Page 66 of Brimstone Hollow

“That’s what it looks like.”

“But why?”

“Probably for the same reason we decided to get the exhumation order to begin with,” I say. “Because there was likely incriminating evidence on the body that was missed before he was buried.”

“What are you going to do now?” Katie asks, still sounding somewhat dazed.

“Well, there’s not a lot Icando besides try to find his body. Do you want me to stay on the case for now?”

“Yes,” she says, immediately. “Yes. Let me know if you… Well, just keep me updated, please.”

“I will. Try to get some rest.”

We hang up and I walk back toward the cemetery and find Chief Dishman talking to a man in his thirties, tall and broad shouldered, who’s saying, “Chief, I swear to you he was in there.”

“You were a pallbearer?” Dishman asks.

“That’s right, sir. The coffin was thin and, well, if you’ll excuse me saying it, it was cheap. The lid came askew when we put it down beside the grave and I could see him in there, all wrapped up. My aunt Thelma told me he wanted to be buried like Jesus, but, good Lord, I can’t imagine the Son of God would’ve stank like he did.”

Coroner Bradley, standing just beside Dishman, says, “Look, it wasn’t my fault he smelled! The manrefusedembalming. In the middle of a heat wave! I can assure you, I did everything I could. I kept him in cold storage the whole night he was in my mortuary and—”

“I couldn’t give a damn how bad the man stank,” Dishman says. “What I’m concerned about is whether or not he was ever in the coffin to begin with because he sure as hell ain’t in there now.”

“He was in there,” the pallbearer—Thelma’s nephew, apparently—says.

Coroner Bradley nods in agreement.

I walk around behind them, back to Ezra’s grave, and stand next to Thelma, who holds out a hand so I can help her to her feet. She grips tight,but I feel the shakiness in her legs as she stands. When she’s situated, she meets my gaze, and I’m stunned to see that her eyes are bright with tears.

“What’s going on here, Miss Gore?” she asks. “Who could’ve done this?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Behind us, Officer Gavin approaches.

“Get all these people out of here,” Dishman tells him. “This is a crime scene.”

“A crime scene?” someone shouts. “This is the site of a miracle!”

“Amen!” someone else shouts.

“Yes! Praise Jesus!” another voice says. Together, Thelma and I watch them.

After a while, she shakes her head. “This is evil,” she says, her voice thin but determined. “Whatever happened here… this wasn’t the Lord’s work. It was the Devil’s. I just know it.”

Shaken, Thelma takes her coffee thermos and her camp chair and allows her nephew to escort her away from the grave. I watch as she treads carefully back down the hill. When she’s out of earshot, I approach Dishman and Coroner Bradley.

“What did the grave look like this morning,” I ask Bradley, “when you first got here?”

Bradley looks from me to Dishman, as if expecting the chief to put me in my place. Instead, Dishman says, “Well, hell, Bradley, answer the woman.”

“The sod looked exactly like it did when we put it back on Sunday morning,” he says. “After we replace the dirt on top of a coffin, we hose it down to get the earth to settle. Then, we tamp it with a machine to bring it all level before we replace the sod that was cut from the ground before the grave was dug. When we leave, it’s clear the grave is new, but it’s neat. Andthatis how it looked this morning. There was no sign of it being disturbed.”

Dishman says, “Thelma Worley told me she came up and visited it yesterday evening. Took the dead flowers away. She said it looked normal.”

“He was in that coffin, Chief,” Bradley says. “I pronounced his death, took him straight from the parsonage to the mortuary, cleaned his body and wrapped it, then put him in cold storage overnight. Sunday morning, we put him in the coffin and brought him over here and they had the funeral in the church. Then, we buried him. He was in there.”

Dishman nods and then makes a gesture that says Bradley can move along. I watch as he walks down the hill, looking over his shoulder at the empty grave more than once.