We walked in complete silence now. Once the sound faded, my nerves settled and I noticed we were ascending. And just when I hoped that meant the end would soon be in sight, we came to a dead end.
There was nothing in front of us but a solid brick wall.
The thought of turning around and going back toward that sound, back to that chamber of horrors was too much. I was emotionally drained. Spent. I felt like dropping to the floor and bursting into tears.
“Over there,” Devlin said, and pressed my hand holding the flashlight down and to the left.
Another opening. Another way out.
He took the flashlight and shined it into the hole.
“Is it a way out?” I asked nervously.
“I think so. Come on.” He went first and waited for me on the other side.
We were in some sort of circular chamber maybe five feet wide in diameter. Metal steps had been bolted into the wall and I felt a surge of elation until I realized those stairs led up to nothing. There was no opening at the top. Just total darkness.
“I think we’re in an old well or cistern,” Devlin said. His voice had a metallic sound as it ricocheted off the round walls.
“How do we get out?”
“There must be a lid or something over the top.” He slanted the beam upward for a moment, then handed me the flashlight and his gun.
“Do you know how to use a weapon?”
“No, not really.”
“The safety’s off. If anything comes through that hole, point at it and squeeze the trigger. Don’t think, just do it.” I nodded.
“Keep the light,” he said. “Don’t watch me, watch that hole.”
“Okay.”
He tested his weight on the ladder, his footsteps clanging as he went up. Within seconds, he was twenty feet above me. I heard the click of the lighter and a grunt or two from Devlin as he tried to dislodge the cover, but I resisted the temptation to glance up.
“Is it bolted down?”
“It’s a door. I see hinges and a handle, but something solid has been placed on top of it outside. I can move it, but I can’t open it more than a crack.”
My eyes were still glued to the opening as I clutched the weapon in one hand and the flashlight in the other. For a moment I could have sworn—
There it was! That stealthy shuffle, as though someone was inching his way along the tunnel, skulking through the darkness so as not to give away his position.
“He’s coming,” I whispered.
My voice carried all the way to the top. The stairs clanged as Devlin quickly descended. He took the gun and the flashlight and swept the beam up the ladder.
“Get to the top. I’ve managed to pry the door open a few inches. See if you can squeeze through.”
“What about you?”
“Just go. I’ll be right behind you.”
But as I started up the ladder, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the light disappear through the hole.
“Devlin?”
No answer.
I was torn between going up and coming back down. The torturous indecision was like my nightmare all over again. I was still hanging there a moment later when Devlin crawled back though the opening.
He didn’t say a word, just waited at the bottom until I’d climbed to the top and then he followed me up.
I shimmied through the opening, scraping elbows and knees against the rough brick, and then once through, I used all my strength to heave a boulder aside and open the door.
Devlin crawled up out of the well and we both turned to survey our surroundings. We were somewhere in the woods outside the cemetery gates.
It was not yet dark. The horizon still glowed in the west. To the east, the moon rose over the treetops. A breeze whispered through the leaves and I could smell jasmine in the twilight.
Devlin took my hand and we walked through the cooling air as his ghosts slipped through the veil behind us.
Twenty-Nine
By the time I left the cemetery, the place was swarming with cops. Crime scene techs had descended upon the chamber and a small army of policemen was combing through the tunnels. I assumed Devlin would be occupied for hours so I was completely shocked when he showed up at my door later that night.
I’d been home long enough to shower and fix myself a light dinner, though I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than pick at the salad. What had been seen in that chamber could not be unseen, and I had a bad feeling it would be days, if not weeks, before I managed a full night’s sleep.
Devlin had brought a laptop with him so that we could go through the Oak Grove images together. I assumed he’d come to the same conclusion I had earlier—Hannah Fischer had been in that chamber either dead or alive while I’d been aboveground photographing headstones. The theft of my briefcase solidified my suspicion that the killer believed I’d captured something incriminating in one or more of those shots.
But how had he known those pictures were in my briefcase…unless he’d seen them?
On the day the body had been discovered, I’d spent the afternoon at Emerson, both upstairs in the main library and in the basement archives area. The briefcase had been left unattended for long periods of time while I combed through boxes of records and scrolled through the database. If the case had been open, anyone passing by could have glimpsed the pictures. Which would mean that at some point during the day, I had been in proximity to the killer. We might have brushed shoulders or exchanged pleasantries. The thought of that now in the aftermath of our discovery—with the purpose of those chains and pulleys so gruesomely apparent—made me ill.
Before Devlin arrived, I’d put together a chart of everything we knew about the burial site of each victim, starting with Hannah Fischer.
Along with a floral design, the headstone had been engraved with a floating feather and this poetic epitaph:
The headstone on the grave where the unidentified remains had been excavated contained a single full-blown rose, a winged soul effigy and the inscription:
Since Afton Delacourt’s body had been left on the floor of the mausoleum rather than buried, I had no headstone art or epitaph with which to compare, but I thought the art and inscription on the vault that had led us to the hidden chamber might be significant clues. The broken chain deviated from the soul-in-flight motif on the two headstones, but the verse intrigued me:
