CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘Imagine if the conspiracy crowd got a whiff of this,’ Ripley said.
Ella was standing at the back of the cemetery with her partner as the crew reversed their operation. Hibbert and his men were talking to the foreman somewhere.
An empty coffin. No body and no notebook.
‘That’s why none of them are detectives.’
‘Well, we are detectives, and we need to find out who stole a giant’s dead body.’
Ella pulled her mask off. The relief of clean air lasted about a second before the rest of it landed on her. ‘An empty grave isn’t nothing. It means this whole thing is about Greaves. We find whichever lunatic has his corpse in their basement, we find our killer.
‘Simple as that,’ Ripley said.
‘There’s still avenues we can look into. Wait here.’
Doctor Park had climbed out of the cut and was talking into his phone with his free hand pressed flat to the crown of his head.
One of the crew had started coiling the lifting straps without being told.
The groundsman, a stooped man named Aldous who’d let them through the gate at noon, stood a few feet off with his key ring still in his fist, looking into the hole as if he’d never seen an empty coffin before.
Ella went over to him.
‘The empty casket,’ she said. ‘Is there any camera on this place? Anything that covers the gate, the road, the sections at the back?’
‘Not really, ma’am. Sorry.’
‘None at all?’
‘We have one on my maintenance hut, but I don’t know where the feed goes. I’ve never had to check it.’
‘No coverage of the plots?’
‘Coverage costs money, ma’am. Most of our residents don’t get up to a lot.’
He was right, Ella thought. This was a field for the dead, many of whom were criminals in life. It was isolated for a reason, and that meant if someone wanted to dig up a body without a single eye on them, they couldn’t have built a better spot if they’d designed it themselves.
‘Okay, thank you.’
Ella went back to Ripley, who was now mid-conversation with Hibbert. When she got there, Hibbert looked at her like she’d just tried to feed him feces.
‘Great work, agents. Now I’ve got to explain this to the big guys, and tell Maryland police that they’ve got a body snatching case to add to their load, so that’s me out for the day. Here, you can do this yourself.’ Hibbert slapped a stack of papers to her chest.
‘What’s this?’
‘A bunch of people who need to know we violated a grave. Thomas Greaves’s legal counsel. Call them when you’ve got five minutes.’
‘Okay. Leave it with me. I’m sorry this didn’t yield any results.’
Ella disagreed with her own assessment, but she could tell that Hibbert didn’t want to hear any justifications right now. He wanted to blow off steam, and Ella couldn’t blame him. Hibbert’s phone then rang, and he looked at the screen with the same turd-eating expression he’d had a minute ago.
‘Great. The Mayor’s office. Excuse me while I get my ass handed to me.’
Hibbert disappeared around the corner. Once he was out of earshot, Ripley started laughing.
‘Feel vindicated, yet?’
‘No. You?’
‘Not even close,’ said Ripley, ‘but you’re right about one thing. We know for sure that we’re on the right lines. I’ve just got a lot of questions.’
‘Like how did he dig up a grave, steal a body and refill the grave without anyone noticing?’
‘No. Dark, the guy is ten feet tall and has arms like deep-sea pipelines. He chopped through bone and muscle and tissue in one swing. He could probably dig through five feet of soil with one hand.’
‘Fair point.’
‘I’m just wondering why this guy’s profile is so bizarre.
We know he’s a monster of a man, we know he’s a physical specimen with incredible strength, we know he has no qualms about subjecting these people to violent deaths that would traumatize even the most hardened cops.
And now he’s grave robbing too. You see where I’m going with this? ’
Ella had been so lost in the physical evidence that she hadn’t had time to stop and ruminate on the details that transcended the flesh. She processed Ripley’s idea and took it to its logical endpoint. ‘On paper, he’s the alpha male of serial killers. A modern-day Carl Panzram.’
‘Right, and you know what Carl Panzram didn’t do?’
‘Idolize anyone. Yet our killer idolizes Thomas Greaves for some reason.’
‘Yup. Alpha offenders aren’t known for their compassion. They kill for themselves, and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t kill at all.’
Ella took a moment. The coffin was back in the earth now, and the excavator was readying itself to shovel the dirt back into the hole and bury the phantom remains of Thomas Greaves once more.
So where were his real remains?
‘Mia, I’m going back to the precinct. I’ve got some thinking to do.’
***
History was written by the survivors, and survivors, like everyone, had biases. Therefore, history was filtered through the partialities of the winners.
It took a special kind of person to remember the losers, and that’s what he was doing this afternoon.
He had a gift for a certain someone. The rock did not keep the water but he kept everything, every word, every face, every name spoken once in a corridor and never again.
He remembered the ones who deserved crossing off, and he remembered the ones who deserved to know their efforts were not in vain.
He could see his destination now, and it looked deserted enough for him to make the run right away.
However, he sat still for a moment and tinkered with his GPS.
There were no cameras nearby that he knew of, but even if a discreet camera had somehow bypassed his examinations, it would just catch a man in a hood and nothing more.
Would his size give him away?
Perhaps, but over the years he’d learned how to make himself smaller, just in case he ever needed to.
A little hunch of the shoulders, hands in the pockets.
Those small acts alone could compress a man a few inches.
But of all the atrocities he’d committed this week, he’d be amazed if what gave him away was a mere gift exchange.
Hell, a video of him committing murder was all over the Internet – or it was, until they scrubbed it – and still no one had come knocking at his door.
The mentor had said this was a bad idea. Involve as few people as possible had been the advice, and what good advice it was. Still, the mentor was just there to guide him, not control him, and this was always part of the plan, long before the mentor got involved.
One more look in every direction and he was sure the coast was clear.
Now or never.
With gloved hands, he grabbed the gift, opened the car door and made for his destination.