here. This isn’t Pearly Johnson, Barney. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What’ll we do now?” asked his brother.
“We need to call the sheriff. We won’t touch anything until he gets here. I know Tommy Lee’s number and I’ve got a phone in the jeep.”
Pace shook his head. “No, we’re not in Laurel County. We’ve crossed into Walker. Sheriff Ewbanks has jurisdiction here. And this county’s not set up for 911. You’ll have to call information.”
Pace and I left the bewildered Tucker brothers to guard the site and speculate as to the identity of the skeleton. I started the jeep’s engine, hoping a brief blast from the heater would remove the chill which had penetrated my bones. Pace stretched his hands over the vent and shivered.
“What a mess, Barry. It’s like Pearly’s under some kind of curse.”
I forced a smile. “Well, maybe he invited a friend over, or maybe Turncoat Turner is more popular than you thought.”
But it wasn’t funny. To think that a body had been buried on top of someone else. This was much more serious than a septic tank cracking open.
“Walker County Sheriff’s Department.” The mountain twang of the man’s voice came through the low hiss of the cell phone.
“Yes, this is Barry Clayton of Clayton and Clayton Funeral Directors. I’m calling to report the discovery of a body.”
“A body you say?” The voice sounded closer to the phone. “Where?”
“Buried in the graveyard at Eagle Creek Methodist Church.”
“You found a body in a graveyard. Look, wise-ass, go chase your refrigerator. It’s running.” A click and hiss.
“He hung up on me.”
“I think you’d better start your story differently,” suggested Pace. “Otherwise, we’ll be up here all day.”
Fifteen minutes later, a tan cruiser with
WALKER COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
written on the side pulled into the parking lot. Pace and I got out of the jeep and met the uniformed driver as he emerged from the car.
“You Mr. Clayton?” he asked, talking with a lit cigarette bobbing on the edge of his lip.
“Yes, and this is Reverend Pace.”
“I know the preacher. I’m Sheriff Ewbanks. Horace Ewbanks. I’m sorry my deputy hung up on you. Kids give us a lot of trouble.” He started walking toward the Tuckers.
“Anybody else coming?” I asked.
“Maybe. Depends on what we got. A deputy’s standing by to lead up the state mobile crime lab if it’s needed. I’ll make that call, Mr. Clayton.”
I figured Ewbanks to be in his early sixties. He was shorter than me, no more than five-foot-six, and he looked wiry and tough. White hair stuck out between the upturned collar of his leather jacket and the band of his regulation hat.
“What’s Clayton doing burying over in this county?” he asked.
“Pearly Johnson’s family asked us to move his grave,” I said. “Senator Hugh Richards is being buried here tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I knew the senator and his family. You Jack Clayton’s boy?”
“Yes.”
“Heard something ’bout that. Used to be a police?” He said the word “po-lice” with a couple of extra Os.
“That’s right. Till my dad got sick.”
“My momma had Alzheimer’s.”
He stopped and for a second the bantam rooster cockiness left him. “You know the last conversation I ever had with her when she made any sense?”
“No.”
“She told me to give up these cancer sticks.” He plucked the unfiltered burning cigarette stub from his mouth and flipped it back toward the church. “Promised Momma I’d quit some day.” He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of Pall Malls. “But today ain’t the day.”
Sheriff Ewbanks knew the Tucker brothers. He heard their accounts before going into the grave himself.
“Nothing been touched?” he asked again.
“No,” I said. “Like I said on the phone, when I found the jacket and felt the additional bones, I treated it like a crime scene.”
“Good.” Ewbanks bent over and picked up the skull, cradling it in his right palm like a softball pitcher before his windup. He held the skull close to his eyes and studied it. Cigarette smoke flowed out of his nostrils and drifted around the macabre relic.
“You examine this?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He looked at it more carefully, turning it over several times before staring into the empty sockets. I thought of Hamlet in the churchyard, making judgments on the skull, on the futility of existence. “Alas, poor Yorick!” Horace Ewbanks didn’t strike me as a man who would lose sleep over the meaning of life.
