The Evil That Men Do Read online

  We swept the road with our lights. “There,” I said.

  “You stay here. I’ll get the tools. I’m going to move the car off the road where it won’t be seen if someone drives through. Should’ve done before. Here’s more light.” He handed me the lantern, which I switched on to its low setting.

  He patted my butt for reassurance and moved off toward the car. Christ, I thought. I’m alone in the middle of a graveyard an hour before midnight, up to no good, and I’m a heathen to boot. What won’t I do to see justice served? As we were spiraling, I kept thinking of the monstrous crimes of murder that drove my actions. Ends may justify means when dictated by reason, or so I argued to myself.

  Charles started the car and drove it well into the desert so that it wouldn’t fall within the range of the headlights of any car driving through. Maybe the cops came by here once or twice on their rounds. The lights of Charles’s car went out at the same moment that the first beams of light from another car became visible down the road. I quickly doused the lantern and hunkered down, putting a gravestone between me and the new light source.

  Music streamed across the graves—Supertramp. I had received their album Crime of the Century for my ninth birthday and I knew every note and every word of every song in it, even these twenty years later. The car went to the farthest end of the road and stopped. I was making like the Tell-Tale Heart. I crawled behind another headstone. From the car came the sound of a couple of tops being popped, some talking, silence except for the music, giggling, and heavy breathing. I was getting the picture.

  The periods of no talking became longer, replaced by even heavier breathing and now some moaning. Supertramp was well into the title song, the last cut on the album, and the relentless streams of massive chords from the keyboard charging to a climax. They timed their sex to the music—whether intentionally or not, I couldn’t tell. The last strains of “Crime” accompanied the post-coital murmurings of the lovers.

  The car started up and slowly completed its circuit of the cemetery and was lost to sight. Thank goodness for the quick and the horny. Though it seemed longer, the whole business had lasted but twenty minutes. Only when their car revved onto the highway did I dare show my light. Another light winked back and came toward me.

  It was midnight when Charles inserted the tip of a shovel under the marble slab that had protected Starry’s remains for all those years. The dryness of everything heartened Charles as he went about the task. We had survived the invasion of the sex-starved and were hoping for no copycats. We had some heavy labor in front of us and the thought of it took our minds off the ghoulish business at hand.

  I grabbed the other shovel and between us we pried the slab up a few inches. “Now the other side,” said Charles. “Then it should come right up.” We repeated the action and the slab came loose. We moved it off to the side. Then the digging began. The earth was packed solidly; it was dry and hard, but not rocky. We used a pick to help us get through the first foot and from that point the job was easier.

  The big thrill when digging for buried treasure is to actually feel the sought-for object. We were standing about three feet inside the grave, sweating, filthy, and exhausted, when I pushed in the tip of my shovel and it scraped against wood. We widened the pit to accommodate the length and width of the casket.

  “Keep your feet on the edges,” warned Charles. “The top may be rotten. You wouldn’t want to fall through.”

  We toasted with water. Then, between us, we finished half the gallon Charles had had the foresight to bring. Thirsty work, grave-digging.

  After another half hour, we had removed as much dirt as we could. The entire top of Starry Night’s coffin was exposed. We climbed out and looked back down into the excavation we had dug. “There’s no way we can lift that sucker out of there,” I said. I was too bone-weary for reverence.

  “We’ll try to get the top off. It’s screwed down but I bet half the screw holes are rotted. Back in a jiff.” Charles plodded off to the car for some tools and I noticed that he now cast a long, thin shadow.

  While we’d been working, the moon had come up over the hills to the east. Only night people are treated to the spectacle of a rising moon in its waning quarter, its body bloated, its mien a doleful orange, its crescent inverted, its ascent a desperate flight from the overtaking sun that soon would engulf the moonglow in the brilliant dawn of a new day.

  The moon has a special meaning in my life. I was born on the day that Neil Armstrong took a giant leap for mankind and stepped out of his earthly craft onto the moon’s surface. I’d grown up wanting to be an astronaut, but was unable to pass NASA’s rigorous physical examination. The army, at least, was once glad to have me, but they, too, had rejected me after my cancer surgery.

