Judgment of the Grave (8 page)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13

It had been a crappy day so far.

To start with, Quinn had woken up to find that there was something wrong with the seal on the dishwasher and it had leaked all over the kitchen floor. Racing across to mop it up before it ran through onto the living room carpet, his socks—the last clean pair—had gotten soaked.

Megan had woken up feeling better, but her nose was still running a little, and when he’d dropped her at day care, he’d felt like the worst father in the world. He could still see her little face watching him as he walked away.

Now he was sitting at his desk, going over the notes he’d taken on the Kenneth Churchill case. “Josiah Whiting,” he read to himself. “Militiaman. Stonecutter.” The guy had been doing research on this stonecutter—Josiah Whiting, his name was. Beverly Churchill had said that’s why he’d stayed in Concord. So, how had he ended up rotting in the woods? If it was him, he reminded himself, if it was him.

It was funny, this thing involving gravestones. Not directly, but still…If it turned out that the gravestone maker guy had anything to do with it, he could call Sweeney and see what she thought. He hadn’t seen her since the morning they’d found Maura together, but he’d been certain that seeing her would bring back the awful rush of horror, grief, and relief he’d felt standing at the top of the stairs and knowing that his wife lay dead on the other side of the bathroom door. But still, if it was Churchill and he needed some advice about this gravestone thing, maybe he could just call her, just kind of run it by her. Maybe that would be okay.

He put the file aside and went to call Beverly Churchill.

As Quinn pulled up to the house at nine that night, he took a deep breath and steeled himself for his sister-in-law’s assault. He ran through everything he thought she might say, just so it wouldn’t be a surprise. “You’re irresponsible. You have to put your daughter first. Why couldn’t you just tell them you needed to leave?”

At four o’clock, it had become apparent that there was no way in hell he was going to pick Megan up at day care by six. He’d already gotten yelled at a couple of times for being late, so he’d called Debbie at work and asked if she could pick Megan up and take her back to the house and watch her until he got home. She’d sighed loudly but agreed. He’d been waiting on the results of the dental-records comparison on the Concord body and he’d known that if it turned out to be Kenneth Churchill, as Quinn was sure that it would, he would be at it most of the night, notifying Beverly Churchill, starting to liaise with the state homicide guys assigned to the Middlesex County D.A.’s Office. They’d take over responsibility for the murder investigation, but there would be a lot to do.

As it turned out, though, the forensic dental specialist that the state police used had been running late and finally they told him they probably wouldn’t have the results tonight. The Concord cops had Quinn’s cell number, they told him. They’d let him know when they knew anything.

“Hi,” he called out, coming in the door and tripping over a stuffed animal. “I’m home.” He heard Debbie’s voice upstairs, along with Megan’s laugh, and he followed the voices up to Megan’s bedroom at the top of the stairs. Megan was on the changing table, and Debbie was getting her into her sleeper.

“Hi,” she said over her shoulder. “I thought it was going to be late tonight.”

Christ. Now she was mad that he was early. “Well, we didn’t get back the results I was waiting for, so they sent me on home.”

“Oh.” She leaned over Megan and cooed at her. “Yes, we’ve got you all nice and clean, don’t we?” Quinn smelled the strong tang of diaper rash ointment, the soft scent of Megan’s bubble bath. Megan waved her legs on the changing table and grinned at him.

“I can take over, Debbie. You go on home now. I really appreciate your helping out tonight. Thanks. Really.”

But she ignored him and went on cooing at Megan. He stood there dumbly and finally she said, “That’s okay. I’ll put her to bed. Since I’m here.”

He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t force her out of the house, so he just kissed Megan good night and went downstairs, where he sat on the couch and waited for Debbie to come down. He felt the way he remembered feeling as a teenager, when his mother would make him sweat it out before she let him have it for coming in late or forgetting to do something around the house she’d asked him to do.

Finally he heard her footsteps on the stairs. “She’s asleep,” she said. “She always goes right down for me.”

“Thanks, Deb. Really. I appreciate it.” He couldn’t look her in the eye while he said it. “I hope you didn’t have plans or anything.”

