Callie was comfortable with the concept of Original Sin, of being born into a sadness, even a corruption, already waiting for you. It seemed to her the way of the world, mirroring the discontent that drove the human condition. That baptism could erase it was something she wasn’t sure about. She’d like to think it was true. But perhaps it only obscured rather than erased? The way one fresco obscured what lay beneath. The same way years of smoke from the shepherds’ fires had obscured everything.
As she stood before it, the image of Rose’s tree in Towner’s courtyard came to her, standing silent witness to history. She believed she understood Rose’s attachment now. It wasn’t dendrolatry, as Finn believed. It was something greater. Humans are rooted like trees, she realized; she hoped that some form of heliocentricity moves us toward the light.
She gripped Paul’s hand tighter.
His phone vibrated. He checked the number and exited the cave to get a better connection, motioning for Callie to stay until the presentation ended.
The light of the midday sun was blinding when Callie emerged from the shadowy crypt. She took the stairs slowly, waiting for her eyes to adjust. At the top, she noticed a grove of olive trees. How had she missed them before? She had noticed only the vineyard where they parked Paul’s car. She hadn’t seen any trees.
She found Paul at the edge of the ravine, the trees and vineyard painting a backdrop behind him. It was an arrangement similar to the ancient landscapes he was uncovering in the caves. She started to tell him this when she noticed he was still holding his phone, but his arm was hanging at his side, and his expression was difficult to read.
“That was my father. My mother died this morning.”
The banshee wasn’t always a terrifying creature. It was her imprisonment and diminishment that caused the turning, transforming her into the frightful crone we finally recognize only as she comes for us.
—ROSE’S Book of Trees
Rafferty was glad to see Callie and Paul together, though both of them looked miserable. He was sure that Paul felt guilty for being away when his mother died. He and Towner had seen Emily and Finn a few times after they came back from Florida, and she had looked so well that Rafferty had actually found himself wondering if she were in total remission.
He looked at Marta, standing next to Finn. Too close, in Rafferty’s estimation. He had never been fond of Finn. The graveside service was taking longer than Rafferty had anticipated. Luckily, he’d told Jay-Jay to have them start the exhumation with or without him. There were still patches of snow on the ground, and the plowed piles in the parking lot probably wouldn’t completely disappear until May. This was the first day the ground had been cleared enough to bury the dead—or dig them up—and everything cemetery-related was happening at once.
And, as if it all wasn’t awful enough, today should have been the day he took his twenty-five-year chip. Instead, the new anniversary of his sobriety would be tomorrow. Tomorrow it would be two years.
Towner held his arm, joining the prayer responses as required, and trying to hold back tears.
Though it was a nondenominational service, just family and a few close friends, Archbishop McCauley presided. Instead of beginning with the first prayer in the traditional mass of the dead, he ended with it: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” He turned to the group, translating: “Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.”
“And let perpetual light shine upon her.” Rafferty joined in the traditional response, crossing himself as the memorial ended.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay for the gathering,” he said to Towner as they left the gravesite.
“Everyone will understand,” she replied.
He climbed into his cruiser, driving faster than the rest of the cars leaving the property. He didn’t want them to get too far into digging without him. Jay-Jay wasn’t one to assert himself, and Rafferty wanted to make sure the exhumation team didn’t overstep their prescribed duties. Also, he wanted to be certain that curious onlookers were kept at a distance.
He headed out of Pride’s Crossing, over the bridge, and arrived at Greenlawn Cemetery. The first thing he saw was a crowd surrounding three open graves.
In direct violation of procedure, the first two pine coffins had been opened on-site, and as he got out of his car, the crew was opening the lid of the last. A photographer from The Salem Journal leaned over to snap a shot. “Hey!” Rafferty called out. He raced over to the open coffins, looked down, and felt the surge of adrenaline as it hit him.
All three of the coffins were empty.
Callie hadn’t visited her mother’s grave since last November. Now, a few hours after the shock of seeing Emily laid to rest, she stood in the fading light of late afternoon staring down into the hole where her mother’s body was meant to be. It brought her back to the morning after the murders, when she’d stood at the edge of the crevasse. Everything seemed distorted, and spinning. For a moment, she thought she might faint.
“Who did this?” she asked, trying to regain her balance.
No one answered. Towner took Callie’s arm, and no one spoke until they were walking back to the cruiser. “What kind of sick person would do something like this?” Callie demanded.
“Someone who was trying to cover their tracks,” Rafferty said.
This day was too much. After Emily’s service Paul had started to drink and engaged Archbishop McCauley in a loud conversation about the Church’s views on infidelity. The priest had quickly managed to extricate himself, and Finn had said, “You need to learn when to keep your mouth shut, son.”
“And you need to learn when to keep your fly shut, Dad.”
The place went quiet. Then Paul had walked out without Callie, and she’d gotten the call from Rafferty telling her that her mother’s body was missing. “Please don’t stop looking for the killer,” she asked him now, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m never really going to be okay until we find out who did this.” It was the sad truth, and they both knew it. Callie turned and slowly walked back to her car.
Rafferty watched as she walked away. Towner, who had driven over with Callie, waited for him while he spoke to the cemetery caretaker.
Though the ground around the graves didn’t look as if it had been recently disturbed, he did notice that about a hundred-foot expanse of lawn around the graves and leading up a nearby hill was a slightly lighter green than the surrounding growth.
“That whole patch was resodded, just before I got this job,” the caretaker explained.
“When was that?” Rafferty asked. It couldn’t have been that long ago. The kid looked as if he was right out of high school.
“The second week of December,” he said. “The guy who had it before decided to retire that week, so I got his job.”
“Isn’t December a little late for resodding?” Rafferty asked.
The kid shrugged.
Rafferty had just resodded the front yard at the rental house he owned in the Willows. Fall was the best time for planting new grass, he’d learned. Going through a winter gave the grass a chance to properly root itself. Even so, it was usually early and not late fall that was good for grass planting.
“Was there a reason they sodded this whole patch?” Rafferty asked.
The kid shrugged again. “I have no idea.”