  Charles returned with a valise, which he put aside, and a portable electric drill into which he fixed a Phillip’s screwdriver bit. We switched the lantern on to its highest setting, and lowered it into the grave. Charles followed it in, careful to mind where he placed his feet. When he was properly balanced, he went to work on the screws. Some came out immediately. If one was recalcitrant, he chiseled away the half-rotted wood surrounding it. When all the screws had been removed, the top was ready to come off. Charles climbed out of the grave. He lay on his stomach and reached back in with a crowbar to pry up one corner of the casket’s lid. He repeated this at each corner. “She’ll come up now,” he muttered with satisfaction. “Would you get the lantern, please!”

  I pulled out the lantern and set it aside. Charles grunted, strained, and lifted. The lid creaked but wouldn’t come clear. Some of the wood must have fused over the years.

  “Give me a hand here, love; grab that claw hammer.”

  I lay down next to Charles and reached as far as I could into the grave and managed to hook the claw under the lid. Our combined strength was enough to break the seal. Slowly, with a rasping, grating sound that set my teeth on edge, the end of the lid rose toward the open air. We were able to get our hands under it and muscled it up until we could get to our knees, and then lifted some more until we were able to stand. Together, we pulled it fully out of the grave and set it atop the piles of dirt.

  We got down on our bellies again, heads in the grave. I chanced a sniff. Charles was right. An inoffensive earthy smell prevailed. Charles lowered the lantern into the grave, fully illuminating the contents of the open coffin.

  Chapter 22

  I had steeled myself for the sight of a human skeleton, gray and decayed. Instead, I beheld the rainbow hues of Starry Night’s burial clothes, faded but still colorful. There wasn’t much left of these, and beneath them lay the bony remains of the corpse, which had been laid to rest on its side. Charles bellied forward until he could bend at the waist and reach into the coffin. He felt around for a moment and pulled himself up with a grunt of satisfaction.

  “This may work, Dagny. It’s very dry. The skeleton is well preserved. I don’t think water’s ever seeped in.”

  “Can you tell anything?” I asked.

  “No. I’m going to have to climb in.”

  He got his valise and the lantern and eased himself into the grave, careful not to step on the remains. Edgar Allan Poe would have loved this. Charles switched the lantern to its brightest setting. I had stopped being nervous about being discovered. There aren’t many people around a graveyard at three in the morning. Still, the lantern shone so brightly that even in the confines of the grave it produced a glow visible at a distance. I wondered if anyone lived in the hills to the east. They appeared desolate, but you never know. Someone could be looking down on the phantasmagoric sight of a white aurora streaming from a grave. What a ghost story!

  Charles opened the valise. It contained a field microscope, stainless steel surgical implements, a laboratory squirt bottle, some cloth, disposable latex gloves, and a surgical mask. He donned the mask and a pair of the gloves and removed all of the other items. He closed the valise and laid it down at the edge of the pit. He set the microscope
on top of the flat surface and made some adjustments. It was self-illuminating.

  He bent over, disappearing from view. He grumbled and stood up. “I can’t see a bloody thing because of my own bloody shadow. Would you hand me that torch? Wait, put some fresh batteries in it.”

  I did so and watched him go gingerly down on his hands and knees, straddling the corpse as if he would make love to it. He studied the bones of her left hand, some of which crumbled when touched. Then he searched the ground and found something, which he laid aside. He repeated the routine on her right hand. He turned 180 degrees. He examined both feet as he had done the hands. Finally he collected his treasure, exhaled loudly, and stood up.

  He squirted the finger- and toe-nail remains repeatedly until they were clean and patted them dry with the cloth. He placed one of them under the microscope and bent over the instrument. He made some adjustments, shifted the object slightly, and made more adjustments. He continued in this way until he was satisfied. He repeated the ritual with the next object, then the next. The fourth one pleased him. His head rose and he gave a thumbs up sign with his free hand. He continued until he had scrutinized all the nails, seven in all.