“No. Not really.” She picked up her white sneakers from the bottom of the stairs and sat down across from him, easing her feet in and carefully lacing them up. For as long as he’d known her, Debbie had always worn these exact white sneakers. She had foot problems—he’d never quite understood what they were—and when she had to wear shoes other than the sneakers, she complained loudly about the pain. If he was honest, Quinn had to admit that he’d always thought she was a bit of a hypochondriac, but now as he watched her face twist into discomfort as she tightened the laces, he felt guilty. He’d never liked Debbie. Poor Debbie, with her too-long, overpermed hair and her tight little face. Someone had once told her that her slightly bugged blue eyes were her best feature and she covered them with eye shadow and mascara, only calling attention to their bugginess. She’d always been so much Maura’s kid sister, wanting to come along on their dates, never leaving them alone. He remembered sitting in Debbie and Maura’s grandmother’s living room the night after the first time he and Maura had slept together. They had both been virgins and he had been in a fever of desire that night, terrified that he would have to go home without doing it again. They had been watching TV and he remembered hating Debbie for not going to bed and finally he had asked Maura if she wanted to go for a walk. They had made love the second time leaning up against the back wall of the corner deli on the next block.

“Timmy,” Debbie said, and he looked up with surprise to find that she was nervous. She folded her skinny little legs into her chair and twisted a piece of hair so tightly that he thought she might pull it out by the root. “I was thinking and I don’t know if it’s, well, I don’t know what you…Anyway, I was thinking that you need someone to take care of Megan and I was thinking that maybe I could do it. I mean, I could be like her nanny. Instead of paying for day care, you could pay me and I wouldn’t mind if you were late or whatever.”

Quinn forced himself to sit back in his chair and study her before saying anything. She seemed serious. After getting out her suggestion, she was leaning expectantly forward, fiddling with the perfectly tied shoelaces.

“But what about your job?”

“I never really liked it. I mean, it’s just something to do for a living, like. You know? But I really like taking care of Megan. It just makes me happy. Nothing else makes me that happy, you know?”

“Well, wow. I…thanks, Debbie, I really appreciate the offer. Let me think about it, okay. I kind of have to, you know, just think about my schedule and what would work the best.”

She looked a little hurt. “Okay, yeah, definitely. Thanks,” she said, getting up and putting on her leather jacket.

“And, hey, thanks again for tonight. I really appreciate it.”

When she had gone, Quinn lay back on the couch and covered his face with his hands. Now she was mad at him. Why hadn’t he just said yes? It was, in many ways, the perfect solution. He wouldn’t have to worry about working late, and Megan loved Debbie. She knew her, was happy with her. So, what was his problem?

It was that he couldn’t stand the thought of coming home to her silent accusations every night. He couldn’t stand the thought of her neediness. So, what was he going to do? Well, he supposed he’d have to find another babysitter.

He thought of Maura, wondered what she would do, though he supposed that wasn’t really the way to think about it, since Maura hadn’t shown herself to be the model of parental responsibility. Damn it! What had she been thinking? Goddamnit! Then he felt guilty for even thinking it and he felt his eyes fill with warm tears. He wiped them with the back of his shirt and took a deep breath, trying not to lose it. When it came down to it, it wasn’t any grand self-control on his part that kept him from breaking down. He was just too tired.

He cleaned up a little, putting away Megan’s toys and emptying the dishwasher, and tried to get his mind back on the Kenneth Churchill case. When he’d called Beverly Churchill to get her permission to release the dental records, he had tried to sound casual about the body. “We don’t know anything,” he’d said. “I want you to be prepared for the worst, but I have to tell you that it very well may not be him.”

“But it’s in Concord. And the uniform. How could it not be him?” She had seemed oddly calm and he had realized that perhaps the not knowing was worse than the knowing. He almost had the sense that she was relieved something had happened at last, but he told himself to reserve judgment. People did strange things when informed of a loved one’s death. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Well, he thought, checking the wall clock, it was eleven, so he probably wouldn’t know tonight. He should get to bed. Megan would be up at six and he had to get her to day care, get to the station, deal with whatever the day brought. Intense and unrelenting fatigue washed over him, and for a moment he leaned against the kitchen counter. “Get to bed, old man,” he said aloud in the silent house.

He had just dozed off when his cell phone rang. In the dark, he scrambled for it on the bedside table and caught it on the seventh ring.

