"Yes. What's that got to do with anything?"
"You found a corpse inside a glacier, correct?"
"Yes, but—"
"On that man's body was a book. A leather journal that belonged to me before he took it from me. I want it back," Heidi continued, "so tell me…where is my book?"
"There was no book. I promise" The young woman pleaded. "Now please, let me go."
Heidi stepped back. "Last chance. Tell me where you hid the book."
"I don't know what you're talking about. There is no book."
Heidi motioned to Scott then pointed to the table. "Stuff that rag in her mouth."
"But Mother, she doesn't know—"
"Do it now, Scott," Heidi ordered. "Do not question my judgment. I will get her to answer…one way or another."
The tone in his mother's voice frightened him. How could a woman only five feet tall be so intimidating? Scott obeyed her like a robot. He grabbed a cloth rag, walked over and clenched his hand around the young woman's throat. When she opened her mouth, he stuffed the rag inside, and then looked at his mother. "What are you going to do?"
"Offer her some incentive to talk."
Heidi grabbed an apparatus that looked like a wood-burning iron with a duckbill shaped attachment. He'd used the tool many times to reshape or reconstruct bodies disfigured by injury. The tool, called a heat spatula, allowed the embalmers to smooth wax across the deceased skin to remove blemishes.
"Is this really necessary?" He asked.
"Not another word, Scott." The old woman turned the dial on the tool. "Now my dear, you will tell me where my book is."
His mother poured the hot wax on the young woman's left arm. Hot enough to scald but not blister the skin. The woman bucked on the table and screamed into the rag. Tears rolled down both cheeks. After the wax cooled and the woman calmed down, his mother placed the heat spatula on the woman's arm.
Scott Katzer watched as his mother repeatedly burned the woman's arm with the heat spatula. When the hot duckbill attachment melted through the wax and touched the woman's skin, he could hear the sizzle of burning flesh followed by a wisp of smoke rising from the wound. The pungent smell of singed flesh filled his nostrils.
He always knew his mother could be callous. Her lack of empathy to their clients always bothered Katzer. But what he was witnessing now was torture and should be making him sick to his stomach.
It wasn't.
On the contrary, he was filled with a desire to torture the woman himself. Take control of the situation. Dominate. Get even for sucker punching him in the stomach in Charleston. He knew his mother would never relinquish control so he sat back and watched. The whole time imagining he was doing the torturing.
His mother worked the apparatus from the woman's elbow and slowly burned a small patch at a time along her upper arm until she reached the woman's shoulder. With each scald the woman jumped, her eyes bulged and more tears ran down her already tear-stained cheeks. Her mascara left black lines streaking from her eyes down the sides of her face.
Finally, his mother stopped.
She put down the heat spatula. "Remove the rag," she ordered.
The woman's moans filled the room. Impulsively, Scott grabbed the woman's jaw and held the scalding device inches from her face. "Stop your wailing, bitch, or you'll get more of this."
The woman took short gasps of air, sobbing uncontrollably.
His mother stared at him. He could only imagine what she was thinking. Finally she looked back at the woman and spoke. "Now Ms. Regan, I'll ask you one more time before we start on your face. Where is my book?"
"Ms. Regan?" The young woman panted in broken speech. "I'm not Ashley Regan. I'm Samantha Connors."
16
Jake and Francesca arrived at the park office in the Andersonville National Cemetery at 8:30 a.m. with instructions from Evan Mackley to meet with a man named Adam Marshall. The Andersonville National Historic Site consisted of not just the cemetery but also the National Prisoner of War Museum and the associated Civil War prison site.
Camp Sumter, as it was originally known, was built in early 1864 and was one of the largest Confederate military prisons of the Civil War. The prison pen covered 26 ½ acres and was manned by guards who stood watch in sentry boxes spaced at thirty-yard intervals. These Confederate soldiers in the pigeon roosts, as the prisoners called them, monitored an area referred to as the deadline, a nineteen-foot sterile area between the stockade fence and the prisoner containment area. Any prisoner crossing the deadline was shot — dead.
The Andersonville Confederate Prison was in operation for only fourteen months and closed in May 1865. In July of the same year, Clara Barton, along with a detachment of laborers, soldiers, and a former prisoner named Dorence Atwater, came to Andersonville Cemetery to identify and mark the graves of the dead Union soldiers.
When the Citation 750 landed at Souther Field in Americus, Georgia, Jake's reserved rental car was waiting, a black Dodge Charger R/T equipped with a 5.7 liter HEMI V-8, all of which appealed to Jake's hot rod mentality. The 8-mile drive down the barren country road from the airport to the park office took him just under six minutes. He'd grown up in Georgia and was at home on the Peach State's back roads. His father had brought him to Andersonville on occasion when Jake was younger, usually in conjunction with their father-son fishing trips to Lake Blackshear.
Jake noticed the heavy dew on the grass left by the cool September morning. While he and Francesca walked across the parking lot toward the office, Jake noticed a motorcade and a hearse parked across the cemetery lawn. As a former Naval officer, he recognized the sailors in U. S. Navy Dress Blues standing at attention under the Rostrum while family and friends mourned the loss of another of America's heroes.
Adam Marshall greeted Jake and Francesca in the office lobby. He was Jake's size except more of his chest had given way to gravity and moved to his waistline. He had short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses and wore a uniform.
"You must be Jake Pendleton and Francesca…" Marshall paused. "I won't try your last name, I'm sure I'd butcher it."
"Catanzaro." She extended her hand as a greeting.
Jake and Marshall shook hands. "What is your job function at Andersonville?" Jake asked.
"Chief of Resource Management," Marshall said. "Most people see the uniform and just assume I'm a Park Ranger. After all, this historic site is part of the National Park Service and most people have been to a national park so they've seen the uniform."
"I take it you've already been briefed on the purpose of our visit?" Jake asked.
"I received an email from the Director of Park Services in D.C," Marshall explained. "He said I was to give you full access to the file of the deceased and the police report. He indicated there had been other instances similar to this." It was more a question than a statement. "I can show you the pictures but the grave is actually still open if you'd like to take a look for yourself. It had been scheduled for covering and repairs this morning but after the email, I postponed it until after your visit. Figured you might want a first-hand look."
"That would be great." Jake looked at Francesca. "Let's take a look."
Marshall picked up a folder from the receptionist desk. "If you'll wait out front," he pointed to the door, "I'll pick you up in the groundskeeper's cart. The grave is in the northeastern corner of the cemetery in Section P. No need to walk when we can ride."
Five minutes later the cart pulled up to an open grave surrounded in yellow warning tape. A canopy covered the site. The casket hung suspended in midair by straps attached to a lowering device.