and several gardeners had been tending to stone markers and the flower beds around them. Thick gray clouds moved quickly overhead, casting shadows on the tall monuments. An eerie calm seemed to settle in over this pastoral setting the farther away from the city streets we traveled.
Mike had slowed the car. He was staring at one of the larger granite monuments, a Tuscan canopy supported by a dozen columns, covering a swag-draped sarcophagus, surrounded by a stand of tall pine trees. “How rich do you have to be to get a place here? Some of these things look palatial.”
“Oh, Detective Chapman, you’re not wrong. We’ve got our Whitneys and our Woolworths and our Vanderbilts.” Silbey poked his head between us again with a new spurt of energy. “This was such an elite place in its heyday. We’ve got Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington, Herman Melville and Joseph Pulitzer. Mayor La Guardia, of course. And our ladies-like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Nellie Bly.”
“No matter how much money they spent on these shrines to themselves, they’re still dead, aren’t they?” Mike said.
“Obviously so. These memorials just tell their stories, sir.” Silbey sat back in his seat. “That’s Primrose, just after the stop sign. You can pull over and park.”
“What’s this? The low-rent district?”
The headstones in the section we were approaching were on a flat piece of land, far less dramatic than the rolling topography of so much of the park. There were no grandiose monuments here, but rather crowded rows of small markers, set close together.
The strips were bare of the elegant plantings we had passed along the way, shaded simply by tall, old trees that dotted the dirt pathways.
“Some of the more modest graves are in this area. The girl’s family,” Silbey said, stepping out of the car, checking his notes for the name, “the Hassetts, is it? Looks like they bought the plot about fifty years ago. Not quite the placement some of our rich and famous have, but we’ve got many local folks like them.”
I joined Mike on the side of the road. “The diggers will meet us here?” he asked.
Silbey checked his watch. “It’s almost nine. They should be along shortly. Anyone else coming?”
“There’ll be a van from the medical examiner’s office to take the body away,” Mike said. “And maybe a couple of detectives from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Where is she?”
Silbey crossed the road. “Four rows back in there. G112. It’s just a small marker in the ground.”
Mike made his way through the narrow footpaths-stopping to kneel in front of the flat stone that said REBECCA HASSETT on it. I watched as he ran his finger over the letters that formed her name and studied the numbers chiseled in it, which noted the few years between her birth and death.
Several generations of Hassetts were here, resting head to foot, fast running out of room in their final resting place. Mike glanced around at the names, then continued walking downhill toward what looked to be another pond, which was bordered in part by an enormous weeping beech.
I walked behind him and stopped when he did, for a second time, at a larger headstone. “Whaddaya know? William Barclay Masterson.”
“Who?”
“Gold-topped cane, derby hat, fastest gun in the West. I’d have expected him to be buried on Boot Hill.”
“Bat? Bat Masterson?” I remembered the reruns of the popular fifties TV western starring Gene Barry, but knew nothing about the life of the real deputy marshal appointed by Teddy Roosevelt.
Neither of us heard Evan Silbey come down the dirt path. “He left Dodge City to come back to New York. Bat was a sportswriter for the Morning Telegraph when he-”
“Did you see that?” Mike asked, turning to look toward a tall obelisk marker.
“What? The van?” I noticed the morgue car-with its OCME markings on the side panel-coasting to a stop behind our Crown Vic.
Mike shook his head. “Someone was crouching behind the marker opposite the Hassett plot. Somebody waiting for us who wasn’t invited to this unpleasant little disinterment.” He started to trot down the incline.
“Where’s he going?” Silbey asked, his voice rising almost an octave.
I saw a figure in a dark coat dart out from behind the obelisk and cross the road to go down toward the tranquil pond. Mike called out for the person to stop as he began to give chase.
“Mike,” I said, in almost a whisper. It seemed so inappropriate to be shattering the quiet of this sanctuary.
He ignored me but had reached the roadway just as the truck carrying four gravediggers pulled up to the intersection.
The person picked up speed as he ran downhill, and Mike lost seconds waiting for the truck to make the turn. Whoever it was did not want to stop to see why Mike was after him.
The branches of the weeping beech hung over the landscape, like hundreds of arms reaching almost to the ground. I lost sight of the black-coated figure when he headed directly for the great tree and slipped under its limbs, disappearing behind it. A garish mausoleum with a green copper roof sat beside the beech and provided cover for him as well.
Ten seconds later, Mike was swallowed up by the foliage, too. Anxiety had overtaken me again. I didn’t need any more excitement after yesterday’s trauma. I was too late to try to chase Mike and uncertain about what had set him off after the elusive figure.
I cut through the grass between several markers to get to the curb. I pleaded with Mr. Silbey to send the gravediggers to back Mike up. All four of them-and Silbey himself-looked at me as though I had lost my mind.
“What do you need, Miss Cooper?” one of the morgue drivers asked.
“Mike Chapman-he’s gone off after someone. Would you check down there”-I pointed-“and see if he needs any help?”
“Sure. Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But,” the driver said tentatively, “what if it’s trouble?”
“It’s probably paparazzi,” I said. “Mike was worried that someone at the squad might have leaked this to a reporter. We wanted to get the exhumation done without any press around. Please hurry.”
We had talked about that possibility on the ride to the cemetery. I hadn’t seen a camera in the runner’s hand, but now I was actually hoping that the interloper was no more dangerous than a press photographer.
Reluctantly, the driver started walking toward the pond.
Another car pulled up behind our growing caravan. A husky, thick-necked man in a T-shirt, jeans, and clean work boots-a baseball cap barely fitting the circumference of his wide head-got out and came slowly toward Evan Silbey and me with his head down.
“I thought you weren’t expecting anyone else,” Silbey said. “Get Chapman back here. Who is this?”
“I don’t have any idea,” I said.
Then the well-muscled figure lifted his head and kept walking toward the stone that bore Rebecca Hassett’s name. All his features were exaggerated-a bulbous nose, strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and sulking expression. It was her brother Bobby.
He wagged a finger in my direction. “Don’t think you’ll be touching my sister, Miss District Attorney. Not you, not that wiseass cop who’s sticking his nose in our personal business every place I go. Let her rest in peace, for God’s sake, or I’ll be sure you live to regret it.” Hassett stepped closer to me and backed me against another headstone. “You leave the poor girl alone.”
33
“Look, Mr. Hassett, we’ve got a court order to do this,” I said, trying to glance over my shoulder for any sign of Mike. “I-I know this is an awful thing to have to think about, but it’s quite possible that techniques we have now that weren’t available when your sister was killed might help us identify-”
Bobby Hassett’s face was just inches from mine. His nostrils flared and his bloodshot eyes narrowed as I spoke. His breath had the faint odor of beer as he interrupted my lame explanation. “Don’t give me none of that. What difference is it to know who the mutt is who killed the kid? He’s lived way too long to make any kind of justice
