Grave Sight

"He's always with me."

Hollis looked as if he were politely swallowing scorn. "That's all he does?"

"It's enough." The thought of managing by myself made me shiver.

"So, how much do you charge for your services?" he asked, his eyes on the road ahead of him.

I hoped there wasn't an implication there. I kept silent.

It took a while to make Hollis uncomfortable, longer than it took for most people.

"I want to hire you," he said, by way of explanation.

I hadn't expected that. "I charge five thousand dollars," I told him. "Payable on a positive identification of the body."

"What if the location of the body is known? You can tell the cause of death, too, right?"

"Yes. Of course I charge less if I don't have to find the body." Sometimes the family wants an independent suggestion about the cause of death.

"You ever been wrong?"

"Not that I know of." I looked out the window at the passing town. "When I can locate the body, that is. I don't always find it. Sometimes, there's just not enough information available to tell me where to search. Like the Morgenstern girl." I was referring to a case that had made headlines the year before. Tabitha Morgenstern had been grabbed off a suburban road in Nashville, and she'd never been seen since that day. "Just knowing the point where someone vanished isn't enough. She might have been dumped anywhere, in Te

Though the cemetery wasn't yet visible, I knew we were approaching one. I could tell by the buzzing along my skin. "How old is the cemetery?" I asked. "It's the newest one, I guess?"

He pulled over to the side of the road so abruptly I almost lost my grip on my milk shake. He glared at me, his face flushed. I'd spooked him.

"How the hell—did you and your brother drive by here earlier?"

"Nope." We were pretty far off any streets that tourists or casual visitors would take, a bit out in the countryside and away from any tourist amenities. "Just what I do."

"It's the new cemetery," Hollis said, his voice jerky. "The old one's..."

I turned my head from side to side, estimating. "Southwest of here. About four miles."

"Jesus, woman, you're creepy."

I shrugged. It didn't seem creepy to me.

He said, "I can give you three thousand. Will you do something for me?"

"Yes, I'll do it. Since we haven't run a credit check on you, I need the money in advance."

"You're businesslike." His tone was not admiring.

"No, I'm not. That's why Tolliver usually does this part." I finished my milk shake, making a loud slurping noise.

Hollis did a U-turn to head back to town. He went through the drive-through at the bank. The teller did her best not to act surprised when he sent his withdrawal slip over to her, and she also tried not to peer too obviously at me. I wanted to tell Hollis that if I were performing any other service, he wouldn't be sitting there all huffy; if I cleaned houses, he wouldn't be asking me to go clean his for free, right? My lips parted, but I clamped them shut. I refused to justify myself.

He thrust the money, still in its bank envelope, into my hand. I slid the envelope into my jacket pocket without comment. We drove back to the turn-off that led to the cemetery. We were parked on a gravel path winding among the tombstones, when he turned off the engine. "Come on," he said. "The grave is over here." The day had cleared up, turned bright, and I watched big sycamore leaves turn cartwheels in the wind across the dying grass.

"Embalming mutes the effect," I warned him.

His eyes lit up. He was thinking I'd faked my results before, somehow, and that now he'd unmask me. And he'd get his money back. He had about a ton of ambiguity resting on his shoulders.

I stepped gingerly onto the nearest grave, the ground chilly under my bare feet. Since a cemetery is so full of death, I have difficulty getting a clear reading. When you add the competing emanations from the corpses to the effects of the embalming process, you have to get as close as you can. "Middle-aged white man, died of... a massive coronary," I said, my eyes closed. The name was Matthews, something like that.

There was a silence while Hollis read the headstone. Then Hollis growled, "Yes." He caught his breath jaggedly. "We're going to walk now. Keep your eyes shut." I felt his big hand take mine, lead me carefully to another patch of ground. I reached down deep with that i

We went back in our original direction, and I knew by the tension in his body that this was the grave he'd been aiming for all along. When he guided me onto the grave, I knelt. This was death by violence, I knew at once. I took a deep breath and reached below me. "Oh," I said sharply. I realized dimly that because Hollis was thinking of this dead person so strongly, it was helping me to reach her. I could hear the water ru

"Someone had ahold of her ankles," I said, and I was all by myself in my skin, and I was alive. "Someone pulled her under."

After a long moment, I opened my eyes, looked down at the headstone in front of me. Sally Boxleitner, it read. Beloved Wife of Hollis.

"C ORONER always said he couldn't figure it out. I sent her for an autopsy," the deputy said. "The results were inconclusive. She might have fainted and slipped under the water, fallen asleep in the tub or something. I couldn't understand why she couldn't save herself. But there wasn't any evidence either way."

I just watched him. Grieving people can be unpredictable.

"Vagal shock," I murmured. "Or maybe it's called vagal inhibition. People can't even struggle, if it's sudden."

"You've seen this before?" There were tears in his eyes, angry tears.

"I've seen everything."

"Someone murdered her."

"Yes."

"You can't see who."

"No. I don't see who. I see how, when I find the body. I know it's not you. If you were the murderer, and you were right by your victim, I might be able to tell." Which I hadn't intended to say: this was exactly why I really needed Tolliver to speak for me. I began to miss him, which was ridiculous. "Can you take me back to the motel, please?"

He nodded, still lost in his own thoughts. We began to make our way between the headstones. The sun was still shining and the leaves were still fluttering across the browning lawn, but the spark had gone out of the day. I was trembling with a fine small movement as my bare feet moved through the short cool grass. On the way back to Hollis's electric-blue truck, I paused to read the name on the largest monument in the cemetery. There were at least eight graves in the plot marked Teague.

Good. I carefully stepped onto the one marked Dell. He was there, buried not too deeply in the rocky soil of the Ozarks. I spared a second to think that I was lucky that co

Suicide, my ass, was my instant, and silent, reaction. Why hadn't Sybil hired me to come out here to read his grave first, instead of sending me to the woods to find Teenie? Of course this boy hadn't shot himself. Dell Teague had been murdered, just like his wild girlfriend. I opened my eyes. Hollis Boxleitner had swung around to check on what I was doing. I looked into the intent face of the deputy. "No suicide here," I said.