Chapter 20 #2
What disgusts me even more is that the look on Jesse’s face tells me that to the lesser humans, he pulled it off.
I scrutinize them until Gabriel puts my burger in my hands.
“They disgust me,” I announce to Gabriel.
“I know. It’s okay, baby,” Gabriel says as he rubs my knee.
“I can hear you!” Matthew protests.
“I wish I had one of those window things like they do in limos,” I tell Gabriel.
“With your millions, I bet you could have one installed,” Gabriel says, and I nod, liking the idea.
I’ve never seen anyone so excited to dig a hole until I met Matthew, who is all smiles as he hurries out to rob a grave. He has tossed away his badge and all morals just to look sexy in front of Jesse.
What a weak human.
I glance at Gabriel, who smiles at me and makes me realize that I would burn down the world for him.
I grimace a little as I realize what that means and decide I’ll bully Matthew to feel better about myself.
“Listen up, I got different shoes for us so that any shoe treads will be unidentifiable if we are caught for some reason,” I say before glancing at Matthew. “Well… besides Matthew. Hopefully, those aren’t the shoes you wear every day.”
Matthew looks down at his feet before doing some strange Dorothy heel tap. “Of course they’re the shoes I wear every day!”
“New plan, we’ll leave traces of Matthew’s DNA around the gravesite,” I say as I pluck out some of his hair.
That makes him bat me back. “Dammit, Liam!”
“Make sure to sprinkle a little as you go, like a bread crumb trail,” I tell him.
“Matthew, it’ll be fine. Just like… uhh, if we get caught, burn those shoes… yeah, that,” Gabriel says with a warm smile. “Liam, stop taking pictures of his shoes, dammit!”
“I’m just saving this in my blackmail folder. Matthew, let me take a picture of the treads.”
“What else do you have in there?” Jesse asks.
“Shhhh, don’t worry about it,” I say before I pull out the three shovels. Gabriel takes one, I give Jesse one, and I put mine in Matthew’s hands. Then I take the one out of Gabriel’s hand and put it in Matthew’s second hand. I smile, pleased by this arrangement.
“This is for the best,” I decide.
Matthew doesn’t even complain and acts like he’s going to dig with two shovels if it makes Jesse look his way.
We walk across the old graveyard and toward the spot in the back.
I’d already scouted it out online, knowing that something up front or near new graves would be noticed.
We still run the risk of it being discovered, but with the snow coming, it’ll have time to recover before spring.
And by then, all of this will have been swept under the rug, and I really don’t care if they find out because Whitaker will definitely be dead at that point.
We reach the gravesite where I lay out two tarps and set up a couple of lights. Then I take the flat-edged shovel from Matthew and start working in clean lines to cut out the grass so that when we lay it back down, the grass will be mostly undisturbed.
“It’s ridiculous how good at this you are,” Matthew says.
“My mom made me help my dad landscape our whole yard one time. Even though we had the money to hire people to do things, my parents preferred to do them. They claimed it was good to know how to do this stuff and not always rely on others… no idea why,” I mutter as I carefully remove the first square of sod and set it to the side so I know exactly where it goes.
Once I’ve neatly arranged it all, I wave Matthew toward the grave.
“Keep the dirt on the tarp. Do you understand? On the tarp.”
“I hear you speaking, and am now regretting how nosy I was being.”
Jesse slams his shovel into the dirt and when it barely sinks in, he gives the shovel a kick before tripping over it. “Fucking hell, the ground is hard! How did you cut those out so well?”
I shrug. “I do everything well.”
“Let me help,” Gabriel says.
“Gabriel, honey, no. This is why I allowed Matthew to join us.”
Gabriel shakes his head and proceeds to help, which means I have to push him back and begin digging in his place. The flat shovel is not made for this type of digging, but it gets dirt out, so I keep going.
“Gabriel, do what you do best and look handsome. Degrade us a bit too, if you want. I’m up for anything,” I tell him.
“How am I going to degrade you? You’re doing such a good job.”
