Devil Bones (18 page)

“When?”

“Seven years ago. August.”

“Talk about it.”

“Donna picked Elmwood because some old cowboy movie star is supposed to be buried there.”

“Randolph Scott?” I guessed.

“Yeah. Since her name was Scott she thought it would be cool to get something from him.”

Randolph Scott was male, white, and eighty-nine at the time of his death. That didn’t track with my profile of a young black female.

“Did you succeed?” I asked.

“No. We met for a midnight showing of
Rocky Horror Picture Show,
then went over to Elmwood. The gate was open. Donna brought flashlights. I brought a crowbar.”

Finney’s eyes slid to his lawyer. Charlie nodded.

“We looked around for Scott’s grave, but couldn’t find it. Eventualy, we stumbled onto an aboveground crypt, back in a different section, where there weren’t so many big, fancy tombstones. Seemed like a place we wouldn’t be spotted. The hinges were rusty. It took only a couple of shoves with the crowbar.”

“Was a name engraved on a marker?” I asked.

“I don’t remember. It was dark. Anyway, we went in, pried open a casket, grabbed a skul and a jaw and a couple of other bones, and ran. To be honest, I was pretty freaked by then, just wanted to be gone. Donna said I was being a candyass. She was psyched.”

“Let me be sure I got this straight. You’re saying you kept the jaw and Donna kept the rest?”

Finney nodded in answer to Slidel’s question.

“How’d Cuervo get the bones?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got contact information for Donna?”

“No. Her family moved right after that. She said she’d write or cal, but she never did.”

“You never saw or talked to her again?”

Finney shook his head glumly.

“Who’s her old man?”

“Birch. Birch Alexander Scott.”

Slidel scribbled the name. Underlined it twice.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Silence crammed the smal space. Finney broke it.

“Look. I was a messed-up kid. Four years ago, I discovered Wicca. For the first time, I’m accepted. People like me for who I am. I’m different now.”

“Sure,” Slidel said. “You’re Bily Friggin’ Graham.”

“Wicca is an Earth-oriented religion dedicated to a goddess and god.”

“Lucifer part of the lineup?”

“Because we embrace a belief system different from traditional Judeo-Christian theology, the ignorant believe we must also worship Satan. That if God is the sum of al good, there must be an equaly negative being who is the embodiment of evil. Satan. Wiccans don’t buy into that.”

“You saying there’s no devil?”

Finney hesitated, choosing his words.

“Wiccans acknowledge that al nature is composed of opposites, and that this polarity is a part of everyone. Good and evil are locked within the unconsciousness of every person. We believe it’s the ability to rise above destructive urges, to channel negative energies into positive thoughts and actions, that separates normal people from rapists and mass murderers and other sociopaths.”

“You use magic to do al this rising above?” There was menace in Slidel’s voice.

“In Wicca, magic is viewed as a religious practice.”

“This religious practice involve carving up corpses?”

“I’ve already told you. Wiccans perform no destructive or exploitive magic. We hurt no one. Why would you ask such a question?”

Slidel described Jimmy Klapec’s corpse.

“You think
I
kiled this boy?”

Slidel impaled Finney with a glare.

“I robbed a grave when I was seventeen. Got picked up once for relieving myself in public. Two stupid pranks. That’s it.”

The glare held.

Finney’s eyes sliced from Slidel to Charlie to me. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“Frankly, kid, I don’t believe a thing you’re teling me.”

“Check it out.” Finney was almost in tears. “Find Donna. Talk with her.”

“You can bank on it.”

20

WE CAUGHT A BREAK. OR FINNEY DID. SINCE THE ALLEGED grave grab had taken place after 1999, the incident was on the CMPD computer. Using the year of occurrence and Elmwood as identifiers, we puled the report in minutes.

On the night of 3 August, an unknown suspect/suspects unlawfuly entered crypt 109 located at Elmwood Cemetery. The reporting officer spoke with Mr. Alen Burkhead, cemetery administrator. Mr. Burkhead stated that upon arriving at the cemetery at 0720 hours on 4 August he discovered crypt 109 had been pried open. Mr.

