The Restorer

Twenty-Four

I found Devlin at the Bedford Mausoleum. His back was to me and he seemed so lost in thought that I didn’t think he was aware of my approach. But then he spun around quickly and if I hadn’t been so adept at concealing shock and fear, I might have jumped.

“It’s just me,” I said lamely.

“Force of habit.” His gaze went past me as if making sure no one else tried to sneak up on him.

I wondered if his job made him so wary, or if on some level he sensed his ghosts. Did he ever feel the frost of their breath? The tug of their wintry hands? The bite of a ghostly kiss?

My gaze raked over him as he turned back to the mausoleum, and as I studied his profile, my thoughts turned to that soft voice I’d heard in the background last night. I wondered who she was, what she looked like and how well Devlin knew her.

Had she measured up to Mariama?

I was a little ashamed of my petty jealousy. Two homicide victims had been discovered within these cemetery walls and I had just witnessed the exhumation of what might well turn out to be a third. Devlin’s private life should be the least of my worries.

“I’ve found something,” I told him, and he turned with a lifted brow.

“What is it?”

“The inscription on the headstone of the grave we just dug up.” I tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen loose from my ponytail. “After everyone left, I took it upon myself to check the epitaph.”

“But the markings on that headstone are illegible,” he said. “We talked about it the other day with Regina Sparks. How did you manage to read the epitaph?”

“I used a mirror to reflect light. Full-length works best, of course, but I didn’t have one with me today so I had to make do with something smaller. It’s all about the angle. Directing the light diagonally across the face of a gravestone casts shadows in the indentions and makes it easier to read the inscriptions.”

“That’s pretty clever.”

“Yes, but it’s not my cleverness. It’s a trick of the trade. My father taught me how a long time ago. It saves a lot of wear and tear on the stones. You never even have to touch them…” I stopped. “Sorry. I’m rambling again.”

Nine out of ten men would have agreed and asked that I just get to the point. Not Devlin. He merely said, “Go on,” and then proceeded to hang on my every word as if I were the most fascinating creature he’d ever encountered. Of course, we both knew that wasn’t true.

“Anyway,” I said in conclusion, “the epitaph from that head stone was published in a comment on my blog just like the other one.” I recited the inscription from memory.

He waved aside a fly. “When?”

“When was it published to the blog? A little while after the first one. I thought I recognized the verse so I used my phone to verify the posting.”

“Anonymous again?”

“Yes. But I’m certain it was the same poster.”

I set down my bag and closed the distance between us, coming to stand beside him at the bottom of the mausoleum steps. He waited in silence, watching me intently until I was the one who had to look away. After as much time as we’d spent together, I should have been over my reticence around him, but I thought it a good thing that I wasn’t. I could never allow myself to forget about his ghosts or discount my father’s warning about him. I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that Devlin was a terrible threat to both my physical and mental well-being.

And yet even now I could feel his pull. Even now my eyes lingered on his lips, wondering yet again what it would be like to kiss him. I’d never felt anything like this before. Everyone always said that in the movies, but for me it was true. Temple was right—I’d always sought out only those men who didn’t threaten the rules or my peace of mind. I’d lived in my own little world, cocooned from reality and sustained by fantasy, until the night John Devlin had stepped out of the mist.

His gaze on me flickered and I wondered if something of my feelings had shown on my face. Quickly, I turned away.

“What else can you tell me about the inscription?” he said.

“It’s not so much the inscription itself that we should be concerned about. As I said, the lettering can only be read under certain conditions. The angle of the light has to be just right. The thing is…who else would know that?”

He gave me a shrewd glance, comprehending my meaning precisely. “What about the archives? Would epitaphs be included in the written records?”

“Sometimes they are, along with a description and dimensions of the headstone. But again, one would have to know where to look. And in this case, so many of the records from the original cemetery are missing. But I suppose it’s possible that someone could have stumbled across one of the old church books. I’ve been looking for one in particular in the archives room, but the system there is a mess. Completely disorganized.”

“Who would have access to those records?”

“Students. Faculty. And someone like me who has special permission, of course.”

He eyed me thoughtfully. “You’ve spent some time down there, I take it.”

“Yes, quite a lot.”

“Have you ever seen anyone else down there?”

“Sure. People come and go all the time. The last person I saw was Daniel Meakin, the historian. No, wait. I take that back. Camille Ashby was the last person I saw down there.” I explained to him about having seen Camille underneath the stairwell right after my conversation with Meakin.

