Amanda Stevens - The Sinner

He glanced down at his notes. “Not after the place got so overgrown. Too many snakes and God knows what else lurking in the bushes. It’s too bad, really. The cemetery used to be beautiful.”

“It will be again.”

He turned back to the circle, his gaze moving around the cages. “I’ve lived here my whole life. Grew up in a house not five miles from where we’re standing. I thought I knew this area like the back of my hand, but I sure never knew these things were here. Have you ever come across anything like them before?”

“Not around here. Mortsafes were mostly used in Europe.”

“Mortsafes?” I saw him shiver.

“They kept grave robbers from digging up fresh remains to sell to medical schools.”

His expression turned grim as he trained his gaze upon me. “Looks like they were used here to keep something in.”

I’d thought of that, as well, of course, but I didn’t comment.

“Will you be around this afternoon?” he asked. “We may have more questions once we get her out of the ground.”

“I’ll be working in the cemetery. I never leave before sundown.”

He gave a vague nod as he went back to his partner. I hung around watching them. They didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they were glad for the company. The place seemed more desolate than ever and the trill of the loon made us all turn anxiously toward the marsh. I couldn’t help remembering the officer’s broken thought: Not after...

Not after what?

The palmettos rustled in a mild breeze. An insect droned in my ear. And from the woods, that presence still watched me.

Who are you? I wondered. What are you?

Still no answer.

For the next several minutes, the cops huddled over the second mortsafe, talking in low tones and making a few notes until more personnel arrived on the scene, including a plainclothes detective, a forensic team and the Beaufort County coroner.

A brief discussion ensued about possible ownership of the land and how best to open the cage so the body could be removed. That dilemma brought Officer Malloy back over to me.

“Who hired you to restore the cemetery?”

“It was a joint effort by some of the families and a local historical society,” I told him.

“Do you have a contact person?”

“Annalee Nash.”

A brow shot up. “Annalee Nash?”

“Yes, why? Do you know her?”

“Everybody knows Annalee. I guess I’m just a little surprised to hear she’s involved with that cemetery.”

“Why wouldn’t she be? She’s secretary of the local historical society.”

“I don’t keep up with that sort of thing. How did the two of you meet?”

“She first contacted me through my website and we’ve kept in touch ever since. She’s the one who made sure all the permits were in order so there wouldn’t be any delays once we signed the contract.”

He slapped at a mosquito on the side of his neck. “I don’t suppose she ever mentioned anything about ownership of the property adjoining the cemetery?”

“This property, you mean? No, she didn’t. As I understand it, Seven Gates is located on public land, but nothing I’ve found in the archives suggests these graves are connected to the cemetery.”

“They look like they’ve been here a long time,” he said.

“I’m guessing the mortsafes are only a few decades old, but the dirt underneath the first cage is sunken, which could indicate that the burials are older. If the original graves are over a hundred years old, the state archaeologist would have jurisdiction regardless of property ownership.”

The detective came up just then, and after we were introduced, I repeated everything that I’d told Officer Malloy.

Detective Lucien Kendrick looked to be in his early thirties, a man of indeterminate ethnicity with light brown skin and topaz-colored eyes that tilted exotically at the corners. The intensity of his scrutiny took me aback. Not since my first encounter with Devlin had I experienced such an unsettling focus. Even when he addressed Officer Malloy, Kendrick’s gaze remained hard upon me until I had to fight the urge to take a step back from him.

He was just shy of six feet, lean and sinewy. By no means a large man, but his bearing gave him an air of toughness and invincibility. I didn’t consider him handsome in the traditional sense of the word, but he was one of the most striking men I’d ever met, from the strange color of his eyes to the razor sharpness of his cheekbones.

His attire was casual, but his jacket and boots were of good quality. Not custom like Devlin’s wardrobe, but certainly several cuts above what one might expect from a small-town police detective. Sometime in the not too distant past, his left eyebrow had been pierced. I could still see the tiny holes and, once noticed, I started to search for other bits of unconventionality. The tattooed skull on the back of his hand. The raised scar tissue of a brand on the side of his neck. He was an enigmatic man, one who undoubtedly marched to his own drummer, and I found him fascinating in the way one might admire the coil of a cobra or the crouch of a tiger.

Nonconformity aside, my heightened senses warned me that he was no ordinary “cop.”

“You say you’ve been working here since the end of May.” His voice was deep and lilting with the barest hint of an accent that I couldn’t place. But the nagging familiarity of some of his inflections made me curious about his background. Where had he come from and what had brought him to this part of the world? And how had he ended up as a detective with the Ascension Police Department?

“Miss Gray?”

I started at the sound of my name, dragging my focus from the brand snaking up over his shirt collar to lock gazes with him. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

His gaze zeroed in on my cheek. “Are you all right?”

“What? Oh, that. It’s just a scratch. A hazard of my profession, I’m afraid.”

“I know all about those,” he murmured. “You should put something on it. You don’t want to risk infection.”

I lifted my head in a small act of defiance. The detective’s caution had sounded strangely like a threat. Which was absurd, of course, and overly defensive. “I’ll take care of it later. Right now, I’d rather answer all your questions and be on my way.”

He nodded, his gaze cool and assessing. “I understand you’ve been working in the cemetery since late May.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What time do you usually get to work in the morning?”

“Just after sunrise.”

“That early every day?”

“I like to get the more strenuous tasks accomplished before the heat of the day sets in.”

“That would put your arrival this morning around six-thirty, correct?” Another quirk of his eyebrow, another bold stare.

I swallowed hard. “Thereabouts.”

“You didn’t notice any suspicious activity? Dogs barking? Strange vehicles parked on the side of the road? Anybody going into or coming out of these woods?” He searched my face. “Anything at all unusual?”

“No, nothing. There’s very little traffic on Cemetery Road, especially at that hour. If there had been anyone about, I’m certain I would have noticed. I haven’t seen anyone all day except for a group of kids with fishing poles and crab traps heading toward the marsh.”

He paused as if carefully evaluating everything I’d told him. “So you worked in the cemetery until around three when you decided to take a walk. I’m surprised. That’s generally when the heat of the day sets in,” he said, throwing my own words back at me. “Why not rest in the shade?”

“I’d been kneeling and bending for hours cleaning headstones. I needed to work out the kinks.” The half-truth slipped out easily because I’d spent a lifetime keeping secrets. Concealment and discretion had become second nature to me.