“Detective Quinn? John Tyler out in Concord. I wanted to let you know. They’ve got an answer for us on this Concord body. It’s definitely not Kenneth Churchill.”

Quinn sat up in bed, wide-awake now. “What? What do you mean?”

“It’s not him. Different set of choppers.”

“Jeez. I really thought this was gonna be it. The uniform and everything.”

“Hey, I know. That was a funny thing, actually. Your guy was a Minuteman. This guy was a Redcoat.”

“What?” Quinn’s sleepy brain struggled with the unfamiliar words.

“We’ve been talking to some of these reenactor guys about it. Apparently, your guy was one of ours, a Minuteman. This guy we found in the woods, he was wearing a British soldier’s uniform. He was on the other side. I’m sorry, you’re going to have to look for your guy somewhere else.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14

The minuteman museum was located on Lexington Road, across from Orchard House in a low Colonial building painted white and trimmed in green. The sign out front was calligraphed in gold, and the whole place had a classy, well-cared-for look that appealed to Sweeney’s sense of aesthetics.

She pushed through the glass doors on the side of the building to find herself in a well-decorated eighteenth-century American home. The main room served as a kitchen, with a wide hearth and a sort of sitting room, and as her eyes adjusted to the lower light, she noticed display cases around the room.

“Hello,” said a white-haired, grandmotherly woman sitting behind the ticket desk and wearing a nametag that read, “Phyllis. Volunteer.”

“Hello. Oh, one please,” Sweeney said, noticing the sign that informed her that she, as an adult, would have to pay $5 for the pleasure of looking around the museum. She handed over the bill and the woman handed her a little aluminum button with intertwined M’s.

“I was wondering,” Sweeney said, once she had tucked away the receipt, “if Cecily Whiting is here today.”

“Cecily’s with a group,” the volunteer said. “But if you want to look around, I’ll send her out to see you when she’s done.”

Sweeney said that would be fine and spent the next forty minutes looking around the museum.

She loved small historical museums, and this one was as good as any she’d seen. Its focus was the Minutemen, the average citizens—farmers, wheelwrights, and housewrights—who had formed a ready army in order to protect their rights, rights increasingly under assault from the British crown in those tense years leading up to the Revolution. The museum explored the Minutemen from every angle, the typical Colonial home, the community lives of the towns that provided the men who would defeat an empire, the women behind them.

Cecily Whiting, if that was who had authored the informative panels around the various rooms, had not presented only the red, white, and blue version of the Revolution. The point was made that for many years the colonists had enjoyed far greater autonomy than most other British subjects and that the standard of living in America was higher than it was for most men, women, and children living in the British Isles at the time. The Revolution, the point was made, was in many ways a civil war, between those loyal to the crown and the upstart nouveau-riche craftsmen and men of business.

Sweeney moved onto an exhibit called “Spy Letters of the American Revolution,” featuring biographies of Benedict Arnold as well as a handful of lesser-known spies—British and American ones—who had operated during the Revolution. There was even a little exhibit on women spies, which told about women such as Sarah Bradlee Fulton, the “mother of the Boston Tea Party,” and the group of women in Philadelphia who passed information about the British to General Washington.

The exhibit featured facsimiles of the ingenious letters that the spies had used, some in invisible ink, others cut into thin strips that could be hidden in quills and then reassembled, and yet others made so they could be read for their true meaning only when viewed through a “mask,” or a piece of paper into which an oddly shaped window had been cut. She was reading about crude, early codes involving the replacement of a number for a letter when a voice behind her said, “Hi, Sweeney.”

Sweeney turned around. “Hi.” Cecily Whiting was wearing an elegant dark brown suit, an orange and russet scarf at her neck, and against the backdrop of autumn leaves showing in the window behind her, she looked like a catalog model. “I thought maybe I’d come and find out some more about Josiah Whiting. I don’t know if Pres told you, but we found a few more stones yesterday and the more I see of them, the more interested I am.”

“Pres did tell me. He said he’s going to be your assistant. I hope he’s not pestering you. He wasn’t feeling well in the morning, so I let him stay home from school, but I think it was all a ruse to go find you in the cemetery.”

