Grave Surprise

Page 14

  The closest I could get to Clyde Nunley's corpse without climbing down into the grave--which might have destroyed or damaged evidence--was to hang over the edge with my hand extended to him. I lay down on the ground and wriggled forward. Tolliver held on to my legs. The hole wasn't so deep, and I managed to touch the shirt on Dr. Nunley's back.

  His death was so recent it was like a continuous droning in my head, almost drowning my reason, and I had to wait for that to subside before I got a sense of his passing. "Hit on the head," I mumbled, caught up in the sheer astonishment he'd felt. "On the back of the head. So surprised. " The shock of it was still lingering around him. He absolutely had not expected the attack.

  "Here?"

  "Yes," I said, straining to extract the pictures of the end of his life. He was so fresh, so recently translated into this lump of flesh that could neither act nor reason. I saw the darkness around him, the tombstones, everything like it was now: the cold, the rough ground, the upturned earth. "Oh, it hurts! Oh, it hurts! My head!" And the hole coming at me, couldn't throw out my hands to take the fall, grayness. . . blackness.

  I was close to that blackness myself when Tolliver hauled me up and braced me against him.

  "Here, open your mouth," he said, and then he repeated it. "Open!"

  I parted my lips, and he pushed a piece of peppermint into my mouth.

  "Come on, you have to have some sugar," he said, and his voice was sharp and commanding.

  He was right. We'd found that out, by trial and error. I made myself suck on the candy, and in a few minutes I felt better. Next came a butterscotch.

  "It's never been this bad," I said, my voice weak. "I guess it's because he's so new. " I was worried I couldn't make it across the cemetery back to our car without a lot of help from Tolliver.

  "He's absolutely gone, right? That. . . who stopped you--wasn't him? I did think I saw a beard. "

  Every now and then, we'd found a soul attached to a body. That was rare, and until this night I had thought that would be the eeriest thing we could find. Now we knew there was more.

  "Clyde Nunley's soul's gone," I said, not willing to commit myself further than that. "And we should be, too. " I gathered myself to make the attempt.

  "Yeah," Tolliver said. "We got to get out of here. "

  I paused, halfway to my feet. "But we'll be leaving him by himself. "

  "He's been by himself for a hundred years," Tolliver said, not pretending he didn't understand. "He'll have to be by himself for a while longer. For all we know, maybe he's got company. "

  "Does this qualify as the strangest conversation we've ever had?"

  "I think so. "

  "I couldn't have anyone else but you here, no one else would understand," I said. "I'm so glad you saw him, too. "

  "And that's never happened before, right? You've never mentioned anything like that. "

  "Never. I've known when souls were still attached to the body, and I've wondered if those would be ghosts if they didn't detach. I've always wondered if I would see a ghost sometime. I've always been a little disappointed that I haven't, in a way. Oh my God, Tolliver. He saved me from falling right into that grave on top of the corpse. The first time I see a ghost, and he saved me. "

  "Were you scared?"

  "Not that he would hurt me. But I was afraid because it was spooky and I didn't know what to do for him. I don't know why he can't or won't go on, I don't know how he experiences time, I don't know his purpose. And now all his people are gone, I guess. No one could visit him or. . . " I shut up, afraid of sounding maudlin.

  They all want to be found, you know. That's all they want. Not vengeance, or forgiveness. They want to be found. At least, that's what I'd always thought.

  But Josiah Poundstone--I was sure he was the ghost--had been firmly located since the moment of his death. Someone had erected the "Beloved Brother" headstone. And someone had murdered him, if that was part of his awareness. When I'd stood on his grave in the daylight, I'd felt only the faintest flutter from him, so overwhelmed had I been with the thrumming from the most recent corpse. I'd assumed Josiah Poundstone was gone for good. Apparently, I'd been wrong.

