The Restorer

He was handsome, charismatic and intensely focused, and he intrigued me almost as much as he disturbed me. I couldn’t stare at him for long without hearing the echo of my father’s third rule inside my head:

Keep your distance from those who are haunted.

I drew a breath of moist air and tried to shake off his strange spell. “Have you found out anything about the victim?”

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded tentative and I wondered if he would pick up on my unease. He was probably used to a certain amount of discomfort in his presence. He was a cop, after all. A cop with a very complicated past, I was beginning to suspect.

“We don’t know who she is yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

So the victim was female. “Do you know how she died?”

He paused, his gaze sliding away before he answered. “We won’t know conclusively until after the autopsy.”

It wasn’t so much what he said as what he didn’t say. And the way he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes. What was he hiding from me? What terrible things had been done to that poor woman?

And then I thought of all the hours I’d spent working alone in this cemetery. What if the killer had happened along at one of those times?

As if reading my mind, Devlin said, “I can tell you this much. She wasn’t killed here. Her body was brought to the cemetery for disposal.”

Was that meant to comfort me?

“Why here, I wonder?”

He shrugged. “It’s a likely spot. This place has been abandoned for years and the ground over the old graves is soft. Makes for easy digging. Cover it up with a few dead leaves and some debris and a casual observer would never even notice the soil had been disturbed.”

“But then the rain set in.”

His gaze returned to me. “The rain set in and you came along. Even if the dirt hadn’t washed away, odds are you would have noticed the fresh digging when you cleaned up the grave.”

Call me a coward, but I was glad it hadn’t gone down that way. “Who found the body?”

“A couple of students climbed over the wall for a little private party. They spotted the exposed head and torso and reported it to campus police. Dr. Ashby notified Charleston PD, and then met us at the gate to let us in.” There was a slight shift in his voice. “She mentioned that you also have a key.”

I nodded. “She gave me one when we signed the contracts.”

“You haven’t loaned that key out to anyone in the past few days, have you? It hasn’t gone missing or anything like that.”

“No, of course not.” I stared up at him in alarm. “You’re not suggesting that the killer used my key to get in, are you?”

“I’m merely asking you the same questions I asked Camille Ashby. It doesn’t appear the lock was tampered with, so the logical conclusion is that the killer used a key.”

“Maybe he didn’t come through the gate. He could have climbed over the fence like those kids.”

Devlin glanced around. “Those walls are ten, maybe twelve feet high and overgrown with vines and briars. It would be one thing to climb over with a bottle of Jack or a six-pack. Dragging a body over…not so easy.”

“He could have had help.”

“Let’s hope he didn’t,” he said, something dark and chilling running beneath his words.

I wondered what was going through his head at that moment. He struck me as a very thorough man, one so meticulous and driven he would leave no stone unturned until he found his answers.

Which brought me back to his ghosts…

Were they bound here because of him?

In spite of what my father had told me about the parasitic nature of spirits, I’d come to the conclusion that some did linger because of unfinished business, be it theirs or the unwitting host’s. This made them no less dangerous to someone like me. On the contrary, those entities worried me the most because they were often desperate and confused and sometimes very, very angry.

We fell silent and the night grew still. The mist muted the voices of the police personnel as they went about their grim business.

I started to ask Devlin how much longer he would need me, but another officer came up just then and he turned to speak to him in low enough tones that I couldn’t hear. I didn’t want them to think that I was trying to eavesdrop, so I moved away and went back to my silent lurking.

No one paid me any attention, and after a while, I decided I could probably just leave and no one would notice. The idea tempted me greatly. I wanted nothing more than to be home, safe and sound, in my own private sanctuary, but I resisted the urge. I couldn’t just leave after giving Devlin my word. I was a Southern girl raised by a Southern mother. Duty and obligation were as deeply ingrained into my psyche as the need to please.

As Papa had, my mother had instilled in me a certain set of rules by which she expected me to live my life. The more superficial edicts I’d long since discarded—I no longer ironed my bed linens and I didn’t always use a tablecloth when I dined alone. But going back on my word…now that was something I would do only under pain of death.

The hair at the back of my neck prickled a warning as the air around me stirred. I knew Devlin had come up behind me again, and I turned before he could touch me.

“The coroner’s finished,” he said. “They’ll be moving the body soon. After that, you can take off. We won’t be able to do much out here until daylight.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you know where to send your invoice.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Why not? You earned it tonight. Just one thing, though. When word of this gets out, reporters are going to hammer the university for a statement. If your name is mentioned as a consultant, they’ll likely want to get something from you on the record. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t release any information without first clearing it with me.”

“Of course.”

I had no intention of talking to the press about the grisly discovery in Oak Grove Cemetery. All I wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed and put this night behind me.

But a tidy ending was not meant to be. Everything in my world was about to change forever.

Including my father’s rules.

FOUR

My house on Rutledge Avenue was pure Charleston—a narrow, two-story clapboard with upper and lower verandas and a front garden surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.

More important to me, it was one of those places my father had long ago taught me to seek out. There were no ghosts in this house. It was a sanctuary, a safe haven, the ground beneath hallowed, but I had no idea why. In the six months I’d lived here, I hadn’t been able to dig up much of its history, only that the house had been built in 1950 after the original structure had been torn down.

Sometime in the 1990s, the owner had installed central heating and air-conditioning and divided the house into two apartments. Both units had access to a low-ceilinged, dirt-floor basement with brick walls and crumbling mortar—the only part of the original structure that remained—and a quaint backyard garden that smelled like heaven in the late afternoon when the Queen of the Night on the east side of the house started to bloom.

A medical student named Macon Dawes rented the upper level. I didn’t know much about Macon. Our paths rarely crossed. He worked a crazy schedule at the hospital and I often heard him coming and going at odd hours.

As I arrived home, I hoped to see a light in one of his windows and his old Civic parked in its usual spot. We were barely on a first-name basis, but tonight of all nights, I would have welcomed his presence. I didn’t relish entering an empty house alone, even one protected from the other world. Ghosts couldn’t penetrate the walls, but there was nothing to prevent a desperate killer from breaking a window or picking a lock to gain entrance.

But the house was dark and silent, the driveway empty. Palmetto fronds hung heavy and still over the fence as I approached the side gate, door key clutched in my hand. As I stepped through into the garden, a police cruiser pulled to the curb in front of the house and a uniformed officer got out. I didn’t allow myself to panic. In fact, I was relieved to see him.