Charlaine Harris - An Ice cold Grave

Shit, I thought. Tolliver's face went very rigid. "At least her soul's gone," I said, and I could have slapped myself when I realized I'd spoken out loud.

"Oh," said the cheerful, motherly woman. "You can see 'em, too."

"Yes," I said, really startled.

"I thought I might be the only one."

"I don't think there are many of us," I said. "Does it help in your job?"

"When they're gone like they should be," Cleda said. "If I see one lingering, I try to call in their pastor to read a prayer. Sometimes that does the trick."

"I'll have to remember that," I said faintly. "All right. Let me do my thing." I closed my eyes, which wasn't necessary but did help, and to get the best impression possible, I laid my hand on the bag. I could feel the chill flesh under the surface.

I feel so bad, I'm so tired…. Where's Manfred? What's that man doing here? Looking at me. So tired…sleep.

My eyes flew open to meet the funeral director's curious blue gaze.

"Natural death," I said. It wasn't murder if someone else just stood there and watched. I'd had no sense of touching, or any other kind of contact. Someone, some man, had watched Xylda in her last moments, but that was hardly surprising. It might have been the doctor or a nurse. There was no way to tell. However, the image I got was chilling—someone calmly and dispassionately watching Xylda die. Not aiding, but not preventing, either.

"Oh, good," Cleda said. "Well, I'm sure the family will be glad to know that."

I nodded.

The black bag went back into the transition room.

In a somber silence, we retraced our steps across the parking lot and through the corridor back to the front doors of the funeral home.

"I guess you're braced for a huge amount of business," Tolliver said. "When the bodies of the—the young men—are released." I was sure he'd been going to say "victims."

"We're going to be pretty busy, yes, sir," she said. "One of those boys was my nephew. His mama, my brother's wife, she can't hardly get out of bed in the morning. It'd be one thing if someone had grabbed him and killed him—that would be bad enough. But to know he lived for a while, and got hurt so bad, and got used so unnatural, that just kills her."

There was no possible response that would be helpful, because I thought she was exactly right. To know your loved one was cut and burned and raped would make the fact of his death much worse, and there was nothing to be done about it. I'd always figured my sister Cameron had been raped before she'd been killed, without ever having proof of either. And just imagining it might have happened was pretty damn awful. I thought the act of rape itself was unnatural, regardless of the gender of the victim. But an emotional time like this was no time to debate the issue.

"We're really sorry," I said.

"Thank you," Cleda Humphrey said with dignity, and we let ourselves out.

"She was pretty decent," Tolliver said as we got into the car. "Probably the most relaxed funeral home person we've ever dealt with."

That was certainly true. "She seemed to take us pretty much in stride," I said.

"Nice change."

I nodded.

Pastor Doak Garland pulled into the parking lot in his modest Chevrolet just as Tolliver was putting the keys in the ignition. He approached the car, so Tolliver turned the key and pressed the window button.

"Hello again," Doak said, bending down to look at us.

"What are you busy doing?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't ask us about our own visit to Sweet Rest.

"Well, one of the bodies is already being released tomorrow, Jeff McGraw's, so I'm here to talk to Cleda about the service. I think we'll need extra traffic control, so I've already been to the sheriff's department, and I think Cleda needs to be prepared for an extra visitation night."

"This is going to take it out of you," Tolliver said. "There are a lot of services coming up."

"Well, I wasn't the minister for all these boys," Doak said with a gentle smile. "But the whole community will turn out for each funeral, so we're all in for a hard time. And maybe we should be. How could this happen in our midst, and we knew nothing?"

That was too big a question for me. "Wouldn't some of that be due to the former sheriff, Abe, um, Madden?" I said. "Wouldn't some of that be due to his policy of pretending the boys were runaways instead of missing and in danger? He seemed willing to shoulder his share of the blame at the memorial meeting the other night."

Doak Garland looked taken aback. "Maybe we shouldn't be into pointing fingers," he said, but he didn't say it with any force. It was clear he wasn't thinking about Abe Madden's role in the terrible drama for the first time. "You really think that had a bearing?" he said.

"Of course," I said, surprised. I didn't know Abe Madden. I didn't have to be careful of his feelings or his reputation. "If his attitude toward the vanishing boys was really the one I've heard described, then of course it had a bearing. Possibly if the investigation had gotten under way quicker, we'd have a few more kids walking around alive."

"But will assigning blame make this any easier?" Doak asked rhetorically.

I decided to take the question literally. "Yes, it will, for everyone but Abe Madden," I said. "Assigning blame does help people feel better, in a lot of ways. At least in my experience. Plus, if you can correct the behavior that led to the problem, the problem might not repeat itself." I shrugged. Maybe, maybe not.

I'll say this for Doak Garland, he didn't just whip out a platitude, as some men of the cloth were prone to do. He mulled the idea over. "There's a lot in that," he said. "But really, Ms. Connelly, that's just assigning a scapegoat to bear the sins of all of us."

I thought in my turn. "Okay, there's something to that, too," I admitted. "But there is blame to be assigned here, and the former sheriff should shoulder at least some of it."

"As he did," Doak Garland said. "In fact, it would be a good idea if I dropped by to see him. He may be thinking the same way you are."

I wondered if the pastor was trying to make me feel guilty in turn, but I didn't. I don't like to see people get depressed or shunned, but I knew that in my own experience, you had to assume responsibility for your own actions before you could move along with your life.

We didn't have any more to say, I felt. I raised my eyebrows at Tolliver, and he said, "Pastor, we've got to be going." Without further conversation, we rolled up our windows and pulled out of the parking lot.

"Where are we going?" Tolliver asked. "I mean, I can drive around aimlessly, but since there are still patches of ice…"

"I'm hungry, what about you?" I asked, and that was easy to answer. All the businesses in Doraville appeared to be open now, and people were going about their affairs with an air of relief. I felt relieved, too. We could get out of here just about any time now.

"What if we just left?" Tolliver said. "We could be on the interstate going in the right direction in an hour. We could find twenty restaurants."

I was surely tempted. We were sitting in the parking lot of the McDonald's again, and I stared at the golden arches, trying to feel something besides resignation.

"We have to return the key," I said, stalling.

"Yeah, a five-minute delay."

"Will they let us?"

"‘They' being the SBI guys? Sandra Rockwell?"

"Any of the above."

"What could they want us for?"

"We haven't signed a statement about yesterday."

"Yeah, true. We might need to stop by the police station for forty-five minutes and do that. Okay, let's go get a burger, and then we'll tie things up."

I wanted to leave, really I did, but there was something nagging at me, or maybe two or three things nagging at me. But I kept reminding myself I wasn't a police officer, and I wasn't responsible. On the other hand, if I suspected something, I should mention it to someone who'd take me seriously.