“Amazing, ain’t it,” he said. “We all look so ugly in the end. Some of us just have a head start.” He looked up at me. “You know something about anatomy, and you’re an ex-cop. Here, what do you make of this?” He handed me the skull.
“I’d say this hole was made by a small caliber bullet. Twenty-two or twenty-five.”
“And?”
“And the owner of this skull was probably dead before hitting the ground.”
“Thanks. That’s an analysis I understand all too well.” Ewbanks looked up at the overcast sky. “Preacher, what time is Richards to be buried tomorrow?”
“Three o’clock.”
“All right. I’ll call in the crime lab to help dig up the rest of the body. We should be able to finish that before dark, unless this snow sets in. Tomorrow, as soon as it’s light, we’ll sift through the dirt you dug up here to make sure we don’t miss anything. Clayton, if we’re clear by noon, will that be enough time to move this vault and be ready for the senator’s service?”
“Yes, if the weather holds and I alert the other funeral home.”
Ewbanks pulled himself out of the grave. “Well, ain’t a hell of a lot I can do about the weather. I’m sorry, but if it runs us late, it’ll just have to be that way. This is now the scene of a homicide. There won’t be a burying until there’s an unburying. I’m going to the radio.” He headed for the patrol car, brushing the black dirt from his knees along the way.
Pace and I stood beside Sheriff Ewbanks watching two men from the mobile crime lab carefully remove the dirt from around the bones. Another deputy strung yellow tape in a wide rectangle from the parking lot to at least thirty feet beyond the open grave.
“Why’s your man taping off such a wide area?”
“To keep the damn buzzards away,” said Ewbanks.
“Buzzards?”
“The press. Same thing. I’ll arrest any of them that cross that line, and they know it. Surprised they ain’t here by now. Somebody’s always monitoring the frequencies. They’ll be screaming to get some pictures of our victim down there. Claiming the public’s right to gawk.” He took a final drag on his umpteenth cigarette, and then crushed it beneath his shoe.
Our victim was now more or less a complete skeleton. Shirt and trousers had rotted away, but traces of a leather belt ended in a silver buckle, the nylon jacket still had green color, and the bones of the feet were encased in moldy remnants of what looked like cowboy boots. One of the lab men delicately slid the hip bones to the side to search the ground underneath.
“Hey, hey, what have we here?” he exclaimed.
The sheriff and I moved closer to the edge. We watched the man reach a latex-gloved hand into the dirt and pull out a small, rusty pistol.
“Looks like he was either packing or the murder weapon was buried with him,” said the man as he held the gun up for Ewbanks to inspect.
The sheriff didn’t touch it. The lab man turned the pistol so that we could see barrel, clip, and grip.
“Too dirty to make out a serial number,” said Ewbanks. “Doubt there’s any chance of lifting prints. Colt twenty-five caliber. Chip in the grip. Not the kind of gun I’d expect on a guy wearing cowboy boots. Any sign of a holster?”
“Nothing attached to the belt. Nothing in the nylon jacket.”
“Have the lab check the interior clip and any shells,” ordered Ewbanks. “Maybe some prints were protected and got etched into the bluing. Alert everyone to look for a twenty-five caliber slug.”
I watched the lab man drop the pistol in a clear evidence bag and seal it. Then he went back to fingering through the dirt where he’d found the gun.
“Ah,” he said. “I thought maybe he’d have it in his hip pocket.” He held up a nylon wallet, the kind held shut with a Velcro strip.
“See if you can open it without damaging it,” said Ewbanks. “Maybe we can get an ID.”
Carefully, the lab man slid his finger along the edge of the faded blue wallet, breaking the Velcro seal. It unfolded in his hand. I could see the red, white, and blue colors of a North Carolina driver’s license in a plastic window.
“Issued in February 1997 to Samuel E. Calhoun,” he said. “Asheville address. Caucasian. Date of birth August 21, 1959.”
“Calhoun,” repeated Ewbanks. “Now where do I know that name?”
“He’s carrying more than four hundred dollars in cash.” The lab man stuck a latexed finger where additional cards hid.