  “You must see this, Dagny.” He placed an object under the lens and turned the microscope towards me. “Focus with this knob.” I got down on my knees and squinted into the tube with my right eye.

  “I can’t see a damn thing,” I complained.

  “Try keeping both eyes open. It takes a moment to get the hang of it.”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Her right thumb nail magnified five times.”

  I persisted and got an image. I turned the focus knob until it was clear. I could make out the root of the nail, eaten away at the edges, but mostly intact. The whitening was evident, though faint and mottled in appearance.

  “I could only find one other nail with hints of the white striations. You’re looking at the best one, but ’twill serve.”

  “So Starry Night was murdered! But why? For her notes? For her office? For her inheritance? And why Judy and Troy, all these years later? Akrich couldn’t have killed the others, even supposing he did kill Starry. I wish I knew more about the circumstances of her death.” I was thinking chaotic thoughts aloud.

  Charles looked puzzled, but all he said was, “Let’s get to work and cover our backs. Maybe while we sweat we’ll get some ideas.”

  “Good luck. I’m too tired to think worth a hoot, but hand me a shovel.”

  Charles put his instruments away. He wrapped the nails in a piece of cloth and put those in the valise, too, along with the used exam gloves. We doused all the lights. The moon, now at ten o’clock high, gave sufficient light. I leaned over the grave one last time and surveyed the disarranged bones. Rational though I try to be, I found the sight of the open coffin and its ghastly contents disquieting. I apologized silently to Starry’s spirit, and promised to make her murderer accountable.

  Charles started shoveling. “Wait,” I cried. “We’re forgetting the lid.”

  “We’ll have to fill the coffin with dirt, otherwise we’ll never get it all back in.”

  We shoveled until a foot of earth covered her coffin. Charles tamped the dirt with his feet, another inescapable profanation. We replaced the lid with the domed side down so it wouldn’t collapse at some later time and cause a cave-in. By four o’clock we’d replaced all the earth, tamping as we went along, so there was enough room on top to replace the marble slab. We used a square-tipped shovel and a broom to cover traces of our deed.

  “This is a patchy job at concealment,” said Charles, “but it will have to do.”

  We risked the lantern one last time so that we could scour the gravesite for any artifacts we might be leaving. I didn’t want to be betrayed by any subconscious feelings of guilt into leaving behind clues to my identity.

  We walked back to the car, satisfied that we’d covered our tracks as well as possible. By the time we had gone a hundred paces, I couldn’t tell where her grave was among the thousands. We threw the digging tools into the back of the wagon, covered them with blankets, and arranged everything as if we were campers. Charles started the Subaru. We crept onto the road, lights off, and glided darkly toward the main highway. There was no traffic. We were in no man’s time, that sliver of night that’s outlasted revelers and foreruns the most zealous of early birds.

  “Can you drive?” I asked Charles. “I’m so tired I could’ve crawled in next to Starry. I don’t think we can pull into a motel without attracting attention.”

  He nodded. “Sure. I want to push off and put some miles between us and the cemetery. I’m so hopped on adrenaline I’ll be awake for hours. You sleep. If I need a snooze, I’ll pull off the road.”

  I didn’t need urging. I dropped the seat back to forty-five degrees and made a pillow of my jacket. Half my sleep the past week had been in cars. I must have drowsed the length of California and back. As I sank into semi-consciousness, lulled by the engine’s hum, I thought, Have I solved a murder? Have I found a murderer? No matter. No way in hell to get an arrest, let alone a conviction.

  I awoke when the car stopped at the bottom of the Castle Avenue exit ramp in Santa Barbara, not far from my temporary home. Every muscle in my body ached. The inside of my mouth had a metallic coating, and when you can smell your own bad breath…yeesh! Charles was smiling at me. He looked haggard. A few craggy lines were trying to take over his boyish face, abetted by his fatigue.

  “I’ll have you home in a trice. You could use a bit more sleep.”

  “You don’t look so great yourself.”

