Watermeier removed his hat. He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, despite what Maggie had noticed was a chill in the air now that the sun was disappearing behind the ridge of rock and trees. Watermeier put the hat on and this time pushed it back. Maggie surveyed the equipment the crime-lab technicians had carefully stacked out of the way on one of the boulders. Finally she saw a red-and-white water jug. She reached and grabbed it, glanced at Carl and waited for his nod of approval. Then she unscrewed the top, took a long slow drink and, as casually as possible, handed the jug to Sheriff Watermeier as if handing it down the line. He didn’t hesitate, took a generous swig and passed it on.
“Was it public knowledge?” she asked Watermeier.
He looked at her, knew she was addressing him, but his eyes drew a blank. “What’s that?”
“Did Mr. Earlman tell people about the tumor? Friends, family, acquaintances?”
“Oh, yeah. He didn’t hide it,” Watermeier said. “But he didn’t complain about it, either.”
“Was there any public mention of it? Was it listed as COD in the obituary?”
Watermeier scratched his head, reaching under his hat. “I don’t remember about the obituary, but almost everyone knew Steve. He owned the butcher shop in downtown Wallingford. Bought it from old Ralph Shelby years ago but still kept the name. Figured everybody already knew it as Ralph’s. That was Steve. He was a pretty humble guy. And a good guy, fair and honest. Even after he got sick he was going in to work every day. Still did the custom cuts himself. After Steve died, the store closed. Someone bought all the equipment but didn’t want to run the shop. It’s some kind of knickknack shop now.”
Dr. Stolz looked up at Maggie from his perch. “What exactly are you thinking, Agent O’Dell?”
“If it’s not a surgery cut, it had to have been made postmortem, right?”
“Yes.”
“Was his funeral an open casket?” she asked Watermeier, who now only nodded. “So it had to be after the funeral.”
“Someone dug up his grave?” Henry asked, but from the look on his face, Maggie could tell he didn’t really want to think about it.
“When and how would they able to do that?” Stolz said. “A sealed vault isn’t the easiest thing to break into.”
“Not all caskets are put into vaults,” Bonzado offered. “Depends on whether or not the family wants to add that extra expense. If I remember correctly it’s about $700 to $1,000.”
“There’s another possibility,” Maggie said. “The body could have been taken before the casket was buried.”
“You mean someone may have snatched the body right from the funeral home?” Bonzado said as he stood, brushing his knees clean.
His sartorial get-up was an odd uniform for a forensic anthropologist, even for a professor. Maybe not for an eccentric professor with muscular, tanned legs. As Maggie caught herself admiring Bonzado’s legs, she also noticed his knees were covered with the rust-colored dust from the rocks and a green weed had latched onto the tops of his socks. It reminded Maggie to take a closer look at the dead man’s clothes for any similar debris.
“If someone had access they could have made a switch,” Maggie answered as she examined the suit, a lightweight wool, damp and sticky with what she guessed to be embalming fluid.
The skull cut had definitely been made after the body had been embalmed and prepared for its casket. There would be no way to hide leaking embalming fluid for an open-casket viewing without repairing the gaping hole, and the cutter hadn’t felt the urgency to make any such repairs. Now that she got a closer look at the blue suit, she could tell there were no signs of green weed, no brown rock dust on the wool. The cut hadn’t been made out here. In fact, other than the sticky embalming fluid, the suit looked clean.
“I helped carry his casket,” Watermeier said, sounding quiet and far away. “It was heavy. He had to be in there.”
Maggie glanced up at the sheriff. He rubbed his temple, not like a man puzzled in thought, but pressing hard—hard enough to wince—as if he wanted the image before him to disappear.
“I’m just saying we need to consider all the possibilities,” Maggie said. “In any case, we should find out who had access to the casket and the grave. Maybe his suit might tell us more.” She found Stolz watching and met his eyes, ignoring their skepticism and what she immediately recognized as a trace of suspicion. Not even an hour into the investigation and Stolz had already decided to label her an intruder. It didn’t matter. She was used to it. “Usually funeral clothes are clean when a mortician puts them on a corpse, right?” She continued, “So anything the clothes came in contact with would have to be from the mortuary or a destination that came later.”
Stolz simply nodded.
“We might find something on the suit, some debris from the killer like hair or fibers. He couldn’t have done this without making contact with the body.”
“He went to a lot of trouble just to take the brain. Maybe he sells parts to teaching colleges,” Bonzado’s female student suggested, as she helped Carl, who had been quietly collecting evidence that may have spilled from the barrel. The woman seemed overly anxious to help and held open a plastic bag while Carl dropped small particles in with forceps.
Maggie was impressed that Carl already had two bags in his other hand, one containing what looked to be a swatch of hair or fur and in the other, a small, crumpled piece of white paper.
“What is this?” She pointed to the crumpled piece of paper.
“Not sure,” Carl said as he handed her the bag. “It’s not a note, if that’s what you were hoping. It’s not even writing paper.”
Maggie held it up, examining it in the sunlight. “Looks like a waxy texture.”
“Getting back to more important matters,” Stolz grumbled. “Like missing brains. Serial killers often take things, clothing, jewelry, even body parts.” He looked from Bonzado and Carl to Watermeier and finally—lastly—to Maggie. “As trophies, right?”
“Yes, serial killers often do that. There’s only one small problem here,” Maggie said, stopping all of them, waiting for their attention. “Mr. Earlman wasn’t murdered.”
CHAPTER 21
Adam Bonzado helped Simon with the bags of sand wiches and sodas, keeping an eye on his student. Ramona and Joe had literally dug into this project, but Simon…Well, it was hard to tell. His pasty complexion and quiet demeanor were typical. So when he volunteered to get lunch for the group, Adam knew it was Simon just being Simon, always the first to offer when there were errands that needed to be run.
They made their way through what seemed to be a growing crowd of reporters and cameras. Officer Trotter with the state patrol had the media trained to stay back behind the crime-scene tape, but that didn’t stop the barrage of questions.
“Professor, Jennifer Carpenter with WVXB Channel 12. When will we have an official update?”
Adam recognized the attractive blonde behind the glasses.
“I’m not in charge, Ms. Carpenter. You’d have to ask Sheriff Watermeier.”
“I’ve been asking Sheriff Watermeier. What exactly are you finding? And why are you hiding it?”
“We’re not hiding anything,” Adam said, and when she whipped off her glasses, he realized the cameraman behind her was now running film. Jesus! Just what he needed. Why hadn’t he kept his big mouth shut? “We’re simply trying to assess the situation. I’m sure we’ll let all of you know what’s going on as soon as we can.”
He turned his back to them and headed for the quarry. Simon waited for him on the other side of the tree line.
“Vultures,” he told his student, hoping for a smile.
“I think she likes you.”
Adam glanced at him, expecting some smart aleck comment to follow. His students were always razzing him about being single. But Simon looked serious. Adam knew Simon was older than most of the other graduate students, having come into the program late. “Yeah? You think so? I’m not sure she’s my type.”
Now, Special Agent Maggie O’Dell was another story. From their first introduction Adam couldn’t help