“Preacher, when was Pearly Johnson buried here?” asked Ewbanks.
“It would have been in the spring of 1997.”
“Much go on up here during the week? Meetings? Choir practice?”
“No. The choir rehearses early Sunday before the service. Most meetings are Sunday afternoons. Weddings and funerals about the only other times that aren’t Sundays.”
“Here’s something interesting,” said the lab man as he continued to check the contents of the wallet. “Calhoun had a P.I. license. New York.”
“Sammy Calhoun,” said Ewbanks. “Now I remember. I wondered whatever happened to that guy. He hung around the courthouse, trying to pick up freelance work from lawyers. Struck me as a smart ass. Must have struck somebody else that way too.”
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of tires on gravel. We looked up the hill to see two cars and a mobile news van pulling into the parking lot. The buzzards were circling.
“Don’t say anything to the press,” said Ewbanks. “I don’t want anything reported before I’ve cleared it. Refer all questions to me, understand?”
We all agreed. None of us wanted to be on the six o’clock news.
“Good. Preacher, why don’t you go tell them I’ll make a statement in a few minutes. Maybe they’ll show you a little respect.”
Pace nodded and started up the hill, brandishing his rhododendron staff in his hand like Moses headed out of Egypt. The snow began to fall like manna.
“Here’s a babe I’d like to interrogate,” said the lab man.
I turned around to look at his latest discovery. Staring at me out of the murdered man’s wallet was a photograph of a beautiful brunette that stopped my heart cold—Doctor Susan Miller, the woman I loved.
I sat in a total white-out. Jumbo flakes swirled around the jeep, but I could still make out the images of Ewbanks and the lab men as they walked up the hill. The white-out wasn’t the snow; it was the blank wall of my mind.
The photograph in the murdered man’s wallet had jerked me into an unknown past. Sheriff Ewbanks knew Sammy Calhoun must have been put into the grave shortly after Pearly Johnson, while the earth was freshly turned. When I met Susan eighteen months ago, she had told me she hadn’t dated since college because the rigors of residency had consumed her time. Med school in New York had been just as tough. So if smart-ass Calhoun wasn’t an old boyfriend, who was he? Why would a P.I. have carried Susan Miller’s picture? Had he been following her?
Through the jeep’s windshield, I saw the sheriff break away from the crime lab techies and head toward the news crew. One of the lab men held the evidence bags under his coat to screen them from the reporters. He and his colleague went to their van. At least Susan’s picture wouldn’t be given to the press. Not yet.
Ewbanks had released me from the scene. Pace was in the church, telephoning Senator Richards’ sister and Williams Funeral Home with news of the delay. The sheriff had told him to reveal as few details as possible, making the pending snowstorm the culprit.
I decided I needed advice, and no one would speak straighter than my friend Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins. That meant face to face. I wasn’t going to get into the details over my cell phone. I called his back door number to set up a meeting.
“Sheriff’s Department. Deputy Hutchins speaking.”
“Reece, it’s Barry Clayton. Is the sheriff in?”
“Oh, it’s you,” he replied with as much enthusiasm as if I were selling magazine subscriptions. “The sheriff ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” Getting information from Reece was like getting helpful hints from the IRS. He was the self-appointed gatekeeper of the department.
“Somewhere close I hope. With this snow coming, we might have traffic emergencies.”
“In that case, you’re the best man to be in the office,” I said, knowing he’d take it as the compliment it wasn’t meant to be.
“Yeah, well, Sheriff’s out this afternoon. His son Kenny’s coming home. I’m going to do my best to keep things under control without bothering him. Something I can help you with?”
“Thanks, Reece, you just did. I wanted to ask when Kenny was coming in for the holidays.” I hung up before the nosey deputy could ask why and dialed Tommy Lee’s home number.
Tommy Lee’s wife, Patsy, answered the phone.
“Kenny get in okay?”
“Just made it. Tommy Lee’s helping him unload the car. That boy brings home every stitch of dirty laundry except what’s on his back.” She laughed and the joy of having her son home for Christmas rang through. “I’ll tell him you’re on the line.”
