“The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Will you arrange for an exhumation today?”

“The earliest would be tomorrow morning,” said Dr. Krueshach. “But the order must come from the chief of police recommended by the principal detective on the case. Other than that, you'd have to go through your federal channels.”

“Then that is what I'll do.” Sharpe pulled out his cellular phone and dialed Eriq Santiva to wake up and get a court order. He was in mid-sentence, having awakened Eriq, when Dr. Krueshach waved Sharpe down, protesting.

“All right! All right, I'll sign off on an exhumation.”

“Then do it,” he said to Krueshach. Turning to Brannan, he stated, “Detective, are we agreed?”

“All right, all right if Herman's going to sign off on it. We don't need to involve a lot of people. I'll make the necessary phone calls.”

Krueshach had gone to his file cabinet and pulled out a blank document. “Here's the exhumation order. You'll need to sign alongside my signature.”

Sharpe took the form and signed it, handed it back and thanked him. “I'll see you at the exhumation.”

Dr. Herman Krueshach nodded but said nothing. A man of few words, Sharpe thought, or a man with a guilty conscience. Jessica would call him incompetent to lose so much in the way of evidence.

Brannan said he'd awakened the mortuary and cemetery people who would meet them at the burial site on the out skirts of Millbrook. Together Brannan and Sharpe exited Dr. Krueshach's office.

As they climbed into Brannan's Oldsmobile, the Millbrook detective softly excused Dr. Herman Krueshach with something about incompatible software systems, horrible budget cuts, little assistance, and no incentives.

Sharpe didn't want to hear it.

EIGHT

Infernal or heavenly, divinity itself is transitory.

— Gerald Messadie

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Same night

A shadow moved across the page she sat reading. Looking up, Jessica found Reynolds staring down at her in a kind of silent examination. “I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was hoping we'd have come to some conclusions about what next.”

“What next?” He seemed awkward, his white shirt open, the linen contrasting sharply with his black chest. “Where do we go from here.”

“Enough with the arcane science lesson, huh?” she replied. All the wine was gone, but she tipped the bottle anyway, studying it as if to have some focal point. “I think to bed is where we go.”

“What?”

“I'm sorry. I meant to sleep, to sleep.”

“Oh, yeah. What time is it anyway?”

“Three, three-ten in the A.M. Not even conventioneers… not even God is awake at this hour,” she lamented.

“Let's just go over the Sarah Towne killing one more time.” “I can do it in my sleep, I promise you, Darwin.”

“They're still taking orders at room service. I can get us another round of drinks. Whiskey sour, right? Jack Daniel's with a lime, lemon, cherry and an orange slice.”

“You are a quick study, Detective. Know just how to tingle a girl's backbone all right, but no, no, and no.”

“I'll just order that right up.”

“Along with your gin and tonic.”

“Hold my seat.”

“Will do.”

With his return, again dropping into the chair opposite her on this cool night, Jessica again noted how tall and imposing a man Darwin was. She watched him grab his shirt for an invisible pack of cigarettes. “Trying to give it up,” he muttered.

Somewhere from another balcony, a piano player made beautiful music, reminding her of Billy Vaughn. Whoever this imposter was, he proved extremely good on the ivories, now playing “Danny Boy.” No doubt a music student.

Whoever he or she was, the pianist slipped unnoticed into an equally beautiful rendition of “I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You).” The melody made Jessica think of how far apart she was from Richard.

“I wonder why the hell I'm here in the beer capital of the world chasing yet another monster,” she confided in Darwin. “I'm not sure I have the stomach for it any longer, Darwin-the process necessary to locate, capture, and put an end to the career of a man bent on ripping out people's fucking spines. Maybe this is a job for younger-”

“What the fuck is this, why-me-whine-fest time?”

The fatigue and the booze conspired against her having any reply to this.

Darwin firmly added, “You are here, Dr. Coran, to teach me, remember? And because you're needed.”

“You have any idea how tired I am of chasing down these fucking freaks, these inhuman humans? And in the chasing, how often I've lost myself, my own soul, Darwin? And you keep at it this way, you'll join me in hell.”

“How can you say that with your record of-”

“The price is high, Darwin. No winning. You lose even when you win. You lose repeatedly. Repeatedly you lose a larger and larger portion of yourself-”

Darwin stared, momentarily stunned at her admission.

“Along with family, along with lovers, along with any chance at happiness, two point five children, a white picket fence, a lapdog, a home and roots?”

“Sure, I understand, Dr. Coran.”

“The hell you do.”

“You got so close to evil, close enough to touch it, and the closer in you get, the closer you are to… to accepting it as… as normal.”

“Then maybe you do know something, young Xavier Darwin Reynolds.”

“I know what I've read in your books.”

“As normal… the things you begin to accept as normal as Mom's apple pie-evil plunked down and hunkered like a gargoyle right in our faces, but it is all verboten for us to fathom why because it's all part of God's grand schematic plans. His unknowable design, and so the sickest most twisted things man can do are all in the human makeup, and so this is indeed normal. And then it gets scary.”

“Scary? You want scary go to the neighborhood I grew up in. Come on, Doc, maybe you've had a little too much to drink.”

“I see it in myself, you see it in yourself, in our species, Darwin, in our race, and in our self-of-selves, where we can't hide… And, yeah, we see it in our cells, our collective, unconscious DNA cells, and so I give you particularly scary.”

Room service arrived with additional drinks. Darwin saw to it, tipping the bellhop. When he returned with her drink extended, he said, “Perhaps, Dr. Coran, we both ought to call it quits on the alcohol after all and get some sleep. We have the follow-up postmortem scheduled for eight-thirty sharp.”

“Sharpe, how I miss Richard Sharpe.” Jessica was beyond exhaustion now. She only grunted and sipped at her whiskey sour. Darwin's eyes lingered over his glass, then at her as he sipped at the ice tinkling at the bottom of his glass. He next exchanged it for his new drink.

“Don't worry about my getting up in the morning,” she said, “especially since it would appear I am not going to sleep anyway. Don't worry. I'll be there on time,” she assured him.

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