  Chapter nine

  WE made our way back to the car, taking our time. I had to hold on to Tolliver here and there, and I don't think he was sorry to hold onto me. We dusted dirt off my jacket, and stomped our feet to remove bits of soil.

  "If there were an emergency room for psychological shocks, we could go there," he said, unlocking the car.

  "I've never left a body unreported," I said, remembering how proud I'd been of that fact only a day before. "Never. " I shuddered. "I wish I could put my brain in a warm bath of something scented," I said. "And give my nervous system some aromatherapy. "

  "That mental picture is just disgusting," Tolliver said.

  He was right, but that didn't stop me from wanting some way to soothe my emotional self. I took a deep breath and tried to put the frivolous thoughts on the back burner.

  We still had decisions to make, and they wouldn't be easy ones.

  "Did you get anything from the. . . did you get anything?" Tolliver asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, Dr. Nunley was really taken by surprise. I don't know why he was out there, but he never expected the person with him had any evil intent. "

  "Do ordinary people expect to be attacked, ever?" Tolliver asked reasonably.

  I gave him a disgusted look. "No, they don't, smart aleck, and that's not what I meant. What I mean is--he wasn't with a stranger. He was with someone he knew, and he had no idea that the other guy wished him ill. "

  "You just using 'guy' for the ease of it?"

  "Right. "

  "We can't tell the police. "

  "Sure we can, but they won't believe us. I don't know what else we can do. And I absolutely don't think we should tell them we were at the grave site again. "

  We argued back and forth all the way to the hotel--and with time out for discretion in front of the staff, resumed our argument when we were alone in the elevator.

  When we stepped out, we were struck speechless to see Agent Seth Koenig waiting outside our room.

  If the management had cast glances at us on our way through the lobby, we'd been too engrossed in our own problems to pick up on it. Certainly not a psychic, I thought ruefully. /// ever claim to be one, strike me dead. We were completely taken by surprise. As one, we stopped in our tracks and stared at him.

  We weren't alone in the staring department. He was laying one on us.

  "What have you two been up to?" he asked.

  "I don't believe we need to talk to you," Tolliver said. "My sister tells me you're an FBI agent, and we don't know anything of interest to you. "

  "Where have you been?" Koenig asked, as though we would be compelled to tell him.

  "We went to the movies," I said.

  "Just now," he said. "Where were you just now?"

  Tolliver took my hand and led me past the agent, who was surely persistent.

  I repeated what Tolliver had said. "We don't have to talk to you. "

  "If it was anything to do with Tabitha Morgenstern, I need to know it. " His voice was rough and hard.

  "Fuck off," I said. Tolliver gave me a startled look. That's not my usual style. But I wanted to get away from this guy. Tolliver got the door unlocked and whisked me inside at top speed. We slammed the door behind us.

  "He's obsessed with his failure," I said, as I began to shed all my outerwear. I noticed my shoes were stained with dirt from the cemetery, despite my efforts. I reminded myself that I had to clean them later. At the moment, I couldn't summon the energy. I felt awful: exhausted, weak, upset. "I have to shower and go to bed. I'm sorry I'm not more help. "

  "Don
't say that," Tolliver said. He hated it when I apologized.

  I often thought, and sometimes said, that Tolliver would be better off if he hadn't undertaken the role of my backbone. But when I tried to imagine myself going on the road alone, I felt a huge hole in my middle that refused to fill with anything. I tried to keep myself fit and did everything I could to ensure my health, but the fact remained that sometimes I was just overcome by the physical problems that plagued me. And the job itself drained me, though I loved it.

  What Tolliver got out of accompanying me, I wasn't able to figure. But he did seem to want to do it, and he accused me of self-pity when I tried to get him to do something he might find more fulfilling.

  In the meantime, we shared everything: the money was our money, and the car was our car, and the planning and execution of the itinerary was ours.

  "Come on," Tolliver said, putting an arm around me helping me to my room. "Hold up your arms. " Like a child, I held my arms up and he pulled off my sweater. "Sit on the bed. " I did, and he pulled off my shoes and socks. I stood, and he unzipped my jeans.

