Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [67]
“But you haven’t found her body?” I said.
“No. I was wondering if you would come take a look.”
This was sad, and it was also professionally awkward. In view of his obvious misery and our friendship with Victoria, I wasn’t even thinking about money. I was thinking about the rest of the cops out there who would decide that my arrival on the scene was Rudy Flemmon’s anxiety taking an extreme form.
But there wasn’t much I could say except, “Give me ten minutes.”
I jumped into the shower, soaped up and rinsed off, brushed my teeth, and pulled on my clothes. I put on boots; not high-heeled fashion boots, but flat, waterproof Uggs. The weather had been intermittently rainy, and I didn’t want to get caught by surprise. Though I hadn’t watched the forecast that morning or checked the paper, I noticed Rudy was wearing a heavy jacket, and I bundled up accordingly.
There was no question of Tolliver coming. That idea suddenly hit me in the face when I was ready to go out the door. Sloppy weather, cemetery conditions: not ideal for someone recovering from a gunshot wound.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, with a terrible pang of anxiety. “You don’t do anything. I mean, get back in bed and watch TV. I’ll call you if anything happens, all right?”
Tolliver was as stricken by the belated realization that I was going out on a work call alone as I was. “Get some candy out of my jacket pocket,” he said, and I did. “Don’t do anything that’s going to hurt you,” he said severely.
“Don’t worry,” I said, and then I told Rudy Flemmons I was ready to go, though that was far from the truth.
On the ride through the misty rain, in the heavy morning traffic, we were silent. Rudy called someone on the radio to tell them we were on the way, and those were the only words spoken in fifteen minutes.
“I know you charge for this,” he said suddenly, as he pulled in behind a long line of cars on a road through a huge cemetery, the modern kind that forbids headstones. I was being bombarded by the vibrations of the corpses, coming from all directions. They were all intense, since this was a relatively new burial ground. I thought the oldest was maybe twenty years in the ground.
“Not an issue. Please don’t mention it again,” I said, and got out of the car. The last thing I wanted to do was debate prices while I was looking for this sad man’s girlfriend.
You would think that if I knew the person it would be easier, but it isn’t. Otherwise, I would have found my sister long ago. The dead clamor for attention with equal intensity, and if Victoria was out here somewhere, she was simply part of the chorus. It was hard to avoid the graves that called for my attention, and it was incredibly painful to be here without Tolliver. I had no anchor.
Common sense, I told myself. I went as close to the abandoned car as I could. One technician was peering at the tire treads, in a desultory way that told me the major work had been done. There were cops searching the landscaped graveyard, which was on rolling ground. It was a common layout for a modern place: there were areas defined by the tall statue in the middle, like an angel garden or a cross area, to help visitors navigate to the correct gravesite. I had no idea what method was used, whether the plots radiated out from the central sculpture or if you got to pick your site within that area. The place was looking pretty full—lying room only. There was a care-taker’s shed in the distance and a chapel in the middle, a sizable marble structure that probably held a mausoleum and a columbarium. Across the width of the grounds I could see a funeral taking place as the search for Victoria Flores went on around me.
Hoping profoundly that no one would notice me, I closed my eyes and reached out. So many signals to sort through, so many clamoring to be recognized; I shuddered, but I persevered.
Freshest. Freshest. I needed something brand spanking new. That is, someone who’d passed over yesterday or even a few hours ago. There, out in front of me. I opened my eyes and walked to a grave