The day was cold and miserable, befitting a disinterment. We huddled together, hands in pockets and shoulders scrunched, while the guy operating the backhoe repeatedly dipped the big yellow shovel into the Hernandez plot.
After an hour, he struck concrete. The vault. Illinois cemeteries required all coffins to be placed in a burial vault or grave box. That prevented the earth from collapsing the casket, which would leave the cemetery pockmarked with hundreds of obvious indentations.
Two men in overalls went down the hole to widen the edges, and large spikes with eyeholes were driven into the vault cover. They secured ropes, and the backhoe lifted the section of concrete out of the grave. Straps were then attached to the coffin, and it was brought to the surface and gently placed next to the vault top.
The coroner, a thin reed of a man named Russell Thompkins, brushed off some dirt at the foot of the casket, then fit a special hex key into a small opening. He cranked it, counterclockwise, and the rubber seal broke, releasing a powerful hiss of putrid air that I could smell from ten feet away.
The casket unlocked, Thompkins lifted open the head and squinted inside.
“Two bodies.” He pinched the nostrils of his pointy nose with long, slender fingers. “A man and a woman.”
“Is that enough?” I asked Chief Duncan. Duncan looked like a stouter version of John Wayne, and must have known it, hence the plaid flannel shirt and cowboy boots.
“It’s a damn good start. We need to establish that it’s Melody Stephanopoulos, and that your Barry Fuller was involved in her death.”
“Did you bring her dental records?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the faxes of the bite marks?”
“I’ve got it all in the car.”
I accompanied him to his vehicle, and took what I needed up to the casket.
“We need to find bite marks, ones that match these.” I showed Thompkins the papers. He nodded, slipped on some latex gloves, and got to work.
I took out a pair of my own, from the deep pockets of my blazer, and looked into the casket for the first time.
Julio Hernandez occupied the left-hand side. He was skeletal-thin, swimming in the oversized brown suit he wore. His facial features were sunken, recessed, and he had no lower jaw – cancer, Rushlo had mentioned. His mouth and throat were packed with rotten cotton batting.
The smell was so bad I had to take breaths from over my shoulder. Even the best embalming job couldn’t prevent decay, and the bacteria had eaten well for years before they too ran out of nourishment and rotted away.
Melody proved to be in much worse shape than Hernandez. She wore no clothing, and her flesh had a light gray cast. The atrocities committed upon her stood out in bas-relief black: a jagged tear across her throat, slits forming X-marks over each breast, a deep gash running from her pubis to her belly button. And dozens of dark, round sores, covering her head to toe like polka dots.
Bites.
The major wounds had been sewn up, the stitches expertly done, though hardly cosmetic. Rushlo’s postmortem work.
The coroner snapped pictures, and I borrowed his scalpel and forced it between Melody’s cold, dry lips, cutting the mortician’s glue that sealed them shut. The blade clicked against teeth. I pried her lips apart and found the suture, looping under her lower gums and up through her septum. I severed the ligature, and attempted to open the mouth.
The mouth didn’t comply.
Using the scalpel’s handle as a lever, I pried open her mouth until I could get two fingers inside. It took considerable force, and felt like I was being bitten, but I managed to stretch her jaws wide enough to get a penlight inside.
There was a gold crown on her back molar, on the upper left side.
The crown matched the one on Melody’s dental records.
The records also showed a filling on the upper right canine, and I easily found that with the light.
“It’s Melody.”
“Russell?” the chief asked the coroner.
“Too hard to tell. There’s a lot of decay.”
“I’ll settle for your best guess.”
“It’s possible they’re from the same man. I’d need more time, proper equipment, to know for sure.”
My cell rang. Libby. I picked up.
“Verdict came in. They didn’t take long to free the bastard.”
“Hold on a second, Libby.” I turned to the coroner. “Is there anything you notice that can prove our guy did this?”
Russell took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.
“Actually, there is something pretty incriminating. See these two bites here, on her inner thighs? There are bite marks in the pictures you gave me, in the exact same places.”
Chief Shelby unhooked the radio from his belt. “That’s enough for me. I’m calling Judge Dorchester.”
“You’re getting an arrest warrant?”
“Yes, ma’am, we are.”
“Libby,” I said into the phone, “don’t let Fuller leave the building. Find a cop and arrest him.”
“You’ve got a warrant?”
“Yes. He’s being charged with the murder of Melody Stephanopoulos.”
“Gladly. Nice work, Jack.”
Chief Shelby walked away, barking into his radio, and I stripped off my gloves and headed back to my car.
I wanted to be relieved, but I only felt empty. Empty and tired. The cop part of me would have liked to be there, to see Fuller’s face when he got arrested. But mostly I just wanted to put all of this death, this ugliness, behind me.
“Nice work, Lieutenant.” Shelby came over, offered his hand. “We’ll get started on these other names right away. Looks like you’ve closed a lot of cases for us today.”
“I don’t envy you the media circus you’ll soon have.”
“We’ll manage. We’re a tough little town. Anyway, thanks for your help. You interested in some supper? Wife’s a helluva cook.”
“Thanks, Chief, but I have to head home.”
The ride back to Chicago was the loneliest five hours of my life.
CHAPTER 43
Melody Stephanopoulos. Barry hasn’t heard that name in a long time, but he remembers her.
You never forget your first.
He wonders how they found her. Rushlo, probably. It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.
Barry tries to scratch his chin, but the chain isn’t long enough; his handcuffs are attached to his ankle restraints.
“I’ve got an itch on my chin. Can you help out?”
The uniform seated to his right, a cop named Stephen Robertson whom he’d worked with out of the 2-6, scratches his chin for him. Fuller sighs.
“Thanks, man.”
The squad car is making good time down Route 57. No lights or sirens, but speeding nonetheless. Fuller can guess how anxious they are to get rid of him. Cops don’t like it when one of their own goes bad. It hits a little too close to home.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Fuller says to the driver, a Statie named Corlis. He has on a snap brim hat and reflector shades, even though dusk has come and gone.
“Hold it in.”
“C’mon, gimme a break. I was in court all morning, got declared not guilty, and I’m free for two minutes and the cuffs get slapped on me again. It’s been a real bad day, and I really need to take a shit.”
“I’m sure Carbondale has johns. You can go there.”
“I won’t make it. There’s a rest area coming up in a few miles. Please.”
Corlis doesn’t answer. Fuller clenches his sphincter, audibly passes gas.
“Jesus, Barry.” Robertson fans the air in front of his nose. “That’s disgusting.”
Fuller shrugs, trying to look innocent. “Prison food. Not my fault.”
“Stop at the rest area,” Robertson says to Corlis.
“No stops.”
“You can either stop, or trade places with me back here.”
“I really have to go.” Fuller puts on a million-dollar grin. “I’ll be quick.”