  "I'm good," I said. "I got it from here. "

  "Sure? Need candy? Need a drink?"

  "No, just a shower and bed. I'll be okay after some sleep. "

  Tolliver said, "Call if you need me," and went back out to the living room. I heard him turn on the television. I couldn't even remember what night it was, so I didn't know if one of his shows was on. We could never count on being able to keep up with episodes, and we'd discussed learning more about TiVo for the set in our apartment. I thought I heard Tolliver's cell phone ring while I was in the tub, but I simply didn't care who was calling. I soaked in hot, scented water, then scrubbed myself bright pink. After I dried off and put on my pajamas, I was disgusted to find out I still hadn't unwound enough to sleep. I turned on my own television to have background noise while I painted my nails. I decided on a nice dark red, which looked autumnal, and I had a lovely peaceful half hour to myself. You can't be said to have any worries if your fingernails are the center of your universe, and it gave me time to decompress.

  I couldn't settle down to read when that was done, though Tolliver had brought a box of paperbacks up with us. We pick them up here and there, and leave them for other people when we're done. We love secondhand bookstores, and we'll go a mile or two out of our way if we've heard of a good one in the area. I'd been reading a biography of Catherine the Great, who may have become an empress but also managed to have a messy life. Maybe all empresses did. I just couldn't get into her tonight, and I was still jangling too much inside to get in the bed. I wandered into the common living room to see what Tolliver was up to.

  He was fuming; there was no other word for it.

  "The TV screen is going to break if you keep glaring at it like that," I said. "What's up?" Tolliver didn't do a lot of brooding and mulling, so I never thought twice about asking.

  "Personal," snapped Tolliver.

  I was shocked for a minute, and then gave myself a piece of good advice. Treat this casually, and don't get all tearful and hurt.

  "Okay," I said calmly. "What's the score in the game?" Tolliver was watching football, which I couldn't care less about, but the question did knock him out of his funk and redirect his irritation. He was off and running on the failure of his favorite team, the Miami Dolphins, to get a first down. Since I know about as much about football as I do about quantum physics, I tried to look sympathetic while keeping my mouth shut. Sleep was out of the question until this was resolved, one way or another.

  "We could use some food," I said, and called room service. I got a hamburger for Tolliver, and a grilled chicken sandwich for me.

  By the time I'd done that, Tolliver had calmed down and was wearing his usual expression of good humor. "That phone call was from Felicia Hart," he said.

  I tried to keep my face still and receptive. I tried very hard not to twitch.

  "I've told you I'm sorry for being. . . for starting something with her," he said. "I'm not going to say it again. "

  "I didn't ask you to," I pointed out.

  "Right. " He shook his head. "Residual guilt," he said, by way of explanation. "She wants to see me again. I said it wasn't a good time. "

  "She saw you today, and she was reminded of how fine you are," I said, careful to be smiling when I said that. "I bet she wants to start up again. "

  He shook his head. "That seems really unlikely. "

  "I wonder if she'll be at the lunch tomorrow," I said, trying to sound innocent. "I'll run interference for you if you need me to. She'll probably try to get you by yourself. "

  "I don't think so," he said, refusing to be drawn.

  "She's very protective of Victor," he said after a long pause. I wondered if he'd seen any of the action on the television screen. "Do you remember what Victor's alibi was when Tabitha was abducted?"

  "Well, it was spring break, so he wouldn't have been at school," I said. "Nope, I don't recall. Why don't we look it up?"

  Tolliver set up his laptop and hooked up to the hotel's Internet service. We began to do a little research into the crime that had led to us being in this room at this moment.

  I sat by Tolliver, my arm around his shoulders, as he brought up the familiar story and the images from eighteen months ago. I had forgotten some of the details, and now that I knew all of the people involved, the pictures had much more impact.