“One of us is,” I say as I see Matthew struggling over there.
I dig for a while before Gabriel gives me a head tilt, telling me he wants to talk to me in private.
I climb out of the shallow hole and follow him as he wanders out of earshot of the others.
“Liam… I’m not a fool. I know you could figure out how to get us to legally look into Whitaker through the department without having to dig him up.
You just want to do this so the police aren’t looking into him. ”
For a quiet moment, I just gaze at him before smiling. “I’ve always thought it was irritating when I read books where the main character gushes over the love interest whose cheeks are all rosy from the cold, but it looks extremely sexy on you,” I say as I kiss one.
“Liam, focus, please.”
I watch him closely. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me that you switched out the medical records. I want you to tell me that you’re using those two to dig a hole and then are going to pull out medical records, knowing that the man in that grave isn’t Whitaker but you’re going to fool them into thinking it is.
And then you’re going to lead them on a wild goose chase to find out who the killer is while you go out and hunt Whitaker down yourself. ”
I hesitate as I realize how right Gabriel was.
I'd looked up the state the body had been in and had carefully found some medical records that depicted what I'd want them to see.
It would have simply been a mind game. Matthew would have believed anything I had to say.
Jesse would have been trickier, but after the whole diner confession, I feel like he would have accepted it.
And then I would have merely set his fears to rest and hunted Whitaker down myself.
As simple as that.
But nothing is ever simple when my sweet Gabriel is involved and trying to make me into a better person.
“If you already know everything I’m going to do, why do I need to tell you?” I ask.
Gabriel doesn’t seem to be in a joking mood as he goes, “Liam.”
I lean against a tree while I watch the other two dig. “I can find this man.”
“I’m sure you can. But you know who can find him faster?” Gabriel asks. “A group of talented detectives and a medical examiner.”
My desire to kill Whitaker is too strong. The idea of him smugly rotting away in prison is enough to make me want to end this whole stunt, go home and figure everything out myself. Why would this man deserve anything akin to freedom? He deserves death. He deserves to die for what he’s done.
But lives are at risk and this isn’t a situation where the others can’t go any further, or where the police are incapable of doing anything, as is the case with many of the monsters I kill.
No, this is simply me being selfish.
While lives are in danger.
“Hey! I hit something!” Matthew announces.
“Don’t ding the top of the casket,” I warn as I head over to it, glad the grave isn’t too deep. I drop down into the hole and help them uncover the casket. It takes longer than I feel like it should before we’ve uncovered enough to open it.
“Did you know that doctors and medical schools used to pay grave robbers to dig up bodies so they could practice on them?” Jesse asks.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to dig up any bodies for my education because this is a pain in the fucking ass.
I think I have blisters. The dirt is rock solid.
I might have given up if I’d had to dig up all of the bodies I was taught on. ”
I say, “The medical schools paying for bodies became a real problem when the grave robbers realized that it was easier to just murder people than dig them up from the graves.”
“Oh right, right! I forgot about that. History is fascinating. Would you guys like to hear about the history of using cadavers for medical research? Or bugs being used in medical research?” Jesse asks.
“No, I’d actually like to be able to sleep at some point in my life,” Matthew says with a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold.
“Bugs are so fascinating… and cute with their little legs and eyes.”
Matthew is staring at Jesse like he’s unsure what language he’s speaking.
“Let’s keep moving,” Gabriel encourages since they seem to have forgotten we’re involved in something highly illegal at the moment.
The problem now is opening it while really having nowhere but on the lid of the casket to stand unless we dig a person-shaped hole.
We quickly decide against that and have Matthew straddle the casket.
I’d made sure to look up whether it was a sealed or unsealed casket before venturing out here and wasn’t at all surprised to see that his mother picked all of the cheapest options even though she isn’t hurting for money. So the lid opens with ease.
“Don’t fall on the body, Matthew, or you’re fired,” I say.
“Am I getting paid to do this?”
“Nah, you’re just risking it all for nothing,” I inform him.
