Ben took a moment to stretch. When he came over to say hello to Bingle, I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any of that smell compound with you?”
“I don’t use it.”
“But how can you stand—”
“For professionals who deal with it all the time — well, I suppose it’s a matter of personal preference, but I don’t recommend using any compound to cover up the smell. Try to deal with it the way nature designed you to deal with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sooner or later, after your brain has received the message from your olfactory cells that something bad is out there — and received it again and again — the signal stops registering. There will be residual odor on your clothes and you’ll smell it again later, when you aren’t so near the grave.”
“Charming.”
“You’ll smell it later no matter what you do now. But if you use something that will open up your nasal passages, it will continue to stimulate your olfactory cells — which will keep you smelling decomp throughout the day. It may also result in your brain connecting the good smell to the bad.”
“You mean that every time I use anything with a menthol or camphor or eucalyptus odor—”
“Yes. Your brain might add decomp to the mix.”
I looked over at David. He had used the smell compound, why shouldn’t I?
“Of course,” Ben said, “I don’t expect you to be able to handle this situation at all, so do whatever you need to do.”
That settled it, of course. David obviously thought I was a fool, but didn’t say so — he just checked in with me every so often to see how I was bearing up. He offered the smell compound to the others; Ben and I were the only ones who didn’t take him up on it. As he was passing it around, he pointedly skipped Parrish. Parrish just grinned and drew a deep breath.
“Move him back to the camp,” Thompson ordered the guards.
The excavation went on, now even more slowly, as the sides of the grave were carefully uncovered. Ben focused on defining the grave’s edges with painstaking care; David gently scraped away at the inside layers; Andy sifted for objects that might have been missed, bagged certain portions of the removed soil, labeled it, and made notes as needed.
From time to time the odor from the grave would suddenly seem worse. Ben would look over at me, smirking. I smiled back, taking satisfaction in knowing that whenever he looked over at me like that, he must have just gotten a beak full of it, too.
Flash continued to videotape the process, and to take still photographs at Ben’s or David’s request. Ben and David had a second camera, and took some photos on their own.
“Why are you photographing the edges of the grave?” I asked Ben.
He hesitated, then said, “Possible tool marks.”
“From the shovel that was used to dig the grave?”
“Perhaps.”
“If you know who did this, why do you need to gather evidence?” I asked.
“We don’t necessarily know who made this grave,” he said. “We have to treat this site as we would any other. Objectively.”
“But Parrish has confessed—”
“Confessions can be recanted. Convictions are appealed. Deals fall apart, Ms. Kelly. We never know what we may need to prove, what evidence may become important. So we work carefully.” He paused, then added, “The rules of evidence are much stricter in courtrooms than in newsrooms.”
I turned away to keep him from seeing me grit my teeth.
After the first few layers of earth had been removed, a layer of large rocks appeared, scattered over the pit. When Thompson asked about them, Ben, not stopping his work, said, “My guess is that they were supposed to discourage carnivores from raiding the grave.”
“Coyotes?” Thompson asked.
Sheridan looked up. “Yes, we know he’s thought about coyotes.”
Once the rocks were removed, the slow, scraping process began again. David was working on the portion near the center of the grave when he suddenly said, “Hold up.”
Ben and Andy stopped what they were doing and began to focus on the area where David had been scraping soil away. They stepped back a little, and called Flash in to take a few photographs. After a moment, they called Thompson over.
I stood up and moved a little closer.
The object of all this scrutiny was a tuft of dark green plastic. Soon we would all come to realize what the forensic anthropologists already suspected.
This was a shroud.
9
WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 17
Las Piernas
Frank Harriman hung up the phone and turned to his wife’s cousin. “The lawyer’s back — he’s in the hospital.” He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Courtesy of his client.”
“What happened?” Travis asked.
“Parrish stomped on Newly’s foot. Caused multiple fractures. They had a tough time getting him back out — fainted a couple of times from the pain.”
“She’ll be all right,” Travis said, knowing where Frank’s concern lay, repeating a refrain that might have been wearying had Frank not needed to hear it.
“All the guards right there,” Frank went on. “Watching him! And he still manages to injure his own lawyer.” He paused, shook his head. “She shouldn’t have gone up there.”
“You couldn’t have stopped her.”
“She shouldn’t have gone,” he repeated, not listening, pacing now.
“Frank,” Travis said.
But he was lost in unpleasant memories. He was thinking of the day they found Kara Lane’s body, of what had been done to her. His pacing came to a halt when he thought — ever so briefly, but far, far too long — about the possibility of his wife being at Parrish’s mercy, in as much pain, as much afraid, as much alone as Kara Lane had been in her last hours. He felt his stomach pitch.
“Frank,” Travis said again.
He looked up.
“She’s still surrounded by lots of other people. You know they’d kill him before they let him harm her.”
He didn’t answer. How could he explain this kind of foreboding? He knew it to be something more than simple fear for her welfare. It was the kind of uneasiness he sometimes got out on the job — instinct, gut feeling, the heebiejeebies — call it what you will. No cop worth a damn ignored it. Right now, it was irritating the hell out of him. He believed in it, trusted it, even though he couldn’t have testified about it in a court of law . . .
“You’ve got to find something to do with yourself,” Travis was saying. “You can’t just sit here, getting more and more freaked out about this. Find something to occupy your time.”
Lost in his thoughts about Parrish, for a moment Frank merely stared at Travis. The suggestion that he keep himself busy — which had at first seemed ridiculous — began to take hold, and now made perfect sense.
He reached for his car keys.
“Where are you going?” Travis asked.
“To visit Mr. Newly in his sickbed.”
10
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 17
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
J.C. caught up to us again when about half of the plastic had been uncovered. If he was weary from the additional hiking he had done or by difficulties in helping Phil Newly to the plane, he didn’t show it.
Bingle noticed J.C.’s presence at the other end of the meadow before I did. Because I had been watching the dog, I caught the change in the focus of his attention before the others did. During the last few hours, I had been spending much of my time ensuring that Bingle didn’t sneak closer to the open grave — after he made one nearly successful attempt, David taught me how to say “¡Quédate!” — which means “stay” — in a tone of voice that Bingle would obey.