"I don't know about that, but Susan, if he was murdered then we have to find his killer. Brother Thomas deserves that, at least. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
"There's a lot to be said for simple justice." The lanky deputy took a long draw on a Camel, then gratefully exhaled a plume of blue smoke.
"Cooper, might I bum a cigarette off you?" Susan implored.
"Of course." Coop reached in her parka pocket and fetched out the familiar white pack covered with thin cellophane, the camel, facing left, dutifully standing at the ready.
"Cheater," Harry teased Susan.
"Can't help it."
"Kills the smell," Tom cheerfully added.
"Uh, Coop, give me one, too. I'll buy you a pack." Harry reached for the offered cigarette.
The three women drew on their cigarettes. Nicotine, calming in most circumstances, worked for Cooper and Harry, who rarely smoked. Susan, however, remained nervous and wished she was inhaling a mentholated cigarette.
The claw scratched the top of the pine coffin.
Within minutes, Travis carefully dug around the edges of the handmade coffin.
Brother Prescott and Brother Frank stepped up to the grave site. They dropped two stout ropes down into the pit, Travis, being much younger than the two monks, hopped down, slid the ropes with a little wriggling under the coffin. Stuart Tapscott grabbed the ropes on the edge of the grave to keep them from sliding back into the pit.
The coroner and Brother Frank took opposite ends of one rope, Brother Prescott and Travis the other. Stuart stood well back. He didn't want to see the body.
"All right, one, two, pull," Travis commanded as the coffin lifted up with relative ease.
Travis and Brother Prescott pried the lid. Before the coroner picked the lid off the coffin, he said, "You might want to stand back and let me look first, ladies."
Harry, belligerently, stepped right up to the coffin; Susan stepped back.
Tom looked up at Harry and half-smiled. He picked up the lid.
"Holy shit!" Harry exclaimed.
The coffin contained three fifty-pound bags of potting soil.
Shock registered on Tom's face as well as those of the two brothers. Susan plucked up her courage to look inside.
Coop was already on her cell phone, punching in Sheriff Shaw. "Rick, we've got a real problem."
Susan's nervousness, then anger, focused on Brother Frank and Brother Prescott. "What's the meaning of this? What have you done with my great-uncle!"
Brother Frank, face white as the snow still folded in the deepest tucks of the ravines, stuttered, "Mrs. Tucker, I swear to you with God as my witness, your great-uncle was in this coffin when the lid was nailed shut."
"One more miracle for the mountain," Harry cracked.
"What?" Brother Prescott was deeply upset.
"You've got a statue crying bloody tears, and now you've got a resurrection." Harry, at that moment, didn't trust either of the brothers any further than she could throw her lit cigarette.
25
The clutter on Sheriff Rick Shaw's desk didn't reflect his mind, which was clear and concise in its workings. An avalanche of flyers and bulletins from the county, the state, and the federal government rolled over his desk.
He carefully sifted through the mail, smiling each time junk mail hit the large round metal wastebasket. Anything pertinent he stacked in a steel mesh file box, a gift from Cooper last Christmas.
Now this Christmas pressed on him. He hadn't bought one present. His wife, whom he dearly loved, shouldered much of that burden, but he wanted to buy her something special and hadn't one idea.
Three people had missed work today because of the flu, one being the receptionist, who sifted people like Rick sifted mail. Deputy Cooper had some days coming to her. She hadn't taken any vacation time this year, but he was shorthanded and Coop, being Coop, pitched in. She had one day off, today, and that turned into work. She never made it to Dayton's.
Rick pushed his chair back when she walked into the office.
"Here." She tossed a carton of Camels on his desk. Another carton was tucked under her arm.
"Living large. Thank you." He slid the carton into his long middle desk drawer. "Really."
"They're from Harry."
"Harry?"
"She bummed a fag off me, so she bought me a carton and then one for you. She sends her regards and she's sorry to hear everyone is fiat on their backs with this damned new strain of flu. Jeez, hope we don't get it."
"I'm chewing so much vitamin C, I'm about to turn orange. And echinacea. My wife stuffs it down my throat, God bless her."
"Helen's a good woman. Everyone needs a wife—even a wife." Cooper pulled up the wooden chair, an old office chair from the 1940s. "I'd settle for one husband, though."
"He'd be a lucky man." Rick had learned to cherish his deputy over the years, although initially he resented a woman in law enforcement and gave her every crappy job that came along. Her upbeat personality, meticulousness, and steadiness in a crisis changed his mind. He fretted that she wouldn't find the right guy. Many men think a woman cop is gay, and Cooper wasn't. She wasn't movie-star beautiful, although she was attractive. She was, however, shy with men who attracted her.
"Thanks, boss." She opened a fresh pack of Camels. "You won't believe this—on top of the coffin with bags of potting soil, I mean—but Harry actually smoked half a cigarette. She gagged, but she puffed like a chimney."
"Did she, now?" He laughed.
"She thought when the lid came off the coffin she'd be puked out by the stench, so she lit up. Not a bad tactic, since smoking compromises your sense of smell. Sticking a gob of Vick's VapoRub up your nose is better." Cooper pulled a small jar out of her coat pocket. "Didn't use it since I figured Brother Thomas would be frozen."
Rick grunted. "Maybe they intended to plant him and misplaced the body."
"Very funny." She tapped the end of the fresh cigarette on the desk. "Anything on Nordy?"
"Pete Osborne copied the last year of Nordy's assignments. We viewed those segments that Pete thought could possibly inflame someone to murder." Rick accepted the cigarette Cooper offered him. He sniffed the distinctive rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco, then struck a kitchen match on the large red matchbox. Rick didn't like lighters. He thought the gas odor filtered into the cigarette. "He made us copies." He held up a DVD in a blue cardboard envelope, which bore Pete's distinctive scrawl. "Can't believe the technology."
"If I have a good Christmas I'll buy myself a DVD player. Still have a year of car payments left." She paused. "Prices keep coming down. Eventually I'll be able to afford one. Didn't mean to get off the subject. What do you think about what you saw?"
"The segment where Nordy was outside a supposed drug dealer's house was volatile. Jamaicans ran out and hit him. The one where he broke the story on the check-kiting scheme shook up people. The trials on that start in March. People have killed for less. There are the usual interviews with victims' families, with murderers—emotional but not the same payoff."
"How do you mean?"
"Emotions run high, and Nordy's footage creates sympathy for the victim. However, that's not the same as pointing the finger and accusing someone of guilt. Murder usually isn't a thought-out crime; most of what we see is spur-of-the-moment. But the check-kiting schemes, mmm, that kind of crime demands thought. It's usually committed by someone with a higher education, someone who might get off with a good lawyer. To save their own neck, that kind of criminal might murder."
"But a white-collar criminal wouldn't kill Nordy. He'd hire a dog's body, don't you think?" She used the phrase "dog's body," meaning someone who lived for odd or onerous chores.
"Exactly." Rick swung his feet up to rest on his desk. "Nordy was going to see the check-kiting story to its bitter conclusion. As for the Jamaican drug dealers, again, there's a lot of money at stake. This is a wealthy county, and people want their cocaine, Oxycontin, and whatever, you know? They'll get it. There's motive there and cunning."