‘What the hell do you want, Bassett? She was badly decomposed. She’d been lying in that field for days.’
‘Searchers said otherwise. She wasn’t there the day they found Pribilski, or the next.’
‘My uncle prepared her for Maryton, not me.’
‘You’ve put plenty of others into that ground since then.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Vaults, Luther, or rather, the lack of them.’
Luther’s face paled under the rouge.
It was a fine day for feeling mean. ‘I’m thinking you’ll do time, Luther,’ Mac said, and left.
Crossing the courthouse lawn, he stopped to face the panorama of the town. The old building, decked out with banners for the Fourth of July, seemed to be especially mocking that day with false promises of justice. The ancient fronts surrounding the square seemed to be a sham as well. He’d once seen them as stable embodiments of solid values, built to last for all time. Now they looked false, flimsy things built to obscure. One had shrouded the goings-on of Doc Farmont. Horace Wiggins still worked behind another, churning out his strange mix of truths, half-truths and outright lies. And just a few blocks north, in a fancy old Victorian house, the Wileys – uncle and likely his nephew – had perpetrated a last act of desecration, throwing Betty Jo Dean unclothed into a vinyl bag. Somehow, that last, indifferent act seemed the most galling of all. Reed Dean had been right. They’d buried her like an animal.
Someone stood across the street, half-hiding behind a tree, watching the road from Rochelle. It was Randall White, waiting for Betty Jo Dean.
The bile he’d been fighting all day rose in the back of his throat. He came up on White from behind.
‘Waiting for Betty Jo?’
White spun around, his face pale.
‘I couldn’t help noticing your interest in the road, Mr White. I expect it will be some time before they bring her and her secrets back, though already there have been interesting developments. The sheriff and the state police will want to speak with you.’
‘I tried to warn you.’
‘Genital warts?’
‘Opening her casket. She was in bad shape.’
‘Too bad to dress? Too bad to do anything but treat her like a Pinktown slut and throw her in a bag in a box?’
White blanched. ‘I don’t know anything about that. Those things happened at the funeral home.’
‘You were at that funeral home, Mr White. You liked to assist Doc Farmont.’
‘Others were there, too. I only did what Doc said.’
‘And what, exactly, was that?’
‘What Clamp said. The bullet, mainly.’
‘Doc’s gone. Everything falls down on you, now.’
Sweat sparkled on White’s forehead. ‘I did nothing wrong.’
‘What else are they going to learn today, Mr White?’
White turned and looked down the road in the other direction, a rat trapped in the sun.
‘What else, Mr White?’
‘There was a mad panic to get at her bullet.’
‘Who was in a mad panic?’
‘I had nothing to do with that. Nothing, you understand?’ He hurried down the sidewalk, away from the courthouse, away from the metal garage and away from the truth he feared, that was on its way back from Rochelle.
FIFTY-ONE
The ambulance brought her back after two hours and forty-nine minutes. Only then did Reed leave the dress at the table and come to stand with the cops and the curious as she was carried into the examining room. She’d been put inside a new body bag, this one made of a beige, synthetic material.
A sheriff’s deputy stopped Mac from following the official personnel in. ‘Only those with permission, Mr Bassett.’
‘He’s with me,’ Reed said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ the deputy said.
Mac stepped back, motioning for Reed to go in without him. Jen Jessup came up and, getting a nod from the deputy, went into the room. Through the doorway, Mac saw her approach Roy Powell. They spoke for a moment, and Powell came to the doorway.
Without looking at Mac, he spoke to the deputy. ‘So long as Mayor Bassett remains at the back, he is welcome to attend the proceedings.’
Such was the power of the press.
The examining room was large and painted a deceitfully cheerful light green. White cabinets and white Formica counters lined two of the walls. The floor was glossy white tile.
Reed stood braced against the rear wall as though he was trying to push himself back into the cinderblocks.
His sister lay on a stainless steel table at the front of the room.
Dr Brown and his stout assistant were laying out shiny utensils on the stainless-steel table. They’d put on blue cotton coats and fresh, thin green gloves. They’d not gone to Rochelle. Presumably they’d consult those films later, after their examination.
Their faces were expressionless, their hands sure. No doubt they’d done this a thousand times.
One photographer stood at each end of the table. The video man had again set his camera on a tripod, the still photographer held his Canon at the ready. It was reassuring. The state was meticulously documenting everything.
Several uniformed officers stood loosely lined up between the table and the spectators. The two state police cops were the ones who’d escorted the ambulance to Rochelle. Three others were county deputies. Clamp Reems, the chief deputy, said nothing, and looked at no one.
State’s Attorney Powell stood away from the table, talking with Jen Jessup, the only reporter in the room.
Mac glanced at Reed, who stared straight ahead. He wondered whether Reed was seeing anything at all.
Dr Brown unzipped the new beige body bag, exposing the original black bag inside, and paused briefly so both photographers could record the first step. No one spoke. Other than the fast clicks of the digital camera, the only sound in the room was the irregular thrumming of a bad bearing in the exhaust fan overhead.
‘There is fluid accumulated at the bottom of the original black vinyl enclosure,’ Dr Brown dictated into the overhead microphone. ‘It has leaked into the new body bag.’
The new bag was meant to contain whatever was leaking from the original. Mac snuck another look at Reed, wondering how many more such horrors the man was going to have to endure that day. The doubt he’d felt at the cemetery that morning struck at him again. Ripping Betty Jo out of the earth might answer nothing, and traumatize her family in ways he’d never imagined, particularly if she’d begun to dissolve.
Dr Brown unzipped the black body bag that had enshrouded Betty Jo Dean since 1982, and folded back the flaps. For an instant there was no sound. And then his assistant gasped, and dropped her long metal probe to clatter loudly on the white tile floor.
‘My God,’ he whispered, disbelieving, dropping his hands to his sides.
One of Bales’s deputies stepped forward. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Please!’ Brown recovered to say. ‘You must all remain back from the table. I will ask the troopers and deputies to eject anyone approaching the table. There is to be no talking, as that will interfere with the recording of this proceeding. Let us all do our jobs. Let us conduct our examination and collect our samples. Only then may you come forward to view this most unfortunate young woman.’
Reed Dean had gone pale. ‘What the hell is going on?’
Mac shook his head, unable to imagine what had unnerved the forensics team. The young deputy who’d looked into the bag had turned to stare at a side wall. His chin was trembling and he was taking long, deep breaths.
Dr Brown reached into the unzipped black body bag with a tweezers. ‘Pubic hair,’ he said, depositing a sample into a plastic bag his assistant was holding open.’ Then: ‘Finger nail, right index,’ ‘finger nail, right middle,’ and ‘thumb nail, right hand.’
The sheriff’s deputy who’d seen her hurried to the door and pushed it open. His face had gone pale and he was sweating like he was about to throw up.