Burkhead did not believe the crypt was damaged when he left work at 1800 hours on 3 August. Once inside the crypt the suspect/suspects opened a coffin and violated the remains of Susan Clover Redmon by removing the skul. The Medical Examiner was notified, but declined to visit the site or to examine the body to determine if other bones were removed from the coffin. At the time of the incident the cemetery was closed and there are no witnesses. A record search revealed that Marshal J. Redmon (deceased) holds deed to the tomb. A Redmon family member, Thomas Lawrence Redmon, was located in Springfield, Ohio. Thomas Redmon has been notified and wil be kept abreast of developments. I request this case remain open for further investigation.

I skimmed the rest of the information:
Reporting officer: Wade J. Hewlett. Incident address: 600 E. 4th St. Victims: Elmwood Cemetery; Marshall J. Redmon. Stolen
property: human skull and jaw.

Slidel determined that Hewlett was now assigned to the Eastway Division. He phoned and was placed on hold. Seconds later Hewlett picked up. Slidel switched to speakerphone.

“Yeah, I remember the B-and-E at Elmwood. Kinda sticks in my head, being the only grave robbery I’ve ever caught. Case went nowhere.”

“You have a gut on it?”

“Probably kids. I caught a double homicide that week, so vandalism didn’t top my dance card. We had no leads, nothing to work. Local Redmons were al dead or moved away. The one out-of-state relative we managed to locate didn’t give a rat’s ass. Eventualy, I decided to just wait and see if the skul surfaced.”

“Did it?”

“No.”

I jumped in. “Why was the ME a no-show?”

“He asked my opinion. I told him nothing else in the tomb or in the coffin looked disturbed. He said he’d contact the family member living in Ohio.”

“And?”

“Thomas Redmon said seal her up, cal if you find the head.”

“Real humanitarian,” Slidel said.

“Redmon had never been to Charlotte, didn’t know that branch of the family, hadn’t a clue who was stored in that tomb.”

“Did you check cemetery records on Susan Redmon?” I asked.

“Yeah. There wasn’t much. Just the name, burial location, and date of interment. Apparently hers was the last coffin in.”

“When was that?”

“Nineteen sixty-seven.”

“How many others are in there?”

“Four in al.”

“None of the others was vandalized?”

“Didn’t appear to be. But nothing was in good shape.”

Slidel thanked Hewlett and disconnected. For several seconds his hand lingered on the receiver. Then he turned to me.

“What do you think?”

“I think Finney’s lying about Cuervo. Maybe Klapec.”

“How ’bout we have us a crypt crawl?”

Elmwood isn’t the oldest burial ground in Charlotte. That would be Settlers. Located on Fifth between Poplar and Church, Settlers Graveyard is lousy with Revolutionary War heroes, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence signers, and wel-heeled antebelum movers and shakers.

Elmwood is a relative newcomer on the local cemetery scene. Opened in 1853, the first interment took place two years later, purportedly the child of one Wiliam Beatty.

Record keeping was less than detailed back then.

Business at Elmwood was slow for a while. Sales picked up in the latter half of the century due to population increases associated with the arrival of textile mils. The last plot sold in 1947.

Designed from its inception to serve both the quick and the dead, Elmwood remains a popular venue for joggers, strolers, and Sunday picnickers. But its hundred acres offer more than azaleas and shade. The cemetery’s design immortalizes in hardscape and landscape the changing attitudes of America’s New South.

Like Gaul, the original graveyard was
omnis divisa in partes tres,
Elmwood for whites, Pinewood for blacks, Potters Field for those lacking bucks for a plot. Whites only, of course.

No roads connected Elmwood to Pinewood, and the latter could not be accessed via the main entrance to the former. Sixth Street for whites, Ninth Street for blacks.

Sometime in the thirties, a fence was erected to ensure that racialy distinct corpses and their visitors never commingled.

Yessiree. Not only did African-Americans have to work, eat, shop, and ride buses in their own special places, their dead had to lie in barricaded dirt.

Years after Charlotte outlawed discrimination in the sale of cemetery plots, the fence lingered. Finaly, in 1969, after a public campaign led by Fred Alexander, Charlotte’s first black city councilman, the old chain-linking came down.

Today everyone gets planted together.

Before leaving headquarters, Slidel dialed the number Hewlett had provided for Thomas Redmon. Amazingly, the man picked up.

Have a go, Redmon said. But, if possible, do everything on-site. Redmon was not a fan of rousing dead spirits.

Slidel also phoned the number listed for Alen Burkhead. Burkhead was stil in charge of Elmwood and agreed to meet us.

