The Butcher and the Wren(31)

The sound of an ambulance echoes through the street noise as it approaches. Leroux pulls the car behind Will’s. Without speaking, he and Wren step out into the thick air. The officers at the scene appear around the corner, looking serious and already glistening with sweat.

“Perimeter looks clear. Gates are secured. Landry and Knox are inside, clearing the way toward plot 1503.”

Will looks more serious than ever, and Wren knows why.

“You haven’t heard anything?” she asks.

He shakes his head and squints in the sunlight. “Nothing.”

The ambulance pulls in, silencing its sirens. Two paramedics jump out and grab kits from a small compartment on the side of the truck.

“Escort these guys behind us, will you?” Leroux gestures to the man and woman who just exited the ambulance. Will nods and retreats to fill them in before following behind Leroux and Wren.

The oldest burial ground in New Orleans stretches for what feels like an eternity ahead of them. The winding passages can play tricks on the mind. It’s eerily silent. This place acts as a vacuum. Even with the bustling city outside the walls, Wren strains to make out a sound, any sign of life. Static answers back. The dead keep their secrets.

Turning right, they make their way to the plots of underground burials. Everything is still. Even the large crow that has landed on a nearby tomb is uncharacteristically silent. He looks to them and sways slightly on the crumbling stone beneath his clawed feet. Wren wonders if he has come to watch this reveal.

“Shovels! We need shovels!” Wren shouts as she spots the freshly dug grave in an otherwise defunct part of the cemetery.

Leroux impulsively runs forward toward the upturned earth, spotting something else. Officers rush to cover the surrounding area. Guns drawn, they prowl and search for any waiting trap. Ignoring Leroux’s discovery, Wren rushes to the groundskeeper shed behind them. It’s locked, as expected, but a shovel leans conveniently against the small structure. She grabs it and runs back to the site where Leroux thrusts the object he saw in Wren’s face. It ticks loudly at her.

“An egg timer,” he says breathlessly. “It matches the alarm back at the other scene. We have almost exactly twenty minutes.” He is flushed and sweating.

“If someone is in there, that isn’t good. No way they’d be conscious under there,” she worries, slitting her eyes at the mound of fresh earth before them. “We have to dig. Now.”

Leroux quickly shrugs off his jacket, letting it fall to the ground, and pushes up his sleeves.

“You use the shovel,” he commands and kneels to start scooping loose soil, using his hands and arms as a crude shovel.

Wren digs furiously. She throws soil aside with abandon as more officers join in their efforts. They are silent workers. No one speaks. The only sound is the shovel hitting earth and collective heavy breathing. Wren’s hopes have shattered, but she tries to hide it from her teammates. She had hoped they would find someone out in the open or even in an aboveground tomb. Someone buried alive has very little time for survival, and forty-five minutes is a big stretch, no matter how healthy the victim is. They have no idea what this type of container this person was buried in, how deep it lies, and or how long they’ve been in there. They don’t even know if someone is in there or not. Despite all of this, Wren digs at a breakneck pace. Her hope shattered, yes, but not beyond repair.

Leroux eagerly takes the shovel from Wren’s hands, plunging it into the dirt as hard and fast as he can. The seconds tick away loudly on the old egg timer, and he can see on Wren’s face that every second counts. It feels like they have been digging for days. They’ve dug close to three feet down already. Leroux wipes the back of his arm across his forehead, smearing dirt along the sweat.

“Guys, what if it is a full six feet down?” an officer asks hesitantly.

Wren shakes her head and blows out some air. “Then we dig six feet.”

Leroux keeps going like a machine. He doesn’t respond to his colleagues’ concerns, but he feels them. Six feet of earth is an enormous amount to clear straight down without prior planning, proper tools, or decent hydration and rest. He hadn’t even noticed until now that the two paramedics on the scene have taken off their uniform shirts to scoop dirt alongside them. He catches the eye of a medic and nods a silent message of appreciation. She nods back and continues to pull dirt from the grave site.

They work together like a well-oiled machine. Dirt flies in all directions. All parts of this team are laser-focused. Leroux steals a glance at the timer, and the tip of the spade hits something solid. He slams it down again to make sure. Metal on wood. He glances again at the time. Four minutes left.

“We hit something!” he yells, moving a bit to the side to clear more dirt away from the wooden casket slowly becoming unearthed in the soil.

Wren scrapes her shovel head across the top of the casket to clear the dirt away, and others gather to scoop the bulk away from the end. The grave was loosely dug. He wanted them to find and open it, but he also wanted them to struggle a little first. Anticipation permeates the air as a handle on the end of the coffin is exposed.

“Let’s try to pull it from one end,” Will suggests, gesturing toward the exposed handle. “We can try to tip it to get the lid off without dumping more dirt inside.”

Wren nods. “You three pull up, and we will guide you from this end. When I say stop, stop. I don’t want you to tip it too vertical.”