The Sinner Page 2

  So I emptied my mind to see if anything of the dead woman’s last moments drifted in.

  Nothing came to me. It was as if a deliberate barrier had been erected to block whatever emotions or memories that might have remained. I’d never felt anything like it. The obstruction was cold and impenetrable. An unscalable wall of darkness.

  As I knelt in the weeds, eyes closed in supreme concentration, I began to tremble even harder. The suspicion that a supernatural force had played a role in the young woman’s demise terrified me because no normal police officer or investigator would be equipped to track such a culprit. Not even Devlin.

  And I very much feared that was why I had been summoned.

  Three

  Despite the isolation of that forlorn circle, the area surrounding Seven Gates Cemetery was located just inside the city limits and, therefore, fell under the jurisdiction of the Ascension Police Department rather than the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

  The dispatcher had promised to send a squad car straightaway, and while I waited for the first responders, I busied myself taking photos with my phone. I was careful to tread only where I’d stepped before so as not to further taint what was clearly a crime scene. I wanted to get shots of the other cages, but I didn’t think it a good idea to tramp through the weeds before the authorities had conducted a thorough search.

  All the while I worked, I remained intensely aware of the watcher in the woods. The sensation of that hidden stare stayed with me even as I immersed myself in the scene, letting my gaze wander over the metal cages, committing to memory details of the devices so that I could later sort through my photographs and research materials for a similar design.

  I’d read about a pair of caged graves located in an old cemetery in Pennsylvania, but those were the only mortsafes I knew of in North America. Their size and weight made them unwieldy to transport so finding them in such a remote location was especially puzzling considering that body snatching was no longer a threat.

  How and why had they ended up in this clearing? What other purpose might they have served? Might still serve?

  The questions droned on as I anxiously waited for the police. The authorities didn’t rush to the scene with sirens blaring as I had imagined they would after my descriptive and rather breathless phone call. Instead, a good half hour after I’d reported the find, I heard the slamming of car doors out on Cemetery Road, and then a few minutes later two uniformed officers appeared on the trail, ambling along as if out for an afternoon stroll.

  Both stopped short when they spotted me. None of us said a word and the silence stretched until I pointed toward the second mortsafe.

  Their gazes followed my finger. They were young officers, perhaps inexperienced in dealing with such a strange and disturbing scene. I detected a collective hesitation before they approached the caged grave. They spent several minutes in quiet conversation as they observed the tiny hands from various angles in much the same way that I had. And then they made phone calls.

  After a bit, one of the cops came over and introduced himself as Tom Malloy. He looked to be in his midtwenties, still fresh-faced and earnest with a smattering of freckles across his nose and blue eyes that crinkled appealingly at the corners. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat and gave a slight nod. “Miss.”

  I nodded back as I folded my arms and then unfolded them because I thought the stance made me look defensive.

  “I take it you’re the one who called this in,” he said. “Amelia Gray?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  His gaze narrowed as he nodded to the scratch on my face. “What happened there?”

  I lifted a hand to the stinging flesh and shrugged. “A thorn caught me.”

  He glanced back at the hands in the cage and then at me, giving me a thorough scrutiny before taking out his notebook. I could see how the beading blood on a fresh wound might give him pause under the circumstances.

  “Let’s take care of the busywork first,” he said pleasantly enough as he jotted my name on a blank page. “What’s the best number to reach you?”

  I gave him my cell number and answered a few more rudimentary questions before recounting to him how I’d come upon the cages. I told him everything I could remember except for the part about being summoned by the presence in the woods. I explained that away by saying I’d taken a walk to work out the kinks after hours of bending over the headstones.

  “You’re from Charleston, you say?” His gaze flicked over me again and I tried not to flinch at his prolonged appraisal.

  “Yes, but I’ve been staying in Ascension since the end of May. I’m in the process of restoring Seven Gates Cemetery.”

  He looked surprised. “You’ve been working here all summer? I don’t recall seeing you around.”

  “I only get into town once or twice a week. The cemetery occupies most of my time. It was in really bad shape when I first started.”

  “You work alone?”

  “Yes. I’ve put out feelers for local help, but I haven’t had much luck. Just a couple of college kids early in the season, but they didn’t last long.” I bit my lip and turned away with a frown. It wasn’t like me to ramble or volunteer more information than was requested. Evidently, the discovery of the mortsafes and the sight of those hands had left me more shaken than I realized.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised about the lack of local help,” the officer said politely. “There’s a lot of superstition surrounding that old church and cemetery.”

  “Such as?”

  He shrugged. “The usual stuff. Both have been abandoned for as long as I can remember. Kids used to hang out in the ruins late at night after drinking beer and smoking weed, but I don’t think anyone goes there any more. Not after...”

  “Not after what?” I prompted.

  He glanced down at his notes. “Not after the place got so overgrown. Too many snakes and God knows what else lurking in the bushes. It’s too bad, really. The cemetery used to be beautiful.”

