CHAPTER 21

I CREPT DOWNSTAIRS AT THE appointed hour and, in case she should awaken, left Mrs. Mooney a note explaining that my absence was due to a medical emergency.

Eakins was outside in a carriage; we immediately set out. Neither of us had experience in nocturnal intrigues, so we agreed to err on the side of caution and both of us were as vigilant as possible during the ride to South Philadelphia. Eakins made a number of turns and circles in order to detect anyone who might have been following, but we seemed to be alone on our route. Rather than proceed all the way to St. Barnabas, Eakins stopped about a half-mile away. He tied up his carriage in a quiet part of town where it was unlikely to attract attention, even at such a late hour.

We took great care on our walk to the cemetery, secreting two short shovels under our overcoats. Eakins also carried a hooded lantern, which was kept shut, emitting virtually no light. We glanced over our shoulders frequently and occasionally stopped abruptly to listen for other footsteps. Except for the distant barking of dogs and a lone owl, we heard nothing. It was dreamlike, prowling down the quiet streets in long coats on a cool, dark night, the moon and stars largely obscured by an overhang of low clouds. For his part, Eakins seemed to observe the night as a panoply of muted color, a study in composition and design.

We arrived at the back fence of St. Barnabas in about fifteen minutes, and once more waited in silence to ensure that we had no unseen companions. It was then that my heart began to race and my hands grew moist. Even in the half-light, I could see the painter had been affected similarly.

The fence was low and easy to scale, and we were over in a matter of seconds. Once we entered the cemetery grounds, we had journeyed to the far side of the law. If apprehended, we had agreed that our only defense was to admit exactly why we were there, of our suspicions of foul play in the death of Rebecca Lachtmann, and a desire to determine if those suspicions had any basis before leveling accusations. That explanation might not totally spare us the wrath of the authorities, but might mitigate against the most serious of charges. We fervently hoped, of course, that no such account would be necessary.

With April soon upon us, the ground had lost the hardness of the winter frost and we made our way silently through the cemetery, navigating carefully through the rows and rows of graves. It was a simple matter once I had noted the designations of two or three of the rows to move toward the location where the five cadavers in question had been interred.

The section that St. Barnabas had allocated for Reverend Squires’ charges was an uncared-for area at the far end of the cemetery. The rows of shabby graves were interspersed with large trees and would most certainly be avoided by anyone who did not have specific cause to be there. I wondered how much worse Potter’s Field could have been than this grim and neglected place.

Although the silence was, in its own way, as unnerving as sound, we were both relieved that we were so unlikely to be discovered while completing our task. I counted eight graves up from the marker at the end of the proper row to a recently filled mound of earth marked with a simple cross. Without a word passing between us, Eakins and I threw off our coats, grabbed our shovels, and began to dig.

Immediately under the surface, the soil was rocky and surprisingly difficult to move for being filled in so recently. I was unused to such labor and tired quickly. Eakins, however, despite his slight frame had impressive reserves of strength, much as Charlie had shown shoveling the ice. I began to wonder if common assumptions of size and musculature might not be completely false.

We had gotten down about eighteen inches when my shoulders began to ache. Fortunately, just a few inches later, Eakins’ shovel hit the flat wooden top of the pine coffin. Paupers’ graves, even when subsidized by Reverend Squires, were not deep. About three minutes later, we had shoveled off the remaining earth and cleared the top of the lid. Eakins’ shallow breathing was the only sound I heard.

I wondered in what state the body would appear, how much decomposition would have occurred, even in cool weather. Other than identifying the body, would I be able to learn anything at all? A feeling of horrible ghoulishness passed through me that I was eager to lift off the lid. I reached down, took a deep breath, and used the end of the shovel to pry it up.

Eakins gasped. “My God, what is that?” he exclaimed although his voice barely rose above a whisper.

Inside the coffin, rather than the remains of a slender, light-haired young woman, there lay a large, dark, shriveled object. The stench was overpowering and immense insects were everywhere. A moment later, a rat scurried from under the body out a hole it had gnawed in the coffin’s soft pine. Eakins turned away to keep from retching. As I had predicted, witnessing surgery had not prepared him for this. I hastily closed the top.

“What is that?” he repeated, his voice wavering.

“It is a Negro who died of alcohol poisoning,” I replied. “We autopsied him the same day as I saw the girl.”

“Then where is she?” he asked, averting his eyes from the coffin as if it contained a spirit.

“Perhaps I counted wrong.” I lifted myself out of the hole, and checked the row again. Holding the lantern closer to the ground, I saw that I had missed a grave and therefore we had dug one too far. When I told Eakins of my error, he could barely restrain his fury, but there was little time for recrimination. We fixed the top of the Negro’s casket, filled in the hole, and dug another, one site over. By this time, my shoulders were quivering with fatigue and my palms burned.

When I pried open the top of this second coffin, we faced another decomposing corpse, this time of a young girl with fair hair, wrapped in a brown shroud. The skin on her face had shrunken taut. Vermin had been at the eyes. As I moved the thin fabric aside, I heard Eakins emit a series of soft sobs. With one quick cut of the scalpel, I cut through her paper-dry skin, down to the ribs, and exposed the telltale nodules. There could be no doubt now: We had found Rebecca Lachtmann.

But I was not yet finished. I barked at Eakins to hold the light over her abdomen. In the slanted light from the lantern he looked as ashen as a cadaver himself.

My main objective was to determine if an abortion had been performed or begun, and to that end my first task was to determine if any fetal evidence remained in the uterus. From there, I was hoping to discover some indication as to the cause of death, but there was a quite severe limit to the information I might hope to extract from Rebecca Lachtmann’s corpse. Drug residue was undetectable and, in any case, it is unlikely that anesthetic would have been used in such a procedure. Ordinarily, the most likely cause of death from abortion would have been internal bleeding—all but impossible to detect, particularly in a cadaver at this stage of decomposition. In this case, however, I suspected another immediate cause of death if the operation had been botched.

I made a vertical cut through the desiccated skin of the girl’s abdomen from breastbone to pubis, then transverse cuts on top and bottom. The skin peeled back easily. The intestines and uterus were almost gone, but what was left was sufficient to tell me what I needed to know.

I looked up at Eakins. He was struggling to hold the lantern steady, a look of frozen horror on his face.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be on our way in moments. Our time wasn’t wasted. I found what I came for.”

“Thank God for that anyway,” he replied in a raspy whisper.

“And when you fine gentlemen tell me, we’ll all know,” said a voice from the shadows.

Eakins and I lifted our heads. A man in a bowler hat was moving forward toward the grave site. He sported a handlebar mustache and had a revolver leveled directly at us.