  He laughed. “I’m utterly knackered. I need a good soak and a good lie-down.”

  In a few moments we were parked in John’s driveway. Dawn was breaking. Lights were on in one or two houses. An early morning jogger trotted past the idling Subaru. “What now?” asked Charles.

  “Bathe, sleep ’til nine, and go see Akrich. Maybe he’ll slip up.”

  Charles leaned over to kiss me.

  I gave him my cheek and a hug around his neck. “Nothing personal. I’m saving myself for a bottle of Scope.”

  Inside, I ran a hot bath. With the water as hot as I could stand, I slipped in so only my head and part of a breast broke the surface. Exhaustion overwhelmed me. The last thing I remembered before dozing off were billows of muddy hue spreading out from my body.

  The chill awakened me. I’d slept nearly an hour. The bath was lukewarm. I debated adding some hot, but the tint of the water and my wrinkled fingers suggested soap, shower, and a dry bed. I don’t remember getting from bathroom to bed but somehow I was wrapped in a blanket when the phone rang.

  I jerked awake. The clock read ten after nine. I’d forgotten to set the alarm. I reached for the receiver, nearly knocking over the blinking answering machine. I’d been too out of it to check messages earlier.

  “This is Dagny,” I croaked. Good, I remembered my name.

  “Dagny, Jeanette Briggs, from Santa Cruz…”

  “Hi, Dr. Briggs, how’s it going?” I stifled a yawn.

  “Just fine. Did you get my message? I left one at your office and one at your home. I haven’t been able to get a hold of Dr. Clarke, either.”

  Uh-oh. Charles and I caught in the act, but not the act she most likely had in mind. “Oh, dear. I was out on a case and haven’t been to my office, and my machine at home is acting funny. What’s up?”

  “Wellex makes an anesthetic called Welnarkothal. When it’s mixed with equal amounts of Nandrolex, the Nandrolex acts as a catalyst. A small amount of the mixture could anesthetize an adult human almost instantly. That’s what we finally determined was in Troy’s blood. It was a tough one. I had staff working half the night.”

  I could dig that! “That’s great, Dr. Briggs! Could a tranquilizer dart hold enough of the mixture to knock someone out?”

  “I should think so, yes.”

  “How long would they be unconscious?”

  “That depends. With
small doses, a matter of minutes, perhaps as much as ten minutes.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve done some experimentation on my own—on lab animals, to be sure, but the results scale up pretty reliably.”

  “Can a person buy this stuff? Or get a prescription for it?”

  “Not that I know of. I guess a medical facility could order the ingredients, but as far as I know, no one’s ever tried combining them.”

  “How did you figure it out?”

  “It occurred to me to look for drugs from the same pharmaceutical company. You’re the one who reminded us of Wellex. Once I knew I was looking for Welnarkothal, I could analyze it chemically and devise a test for its metabolites. It cost us a pretty penny in lab fees, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the coroner goes for a murder one rap.”

  That woke me up. “Would the mixture contain enough Nandrolex to cause the white lines?”

  “That side effect doesn’t always occur, but the mixture is fifty-fifty, so the recipient of the dosage would be receiving ten, twenty times the normal dose of Nandrolex. That’d raise the likelihood of collateral activity.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s a probably. I don’t know for sure. I’ll tell you what I think, though, for what it’s worth. There are a lot easier ways to kill yourself than strangulation by hanging. These were bright, young, well-informed kids. They’d have access to drugs that’d do the job painlessly and efficiently. A handful of Valium and a half pint of vodka, or whatever. I just don’t see them choosing to hang themselves like some Russian in a Dostoyevsky novel.”

  “Me neither, Dr. Briggs. Thanks for your opinion, and for the info.”

  “What’ll you do with it? Do you have suspects? I’m sure the homicide people up here will want to talk to you.”

  “All I have are puzzle pieces. I don’t have the picture on the box to guide me. I’m not even sure if all the pieces belong to the same puzzle.”

  “I promised Dr. Peters I would call Dr. Clarke and tell him what we found. Can you pass the information on to him?”