Violets are Blue

"Right," said Detective Goodes. "Mary Alice had either cut herself over the past couple of months, or someone else did it for her. She had over seventy separate cuts on her body. Everywhere but the face."

The detective's white Suburban pulled onto a gravel road, then we passed between rusted wrought-iron gates.

"We're here," Nancy Goodes a

It made me sad too.

Chapter 14

I have yet to meet a relatively sane person who is anything but twitchy in a cemetery at night. I consider myself to be mildly sane; therefore, I was twitchy. Detective Goodes was right. This was a very sad affair, a tragic conclusion to a young girl's life.

The backdrop for the cemetery was the rolling foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains. Three patrol cars from the police department in San Luis Obispo were already parked around the grave of Mary Alice Richardson. The medical examiner's van was parked nearby. Plus two beat-up trucks without any clear identification on them.

Four cemetery workers were digging up the grave in the bright light cast by the patrol-car headlamps. The soil looked rich and loamy and was thick with worms. When the hole was of sufficient depth, a backhoe was brought in to do the bulk of the job.

The police observers, including me, had nothing to do but stand impatiently around the grave. We drank coffee, exchanged small talk, cracked a few dark jokes, but nobody really laughed.

I turned my cell phone off. I didn't need to hear from the Mastermind, or anybody else, here in the cemetery.

Around one in the morning, the container of the casket was finally uncovered by the cemetery workers. A lump rose in my throat, but I looked on. Beside me stood Jamilla Hughes. She was shivering some but sticking it out. Nancy Goodes had retreated to her Suburban. Smart lady.

A crowbar was used to pry off the top of the liner. It made an unpleasant groaning noise, like someone in deep pain.

The hole in the ground was approximately six feet deep, eight feet long, less than four feet wide.

Neither Jamilla nor I spoke. Every detail of the exhumation held our attention now. My eyes blinked too rapidly in the eerie light. My breathing was uneven and my throat felt a little raw.

I was recalling crime-scene pictures of Mary Alice that I'd seen. Fifteen years old. Hung two feet off the ground by her ankles, left that way for several hours. Drained of nearly all her blood. Another class IV death. Viciously bitten and stabbed.

The victim in Washington hadn't been stabbed. So what did that mean? Why the variations on the murder theme? What did they do with all the blood? I almost didn't want to know the answers to the questions throbbing inside my head.

Tattered gray canvas straps were carefully secured around the casket, and it was finally slowly raised out of the ground.

My breathing was ragged. Suddenly I felt guilty about being here. I had the thought that we shouldn't be disturbing this poor girl in her grave. It was an unholy thing to do. She had been violated enough.

"I know, I know. This sucks. I feel the same thing," Jamilla said out of the side of her mouth. She lightly touched a hand to my elbow. "We have to do it. No other choice. We have to find out if it's the same killers."

"I know. Why doesn't that make me feel any better about this?" I muttered. "I feel all hollowed out."

"That poor girl. Poor Mary Alice. Forgive us," Jamilla said.

A local funeral director who had consented to be on hand carefully opened the casket. Then he stepped back as if he had seen a ghost.

I moved forward to get my first look at the girl. I nearly gasped, and Jamilla's hand went to her mouth. A couple of the cemetery workers crossed themselves and bowed their heads low.

Mary Alice Richardson was right there in front of us. She was wearing a flowing white dress, and her blond hair was carefully braided. The girl looked as if she had been buried alive. There had been virtually no decay of the body.

"There's an explanation for this," the funeral director said to us. "The Richardsons are friends of mine. They asked me if anything could be done to preserve their daughter for as long as possible. Somehow they knew their little girl would be seen again.

"The condition of the body, once interred, can be in any state of decay. It depends on the ingredients. I used an arsenic solution in the embalming process, the way we used to in the old days. You're looking at the result."

He paused as we continued to stare.

"This is the way Mary Alice looked the day she was buried. This is the poor girl they murdered and hung."

Chapter 15

We got back to San Francisco from San Luis Obispo at seven in the morning. I didn't know how Jamilla could drive, but she did just fine. We forced ourselves to talk most of the way back, just to keep awake. We even had a few laughs. I was bone tired and could barely keep my eyes open. When I finally closed them inside my hotel room, I saw Mary Alice Richardson in her coffin.

Inspector Hughes was drinking coffee at her desk when I arrived at the Hall of Justice at two o'clock that afternoon. She looked fresh and alert. None the worse for wear. She seemed to work as hard as I did on a case, maybe harder. I hoped it was a good thing for her.

"Don't you ever sleep?" I asked, as I stopped to talk for a moment. My eyes went to the clutter in her work space.

I noticed a photograph of a smiling, very good-looking man propped on her desk. I was glad that she had time for a love life at least. It made me think of Christine Johnson, who was now living out here on the West Coast. I felt a stab of rejection. The love of my life? Not anymore. Unfortunately, not anymore. Christine had left Washington and moved to Seattle. She liked it there a lot and was teaching school again.

Jamilla shrugged. "I woke up around noon, couldn't get back to sleep. Maybe I'm too tired. The M.E. in Luis Obispo says he'll send us a report late today. But listen to this. I just got an E-mail from Quantico. There have been eight murders in California and Nevada that bear some resemblance to the Golden Gate Park ones. Not all of the victims were hung. But they were bitten. The cases go back six years. So far. They're looking back even further than that."

"What cities?" I asked her.

She glanced down at her notes. "Sacramento — our esteemed capital. San Diego. Santa Cruz. Las Vegas. Lake Tahoe. San Jose. San Francisco. San Luis Obispo. This is so goddamn creepy, Alex. One murder like this would be enough to keep me sleepless for a month."

"Plus the murder in Washington," I said. "I'm going to ask the Bureau to look at the East Coast."

She gri

I teased, "So what do we do now?"

"What do cops always do when they wait? We eat doughnuts and drink coffee," she said, and rolled her dark brown eyes. She had a natural, very attractive beauty, even on just a few hours' sleep.

The two of us had a late breakfast at Roma's around the corner. We talked about the case, then I asked her about other cases she'd solved. Jamilla had a lot of confidence, but she was also modest about her contributions. I liked that about her. She definitely wasn't full of herself. When she had finished her omelette and toast, she sat there nervously tapping her finger against the table. She had several tics, seemed wired most of the time. I knew she was on the job again.

"What's the matter?" I finally asked. "You're holding something back, aren't you?"

She nodded. "I got a call from KRON-TV They're close to doing a story that there have been several murders in California."