“Looks like you’ve snagged a big one,” I said as the backhoe hoisted the coffin out of the grave. The operator swung the arm to one side of the grave and set the coffin on a rectangle of artificial turf. Then he throttled the machine to idle and clambered down to unhook the cable sling. This time the backhoe had reeled in Gill Pendergrast, a thirty-nine-year-old white male who’d been killed in a motorcycle wreck a week before Trey Willoughby’s death. Both the accident report and the newspaper story DeVriess had found indicated that Pendergrast had died of massive head injuries sustained in the crash—he hadn’t been wearing a helmet—so I was braced to see a crushed skull when I cranked open the lid of the coffin. I was also prepared to see another limbless corpse. I was not, however, prepared to see what the coffin actually contained: four pillow-shaped paper bags, each labeled PLAY-GROUND SAND 50 POUNDS.
“KNOXVILLE POLICE ARE INVESTIGATINGtwo bizarre cases of grave robbing,” began WBIR anchorman Randall Gibbons in that evening’s television newscast. “We should warn you, this story is disturbing and some of the images that follow are graphic.” I wasn’t sure whether the warning was meant to deter viewers from watching it or deter them from switching to another channel. Gibbons had coanchored the broadcast with Maureen Gershwin until her on-camera death a few weeks before; his transition to solo anchor had been smooth, though I noticed that I still missed Maurie. “One of the bizarre body thefts came to light today,” Gibbons continued, “when a coffin exhumed at Highland Cemetery was found to contain four bags of sand instead of a body. The other theft—discovered last week at Old Gray Cemetery—was more gruesome: The corpse of a man exhumed for a DNA paternity test was found to be missing both arms and both legs. Police say both thefts occurred before burial, not afterward; they also say both bodies were buried in 2003, after funeral services at Ivy Mortuary.” The footage included wide shots and close-ups of Pendergrast’s copper coffin and its sandy contents, as well as deliberately blurred KPD crime-scene photos of Willoughby’s limbless body. The story included brief bios of the two men, as well as a few sentences about the life and death of Ivy Mortuary. Then it segued to a brief interview with me, in which I said that whoever amputated Willoughby’s limbs seemed to know what they were doing, and a longer interview with Burt DeVriess, who denounced exploitation and dark misdeeds in “the death-care industry” without ever quite accusing Ivy or any other funeral home of specific crimes.
The footage also included a gum-smacking Culpepper, who asked anyone with information about the thefts or Ivy Mortuary to contact KPD.
The anchorman ended the story with a dramatic flair Grease himself might have envied—or might, I realized, have suggested: “Police investigators and the colorful attorney say they won’t rest in peace until those responsible for the skullduggery have been brought to justice.”
CHAPTER 20
AMONG THE VIEWING AUDIENCE FOR WBIR’S GRAVE-ROBBINGrobbing story was my new therapist, Dr. Hoover. I learned this the morning after the newscast, when I arrived for my nine o’clock appointment.
“Fascinating,” said Dr. Hoover. “Life and death, crime and punishment, justice and injustice—your work really does wrestle with the Big Questions, doesn’t it?”
I allowed as how perhaps it did, but that my own personal wrestling match had taken the limelight, especially since my talk with Jeff had ended so abruptly and painfully.
“Any thoughts on why he walked out on you?”
Dr. Hoover’s hands were clasped in his lap, his elbows resting on the arms of the wingback chair. He seemed relaxed but intent, focused on taking in whatever meaning I could put into words. His openness and attention seemed to wick word and thought out of me; it made me think of osmosis and the way a difference in pressure allows nutrients to flow through a cell’s membrane.
“I think he was surprised,” I began. “No—shocked.”
“What would have been shocking to him?”
“Maybe the idea that he might be about to acquire a half brother or half sister thirty years younger than he is. Or maybe the idea that his dad could be so incredibly irresponsible as to impregnate a virtual stranger.”
“Is that what you were? Incredibly irresponsible?”
“That seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “‘Irresponsible’ is one word you could use. What are some others?”
“I don’t know. ‘Foolish’? ‘Immature’? ‘Na?ve’?”
He bowed his head slightly, a gesture that was becoming familiar to me; it meant that he’d heard what I’d said but didn’t necessarily agree with it. “I’m remembering the recording you brought me a couple of sessions ago, the one where you described the night that Isabella came to your house.” He opened a manila file that had been tucked into the chair beside him. Flipping through it, he pulled out a page. “This is a transcript of the recording. May I read you a few of the things you said?”
I nodded, and his eyes scanned down the page.
“You said, ‘She was beautiful.’ You said, ‘Our lives intersected, powerfully but briefly.’ You said, ‘She opened her arms and her body and her desire to me.’ Do you remember saying those things?”
“I do.”
“Were you telling the truth when you said them?”
“I was.”
“So what kind of man, Bill, might make love to a beautiful woman whose life has just intersected with his in a powerful way? What kind of man might make love to a beautiful, intelligent woman who offers him her body and her desire? Can you think of any other words? Words that might be less harsh, less judgmental?”
I tried to summon other adjectives, but without success.