Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

Sharpe returned to the brochure Mori French had whipped out from his inside coat pocket even at this hour, even though Sharpe would not be using his services. “These guys running the local funerary have this down to a science, selling their services.”

“Lotta money in it. If maybe I'd been smart,” muttered Brannan. “Hell, we see death all the time, too, but we don't make near the bucks off it Frenchy and Parker do.”

“Listen to this,” said Sharpe, reading now from the soft blue brochure with a cloud-filled sky, bright with beaming light, as backdrop to the bold lettering. “'French and Parker's Arrangement Center provides you with an array of choices: Ground Burial, Cremation, Mausoleum, Funeral Services, Local and Long Distance Shipping to Anywhere in the Continental U.S., Winter Storage (during permafrost season only) and Veteran's Special Arrangements. Free Arrangement Decision Guide.'“

“They've got the territory covered all right.”

Following Mori French, Dr. Herman Krueshach sleepily bounced along in a family station wagon. Sharpe imagined Krueshach blinking into his rearview mirror and cursing under his breath, disenchanted with the idea of digging up a two-year-old corpse on what he believed to be a wild goose chase.

They had driven through the chill damp fog that crept into the cab of the car and into Sharpe's bones. Despite the season, the predawn drive felt icy cold, its destination and outcome grim like any funeral motorcade, but worse yet since their purpose was at opposition to French and Parker's normal “arrangements.” Nothing on their guide about exhumations. In fact, no one in Millbrook's entire history had ever been raised from the dead.

They'd rolled out past the city limits sign, past silent tractors sitting in fields and patient cows lined up at barn doors. Now in the distance, Sharpe heard the backhoe-a result of his court order, going thrum-pump, thrum-pump, thrum-whosh just as the motorcade of three vehicles turned in under a black wrought-iron gate. The cemetery gate reminded Sharpe of old black-and-white American cowboy films when Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper, sitting astride a horse, staring at the big cattle ranch announced an intent to take a stand. The overhead arch was oddly draped with a banner flapping in the cold November early morning light. The new, temporary banner proclaimed the fog-laden cemetery as The Henry Knox Memorial Cemetery.

“Just had a rechristening ceremony out here a week ago,” explained Brannan as if apologizing for what appeared to have been a celebration. There were even a few dead balloons left hanging in a surreal fashion from the iron gates.

“I see,” Sharpe replied as they entered the narrow un-paved paths inside the gates. Ahead of them, the yellow monster backhoe that'd begun its journey here on a flatbed an hour before, coming from Alvin's A to Z Rental in town, materialized from the fog, its formless noise now taking on clearer meaning. Form and function and mechanical efficiency amid the weeping trees and fallen headstones of what appeared to be an ancient plot of ground. Sharpe wondered how old the cemetery might be, and he again wondered why Louisa Childe had not been buried in any one of the three cemeteries within the city limits, the Catholic cemetery, the Baptist cemetery, or the Episcopalian one. Brannan followed the succession of cars as each pulled up against the line created in the fog by Alvin's huge flatbed truck which had come to this point in roundabout fashion so as to disturb as few gravesites as possible. Their presence, the cars, and the flatbed absorbed some but not all of the enormous noise shattering the stillness of this place as the backhoe continued its work.

Sharpe saw a huge gash had been taken out of a lovely oak that, by day, must provide ample shade throughout this area for Louisa and her neighbors.

Everyone climbed from their cars and gathered about the large hole being dug. They looked like men who would go out of their way to watch a machine of this size do its job. The sun remained just offstage, its predawn light muted by the overcast morning, while ominous, dark, roiling clouds threatened to complicate the morning's work with a downpour. But there seemed already so much moisture in the air that it would be difficult for raindrops to pass through it. Sharpe sauntered up alongside Krueshach, Mori French, and Detective Brannan. Nothing was said. The sound of the backhoe was king.

The serene invaded by the chaotic needs of men with questions.

“It's Millbrook's second cemetery for its second-class citizenry, transients, homeless and uninsured,” Dan Brannan said in his ear. “I see.”

“Is that what they're going to put on your tombstone, Sharpe? 'I see'?”

“Quaint place,” he replied, surveying the nearby tombstones, thin as parchment some of them, some with dates going back to the 1830s. None of the more recent markers had names, only numbers.

AT the same time that Richard Sharpe exhumed Louisa Childe's body, Jessica awoke sprawled across her luxurious Wyndham Hotel bed, amid paperwork on Sarah Towne of Portland, Oregon. She recalled having reviewed the Towne case the night before. She didn't remember tossing the files on the huge bed or falling asleep for that matter, or saying good night to Darwin Reynolds.

Rolling over, her eyes growing accustomed to the notion of opening, she saw it was still dark outside-overcast with roiling thunderstorms off in the distance and a pitter-patter against the windows that gently rocked her back into numbness and sleep. So she closed her eyes again and contemplated what lay ahead of her, and wondering if she'd been too exhausted last night to set her alarm properly. Why hasn't it gone off by now… Must be seconds away from ringing… How can I sleep knowing that?

She wanted to see Joyce Olsen's body one last time, perhaps to verify that it had ever happened. Most certainly for a final, closer look, wishing to find the secret message in the dead woman that she ought to be able to discover. Joyce Olsen's wrong-side-up or upside-down autopsy had been a strange postmortem indeed. Cleaned of blood, the wound had been like a gash torn from the body of a battlefield victim hit by heavy mortar fire. All the parts disfigured, out of place, surreal.

Jessica wondered now if she was losing her touch, her edge, her instinct for the chase. She had learned nothing new in the autopsy. Perhaps it was to be so and to remain so with this particular victim, but it nagged at Jessica. In the past, she had often discovered something that had gone unnoticed by others, including other medical examiners. But not this time. Not now. Perhaps it was the attitude with which she approached the Olsen woman's body. Jaded, unfeeling, all the emotion knocked from her at the scene. Or perhaps she simply expected too much, expected that the very way in which the killer had carved Joyce Olsen up might lead to something, might tell them something, might grant them some small insight into the mind capable of such a monster's appetite. But neither the body, nor the enormous insult to it, nor the autopsy itself had revealed any great insights. And another go-round-the continuation of the autopsy with Sands this morning-she rather doubted would net anything new or useful, either. Still, Sands was going to “dig” deeper, and so, Jessica felt she'd best be present.

In his own subtle way, Ira Sands seemed to want to best Jessica, given this opportunity to work alongside the FBI's finest forensic detective. He'd turned it into a macabre competition she wanted no part of. No doubt he had the body prepped, ready and already waiting.

She pulled herself up against the headboard, and squinted at the clock: 6 A.M. She'd set the alarm for 6:30. She clicked it off so it would not ring in her ears. She next worked gummy sleep residue from her eyes. Then she looked across the room at the table where she and Reynolds had spent some time early in the evening yesterday working before they'd gone out to the terrace to work there.