“No, he’s a great kid. If you feel okay about him hanging out with someone you barely know, I’m having fun.”

Cecily smiled again. “It’s funny,” she said. “With Pres being sick, I’ve kind of let some of that old maternal protectiveness go. You’d think it would be the other way around. But I want him to have any experience he can have. And he’s a good judge of character. If he likes you, you must be all right. So, what do you want to know about Josiah Whiting?” Again, her voice was just a little too eager and Sweeney found herself wondering about Cecily’s motivation. Was she trying to get back at her ex-husband by helping Sweeney with her research?

“Well, I’ve gotten interested in his carving, his death masks in particular, and I’m hoping to write a paper about him. From what I can tell, there hasn’t been much done on him.”

Cecily raised her eyes and seemed about to say something, then stopped herself and turned away from Sweeney to adjust a picture on the wall that did not need adjusting.

“My ex-husband is a descendant of Whiting’s, so a lot of what I know is family lore.” She turned and smiled. “Not always reliable. The family was from Plymouth and his father moved to Concord in the 1750s and set up shop as a stonecutter. He did masonry too. Josiah Whiting apprenticed with the father and then took over the family business. He made stones for people in Concord and Lexington and the surrounding towns. I don’t know much more about his gravestones, but I can tell you about his life. Let’s go sit in my office.” She led the way through the galleries and into a back office decorated with lithographs and paintings of Revolutionary War battles and framed copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

There were a series of file cabinets against one wall, and Cecily flipped through the hanging file folders and took out a manila folder. “My ex-husband’s family donated a collection of family letters to the museum. I had a special exhibition about Josiah Whiting last year and displayed some of them. These are copies, but you’re welcome to look through them if you want. Anyway, what can I tell you about him? Josiah Whiting married a girl from Concord named Rebecca Abel. They had five children, one who died as a toddler. Their stones are in the Hill Cemetery if you want to see them. The oldest son, John, had health problems and died young. The second son, Daniel, became a stonecutter and carried on the family tradition. My husband’s family is descended from Daniel’s line.

“Anyway, Josiah got interested in the Revolutionary cause early on. He was educated and he wrote some pamphlets about the Stamp Act. And he was a principal member of a local underground group that was agitating for war. As things heated up, he became even more deeply involved in the cause and joined one of the Concord Minuteman companies.

“As you probably know, he was killed after the fighting at the North Bridge here in Concord. There’s a good bit of information about what happened that day, mostly through the depositions of the Minutemen and British soldiers after the fact. There are letters too, written by townspeople who witnessed the events or the men who fought. You have to take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt, though, because misinformation was rampant and rumors spread very quickly. Many of the accounts are blatantly romanticized. But they still offer us a pretty good look at what people were doing that day.

“Josiah Whiting’s Minuteman company was warned by Dr. Prescott around one
A.M
. The bell in the church tower would have been rung and the men woke and gathered at Wright’s Tavern. We have accounts from other men in the company who say he was there. They knew that the British regulars were coming out to confiscate ammunition and stores of flour and other staples, so they arranged a signal and went off to help the townspeople hide anything that hadn’t already been put away. We don’t know what Josiah Whiting was doing, but we can assume that he was helping with this task. At dawn, the word came that there had been shooting at Lexington and the Minutemen gathered again, joined by a company from Lincoln. There would have been about two hundred and fifty men there. Am I boring you?”

“No, not at all. My Revolutionary history isn’t the best. Pres had to remind me what Battle Road was the other day.”

Cecily smiled and went on. “Anyway, the three companies started marching to meet the British, but as they went along the Lexington Road, they met the British who were coming in the opposite direction. The Minutemen turned around and started marching back toward Concord, with the regulars following. You have to remember that all this time, the alarm had been going out all over the countryside and companies of Minutemen were arriving from every direction.”

She got up and took an old-fashioned-looking map down from a bulletin board on the wall. “The British light infantry were sent up on this ridge, where the Minutemen had gathered,” she said, pointing to the map. “And so the Minutemen retreated back to the center of town, but they kept men on all of the ridges, where they could observe what was going on and plan their attack. They were always one step ahead. People say that we won the Revolutionary War because we knew the land, and that was largely true. The Minutemen watched from the ridges as the light infantry and the rest of the regulars met up on their way into town.”