“I had the strangest feeling she was spying on us, but I can’t imagine why. She and Meakin are colleagues. Do you know him?”

“I know who he is,” Devlin said as he turned his attention back to the mausoleum. “What can you tell me about this place?”

“The mausoleum? Not a lot. I haven’t been able to find much information about it. I do know that it’s the oldest in the cemetery, built in 1853 by the Bedford family, who donated land to Emerson University. The architecture is Gothic. Beautifully doom and gloom. Mourning became something of an art form in the Victorian South, though nothing compared to their English cousins, of course.”

“Have you been inside?”

“I’ve taken a peek through the door. It’s in terrible shape. Graffiti and trash all over the place. Dust, cobwebs, you name it. The vaults were vandalized years ago and the remains are long gone.”

He turned at that. “Someone took the bodies?”

I shrugged. “What can you do? Grave robbery is an age old profession. In cemeteries like Oak Grove, armed guards used to patrol at night to prevent medical students from stealing fresh bodies to use as cadavers. Body-brokering is still a big business.”

“Pleasant thought.” Devlin placed his foot on the bottom step. “How do you go about restoring a place in this kind of shape?”

“Scrub away the graffiti, haul off the trash, reseal the vaults. It’s a lot of hard work. Manual labor, actually.” I stared down at the calluses on my hands. “And the sad thing is, without the bodies, the restoration is never going to be truly complete.” I lifted my gaze to Devlin, a troubling suspicion starting to take root. “Is this where Afton Delacourt’s body was found?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“I didn’t know it then. Since I can’t access the file, I had to track down the detective who was in charge of the investigation.”

“He’s still on the force?”

“Retired five years ago. He has a place on Lake Marion in Calhoun County. I finally managed to get an address through a sister who still works for the city. He didn’t want to see me at first…until I told him about Hannah Fischer.”

“What did he say?” I asked anxiously. “Did he give you any leads?”

Devlin expertly evaded my novice questions, along with my probing stare. “We’re treading on tricky ground here. I shouldn’t be telling you anything about this case. Things are moving fast…” Absently, he rubbed a thumb across his chin.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged, a strangely expressive gesture that seemed to convey everything and nothing at all. “People in high places are starting to pull strings.”

“A cover-up?”

“Let’s just say there’s interest at the highest levels. The thing is…we need a break in this case and we need it quickly, before the investigation gets booted upstairs. For whatever reason, this cemetery is being used to dispose of the bodies. As much as I hate to admit it, Gerrity could be right. If the killer is leaving clues in headstone symbols or in those epitaphs, you may be the only one who can unravel his motive. I’ve already dragged you into this. I won’t involve you any further unless you know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

All of a sudden, my heart was pumping ice water into my veins. “What are we dealing with? What did that detective tell you about Afton Delacourt’s murder?”

“How she died, for one thing. In explicit detail.” His voice was quiet, but inflected with something I couldn’t quite decipher.

I caught my breath at the look on his face. “How did she die?”

“Exsanguination.”

Something bleak and cold rose inside me. Dread, fear and maybe just a tinge of excitement. “Just like Hannah Fischer.”

“Yes. Just like Hannah Fischer…”

The way he trailed off made me think there was something more. My fingers itched to take his arm and turn him toward me so that I could look into his eyes, study his expression. But, of course, touching him was not a good idea. Though I certainly wanted to.

“What else did he tell you?” I asked.

“There were ligature marks on Afton Delacourt’s body. The way he described them sounded like the ones we found on Hannah Fischer.”

“Ligature marks? They were both tied up?”

He hesitated. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to tell me.

“It’s all right. I want to know,” I told him.

His eyes pinned me for the longest time, until I shivered as though an icy wind had swept over me. “They were strung up by their feet with leg irons,” he said.

The blunt description took a moment to process. Then I stared at him in revulsion. “Strung up…like meat?”

“Strung up and bled out,” he said grimly.

A wave of nausea washed through me. I felt hot and cold all over. Sweat trickled down my back, but I couldn’t stop shivering. I had the most awful, bloody images in my head. Dripping carcasses, strung up on hooks in packing houses.

I tried to blink away the vision, along with the spots that swam before my eyes. “What kind of monster would do something like that?”

Devlin’s voice was level, his face expressionless, but I saw something in his eyes that scared me. “My guess is, he’s a hunter.”