down his spine. He had never before known Aloysius Pendergast to be tense or agitated. Nevertheless, despite a veneer of calm, the man seemed so today.
The privacy screens were pulled into place around the plot, and Beaufort turned his attention to the goings- on. Jennings had been glancing at his watch and plucking at his collar. “Let us begin,” he said in a high, nervous voice. “May I have the exhumation license, please?”
Pendergast pulled it from inside his coat and handed it over. The health official glanced at it, nodded, handed it back. “Recall that at all times, our primary responsibility is to protect the public health and to ensure the dignity and respect of the deceased.”
He glanced down at the gravestone, which read, simply:
HELEN ESTERHAZY PENDERGAST
“Are we all in agreement on the correctness of the grave?”
There was a general nodding of heads.
Jennings stepped back. “Very well. The exhumation may proceed.”
Two gravediggers, wearing gloves and respiratory face masks in addition to their protective clothing, began by cutting a rectangle in the thick green sod and, with expert finesse, neatly detaching and rolling it up in strips, setting them carefully aside. An operator stood by with a tiny cemetery backhoe.
The sod up, the two gravediggers set to work with square-bladed shovels, aiming sharp alternating blows into the black earth, piling it neatly on a plastic sheet laid to one side. The hole took shape, the diggers blading the walls to crisp angles and planes. And then they stepped back while the backhoe inched forward, its miniature bucket plunging into the dark ground.
The backhoe and the two diggers alternated work, the diggers trimming the hole while the bucket took out the dirt. The assembled group watched in almost liturgical silence. As the hole deepened, the air became charged with its scent; loamy and oddly fragrant, like the smell of the deep woods. The open grave smoked faintly in the early-morning air. Jennings, the health officer, dipped a hand into his coat, pulled out a face mask, and put it on.
Beaufort shot a private glance at the FBI agent. He was staring at the deepening hole as if transfixed, an intense expression on his face that was, at least to Beaufort, unreadable. Pendergast had been evasive about why he wanted his wife’s body dug up — only that he wanted the mobile forensic van to be prepared for any and all tests of identity. Even for a family as notably eccentric as the Pendergasts, it seemed disturbing and inexplicable.
The digging continued for fifteen minutes, then thirty. The two men in masks and protective clothing stopped for a brief rest, then returned to work. A few minutes later, one of the shovels hit a heavy object with a loud, hollow
The men surrounding the open grave glanced at one another. All except Pendergast, whose eyes remained riveted on the yawning hole at his feet.
More carefully now, the diggers evened out the walls of the grave, then continued down, slowly exposing the standard cement container in which the coffin rested. The backhoe, fitted with straps, lifted the concrete lid, exposing the coffin inside. It was made of mahogany, even blacker than the surrounding soil, trimmed with brass handles, corners, and rails. A new scent was introduced to the already charged atmosphere: a faint odor of decomposition.
Four more men now appeared at the graveside, carrying the “shell”—a new casket to hold both the old casket and its exhumed remains. Placing it on the ground, they stepped forward to help the diggers. As the group watched silently, new webbing was lowered into the grave and slid beneath the coffin. Together — slowly, carefully, by hand — the six men strained to lift the coffin from its resting place.
Beaufort watched. At first, the coffin seemed to resist being disturbed. And then, with a faint groan, it came free and began to rise.
As the witnesses stepped back to give them room, the Saint-Savin workers lifted the coffin out of the grave and placed it on the ground beside the shell. Jennings came forward, pulling on latex gloves. Kneeling at the head of the coffin, he bent forward to inspect the nameplate.
“Helen Esterhazy Pendergast,” he read through the mask. “Let the record show the name on the casket conforms with the name on the exhumation license.”
Now the shell was opened. Beaufort saw that its interior consisted of a tarred zinc liner, covered with a plastic membrane and sealed with isopon. All standard. At a nod from Jennings — who had backed quickly away — the cemetery workers once again lifted Helen Pendergast’s coffin by the webbing, carried it to the open shell, and placed it inside. Pendergast watched as if frozen, his face pale, his eyes hooded. He had not moved a muscle, save to blink, since the exhumation process started.
With the coffin safely inside the shell, the lid was closed and fastened. The cemetery manager came forward with a small brass nameplate. As the workers removed the disposable protective clothing and washed their hands with disinfectant, he hammered the nameplate into the surface of the shell.
Beaufort stirred. It was almost time for his own work to begin. The workers lifted the shell by its railings and he led them to the rear of the mobile forensic lab, parked on the gravel nearby. It sat in the shade of the magnolias, generator rumbling quietly. His assistant opened the rear doors and helped the cemetery workers lift the shell up and slide it inside.
Beaufort waited until the doors were shut again, then he followed the workers back to the screened-off plot. The group was still assembled, and would remain there until the procedure was complete. Some of the workers began filling in the old grave, while others, with the help of the backhoe, began opening a fresh one beside it: when his work on the remains was complete, they would be re-interred in the new grave. Beaufort knew that moving her body — even so slight a distance as this — was the only way Pendergast had been able to get the exhumation approved. And even then he wondered what pressure had been brought to bear on the nervous, sweating Jennings.
At last Pendergast stirred, glancing his way. The anticipation, the tense watchfulness, had deepened in his pale features.
Beaufort came up to him and spoke in a low voice. “We’re ready. Now, exactly what tests would you like done?”
The FBI agent looked at him. “DNA, hair samples, fingerprints if possible, dental X-rays. Everything.”
Beaufort tried to think of the most tactful way to say it. “It would help if I knew what the purpose of all this was.”
A long moment passed before Pendergast replied. “The body in the coffin is not that of my wife.”
Beaufort absorbed this. “What leads you to believe there’s been a… a mistake?”
“Just perform the tests, if you please,” said Pendergast quietly. His white hand emerged from under his suit; in it was a hairbrush in a ziplock bag. “You’ll need a sample of her DNA.”
Beaufort took the bag, wondering at a man who would keep his wife’s hairbrush untouched for more than ten years after her death. He cleared his throat. “And if the body is hers?”
When there was no reply to this question, Beaufort asked another. “Would you, ah, care to be present when we open the coffin?”
The agent’s haunted eyes seemed to freeze Beaufort. “It’s a matter of indifference to me.”
He turned back to the grave and said no more.
CHAPTER 33
THE FOOD LINE AT THE BOWERY STREET MISSION snaked slowly past the front row of refectory-style tables toward the steam trays.
“Shit,” said the man directly ahead. “Not chicken and dumplings again.”
Distractedly, Esterhazy picked up a tray, helped himself to corn bread, shuffled forward in the line.
He had been staying below the radar. Way below. He’d taken a bus down from Boston and stopped using
