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“It’s a shame we evenneed cameras like this, but that’s how the world is these days. No one respects private property anymore, not like when I was growing up,” said cemetery director Gerald Haas, who was certainly old enough to remember the world as it once was—or as he thought it was. Gingerly he lowered himself into his chair and woke up his computer. Like the mortuary reception room, the director’s office was quietly tasteful, decorated in soothing pastels and framed quotes on the walls.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
—Kahlil Gibran
Also hanging on the wall was a map of the sprawling 250-acre property, its pathways named after flowers and trees: Lavender Way. Hibiscus Lane. Lake Magnolia. As if these grounds were planted with gardens, not the mortal remains of people.
With arthritic hands, Haas shakily maneuvered the computer mouse but every move, every click, took a painfully long time. Jane thought of Jamal Bird’s nimble fingers typing with the dizzying speed of youth and she had to force herself to be patient as she watched Haas’s gnarled hand scroll and click, scroll and click.
“Would you like me to help, sir?” Frost asked, polite as always, with not a hint of the frustration Jane was feeling.
“No, no. I know this system. It just takes me a while to remember how to do this…”
Scroll. Point. Click.
“Ah. Here we are.”
On the computer screen, a rain-splattered image appeared. It was the passenger drop-off area at the cemetery entrance.
“This is the CCTV at our main gate, on the south end,” said Haas. “It’s mounted right over the archway and it should have recorded everyone who entered and exited this morning.”
“What about that north entrance?” Jane asked, pointing to the map on the wall. “Is there a camera there too?”
“Yes, but that entrance is only used by our staff. That gate’s kept locked at all times and it requires a key code to get in. So a visitor couldn’t have come in that way.”
“Then let’s just look at the video from the main entrance,” said Jane. “Since we know that’s also how he left.”
“How far back do you want to look?”
“According to our witness, the man walked onto the grounds shortly before the memorial service started. So go back to nine-thirty.”
Once again the gnarled hand reached for the mouse. In Haas’s profession there was no need to be speedy. The dead are patient.
Scroll. Point. Click.
“There,” he said. “This is nine-thirty.”
On the video, the rain had not started and the pavement was still dry. Except for a bird flitting past, nothing moved in the frame.
“Fifty years ago, when I was growing up, we kids had respect for the dead. We’d never dream of painting graffiti on a cemetery wall or tipping over gravestones. That’s why we had to install these cameras. No wonder the world’s falling apart.”
The lament of every generation, thought Jane.The world’s falling apart.It’s what her grandmother used to say. It’s what her dad still said. And one of these days, she’d probably say it to her own daughter, Regina.
Her attention perked up when, at 9:35, a silver sedan pulled to a stop at the curb. An elderly couple climbed out and slowly walked through the gate, holding hands.
“That’s just the Santoros,” said Haas. “Their daughter brings them here every week to visit their son. He’s buried down on Lilac Lane. Watch, the daughter’s gone to park the car, but she’ll show up any minute with the flowers.”
Moments later, as he’d predicted, a woman walked into view carrying a vase of roses, and she followed her parents through the gate.
“Those are the saddest ones,” said Haas. “I mean, every death is sad, but when you lose a child…”
“How did their son die?” asked Frost.
“They won’t ever talk about it, but I’m told it was a drug overdose. It happened years ago, when he was only thirtysomething. And here it is, all these years later, and they still come once a week, like clockwork. We always have the golf cart ready to take them to the grave.”
