The Dead
As they drove out ofthe city toward Green-Wood Cemetery in the Paranormal Society’s hearse, Oliver watched Felipe from the corner of his eye. He had been oddly quiet since they returned from Agatha and Louisa’s house the day before. Oliver had tried to gently nudge him during dinner and at breakfast that morning, but no matter how he approached what happened when he sparred with Teresa, Felipe managed to deflect and get him sidetracked. At least driving the hearse toward a crime scene seemed to revive a little of Felipe’s verve. Oliver knew he had been itching to go out on a case since his light duty ended.
Their first month back at the laboratory had been frightfully uneventful with the usual sorts of cases: a man who drowned on land, which turned out to be a case of a moved body rather than magic, a plantmancer who had heightened the effects of a hallucinogenic mushroom to the point that it poisoned her, and a werewolf that died of natural causes mid-transformation. None of them had beentheircase, though, and if what the head inspector said was any indication, this one at least sounded interesting. As much as Oliver didn’t feel like galivanting all over the city after being dragged to half a dozen museums, three family dinners, and two department store trips within a fortnight, Felipe needed cases that took him out of the Paranormal Society to stay balanced. While Oliver would have been happy to go out to the scene of the crime and let someone else deal with the legwork, he agreed to take the whole case for Felipe’s sake.
“Can you read the note again?” Felipe said, not taking his eyes off the road.
Unfolding the police bulletin that had been sent to the Paranormal Society, Oliver smoothed it against his leg. “Assistance needed at Green-Wood Cemetery. Mutilated body in shallow grave. One of yours. Send medical examiner. Ask for Carter.”
“Carter had better be the groundskeeper or cemetery manager,” Felipe grumbled. “I really don’t want to deal with a thousand asinine questions from a cop who can barely get out of his own way.”
Maybe we should have stopped for coffee or a bagel first, Oliver thought as he tried to think of something to lighten the mood. “They aren’t usually on scene when I arrive.”
“Good, I prefer it when they secure the scene and leave the moment they realize it isn’t their business. There’s nothing worse than someone who doesn’t know what they’re meddling in trying to strongarm jurisdiction or stepping all over what little evidence you have.”
“I can imagine. What I’m curious about is how mutilated the body is. They could have been a little more descriptive. I don’t even know if we’re dealing with a half-buried skeleton or a fresh body in pieces.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
As they approached the cemetery’s massive Gothic Revival gates, Felipe slowed the hearse. The crenellated spires soared over them in the same brown stone they saw throughout the city, but for a throat-tightening second, Oliver was back on the island in the desecrated cathedral. With a blink, the eternal twilight was replaced with the warm, May sun. Felipe stopped the steamer just inside the cemetery as a Black man in a brown suit and sturdy boots stepped into the lane. He took his bowler hat off as he approached the window, revealing a neat mustache and a bald pate.
“Are you the investigators from the Society?”
“Yes, sir, and you’re Mr. Carter?” Felipe asked, extending a hand.
“Yes, I’m the head groundskeeper. One of my men discovered the body during his rounds this morning. I can show you where it is.”
Oliver scooted into the center of the bench seat and tucked his elbows close as Mr. Carter clamored inside. Sandwiched between him and Felipe, he held his breath as they crept down the winding road that cut through the necropolis. Green-Wood lived up to its name with rolling hills of grass and enough trees to make it more picturesque than most of Central Park. Half a mile in, Mr. Carter told them to stop the hearse, and they continued on foot along a far smaller path between the graves and mausoleums. Birds sang in the distance as a squirrel watched them curiously from above. Oliver drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was peaceful here in a way Central Park and the city never were. He never wanted to live in the country, but a picnic in Green-Wood Cemetery tucked behind graves in the shade of an oak tree sounded like a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
As they crested the top of the hill, Oliver spotted the makeshift grave covered over with a canvas tarp and a nervous white man sitting atop a grave beside it biting his nails. Through the cloth, Oliver could make out the outline of a body, so it must have been fairly whole. Unlike the other graves that were in orderly rows, this one had been shoved between the trees and could be no more than a foot or two deep. Upon hearing their approach, the other man leapt to his feet.
