“So much Greek to me!” Mrs. Kermode gave a laugh and waved her hand, as if she understood nothing.
Corrie decided to shift tack. “It’s important for me personally, Mrs. Kermode — but it could be important for Roaring Fork, as well. It’s doing something constructive, something positive with these human remains. It would reflect well on the community and the chief—”
“It’s just not respectful,” said Kermode firmly. “It’s not Christian. There are many in this town who would find it deeply offensive. We are the guardians of those remains, and we take our responsibility seriously. I just can’t under any circumstances allow it.”
“But…” Corrie could feel her temper rising despite her best efforts to keep it down. “But…you dug them up to begin with.”
A silence, and then Kermode spoke softly. “The decision was made long ago. Back in 1978, in fact. The town signed off on it. Here at The Heights we’ve been planning this new clubhouse and spa for almost a decade.”
“Why do you need it when you’ve already got a beautiful clubhouse?”
“We’ll need a larger one to serve Phase Three, as we open up West Mountain to a select number of custom home lots. Again, as I’ve repeatedly said to you, this has been in planning for years. We are responsible to our owners and investors.”
Our owners and investors. “All I want to do is examine the bones — with the utmost respect — for valid and important scientific purposes. There’s no disrespect in that, surely?”
Mrs. Kermode rose, a bright fake smile plastered on her face. “Miss Swanson, the decision has been made, it is final, and I am a very busy woman. It is now time for you to leave.”
Corrie rose. She could feel that old, horrible, blood-boiling sensation inside her. “You dig up an entire cemetery so you can make money on a real estate development, you dump the bodies in plastic boxes and store them in a ski warehouse — and then you tell me I’ll be disrespecting the dead by studying the bones? You’re a hypocrite — plain and simple!”
Kermode’s face grew pale. Corrie could see a vein in her powdered neck throbbing. Her voice became very low, almost masculine. “You little bitch,” she said. “I’ll give you five minutes to vacate the premises. If you ever—ever—come back, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing. Now get out.”
Corrie suddenly felt very calm. This was the end. It was over. But she wasn’t going to let anyone call her a bitch. She stared back at Mrs. Kermode with narrowed eyes. “You call yourself an elder in the church? You’re no Christian. You’re a goddamn phony. A fake, grasping, deceitful phony.”
On the way back to Basalt, it began to snow. As she crawled along at ten miles an hour in her car, windshield wipers slapping back and forth ineffectually, an idea came to her. Those anomalous marks she’d noticed on the bones…with a flash of insight, she realized there was possibly another way to skin this particular cat.
8
Lying on the bed of her room at the Cloud Nine Motel in Basalt, Colorado, Corrie made her decision. If those marks on the bones were what she thought they might be, her problems would be solved. There wouldn’t be any choice: the remains would have to be examined. Even Kermode couldn’t stop it. That would be her trump card.
But only if she could prove it.
And to do that, she needed access to the bones one more time. Five minutes, tops — just long enough to photograph them with the powerful macro lens on her camera.
But how?
Even before she asked herself the question, she knew the answer: she would have to break in.
All the arguments against such an action lined themselves up before her: that B&E was a felony; that it was ethically wrong; that if she got caught, her entire law enforcement career would be flushed down the toilet. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be all that difficult. During their visit two days before, the chief hadn’t turned off any alarm systems or other security devices; he’d simply unlocked a padlock on the door and they had walked in. The shed was isolated from the rest of the development, surrounded by a tall wooden fence and screened by trees. It was partly open to one of the ski slopes, but nobody would be skiing at night. The shed was marked on trail maps of the area, and they showed a service road leading to it from the equipment yard of the ski area itself, bypassing The Heights entirely.
As she weighed the pros and cons, she found herself asking the question: what would Pendergast do? He never let legal niceties stand in the way of truth and justice. Surely he would break in and get the information he needed. While it was too late to achieve justice for Emmett Bowdree, it was never too late for the truth.
The snow had stopped at midnight, leaving a brilliantly clear night sky with a three-quarter moon. It was extremely cold — according to the WeatherBug app on her iPad, it was five degrees. Outside, it felt a lot colder than that. The service road turned out to be snowmobile-only, covered with hard-packed snow but still walkable.
Leaving her car at the very base of the road, by a tall stand of trees and as inconspicuous as possible, Corrie labored uphill, her knapsack heavy with gear: the Canon with tripod and macro, a portable light and battery pack, loupes, flashlight, bolt cutter, ziplock bags, and her iPad loaded with textbooks and monographs on the subject of osteological trauma analysis. The thin mountain air left her gasping, the smoke of her condensing breath blossoming in the moonlight as she hiked, her feet squeaking in the layer of fluff atop the hard-packed snow. Below, the lights of the town spread out in a magical carpet; above, she could see the warehouse, illuminated by lights on poles and casting a yellow glow through the fir trees. It was two o’clock in the morning and all was quiet. The only activity was some headlights high on the mountain, where the grooming equipment was being operated.
Again and again, she had choreographed in her head the exact series of steps she’d need to take, rearranging and refining them to ensure that she would spend as little time in the shed as possible. Five minutes, ten at most — and she’d be gone.
Approaching the shed, she did a careful recon to assure herself that she was alone. Then she stepped up to the fence gate and peered over it. To the left was the side door that she and the chief had used, illuminated in a pool of light, the snow well beaten down before it. The door was securely padlocked. By habit, she carried a set of lock picks. In high school, she had practically memorized the underground manual known as the MIT Guide to Lockpicking, and she took great pride in her skills. The padlock was a ten-dollar, hardware-store variety — no problem there. But she would have to cross the lighted area in order to reach the door. And then she’d have to stand in the light while dealing with the lock. This was one of two elements of unavoidable danger in her plan.
She waited, listening, but all was quiet. The grooming machines were high up on the mountain and didn’t look like they’d be passing by anytime soon.
Taking a deep breath, she vaulted the fence and darted across the lighted area. She had her set of lock picks ready. The lock itself was freezing, and her fingers quickly grew stupid in the cold. Nevertheless it took only twenty seconds for the padlock to spring open. She pulled the door ajar, ducked inside, and gently closed it behind her.
Inside the shed it was very cold. Fumbling a small LED light out of her backpack, she flicked it on and quickly moved past the rows of snowmobiles and antique snowcats to the rear of the structure. The coffins, laid out in neat rows, gleamed dully in her light. It only took a moment to find Emmett Bowdree’s coffin. She removed the lid with care, trying to keep the noise to a minimum, then knelt, playing the light over the bones. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her hands were shaking. Once again, a voice inside her pointed out that this was one of the dumbest things she’d ever done, and once again another voice responded that it was the only thing she could do.