Exclusive Excerpt
Wait. He only just realized this grave got dug up?” Deputy Jasper Griggs scratched the back of his ginger, buzz-cut head. He looked over at the old man talking to a detective on the other side of the crime scene tape. “That doesn’t make any sense. Somebody’s definitely been working on it for a while.”
The flashing red and blue lights from Jasper’s SUV illuminated several piles of earth. They were scattered on either side of a knocked-over headstone in the Gaol Street Cemetery. The dirt had melted into deflated blobs after several bouts of rain. A broken shovel sat on top of a moldy slab of plywood, which apparently was used to disguise this illegal and disrespectful act.
“Nobody ever comes over here,” Sheriff Moira Burrows said as she shone her flashlight along the row of graves. Her young colleague failed to notice the untended weeds and disheveled dirt across this entire back section of the cemetery. “Who moved the plywood?” she asked.
“The caretaker,” Jasper said, hooking his thumb over at the man. “When he finally decided to do his job, he messed up our crime scene.”
She tried to be patient with Jasper. Moira knew most people weren’t as observant as she was. People were often blinded by their biases.
In her own personal experience, folks were typically mistaken about her Eurasian ethnicity, her strait-laced sexuality, and her rapidly approaching middle age. When she was out of uniform, her feminine frame didn’t immediately convey law enforcement. However, the timbre of her voice was solid steel, and as a former Marine, she tended to swear like a sailor.
“This is where they put the fucking unwanted,” Moira said. She squatted onto her ankles to get a closer look without disturbing the soil.
The name and dates on the broken headstone were obscured by jagged indents. It looked as if it had been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer or the back of an axe, rather than the rusty shovel lying near it. “Someone really hated this person, whoever they were,” Moira said.
Jasper was ready to go home after a long day, but he suspected Moira had other plans for him. “What do you want to do, boss?”
“We need to find out from the caretaker who this was.” Sheriff Burrows stood up again. “Why was the soil moved? Did they take something from the coffin, or were they just defacing the grave?” Moira shone her flashlight deep inside the hole and examined the broken pine boards below. “Let’s have CSI open it all up. In the meantime, we keep it secure so Toby’s team can document it.”
Jasper sighed. He wasn’t leaving anytime soon.
Moira hated being in graveyards at night. Too many racing shadows. Too much stagnant energy with nowhere for it to go. For the most part, it was rare for her to see a ghost. She just had a strong sense when they were present. Tonight, several spirits sought her attention, but she felt nothing from the grave in front of her. Just emptiness.
“Jasper, go home. I’ll wait for CSI. When you go back to the station, tell First Watch to add more patrols around here. Just in case whoever did this decides to come back and do more damage.” Moira didn’t really think the perpetrator would return. This was a furious act directed at one person in particular.
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