“Not for nothing,” Jesse counters.
Matthew looks hopeful that Jesse is going to say something like, “You’re doing it because you love me.”
Instead, Jesse says something along the lines of, “To save the lives of anyone else this asshole might go after. Liam, the medical records?”
I open the folder and pull them out before handing them over.
Jesse takes a brief look at them before going, “Well… the easiest to examine will be the leg he broke when he was seventeen.”
“Hopefully the right leg because the left doesn’t seem to have joined the casket party,” Matthew says as he uses a stick he must have found on the ground to poke at the missing leg. “How did this guy die again?”
We all look at the mangled corpse. It’s very clear that someone didn’t want anyone identifying this body. The face has been caved in and the leg with the break is missing.
My bet is that the teeth are missing as well.
“That’s the only broken bone, isn’t it? The only surgery?” Jesse asks. “But you got the dental records?”
I hand them over and Jesse carefully examines them before he drops into the hole to do the dirty work for me.
It’s not like he’s afraid to do any of this.
This is what his job entails. It’s definitely not the first body that’s been exhumed which he’s examined, and he knows just how to get to what he needs.
“Make sure you leave some hairs in there for when I have this grave dug up tomorrow,” I say.
“Matthew, shut that man up,” Jesse demands.
“I’m scared of him.”
“I find it hot when someone beats up Liam,” Jesse says.
Matthew immediately looks over at me. “Sorry, brother… you heard the man,” he says as he comes at me.
I slip an arm around his neck and put him in a choke hold before I hold him over the open casket. “Jesse, when you’re done, I’ll just drop him in on top and you close the lid.”
“What are you seeing?” Gabriel asks Jesse, ignoring the brawl.
“I’m seeing a whole lot of shattered teeth, making it extremely hard to find anything we can use. Can you hold this flashlight for me?”
I release Matthew and drop down to see what Jesse is looking at. He’s right, almost all of the teeth have been destroyed, and piecing anything together to get a match would be quite difficult out here in the dark.
“Isn’t there a tooth completely missing?” Gabriel asks. “I mean, it might be in that shattered mess somewhere, but the rest have fragments. That one’s completely missing.”
“See if it got lodged somewhere during the ‘crash,’” I say. “Knowing the situation, I doubt the mom paid a good mortician to prepare the body. Or any at all.”
Jesse is quick while he inspects the head and uses a tool to pull a tooth out from where it’d been embedded in the man’s lower jaw.
“We’re lucky too. A cuspid,” he says as he examines it and grabs the chart.
“No match. Honestly, I know without even looking at the chart. He had a chipped cuspid on this side. There’s no way this is the same tooth.
Things can be taken away but never naturally added to when it comes to teeth.
There’s nothing showing that the tooth was repaired.
” He puts the tooth back where he found it.
“I honestly don’t need to see anything more. This isn’t him.”
Matthew reaches down and Jesse takes his hand, allowing him to pull him out. We close the casket and start to bury the body in silence while we think.
Gabriel glances over at me, probably taking note that because of him, when Jesse asked for the records, I gave him the real ones.
The darkness inside of me is still not pleased over the fact that I’ve let my lead on this case slip, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve given up the hunt.
I just have to be significantly more careful when I go for the kill.
“What’s our plan now?” Jesse asks as snow falls faster than we can bury the grave. We need to finish up fast, or this will be the only site with no snow.
“I’m still contemplating that,” I respond, so the three of us work hard to make it look like the grave was never touched.
Of course it’s not perfect; anyone would see that the moment the snow melts.
But I simply need to get them to use some equipment to dig the grave up before the snow melts and no one will ever know.
If they figure it out, I’ll twist it into some theory that the killer dug the grave up to either plant fake evidence in it or to take away evidence.
“I need to think,” I say. “Unless someone else has some foolproof theory on why we assume it’s a man who’s been dead for years?”
No one volunteers so I nod, deciding that I’ll have to think of a way to deliver this so that Jesse’s name will never come up.
Well… as long as the killer stays quiet.