Sweeney felt goose bumps on her arms. Cecily Whiting told a good story, and looking at the map, she could almost imagine the men marching over the land, the drums beating and the fifes sounding.

“John Baker was a member of the Concord militia company that Josiah Whiting was a member of, and the two men were good friends. Anyway,” Cecily went on, “everything we know about where Josiah Whiting was and what he was doing on April nineteenth comes from an account given by John Baker ten years later. He said that he and Whiting were sent up to a spot on one of the ridgelines, where they watched the regulars make their way across the town to search the townspeople’s homes for stores meant for the militia. A group of them were sent to the North Bridge in order to search Colonel Barrett’s farm, where a lot of the supplies had been hidden. Meanwhile, it was decided that the provincials would retreat across the North Bridge and wait until more Minuteman companies had come from the surrounding towns. Whiting and Baker came down and joined the men at the bridge, just as the British commander Colonel Smith sent a group of his men over the bridge. The Minutemen were just waiting there, to see what the British were going to do. That was when they saw the smoke. I’ve always thought this was one of the best misunderstandings in American history, that as they waited, the provincials saw smoke rising over the town. They thought that the town was being burned, but in fact the regulars had just set fire to some of the provisions they’d taken. The amazing thing about that day is that the provincials were outnumbered by the British to the tune of two to one. But Captain Parker still made the decision that he did, to march across the bridge. We know from Baker’s account that he and Whiting were among the men who marched back across the bridge, driving the regulars back across as they went. They had left their horses tied to nearby trees and went with the rest of the men on foot.

“We don’t know who it was who fired the first shot, though it was probably a regular, but once the firing started, the scene was chaotic. Baker said later that he only remembers firing and reloading three times and that he saw Whiting shooting with a calm hand. In a few minutes it was over. And that’s when Battle Road began. It’s hard for us to imagine what a nightmare Battle Road must have been for the British. After the North Bridge, all they wanted to do was get back to Boston and safety. But they were literally surrounded by militiamen who were opening fire on them at every turn. The provincials knew the land, they were everywhere. There was no way the regulars could compete. Of course, all of the British generals considered that the provincials had fought dirty. They were used to a very formal fighting style. Everybody stands out in a field and fires politely at one another.”

“And Whiting was there? He was shooting at them too?”

“Yes. Again, everything we know about this is from Baker’s account. They rode off together and Baker claims that they each killed a few Redcoats. That may just be boasting, but it’s also very possible. They were both experienced marksmen. Anyway, Baker says that he and Whiting saw two young Redcoats go into a house by the side of the road. They followed them in and found them threatening to shoot the old woman of the house if she didn’t feed them. Whiting confronted them and killed one of the Redcoats. The other one chased him down and stabbed him through the heart. Those were Baker’s words.”

“Wow.” Sweeney made a few notes in her notebook. “Where’s his gravestone? Is it in the Hill Cemetery too? I’d love to see it.”

“Actually,” Cecily Whiting said, “he doesn’t have one. His body was never found.”

“But I thought you said he was killed?”

“Well, he was. But the body wasn’t found. It actually wasn’t as strange as it might seem. On April nineteenth, there were men on both sides who were listed as missing. Who knows why? It’s possible that some of them were wounded and dragged themselves off into the woods, where they died. Or it’s possible that in the chaos of that day, there were men who were simply…lost.”

“There wasn’t any question about whether he had actually died?”

“Well, where else would he have gone? His family was in Concord, his business. Besides, Baker’s account doesn’t leave a lot of room for doubt. It may be that the British hauled him off somewhere. It’s…” She trailed off and Sweeney had the feeling that she was going to say something more. But then she glanced away and said vaguely, “It’s a mystery.”

“Well, thanks so much. It’s a great story. I was wondering if you have a list of all of the Whiting gravestones in Concord and the surrounding area. Sometimes people do little surveys or whatever.” Sweeney tried not to hope too fervently. It would save her a lot of work.

“No,” Cecily said. “But my father-in-law…I mean, my ex-father-in-law, George, has a complete list, I think. He loves it when people get interested in Josiah Whiting. Once you get him going, you’ll have a hard time getting him to stop, actually.”