  “It will be again.”

  He turned back to the circle, his gaze moving around the cages. “I’ve lived here my whole life. Grew up in a house not five miles from where we’re standing. I thought I knew this area like the back of my hand, but I sure never knew these things were here. Have you ever come across anything like them before?”

  “Not around here. Mortsafes were mostly used in Europe.”

  “Mortsafes?” I saw him shiver.

  “They kept grave robbers from digging up fresh remains to sell to medical schools.”

  His expression turned grim as he trained his gaze upon me. “Looks like they were used here to keep something in.”

  I’d thought of that, as well, of course, but I didn’t comment.

  “Will you be around this afternoon?” he asked. “We may have more questions once we get her out of the ground.”

  “I’ll be working in the cemetery. I never leave before sundown.”

  He gave a vague nod as he went back to his partner. I hung around watching them. They didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they were glad for the company. The place seemed more desolate than ever and the trill of the loon made us all turn anxiously toward the marsh. I couldn’t help remembering the officer’s broken thought: Not after...

  Not after what?

  The palmettos rustled in a mild breeze. An insect droned in my ear. And from the woods, that presence still watched me.

  Who are you? I wondered. What are you?

  Still no answer.

  For the next several minutes, the cops huddled over the second mortsafe, talking in low tones and making a few notes until more personnel arrived on the scene, including a plainclothes detective, a forensic team and the Beaufort County coroner.

  A brief discussion ensued about possible ownership of the land and how
best to open the cage so the body could be removed. That dilemma brought Officer Malloy back over to me.

  “Who hired you to restore the cemetery?”

  “It was a joint effort by some of the families and a local historical society,” I told him.

  “Do you have a contact person?”

  “Annalee Nash.”

  A brow shot up. “Annalee Nash?”

  “Yes, why? Do you know her?”

  “Everybody knows Annalee. I guess I’m just a little surprised to hear she’s involved with that cemetery.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s secretary of the local historical society.”

  “I don’t keep up with that sort of thing. How did the two of you meet?”

  “She first contacted me through my website and we’ve kept in touch ever since. She’s the one who made sure all the permits were in order so there wouldn’t be any delays once we signed the contract.”

  He slapped at a mosquito on the side of his neck. “I don’t suppose she ever mentioned anything about ownership of the property adjoining the cemetery?”

  “This property, you mean? No, she didn’t. As I understand it, Seven Gates is located on public land, but nothing I’ve found in the archives suggests these graves are connected to the cemetery.”

  “They look like they’ve been here a long time,” he said.

  “I’m guessing the mortsafes are only a few decades old, but the dirt underneath the first cage is sunken, which could indicate that the burials are older. If the original graves are over a hundred years old, the state archaeologist would have jurisdiction regardless of property ownership.”

  The detective came up just then, and after we were introduced, I repeated everything that I’d told Officer Malloy.

  Detective Lucien Kendrick looked to be in his early thirties, a man of indeterminate ethnicity with light brown skin and topaz-colored eyes that tilted exotically at the corners. The intensity of his scrutiny took me aback. Not since my first encounter with Devlin had I experienced such an unsettling focus. Even when he addressed Officer Malloy, Kendrick’s gaze remained hard upon me until I had to fight the urge to take a step back from him.

  He was just shy of six feet, lean and sinewy. By no means a large man, but his bearing gave him an air of toughness and invincibility. I didn’t consider him handsome in the traditional sense of the word, but he was one of the most striking men I’d ever met, from the strange color of his eyes to the razor sharpness of his cheekbones.

  His attire was casual, but his jacket and boots were of good quality. Not custom like Devlin’s wardrobe, but certainly several cuts above what one might expect from a small-town police detective. Sometime in the not too distant past, his left eyebrow had been pierced. I could still see the tiny holes and, once noticed, I started to search for other bits of unconventionality. The tattooed skull on the back of his hand. The raised scar tissue of a brand on the side of his neck. He was an enigmatic man, one who undoubtedly marched to his own drummer, and I found him fascinating in the way one might admire the coil of a cobra or the crouch of a tiger.

  Nonconformity aside, my heightened senses warned me that he was no ordinary “cop.”

  “You say you’ve been working here since the end of May.” His voice was deep and lilting with the barest hint of an accent that I couldn’t place. But the nagging familiarity of some of his inflections made me curious about his background. Where had he come from and what had brought him to this part of the world? And how had he ended up as a detective with the Ascension Police Department?

  “Miss Gray?”

  I started at the sound of my name, dragging my focus from the brand snaking up over his shirt collar to lock gazes with him. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

  His gaze zeroed in on my cheek. “Are you all right?”

  “What? Oh, that. It’s just a scratch. A hazard of my profession, I’m afraid.”

  “I know all about those,” he murmured. “You should put something on it. You don’t want to risk infection.”

