The second photographer stepped up with a digital camera and took several pictures of the broken corner. After he stepped back, the man with the hammer swung again. Another piece of the lid fell away.
Reed pointed to a tall, gray-haired man and a short, stout woman standing together in the pool of sunlight, just inside one of the big open doors. ‘That’s Doctor Brown, the state’s forensic M.D. The woman is his assistant.’
The man with the hammer swung at the crowbar again. More pieces of the lid fell onto the floor.
‘Everybody stand back,’ Powell, cool in seersucker and in command, called out. People stepped back, but not much.
The worker hit the vault again. This time the entire corner disintegrated, exposing wire mesh molded into the concrete. He pulled away the loose pieces and set down his tools. The man who operated the winch came up and they lifted off the lid and set it on the floor.
The still photographer moved around the opened vault, snapping photos of the casket inside. Suddenly he stopped and bent to snap a fast series of shots of one corner.
He lowered the camera and pointed to something wedged between the casket and the vault’s inside wall. ‘Come here,’ he called to State’s Attorney Powell.
Powell and Jimmy Bales hurried up. Bales started to reach where the photographer pointed.
‘Not without gloves,’ the photographer said quickly.
Bales dropped his hand. Dr Brown, the state’s forensic M.D., pulled on thin surgical gloves and walked up to the vault. He reached into the gap, removed what looked like a large cloth wrapped in newspaper and carried it across the room to an empty table against the far wall.
Mac and Reed stepped closer to the vault. The coffin inside was covered thick with chalky grit, the same color as the cement vault.
The man who’d opened the vault picked up the hammer and pry bar, and split the arched casket top into large pieces. It took only a moment to remove the top half of the casket lid.
White silk fabric lay across what was inside. The lining of the casket lid had fallen down after so many years.
‘Your turn,’ the worker said to the doctor.
Dr Brown, still wearing gloves, stepped forward and gently lifted the white silk just enough to peer beneath it. Shaking his head, he motioned for his assistant to come up.
‘I don’t know why the hell this is, but we’ll send her this way.’
Mac turned to Reed, and was surprised to see him looking at the table where Dr Brown had set the partially wrapped fabric recovered from the vault. Reed was trembling.
‘I need to be sure,’ Reed said, and started walking toward the table.
Mac followed him across the garage.
The fabric, a dark print, had been folded neatly inside the newspaper.
‘Don’t touch,’ someone called out from across the garage.
‘No need, damn it all to hell,’ Reed shouted back. ‘I know what it is.’
‘What is it, Reed?’
‘My sister’s dress.’
‘You can remember that? You were only six when she died.’
‘I got photographs of that fabric.’ Reed Dean clenched his fists, unable to continue.
‘Why, Mr Dean?’ Jen Jessup said. She’d seen Reed’s eyes fill with tears and come over.
‘That’s the dress Betty Jo was supposed to wear to Fred Junior’s wedding,’ he said. ‘My mother and Betty Jo both got identical dresses. Mother insisted Betty Jo be buried in hers, and Mother wore hers when the wedding finally took place, later that year. Mother said Betty Jo wearing that dress was sort of like her being there at the wedding. I have the wedding pictures, everybody trying to look happy.’ He looked at Mac. ‘Don’t you understand? Those bastards at Wiley’s threw her in her casket naked, like some dead animal.’ He gripped Mac’s arm. ‘Who does that?’
Mac could only shake his head. He couldn’t find words good enough to mean anything.
Reed turned to Jen Jessup. ‘What kind of sons of bitches bury a young girl naked?’
Jen was looking past Reed, toward the center of the garage. The cavernous space had gone quiet.
‘And in that,’ she said, pointing.
FIFTY
She’d been zipped in a dark vinyl body bag. It was wet at the bottom.
Two sheriff’s deputies and two state troopers each grabbed a corner, lifted the bag onto a gurney and wheeled it to an ambulance that had backed into the garage. They loaded her in, slammed the door and the state troopers ran to their cars. One pulled in front of the ambulance, one tucked in behind, and together they formed a small motorcade to drive the girl to the hospital in Rochelle.
At least there was respect in that.
Reed watched it all in a stunned silence. ‘Naked, in a damned bag?’
Mac walked over to Bales. ‘You better hope that was just ground water, or Reed’s going to start thinking he ought to sue everyone in the county.’
Bales had lost his bluster, shocked like the rest of them by the sight of the wet bag. ‘We won’t know about damage until they come back,’ he said, almost too quiet to hear.
‘That small bundle wedged in the vault?’
Bales looked at Mac, confused. ‘What?’
‘That fabric wedged between the casket and the vault? Get it photographed some more, for the record. Right now, before it gets disturbed.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the dress she was to be buried in.’
Bales nodded vaguely. It was obvious he didn’t understand. Mac went to get the still photographer, and led him to the table. Bales followed behind, slowly, like his feet hurt.
Reed stepped in front of the sheriff. ‘Get your sorry ass over to Wiley’s and find out why the hell they buried her like an animal. Find out what was so damned important they couldn’t take the time to prepare her respectfully.’
‘Now, Reed, nobody’s going to know that after all this time.’
‘Luther was part of it, back then. Ask him, or I will. He’ll be a hell of a lot happier if you do it.’
Bales looked outside, no doubt thinking that to get away, down to Wiley’s, would be wise.
Mac turned to the photographer, who shot two fast pictures of the parcel on the table and walked away. He wasn’t being paid for confrontation.
Reed’s face was now within a foot of Bales’s. ‘Something you don’t understand about what I just said?’
‘The sheriff’s department had nothing to do with the burial,’ Bales said.
‘You’ll be going over to Wiley’s,’ Reed said.
‘It could… could have been just ground water,’ Bales stammered.
‘It’s not just about the wetness, you idiot. It’s about the dress.’
Bales headed outside.
Through it all, Jen Jessup had stood silently by, taking notes and saying nothing.
‘How about an early lunch, Reed?’ Mac asked. ‘Or just a drink?’ The best thing he could do was to get Reed out of there. ‘She won’t be back for a couple of hours.’
Reed shook his head and moved closer to the dress wadded in newspaper on the table. ‘I need to stay here.’
Mac went outside, crossed the highway and walked the three blocks to the funeral home.
Luther Wiley was in his office, seated behind his immaculate, empty desk. As before, the thick, cloying smell of flowers worked at masking everything. But that morning, the office smelled stronger of something more. Whiskey.
It was no surprise that Jimmy Bales was not there.
‘Tell me again how you weren’t involved in preparing Betty Jo Dean for burial,’ Mac said from the doorway.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘My guess is you’ve already heard about Betty Jo Dean’s vault being opened.’
‘She’s on her way to Rochelle for X-raying.’
‘You didn’t bother to put clothes on her. Her dress was jammed between her casket and the vault.’
‘My uncle handled everything.’
‘She was jammed in a body bag that’s now wet. Did you even bother to embalm her?’