He leaned in close, read the first inscription. “Tara Eaton, faithful wife, 1812–1859.” The next for her husband, Edward Eaton, buried two years later.
Cooper spun, hustled to the other end of the crypt. Bodies would have been laid to rest in the order of their deaths, which meant that Director Peters’s wife should be near the end.
The third to last, it turned out. “Elizabeth Eaton, beloved daughter, 1962–2005.” Above the inscription rested an elegant mahogany coffin, the wood still lustrous, though the top was covered with a thin layer of even dust. Cooper stared at it, struck by what he was looking at, a box with the remnants of a person in it, a woman he’d never met, mother to children who jokingly called him Uncle Nick, whom he’d tickled and wrestled and teased.
There was no time to wince over it. He started feeling his way around the coffin, fingers running over every inlaid detail, tracing the curves and edges. Tapping along the edges, feeling blindly on the sides. Nothing. He grimaced, then angled his head, and leaned in over the box, feeling the cold stone above it, the dust in his eyes and nose as he ran his hands through darkness. He checked every edge, dragged his hands through the narrow space between the coffin and the berth wall.
Nothing.
Cooper stepped back. A spiderweb stuck to his hair, and he brushed it away.
There’s one place you haven’t checked…
He flashed to a fantasy of Natalie dead, hidden away in a room like this, and him sneaking in, breaking open the box, facing what lay inside…
The thought was repellent in every way. But it was possible.
Cooper had no tools, nothing to break the top open with. He’d have to throw it around, maybe slam it against the bench until the wood splintered, the remnants of Elizabeth Eaton jarring and tossing inside. An abomination, but the only way.
Except—
Would Peters have done the same?
No. He’d have brought tools. Cracked it open just enough, but still, cracked it open.
Has it been?
—that the seal on the coffin was perfect, the lid fitting the base so smoothly it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. Not only sealed; there were no signs of tool marks. Breaking the lid open would have left a mark.
His first thought was relief.
His second was frustration. Peters hadn’t hidden what he was looking for in his dead wife’s mausoleum. He’d been wrong.
Only, no. The monitor on the wall gave it away. The evidence was here. It just wasn’t in her coffin.
Cooper stepped back, glanced at his watch. One minute left. He whirled, looked around the room. Forty-two coffins. A stone bench. He dashed to it, dropped down, checked the underside. Smooth. Same with the legs and the edges. Panic starting now. There was an iron crucifix above the door. He checked it hurriedly. Nothing.
Forty-five seconds.
It had to be here. Nothing else made sense. His gift had predicted it, the motion sensor had proved it, he just had to find it.
One of the other coffins? There were forty-one of them. No time to do even a cursory examination.
He stood in the center of the room, spinning slowly. Come on, come on. Willing his intuition to strike. Thirty seconds. He rubbed his hands together, dust flying.
Dust—
There’s no way to hide anything here without disturbing the dust.
And no way to smooth dust out evenly.
So the best thing to do is clear it off entirely. Still a tell, but a less obvious one, especially as more dust settles.
—flying.
He sprinted back to the coffins. Elizabeth was third from last. The two after read “Margaret Eaton, 1921–2006,” and “Theodore Eaton, 1918–2007.”
There was dust atop both of them. Not a lot, but it hadn’t been that long.