Of Grave Concern Part 21

"I'm not sure," I said. "No, wait. There were a lot of voices. There was a girl, speaking Russian."

"Russian?"

"Yes, the dead girl. She talked about her throat being cut. There were also a gambler and buffalo hunters. They talked about a cyprian called Captain Drew. Was there ever such a woman by that name here?"

"There was, years ago," Calder said. "Jessie Drew. They called her 'Captain Drew' because she bossed all the other wh.o.r.es around. She moved on a couple of years ago. Went to New Mexico, I think."

I vigorously used a brush to dislodge the dirt from my fingernails.

"Is there anybody who speaks Russian in Kansas?"

"There are the Russian Mennonites up the Santa Fe tracks around Newton," Calder said. "A town called Alexanderwohl. Thousands of them came over three years ago from the Crimea, to avoid military service in the czar's army. They are pacifists, apparently, and wheat farmers."

"But why Kansas?"

"The climate's about the same as the Crimea, and the Santa Fe sold them thousands of acres to grow their wheat. n.o.body gave them a chance in h.e.l.l of making it, but they have this hard winter strain they brought with them, something called Turkey Red, which seems to be working."

"But we're a long way from Newton, right?"

"Two hundred miles, give or take. But that's only five hours by train."

"Strange how distance is relative, now," I said. "Five hours back east to Newton. But if you walk north or south out of Dodge, you're what-only five miles outside of town in five hours?"

"Or twenty miles on horseback," Calder said. "No, the railroad means money. Dodge City wouldn't be going like hot peanuts if it wasn't for the railroad. Cattle, hides . . ."

I thought of the wagon caravan of hides.

"What do they do with all those hides, anyway?"

"They cut them up to make belts to drive machinery back East. Whether it's steam power or water power, the power has to be transmitted to the pulleys somehow, and buffalo hide is cheap and wears well. Also, the bones can be ground into fertilizer."

"So the buffalo are being turned into the very things that hasten their demise-fertilizer for farmland and pulleys to drive machinery that produces everything from guns to barbed wire."

"How is that different than the Comanche using buffalo meat for food and the hide for their lodges and the tails for fly swatters?"

"One is a matter of need," I said. "The other is just an example of greed."

"I have a coat with b.u.t.tons made of buffalo bone," Calder said. "Does that make me needy or greedy?"

Something stirred in my memory. "What?" I asked.

"I said, I have a coat-"

"b.u.t.tons," I said. "The dead girl who spoke Russian was talking about a b.u.t.ton she had torn from the shirt of the man who killed her. And when I saw her ghost, she was clutching something tight in her right hand."

"A b.u.t.ton?"

"It must be," I said. "Do you know if Doc McCarty examined the girl before she was buried?"

"There was no reason to," Calder said. "She was quite dead."

"But did anybody open her hand?"

"She was stiff as a board. The undertaker didn't want her, because there was no money in it, so we took up a collection for lumber and built a rough coffin and placed her in it. n.o.body thought to force open her hand."

I sat up in the tub.

"Jack," I said. "We've got to dig her up."

Calder protested that exhumation was a legal process and required a court order. He also rattled off some stuff from Blackstone saying that common law viewed the final resting place of a human being as sacred, and that disturbing those remains was a serious offense. Only a family member could pet.i.tion for exhumation, he said, or the church, if the burial was in consecrated ground. He said he didn't think there was anything consecrated about Boot Hill, though.

"You dug me up," I said.

"You weren't dead."

"Who can order an exhumation, then?"

"Judge Grout, but I'm not sure he would grant the pet.i.tion based on your visit to the other world," Calder said. "Grout may be soft about his poor dead boy, but he would be pretty hardheaded about this. There would have to be compelling evidence, and we don't have it. The only other person who can order it would be the coroner, in the course of a police investigation."

"Who's the coroner?"

"Doc Galland," Calder said. "But that old Prussian is unlikely to be sympathetic to our request, unless we could deliver it in High German. But he's not even in town this weekend-he took the train east to Kansas City to visit an old friend."

"Who's the a.s.sistant coroner?"

"Doc McCarty."

26.

We were back at Boot Hill at dawn, standing in the chill air with Doc McCarty and that walrus of a marshal, Larry Deger, who clasped a mug of coffee in his hands and seemed unwilling to share. We were watching as Diamond Jim Murdock and his two miscreant friends took shovelfuls of earth from the grave of the murdered girl and added it to a growing pile alongside. Calder had fetched the trio from the jail and forced them to help, as a fitting-if partial-punishment for what they had done to me the night before.

Murdock had a knot on his forehead the size of a baseball, from where Calder had clobbered him with the shovel handle, and his right eye was swollen shut.

None of the three would look at me while they dug.

