Рита Браун - Rest In Pieces

It took Harry a minute to focus in the fading light. At first, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Then she did.

“Oh, my God.”

10

Albemarle County Sheriff Rick Shaw bent down with his flashlight. Officer Cynthia Cooper, already hunkered down, gingerly lifted the digits with her pocket knife.

“Never seen anything like this,” Shaw muttered. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

The sheriff battled his smoking addiction with disappointing results. Worse, Cooper had begun to sneak cigarettes herself.

Tucker sat staring at the hand. Blair Bainbridge, feeling a little queasy, and Harry stood beside Tucker. Mrs. Murphy rested across Harry’s neck. Her feet were cold and she was tired, so Harry had slung her around her neck like a stole.

“Harry, any idea where this came from?”

“I know,” Tucker volunteered.

“Like I said, the dog was sitting on the creek bank with this hand. I ran back home and called, then hopped in the truck to meet you. I don’t know any more than that.”

“What about you, uh . . .”

“Blair Bainbridge.”

“Mr. Bainbridge, notice anything unusual? Before this, I mean?”

“No.”

Rick grunted when he stood up. Cynthia Cooper wrapped the hand in a plastic bag.

“If you follow me, I can show you!” Tucker yapped and ran toward the cemetery.

“She’s got a lot to say.” Cynthia smiled. She loved the little dog and the cat.

Shaw inhaled, then exhaled a long blue line of smoke, which didn’t curl upward. Most likely meant more rain.

Tucker sat by the graveyard and howled.

“I, for one, am going to see what she’s about.” Harry followed her dog.

“Me too.” Cynthia followed, carrying the hand in its bag.

Rick grumbled but his curiosity was up. Blair stayed with him. When the humans reached the iron fence Tucker barked again and walked over to the angel with the harp tombstone. Cooper flung her flashlight beam over toward Tucker.

“Right here,” Tucker instructed.

Harry squinted. “Coop, you’d better check this out.”

Again Cynthia got down on her knees. Tucker dug in the dirt. She hit a pocket of air and the unmistakable odor of rotten flesh smacked Cynthia in the face. The young woman reeled backward and fought her gag reflex.

Rick Shaw, now beside her, turned his head aside. “Guess we’ve got work to do.”

Blair, ashen-faced, said, “Would you like me to go back to the barn and get a spade?”

“No, thank you,” the sheriff said. “I think we’ll post a man out here tonight and start this in daylight. I don’t want to take the chance of destroying evidence because we can’t see.”

As they walked back to the squad car Blair halted and turned to the sheriff, now on another cigarette. “I did see something. The night of the storm my transformer was hit by lightning. I didn’t have any candles and I was standing by my kitchen window.” He pointed to the window. “Another big bolt shot down and split that tree and for an instant I thought I saw someone standing up here in the cemetery. I dismissed it. It didn’t seem possible.”

Shaw wrote this down quickly in his small notebook as Coop called for a backup to watch the graveyard.

Harry wanted to make a crack about the graveyard shift but kept her mouth shut. Whenever things were grim her sense of humor kicked into high gear.

“Mr. Bainbridge, you’re not planning on leaving anytime soon, are you?”

“No.”

“Good. I might need to ask you more questions.” Rick leaned against the car. “I’ll call Herbie Jones. It’s his cemetery. Harry, why don’t you go home and eat something? It’s past suppertime and you looked peaked.”

“Lost my appetite,” Harry replied.

“Yeah, me too. You never get used to this kind of thing, you know.” The sheriff patted her on the back.

When Harry walked in the door she picked up the phone and called Susan. As soon as that conversation was finished she called Miranda Hogendobber. For Miranda, being the last to know would be almost as awful as finding the hand.

11

At first light a team of two men began carefully turning over the earth by the tombstone with the harp-playing angel. Larry Johnson, the retired elderly physician, acted as Crozet’s coroner—an easy job, as there was generally precious little to do. He watched, as did Reverend Herbie Jones. Rick Shaw and Cynthia Cooper carefully sifted through the spadefuls of earth the men turned over. Harry and Blair stayed back at the fence. Miranda Hogendobber pulled up in her Falcon, bounded out of the car, and strode toward the graveyard.

“Harry, you called Miranda. Don’t deny it, I know you did,” Rick fussed.

“Well . . . she has an interesting turn of mind.”

“Oh, please.” Rick shook his head.

“Pay dirt.” One of the diggers pulled his handkerchief up around his nose.

“I got it. I got it.” The other digger reached down and gently extricated a leg.

Miranda Hogendobber reached the hill at that moment, took one look at the decaying leg, wearing torn pants and with the foot still in a sneaker, and passed out.

“She’s your responsibility!” Rick pointed his forefinger at Harry.

Harry knew he was right. She hurried over to Mrs. Hogendobber and, assisted by Blair, hoisted her up. She began to come around. Not knowing what another look at the grisly specimen might do, they remonstrated with her. She resisted but then walked down to Blair’s house supported by the two of them.

The police continued their work and discovered another hand, the fingertip pads also removed, and another leg, which, like its companion, had been cleaved where the thighbone joins the pelvis.

By noon, after sifting and digging for five hours, Rick called a halt to the proceedings.

“Want us to start in on these other graves?”

“As the ground is not disturbed I wish you wouldn’t.” Reverend Jones stepped in. “Let them rest in peace.”

Rick wiped his forehead. “Reverend, I can appreciate the sentiment but if we need to come back up here . . . well, you know.”

“I know, but you’re standing on my mother.” A hint of reproach crept into Herb’s resonant voice. He was more upset than he realized.

“I’m sorry.” Rick quickly moved. “Go back to work, Reverend. I’ll be in touch.”

“Who would do that?” Herbie pointed to the stinking evidence.

“Murder?” Cynthia Cooper opened her hands, palms up, “Seemingly average people commit murder. Happens every day.”

“No, who would cut up a human being like that?” The minister’s eyes were moist.

“I don’t know,” Rick replied. “But whoever did it took great pains to remove identifying evidence.”