Hewlett. Redmon. Burkhead. Three for three. We were clicking!

Burkhead was a tal, white-haired man who carried himself like a five-star general. He was waiting, crowbar in one hand, umbrela in the other, when we puled up at the Sixth Street gate. It was raining again, a slow, steady drizzle. Heavy gray-black clouds looked ready to unload at the least encouragement.

Slidel briefed Burkhead, then we passed through the gates. The rain beat a soft metronome on the bil of my cap, and on the pack I carried slung over one shoulder.

Some people view silence as a void needing fil. Burkhead was one of them. Or maybe he was just proud of his little kingdom. As we walked, he provided unbroken commentary.

“Elmwood is a cultural encyclopedia. Charlotte’s poorest and wealthiest lie here, Confederate veterans side by side with African slaves.”

Not in this section, I thought, taking in the Neoclassical-inspired obelisks, the massive aboveground box tombs, the temple-like family crypts, the granite and marble carved in intricate detail.

Burkhead gestured with the crowbar as we walked, a guide identifying pharaohs in the necropolis at Thebes. “Edward Dilworth Latta, developer. S. S. McNinch, former mayor.”

Massive hardwoods arced overhead, leaves shiny, trunks dark with moisture. Cypresses, boxwoods, and flowering shrubs formed a wet understory. Headstones curved to the horizon, gray and mournful in the persistent rain. We passed a monument to firemen, a tiny stone log cabin, a Confederate memorial. I recognized common funerary symbols: lambs and cherubs for children, blooming roses for young adults, the Orthodox cross for Greeks, the compass and square for Masons.

At one point Burkhead paused by a headstone engraved with an elephant image. Solemnly, he read the inscription aloud.

“‘Erected by the members of John Robinson’s Circus in memory of John King, kiled at Charlotte, North Carolina, September twenty-second, eighteen-eighty, by the elephant, Chief. May his soul rest in peace.’”

“Yeah?” Slidel grunted.

“Oh, yes. The beast crushed the poor man against the side of a railroad car. The accident caused quite a sensation.”

My eyes drifted to a marble statue of a female figure several graves over. Struck by the poignancy of her pose, I wove my way to it.

The woman was kneeling with one hand cradling her face, the other hanging limply, clutching a bouquet of roses. The detail in her clothing and hair was exquisite.

I read the inscription. Mary Norcott London had died in 1919. She was twenty-four. The monument had been erected by her husband, Edwin Thomas Cansler.

My mind floated a picture of the skul in my lab. Did it belong to Susan Clover Redmon?

Mary had been Edwin’s wife. She’d died so young. Who had Susan been? What calamity had cut her life short? Ended her happiness, her suffering, her hopes, her fears?

Had grieving parents placed Susan’s coffin lovingly in its tomb? Remembered her as a little girl coloring inside the lines, boarding the school bus with her brand-new lunch box?

Had they cried, heartbroken at the promise of achievement never to be fulfiled?

Or had it been a husband who most mourned her passing? A sibling?

Slidel’s voice cut into my musing. “Yo, doc. You coming?”

I caught up with the others.

Further east, the cemetery’s subtly curvilinear design gave way to a gridlike arrangement of graves. The rain was faling harder now. I’d abandoned my soggy sweatshirt for an MCME windbreaker. Bad move. The thin nylon was keeping me neither warm nor dry.

Eventualy we entered an area with few elaborate markers. The trees were stil old and stately, but the layout appeared somehow more organic, less rigid. I assumed we’d crossed the boundary once secured by chain-linking.

Burkhead continued his guided tour.

“Thomas H. Lomax, A.M.E. Zion Bishop; Caesar Blake, Imperial Potentate of the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order and leader of Negro Shriners throughout the nineteen-twenties.”

The section’s most prominent feature was a smal, front-gabled structure of yelow and red brick. Raised bricks formed diamond-shaped decorative motifs on the side and rear elevations and speled SMITH above the plain wooden door.

“W. W. Smith, Charlotte’s first black architect,” Burkhead said. “I find it fitting that Mr. Smith’s tomb reflects his distinctive style of brickwork.”

“How many stiffs you got in this place?” Slidel asked.

“Approximately fifty thousand.” Burkhead’s tone gave new meaning to the term “disapproving.”

“Make a great setting for one of them zombie movies.”