“This is one of our gravediggers, John Duncan. He’s the one who stumbled across the body.”
Felipe shook the man’s hand and introduced them both as Oliver drifted over to the body. Keeping his eyes on the ground, Oliver was surprised to find the grass remarkably unblemished considering the police had already been there. Chunks of sod laid in a heap beside a discarded shovel, but little else around the grave looked disturbed.
“Did you touch anything when you found the body?” Felipe asked.
“No, I went straight to Mr. Carter as soon as I found him.”
“And the police. Did they disturb the body or touch anything?”
Duncan shook his head. “No, they took one look at him, heard we wanted the Paranormal Society instead, and buggered off once they covered him up, not that I blame them.”
Oliver groaned. He almost didn’t want to know what sort of mess lay under the tarp if the police were more than willing to leave it for them to deal with. All he could imagine was a body rife with maggots or putrefied beyond identification, despite not noticing a smell. More than anything, he hoped the policeman was simply lazy and in no hurry to deal with a potential murder.
“And you found him this morning during your rounds?”
“I was on my way to mark out a grave farther down the hill when I saw the shed was left open and my shovel was missing. I thought Sam had come in early and started digging in the wrong place. When I went to check, I found him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Duncan. If you and Mr. Carter could wait over here while I assist Dr. Barlow, I may have more questions for you both.”
Locking eyes with Felipe over the body, Oliver nodded, and they each grabbed one side of the tarp. They gingerly lifted it, stepped around the body, and laid the canvas body side up. Turning to the body, Oliver let out a relieved breath. The man before them was naked and half covered in dirt, yet what drew Oliver’s eye was the sunken place in the man’s torso where his ribs should have been. He may have been dead and dumped, but he was far less mangled than he expected. The carrion eaters hadn’t even gotten to him yet, and there were no obvious maggots or vermin that he could see. Felipe frowned thoughtfully at the body before pulling the Kodak from his bag to photograph the body in situ. Getting out of Felipe’s way, Oliver ignored the other men’s eyes on his back. He should be asking them questions, but the thought of speaking to anyone besides Felipe or Gwen after being out so much felt like more than he could manage.
When Felipe left to canvas the hill for evidence and take more pictures of the scene, Oliver pulled the brush from his gladstone bag and carefully wiped the dirt from the dead man’s face. Either the person who disposed of the body hoped he would be found or realized gravedigging was far more taxing them they thought because saying he was buried in a shallow grave was an overstatement. It was barely more than the outline of a grave. Despite the peppering of dirt covering him, the dead man looked to be in his mid-thirties, of stocky build, white, with greying brown hair and a careworn but cleanshaven face. His skin was as waxy and mottled as a corpse at least a day old, but he wasn’t as decayed as Oliver would have expected. Oliver gently pushed on the man’s upper arm. He was just coming out of rigor. Leaning closer, Oliver took a covert sniff. There was the faint smell of organs and dirt, but there was something sharper and metallic lingering on his skin.
Oliver tilted his head as he brushed away the soil covering the dead man’s torso and revealed a familiar, gaping y-shaped incision beginning at each shoulder and running down to his navel. It was the standard cut for an autopsy or surgery in the chest cavity. Strange. Prodding the indentation where the man’s ribs should have been with the brush’s handle, Oliver heard the gentle patter of dirt raining into the cavity.
Clearing his throat, Oliver caught Felipe’s eye and motioned for him to come over. When Felipe squatted beside him, he whispered, “I don’t see anything obviously paranormal or any signs of violence. The man might have been a cadaver from a school or someone stolen from a morgue. It looks more like a practical joke than a murder, though I’ll know more when I get him in the lab. Did they say why they wanted to call us?”
