any idea who or what is buried here, let alone who’s responsible for burying it.”
Thompson’s mood was not easily suppressed. Even though I disliked him, I recognized that he was not rejoicing over a victim’s grave, but over the opportunity to see Nicholas Parrish face the death penalty.
Parrish, who must have known what this new find would mean to his chances of avoiding that sentence, looked almost serenely at us. His eyes came to rest on me. He smiled.
“Soon, my love,” he said, “soon.”
Bingle’s hackles went up, and he began barking at Parrish.
A warning we should have heeded.
16
THURSDAY MORNING, MAY 18
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
Ben and David soon began the next phase of their work, and with the same painstaking care they had taken at Julia Sayre’s grave. Duke and Earl decided to get a little shut-eye, but made Thompson promise to wake them if the anthropologists found anything.
Merrick and Manton took their prisoner some distance from the grave, where Thompson tried to question him, but Parrish was unwilling to say anything about this victim. That is not to say he was silent.
“Do you know why those coyotes died?” Parrish asked, staring at me again.
“No, tell me,” Thompson coaxed.
“For disturbing the peace,” he answered, not so much as glancing away from me. “Now, look at Dr. Sheridan and Dr. Niles. Are they any better than coyotes?”
“What do you mean?” Thompson asked.
“
“What does that mean?”
“Ask Ms. Kelly. She grew up hearing Latin — at least on Sundays.”
Thompson turned to me.
“It means ‘rest in peace,’ ” I said. “The R.I.P. on old gravestones.”
“You see?” Parrish said. “Do you know the habits of coyotes, Ms. Kelly?”
I didn’t answer.
“They rob graves. They will steal bones and gnaw on them.”
“Coyotes aren’t the only animals that will do that,” Thompson said.
“I don’t like coyotes,” Parrish said, smiling.
I walked away, headed back toward the grave.
Bingle was pleased to see me, and David as well. “Would you mind dog-sitting again?” he asked. “He’s especially restless for some reason.”
I had already realized this. Bingle had been dividing his time between trying to sneak closer to David and turning to bark fiercely toward Parrish.
“Duke and Earl must be ready to kill me,” David said. “They probably managed to fall asleep just in time to have him wake them with all his racket. I don’t know what his problem is.”
“With J.C. and Andy here yesterday, he could command more of your attention.”
“He’s had to sit quietly while I worked on other cases. He’s not usually so unruly. And he seldom reacts to anyone the way he has to Nick Parrish.”
“They should make him a judge,” I said.
David laughed. He showed me that they had already reached a layer of large stones, and could see green plastic in some places. “If this grave wasn’t made by Nick Parrish, he has an imitator,” he said.
“David,” Ben said, on a note of exasperation. He was in one of his crankier moods, and had been frowning throughout the time he had been working on the grave. He didn’t scold me for getting too close to it, though. Progress, I supposed.
Bingle decided to bark at Parrish again.
“Maybe I should take Bingle for a walk,” I said. “Get him away from Parrish for a while. God knows, I’d like to get away from him.” And the smell of decomposition, I thought, but didn’t say so.
“That would be great!” David said. He stopped working and went to get a leash from the dog equipment bag.
“A good idea, Ms. Kelly,” Ben said, carefully scraping soil off the plastic. “I’d prefer to work without curiosity seekers this time.”
“Curiosity seekers?” I said, outraged. “I’m a professional here on a job. If you could just get that idea through your thick skull—”
“What a profession. You profit from other people’s suffering—”
“Excuse me, Saint Ben of the Bones, but—”
“—you’ll peddle the details of another person’s misery to anyone who’s willing to drop a coin at a newsstand
