It fell to me to phone Larke Tyrell.
I found the ME at home, and, from background noise, guessed he was involved with the same football game.
Though Larke's words were cordial, I could tell my call unnerved him. I did not take time to assuage his anxiety, or to apologize for the lateness of the hour.
The ME listened while I explained the situation. Finally, I stopped. Silence stretched so long I thought we'd been disconnected.
“Larke?”
When he spoke again, his tone had changed.
“I want you to handle this. What do you need?”
I told him.
“Can you pick it up at the incident morgue?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want personnel?”
“Who's still there?”
“Maggie and Stan.”
Maggie Burroughs and Stan Fryeburg were death investigators with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill, deployed to Bryson City for the processing of Air TransSouth 228. Both were graduates of my body recovery workshop at the university, and both were excellent.
“Tell them to be ready at seven.”
“Roger.”
“This has nothing to do with the plane crash, Larke.”
“I know that. But these are dead bodies in my state.”
There was another long pause. I heard an overwrought announcer, a cheering crowd.
“Tempe, I—”
I did not help him out.
“This has gone too goddamned far.”
I listened to a dial tone.
What the hell did that mean?
I had other things to worry about.
The next day I was up at dawn, at the Arthur house by seven-thirty. The scene had been transformed overnight. A sheriff 's deputy now stood guard at the kudzu gate, others at the front and back doors. A generator had been activated, and every light in the house was on.
When I arrived, George was helping McMahon load books and papers into cardboard boxes. Bobby was covering the mantel with white powder. As I passed on my way to the kitchen, McMahon winked and wished me good luck.
I spent the next four days like a miner, descending to the basement at dawn, surfacing at noon for a sandwich and coffee, then descending again until after dark. Another generator and lights were brought in to illuminate my underground world, so day and night became indistinguishable.
Tommy Albright arrived on the morning of day one. After examining and photographing the bundle I was certain contained George Adair, he released the body for transport to the Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.
While Maggie worked the decomp stain inside the courtyard wall, Stan helped me photograph the cellar floor. Then we exhumed the alcove burial, slowly exposing the corpse, recording body position and grave outline, and screening every particle of dirt.
The victim lay facedown on a gray wool blanket, one arm twisted beneath the chest, the other curled around the head. Decomposition was advanced, the organs soup, the head and hands largely skeletonized.
When the remains were fully uncovered and documented, we began removal. Transferring the cadaver to a body bag, I noted that the left pants leg was badly torn, the leg missing below the knee.
I also noticed concentric fractures in the right temporo-parietal region of the skull. Linear cracks radiated up the sides of the central depression, turning the whole into a spiderweb of fragmented bone.
“Somebody really blasted this guy.” Stan had stopped screening to look at the skull.
“Yes.”
My outrage was building as it always did. The victim had been dealt a skull-shattering blow, then dumped in a hole like last year's mulch. What kind of monster did such things?
Another thought pierced through my anger.
This corpse was buried only inches below the ground surface. Though putrefied, considerable soft tissue remained, indicating a relatively recent death. Did earlier victims lie beneath? In other alcoves? I kept my eyes and mind open.
Maggie joined us in the basement on day two, having excavated a ten-foot square to a depth of twelve inches around and below the courtyard stain. Though the job was tedious, her efforts paid off. Two isolated teeth turned up in the screen.