“No. I’m driving in this mess,” I lied. “And my mind shuts down when I talk. Is it okay if I drop by?”
“Sure. We’ll save you a spot by the fire.”
I looked at my wristwatch. Ten after three. “All right. I’ll be there about four.”
Tommy Lee and Patsy lived on the side of Laurel County farthest from Pace’s Eagle Creek church. The snow-infested two-lane winding roads would keep me under thirty-five miles per hour most of the way. I wasn’t going to push it. Four-wheel drive doesn’t do a hell of a lot of good if you’re tumbling down a mountainside.
I wanted to talk to Tommy Lee alone, but the afternoon activity of his household might make that awkward. Kenny was a sophomore at NC State in Raleigh, and their daughter, Samantha, was an eighth-grader who would be excited about her big brother’s return. A roaring fire in the den would be a magnet drawing a close-knit family even tighter.
A good inch of snow covered the gravel driveway to Tommy Lee’s house. Both Pace’s bursitis weather forecast and my travel-time estimate were right on the money. I pulled the jeep behind a silver Taurus with icicles hanging from the rear bumper. Kenny’s car had been hot enough to melt the snow, but now had sat long enough for it to refreeze.
The rambling brick ranch-style house was framed by white pines, now literally white as their boughs bent under the weight of the snow. I stepped from the jeep and took a deep breath. Through the cascading flakes came the sweet aroma of wood smoke from Tommy Lee’s chimney. The only sound was the muffled whisper of thousands of tiny particles striking around me. I wished I were ten years old and my greatest concern was sledding with my buddies.
I crunched my way to the side of the house where I could enter through the utility room. Patsy didn’t need a melting puddle to come traipsing across her living room carpet. The storm door was unlocked and a rack of coats, hats, and gloves hung from wall hooks just inside. I unzipped my jacket and started to deposit it in a vacant spot when the door to the kitchen opened.
“Well, where’s your armload of wood?” asked Tommy Lee. “No one gets by me without paying the toll.” His broad shoulders filled the doorway. A red flannel shirt and blue jeans didn’t proclaim his off-duty status as much as the pistol missing from his hip. His grin was as warm as the air flowing out around him. His one eye winked, momentarily blinding him to the fact that I wasn’t smiling.
“Why don’t we feed the pigeons,” I said.
His brow furrowed, puckering the ever-present black patch that covered his sightless left eye. Tommy Lee’s tour of duty in Vietnam hadn’t come without cost, and the price he had paid was written across his face. “You want to talk,” he said.
I nodded and put on my jacket.
Tommy Lee turned around and yelled, “Honey, I’m going to make Barry help with the birds before he falls asleep in front of our fire.”
From somewhere inside the house, Patsy called, “Then put on your gloves. You’re too old to get frostbite.”
“Not me. You tell me I’ve got the hottest hands in Gainesboro.”
He paused, and waited. We both got an earful of silence.
Tommy Lee laughed as he grabbed a gray parka from the rack. “She knows as soon as I come in I’ll run my cold hands up her back. Been doing that for nearly thirty years. She hates it, but loves it when I make her mad.”
I had to smile. For all his tough talk, Tommy Lee jumped at Patsy’s command.
We walked across the back lawn to a wire mesh coop built at the edge of the woods. A chorus of coos originated from a wall that could fairly be described as pigeon holed. Birds nested in mailbox-sized compartments and peered out at the falling snow. The square cage was at least twenty feet on each side and ten feet tall. A dividing mesh bisected the enclosure so that brown birds were segregated from those with white and black markings. Tommy Lee’s pigeons numbered more than fifteen, and they all seemed to be speaking their minds.
He uncapped a large rubber trash can, retrieved a scoop filled with cracked corn and held it aloft so that the birds could see it. Then he tossed the grain through the wire and onto the snow. The pigeons dropped from their cubbyholes like bailing paratroopers. The black and white ones began rapidly pecking up the corn, but the browns thrust out their chests and strutted back and forth between swallows.
“The black and whites are the tumblers, right?”
