“ Son of a bitch!” shouted J.T. at the backhoe operator. “How long've you been digging graves, for Christ's sake!”
Forsythe tried to cool him down, pulling him away from the backhoe man, who had jumped from his cab, preparing to take J.T. on. Forsythe's uniform, along with the intervention of the local sheriff, brought order back to the chaos in the cemetery. J.T. shouted over Forsythe and the sheriff, “Goddamned stupid way to do a disinterment, people! Christ, if we crush the body, that'll do us a hell of a lot of good.”
Men worked to remove the concrete blocks over the casket, the damaged wood coming up in large, spiked splinters, the body within soaking up the rain now seeping into a casket that had remained dry since December.
“ Get her into the hearse!” the mortician shouted to his men, once the pieces of cement were cleared off.
“ Wait, whoa, up there, Lem! Stanley!” shouted the sheriff. “Good God Almighty.”
J.T., hearing this, rushed to the sheriff and pleaded, “What? What's wrong now? What?”
“ That's not her.”
“ What?”
“ That's not the Trent girl in that coffin.”
“ Oh, Christ… no,” moaned J.T. “You people've dug up the wrong grave?''
“ No, no! It's the right grave, the right marker,” said the sheriff. “Just that this ain't the right body.”
J.T. rushed the mortician. “Who's responsible for this? Where's the Trent girl buried, dammit?”
Again Forsythe stepped in and tried to cool J.T. down. “We'll find it. We'll look through the cemetery records. How many people could've been buried here the same day as the Trent girl? We just go to that grave and-”
The rain was pelting them so hard now that Forsythe had to talk over it, shouting.
“ In the morning, Sheriff, in the light of day, dammit! No more of this blind shit. Get me the right body, and get it to the hospital morgue by nine A.M.”
“ I'll see what can be done,” he said as calmly as if taking a breakfast order in a diner.
He had had to contend with the relatives and the local police, and no one was cooperating. J.T. had met the local coroner as well, a hospital pathologist who seemed as bitter and angry as the family at what he called the “heaping on of inhuman and awful sufferin' to the family.”
John had been made to feel like the villain here, and Forsythe, jumping on this attitude of the locals, had cajoled them into believing he was here, in his capacity, to uphold all decorum in the indecorous matter. All that J.T. now wanted was to get what he came for as quickly as possible and get the hell out of Paris, Illinois.
The following day, not trusting anyone at this point, J.T. rose early after a fitful sleep, caught a cab to the cemetery, leaving Forsythe abed, to see to it that the right casket was found and lifted from the earth. He was mildly surprised to find men working. In fact, they were just then lifting out a second casket from a second enormous hole created by the monster backhoe. As the casket was lifted, there was a murmur and an unsettling undercurrent that went through the handful of people who insisted on being present. No one had telephoned to send for him, but everyone else in Paris knew what was going on at the cemetery, except now Forsythe.
The parents and other relatives had turned out in mass. They hadn't been here in the night. But now they were like a small army surrounding the scene. It was highly irregular, but it was a very small town. If any place on Earth might be called xenophobic, it was Paris, Illinois. They didn't cotton to strangers, and they spoke like they were all from Kentucky.
The casket was taken to a waiting hearse amid people shouting, “This ain't right! Ain't human!”
“ God, man, don't you have chil-un, mister? Do you?”
John didn't have children, but he imagined that the loss of a child was assuredly the worst suffering anyone could endure… and then to have the remains of a buried child disturbed, the casket opened and a “piece” of the remains taken out. Little wonder they thought him a ghoul and a grave robber.
But J.T. would get what he came a thousand miles for. He'd get it for Jess and Boutine; he'd get it because their case depended upon it.?
ELEVEN
There were scattered patches of lingering snow on the ground at the graveyard where Janel McDonell had rested since November of the year before below the solid Iowa earth. The snow seemed to cling about the bottoms of the headstones for cold life. Janel's headstone, ornamented with flowers and cherubs, had been removed so as not to be unintentionally hit by the giant, crablike arms of the backhoe that now sank its teeth into the grave, hefted out great mounds of rock and stone, lowered this over a growing mound and then repeated the process.
It was 9 A.M. and there was a bright Iowa sun that sent cascading shadows across the cemetery, and the trees were alive with the music of birds, some darting about the solemn group of people at the grave site. The digging had taken almost two hours, but Jessica knew she was lucky. The girl's family had not spared any expense on her in death, from the headstone to the cement vault which kept water out. Janel's parents, a well-dressed black couple who both insisted on being here, had also purchased a metal casket for her.
A silence of extreme depth blanketed the cemetery when the backhoe had finished its work and the gravediggers then had to climb in over the sealed vault and go to the laborious task of breaking the seal. This was done with hand tools, and the clinking was like that of stonecutters. It echoed about the cemetery.
When the seal was broken and the backhoe put back into 115 operation, to lift aside the enormously heavy lid, the casket was found in excellent condition, looking as it had the day it was lowered: untouched, without a crack, still very much sealed tight.
Cast-iron caskets used in the Civil War that had been opened a century later displayed remarkable preservative powers. The soldiers interred so many years before were in surprisingly good condition. Some had recognizable features, and internal organs were intact. Many of the uniforms were in such a good state of preservation that these were removed to places like the Smithsonian Institution.
Using huge, looping lengths of cloth that they stitched below and around the coffin, Janel McDonell's gravediggers tugged and pulled up her casket, and brought it to the level of the cemetery grounds, depositing it at their feet. Mrs. McDonell had long since begun an uncontrollable crying. Her husband gave her support. Old wounds ripped open wide, Jessica thought.
Jessica looked past Kaseem and asked Dr. Kevin Lewis, a pathologist at the local hospital, “Will you please direct these men to the decomposed room at the hospital?” She had been delighted to learn that Iowa City's largest university hospital had provisions for the necessary work.
The McDonells were accompanied by their lawyer, a man who kept whispering in Mr. McDonell's ear. She sensed that the lawyer was keeping close scrutiny for a future lawsuit for his clients, for the mental anguish they had been put through, despite the fact they need not be on hand. There were two policemen in uniform standing at the periphery. Along with Dr. Lewis there were two other medical men from the hospital, and there was Kaseem.
Everything now depended on Janel inside her coffin. Would the specimen she must take be in a state of preservation which might tell them what they needed? Or would decay and time have destroyed the evidence? She had been told by the local mortician that Janel had been embalmed, so there was a good chance that Jessica and Janel had something to share about her killer. Was it the same man who had killed Copeland?