"Did you think at that point that there was anything wrong?" Shellie asked, her face in a sober mask.
"Yeah, I did wonder," said Dennis Cuthbert. "Anyway, I started walking around, and soon I notice that the grave look a little different."
"How?"
"The edge look a little collapsed. So I go over there and look down, and there he was."
Good. He'd walked over the area where I'd lain to touch the corpse.
The camera swung back to Shellie, who said, "Inside that grave, Cuthbert found the body of a man, tentatively identified as Bingham College professor Dr. Clyde Nunley. Dr. Nunley was dead."
Switch to the outside of an older home probably dating from the 1940s, the kind yuppies bought and restored. "Dr. Nunley's wife, Anne, told the police that her husband had left their home for the second time between six and seven o'clock last night to check something out, he said. He didn't give any details. When he hadn't returned home at his usual time, she went to bed. When she woke this morning and found him still missing from the home, she called police."
Evidently, Anne Nunley had declined to be interviewed, because she didn't appear on the screen. Smart woman.
Close-up of the gleaming Shellie. "Police aren't saying how Dr. Nunley died. But a source close to the investigation said his death could have been an accident, or could have been murder. Apparently suicide has been ruled out. Back to you, Chip."
The picture turned into gray lint right after that.
I didn't dare to look at Tolliver. I didn't want to look at Seth Koenig, either. He stepped forward to turn off the machine, and then he faced me. "What do you make of that, Miss Connelly?"
"I think it's very strange, Agent Koenig."
"Please call me Seth." He waited a beat to see if I'd return the courtesy, but I didn't. I wondered what to do now. I wanted the agent to leave with a fervent desperation, because I needed to discuss this very puzzling development with Tolliver.
"The groundskeeper noticed a car in the parking lot," Seth Koenig said. He waited for us to respond.
"That's what the reporter said," Tolliver said. He sounded as cool as ice. I envied my brother his composure and wished I could match it.
Of course, there'd been no other car there when we'd parked in the parking lot. Dr. Nunley hadn't committed suicide, and he hadn't died by accident. He'd been murdered. We knew it without a doubt.
"There were rocks in the grave," Seth Koenig said.
I did look up then, and met his eyes. "What kind of rocks?" I said.
"Big ones. They'd been aimed at his head."
"But…" My voice trailed off as I thought that through. Granted, we hadn't had sunlight or much time or inclination to examine the inside of the grave. But I was sure the "big rocks" hadn't been there. This might be a clumsy attempt to make the death look accidental; the scenario would be that Dr. Nunley somehow slipped and fell into the open grave, hitting his head on the rocks that lay in the bottom. The killer wanted the police to think it was such an accident; or in an alternative version, that Dr. Nunley had indeed been murdered, but there at the site, by someone who got him to climb down into the grave and then pelted him with large rocks until he expired. Oh, that sounded likely.
Seth Koenig sat on the coffee table in front of me. His eyes met mine. His were a peaty brown, warm with a golden undertone. His whole face was craggy and lined and attractive, and right at the moment, he was concentrated on me.
"I don't know what kind of person you are," he said. "But I know you have a gift. Right now, I want you to use that gift. I want you to go see Clyde Nunley's body in the morgue, and I want you to tell me what happened to him. Something tells me you'll let me know."
Now here was a poser. What could I say?
"Why are you here?" Tolliver said. He stood behind me, leaning over so his elbows were resting on the back of the couch right by my head. "What is your involvement with this case? I know the FBI is no longer actively involved. But you're offering your lab facilities to the police, right?"
"Right," Koenig said. His eyes had turned their high-beam stare on Tolliver, which was a relief to me. "But I'm also here to lend whatever help and support they need, and I'm staying until…"He couldn't finish the sentence.
"You were called in at the beginning," I said, making my voice gentle. "You were in Nashville."
He took a deep breath. "Yes, I was. Our paths never crossed there, but I was sent there when Tabitha was first missing. I talked to the mother, the father, the brother, the aunt, the uncle, the grandparents. I talked to the crossing guard who'd admonished Tabitha about jaywalking, I talked to the teacher who'd threatened to send a note to her parents about Tabitha's talking in class, and I talked to the lawn man who'd told her dad that Tabitha was going to grow up to be real pretty." He took a deep breath. "I went with the police to talk to the moms who drove in the car pool with Diane, I talked to Victor and his friends, I talked to Victor's ex-girlfriend who'd sworn she was going to get even with him, and I talked to the maid who said Tabitha hated to pick up her room." He sat silent for a long moment. "I never learned a thing from any of them. I never discovered a single reason anyone would want the girl out of the way. She wasn't perfect. Even people who loved her had a problem with her every now and then. So, Tabitha wasn't all sweetness and light. No kid is, especially no kid in that in-between age. But as far as I can tell, her mom and dad loved her no matter what she did or said. As far as I can tell, they were trying hard to be good parents. As far as I can tell, they didn't deserve what happened to them because of Tabitha's disappearance."
"Why Tabitha? Why are you so wrapped up in this? You must have investigated other disappearances," I said. "Some of them children, I'm sure."
He rubbed his face with both hands, hard, like he wanted to erase some of the lines in his flesh. "Lots of sevens," he said. "Too many."
Tolliver and I glanced at each other. Tolliver didn't understand the reference, either.
"Sevens?" I tried to keep my voice very quiet. This man was going through a lot, and I didn't want to sway his balance.
"Kidnapping. That's the program designation for kidnapping," Koenig said.
"There was never a ransom demand for Tabitha," Tolliver said. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "The FBI can come in even when there's no crossing of state lines? When there's no ransom demand?"
The agent nodded.
"Any suspicious disappearance of a child under eleven," he said. "We've offered all our facilities to the Nashville police and the Memphis police. We've got forensic experts examining the body. Our guys already went over the grave. Thank God whoever killed Nunley didn't dump him there before our team had finished. And the same team has been all over the grave this morning since the body was found."
I shut my eyes and leaned back in my chair.
"Of course, Nunley was here last night grabbing you by the arm, Ms. Connelly. But we know he left after that. He wouldn't let the hotel staff call him a cab. They saw him get in his car and leave. Did he contact you again last night?"
"No," I said. "He didn't."
"Why was he so angry?"
"He thought I'd cheated somehow. He was having trouble accepting my ability as real. He was trying to find a rational explanation for something that's just unexplainable." I wondered if I needed to call Art Barfield.
Seth Koenig looked thoughtful, as if he was making a very large mental note.
"And where were you, Mr. Lang?" Koenig asked.
"I was walking down Beale Street, trying to find some good blues to listen to. Doing a tourist thing."
"What time did you get back to the hotel?"
"About seven, I think. Harper had been asleep."
"I was upset after the little scene with Dr. Nunley," I explained. "I had a terrible headache. I took some medicine and lay down."