My own clothes weren't yet dry from the laundry, so Calder had borrowed some clothes from Tom the Jailer. He was skinny enough, but I had to roll up the sleeves of the flannel shirt and pin the cuffs of the Levi's.

"Can we rest now?" Murdock asked, leaning on the shovel handle and looking up at us.

"Did I tell you to stop digging?" Calder asked.

"I'm really tired," Murdock whined. "My head is throbbing from where you poleaxed me last night. I think I'm going to be sick."

"Your head would have throbbed from the whiskey anyway," McCarty said.

"I don't know why I drink," Murdock said. "It makes me into somebody else and I do things I'm ashamed of."

"You'll have a lot of time in jail to think about what you did," Calder said. "But right now, keep digging."

Murdock made a face and scooped another shovelful of dirt.

"We had better find something in that hole, Calder," Deger said, then slurped his coffee. "If you don't, Doc Galland is going to have your t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es pickled and put in one of those specimen jars and make a present of them to Judge Grout."

"Don't double down yet, Larry," Calder said.

Then a shovel swung by one of the miscreants struck wood.

"It am the coffin."

"Okay, work toward the edges now."

In a few minutes, the dirt had been cleared away from the edges of the coffin. The grave wasn't the proverbial six feet, but it was a good four or five, and it took a few minutes of struggle for the inmates to work a pair of ropes beneath the coffin. Then they scrambled out of the grave, and each took an end of rope. Calder took the remaining end, and on his count, they began to haul the coffin to the surface.

Soon, the men had the wooden box out and placed beside the grave, and then they began to work on the lid with crowbars and claw hammers. The nails made a frightening screeching sound as they were drawn from the wood. Then the lid was loose, and Calder looked over at Doc.

"You might want to step away now," McCarty suggested.

"No," I said. "I want to see what I would have looked like if Calder hadn't gotten to me in time."

"Suit yourself," McCarty said, and produced a jar of camphor from his pocket. He opened the bottle and allowed Calder and Deger to dip their kerchiefs in it. Then he tore his handkerchief in two, for us both to use.

"All right," McCarty said. "Open her up."

Calder swung the lid off.

We all held the cloths to our noses and mouths, but the stench of decay was overpowering, at once repellent and oddly sweet. All of the miscreants stumbled back many steps, and Murdock fell on his knees and began to retch.

"Go farther down the hill for that," Calder called.

The girl was on her back, her hands crossed over her chest, and her hair spread over her shoulders. Her eyes were closed but sunken. Her skin was a greenish gray. Her black lips had drawn back to reveal her white teeth, which gave the impression that she was smiling without mirth.

The slit beneath her chin still gaped, and it was black with crusted blood.

"Andrei!" I heard. "Is that you? Where are you?"

Calder knelt down and reached for her left hand.

"The other one," I said.

He stopped.

"You want me to do that, Jack?" McCarty asked. "I'm the acting coroner."

"I can do it, Doc," he said.

But his face showed some doubt.

He reached over again and picked up the girl's right wrist. Having long since pa.s.sed rigor mortis, her hand unclenched as he lifted it. A bit of something fell from the dead fingers. Calder retrieved the object from the coffin and held it up.

It was a mother-of-pearl b.u.t.ton sewn to a ragged patch of black cloth.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Deger said.

"I'd say that looks like a b.u.t.ton from Andrew Vanderslice's favorite shirt," Calder said. "What do you think, Doc?"

"I think you need a warrant," McCarty said.

"I already have a warrant for Vanderslice," Calder said. "A federal writ for selling whiskey to the Comanches, and I aim to serve it."

"Shouldn't you wait until Judge Grout can issue one tomorrow morning?"

"That's going to give Vanderslice another twenty-four hours ahead of me," Calder said. "The murder charge can be filed after I drag him back."

Calder handed the b.u.t.ton and cloth to McCarty for safekeeping.

"Marshal, you might want to contact the Russian Mennonite community, up near Newton, and see if any of their girls are missing. I expect them to say yes."

"What makes you think that?" Deger asked.

"Call it a hunch," Calder said as he rested the lid back on the coffin.

"Like the b.u.t.ton?"

"I told you, Doc had a confidential witness for that, somebody who wouldn't come forward if his name was used," Calder said. Then he stood and used the camphor handkerchief on his hands. "All right, boys. Seal her up and get her back into the ground."

"Wait," I said.

"For what?" Calder asked.

"We should say something."

"She's right," McCarty said.

"Go ahead," Calder said to me.

"I'm no preacher."

"You're the closest thing we've got," McCarty said.

"All right."

I told the men to doff their hats, although Calder wasn't wearing a hat, as usual. Then I cleared my throat and bowed my head.