  I lifted my head in a small act of defiance. The detective’s caution had sounded strangely like a threat. Which was absurd, of course, and overly defensive. “I’ll take care of it later. Right now, I’d rather answer all your questions and be on my way.”

  He nodded, his gaze cool and assessing. “I understand you’ve been working in the cemetery since late May.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What time do you usually get to work in the morning?”

  “Just after sunrise.”

  “That early every day?”

  “I like to get the more strenuous tasks accomplished before the heat of the day sets in.”

  “That would put your arrival this morning around six-thirty, correct?” Another quirk of his eyebrow, another bold stare.

  I swallowed hard. “Thereabouts.”

  “You didn’t notice any suspicious activity? Dogs barking? Strange vehicles parked on the side of the road? Anybody going into or coming out of these woods?” He searched my face. “Anything at all unusual?”

  “No, nothing. There’s very little traffic on Cemetery Road, especially at that hour. If there had been anyone about, I’m certain I would have noticed. I haven’t seen anyone all day except for a group of kids with fishing poles and crab traps heading toward the marsh.”

  He paused as if carefully evaluating everything I’d told him. “So you worked in the cemetery until around three when you decided to take a walk. I’m surprised. That’s generally when the heat of the day sets in,” he said, throwing my own words back at me. “Why not rest in the shade?”

  “I’d been kneeling and bending for hours cleaning headstones. I needed to work out the kinks.” The half-truth slipped out easily because I’d spent a lifetime keeping secrets. Concealment and discretion had become second nature to me.

  “And the reason you came all the way back here? The trail from the cemetery is rugged and overgrown. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been this way in years.” His gaze slid to the cages. “Until recently, of course.”

  I gave another shrug. “No particular reason. I just like exploring new places.”

  “Well, I guess that was a lucky break for us. What can you tell me about these cages?”

  There was an odd note in his voice that set off another alarm. My guard came up instantly and now I did take a step back from him as I turned toward the circle. “They’re called mortsafes. As I explained to Officer Malloy, such devices are uncommon in this part of the world. In fact, I’ve only ever seen similar cages in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

  “And yet here they are, a dozen of them in Ascension, South Carolina.”

  “As I said, it’s an unusual find.”

  Our gazes collided once more before he glanced away. He knew something about the mortsafes, I thought. Maybe not the ones in the circle, but he’d seen something like them before, I was certain of it.

  I tried to empty my mind again, but before I could absorb any of the detective’s thoughts or emotions, he spun back to face me as if sensing my tentative probe. For a split second only, I heard the chanting in the woods. That same indistinguishable word repeated over and over. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the mantra, but the sound was either too far away or buried too deep in Kendrick’s memory.

  I resisted the urge to try and push past his defenses. For some reason, I felt it important that I not give that particular ability away to him.

  “This is a small town so word tends to travel fast,” he said. “You can expect a lot of gawkers over the next few days. Since the quickest and easiest way to get a look at those cages is through the cemetery, you’ll need to keep the gates locked.”

  “I will.”

  Shadows crisscrossed over us as more vultures circled. I didn’t glance skyward, but ins
tead put a hand to my eyes as I scanned the treetops where the sun would soon start to slide.

  Kendrick handed me a card. “You think of anything else, here’s my number. Call any time, day or night. Whatever happened here...” His gaze lifted, tracking the buzzards. “I don’t like the feel of it.”

  “It’s disturbing,” I agreed. Beyond disturbing. It was the stuff of nightmares. Arms rising up out of a fresh grave. Hands clinging to the locked grid of a mortsafe that was designed to keep grave robbers out, not the dead in.

  “We’ll begin the excavation once we get the cage opened. It won’t be pleasant,” he warned as he nodded to the trail behind me. “You may want to head back up to the cemetery before we get started.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I used to work for the state archaeologist’s office in Columbia. We were sometimes called in to move whole cemeteries. If there are older remains beneath the victim, it’s very important to preserve the integrity of the original grave site.”

  “Are you offering your services?”

  “I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,” I said, once again startled by the intensity of his focus. I suddenly realized that I could no longer sense the presence in the woods and I had to wonder if Detective Kendrick had somehow scared away the watcher. The notion that he possessed that kind of power was hardly reassuring. “I recommend you call in the state archaeologist,” I rushed to add. “Her name is Temple Lee. If she doesn’t have time to come herself, she can suggest someone locally to assist you.”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Kendrick said. “She was on the news during those Charleston excavations sometime back. As I recall, a torture chamber was uncovered beneath a mausoleum in an old cemetery connected to Emerson University.”

  His expression never wavered but I knew that he was gauging my response. Either he’d recognized my name or he’d done his research on the way to the scene.

  “You’re referring to Oak Grove Cemetery,” I said easily. “I was involved with that case, as well. I’d just been commissioned to restore the cemetery when the first body was found.”