“Yeah, Hanover Tumblers,” said Tommy Lee. “On a clear calm day, I need to have you and Susan come see them. They fly in an upward spiral, and then take a wild acrobatic fall hundreds of feet that would make an F-16 pilot hurl lunch.”
“Why?”
“Why does any guy take a tumble? For a dame. Sex.”
“How do you get them back in the cage?”
“What’s more important to a guy than sex?”
“Food?”
“Right. Barry, what’s so complicated about life? Why don’t women understand us?”
“Who are these guys?” I asked, pointing to the brown pigeons huffing and puffing on their side of the mesh.
“They’re the ones who screw it up for the rest of us. German Magpie Pouters. The males bloat themselves up, ruffle their own feathers, and try to intimidate. At least the tumblers actually do something.”
“Guess they’re like people.”
“Like a lot of the pompous assholes I lock up, except these guys behave better in their cage.”
Tommy Lee walked to the side of the coop and opened a screen door. He stepped in with the tumblers and began breaking the thin ice on the water trough.
“So, you want to talk about birds or people?” he asked.
The wire mesh between us provided a psychological barrier that kept his question safe, like the screen in a confessional. The distance helped me relax. We were having a conversation while he did some chores.
“I want to talk about a body.”
“One that’s at the funeral home?” He stopped fooling with the water trough. I had gotten his attention.
“No. One that was dug up out of the ground at Eagle Creek Methodist Church. Only it wasn’t the expected resident. The grave had been sublet as a duplex.”
“In the coffin?”
“On top of the vault. Appears to be a bullet wound to the skull. The body is nothing but a skeleton and remnants of clothes and cowboy boots. Sheriff Ewbanks came up to investigate.”
“Hard-ass Hor-ass.” Tommy Lee undid the wall of wire separating the two breeds and stepped in with the pouters. As he cleared their water, several males strutted around his feet as if giving an ultimatum.
“What kind of sheriff is he?”
“Good enough, I reckon.” Tommy Lee let a wide grin break through. “Not as good as me, of course. Horace Ewbanks is old school. Been there since the Sixties and pretty much runs things his way. Lets the mountain boys make shine as long as they don’t sell so much he has to do something about it. Doesn’t have much use for Yankees, though he knows their tourist dollars get more important each year. He and I stay out of each other’s way. Worst thing you can do with Horace is tell him how to do his job. You’ll have to give a statement, but after that, you can put it out of your mind.”
“I wish it were so easy.”
“Why? Is there something else?”
“Mobile crime lab found a pistol. Might be the murder weapon. They also found a wallet. Samuel E. Calhoun, assuming the wallet belonged to the skeleton.”
“Never heard of him,” said Tommy Lee.
“Ewbanks had. New York P.I. evidently trying to get work down here. Had a North Carolina driver’s license recently issued.”
“Recently?”
“I mean recently related to when Ewbanks thinks Calhoun’s body was buried. The original grave had been dug in the spring of ’97. It would make sense that whoever shot Calhoun put the body in a fresh grave where no one would notice turned earth. The driver’s license was dated February ’97.”
“That’s good. Gives Horace a point to backtrack.”
“There was also a picture in the wallet the sheriff will backtrack.”
Tommy Lee stared at me through the wire. A few flakes rested on his black patch, but his good eye was clear and curious. He sensed we had come to the reason we were standing out in the snow. “Whose picture?”
“Susan Miller.”
For a few seconds, all I heard was the cooing of the pigeons. Tommy Lee stood as frozen as the snow around us.
“I haven’t said anything to her,” I added.
“Well, you’re going to have to. I take it you didn’t tell Ewbanks.”
“No. He didn’t know who she was. Reverend Pace was there for the grave transfer, but he’d gone up to talk to the reporters before the photograph was discovered.”
“Reporters?”
“A
NEWSCHANNEL-8
crew arrived. I doubt if Ewbanks told them much of anything. The lab men took the photo along with the other evidence. Then I came here. The sheriff wants to sift all the dirt before we move the vault. That might be after the storm.”
Tommy Lee looked up at the sky. “Could be a couple days. Now that we’ve broken the ice, let’s get by that fire. I want to hear everything that happened.”