Page 99 of Alex Cross Must Die

Virginia took a few steps forward. She stopped, then inched to theright. Suddenly, she felt the blood draining from her face. “Here,” she said softly. “Right here.”

She sensed Holmes behind her. She felt the cold edge of the ruler against her skin as he drew it gently across the side of her neck. Her knees gave out. She started to collapse. Poe jumped in to catch her.

“Brendan, stop it!” said Marple. Virginia’s head was spinning as Poe set her down on the sofa. Marple then sat beside her. Holmes prowled the space in front of them like an actor on stage.

“He sliced her throat here,” he stated, planting his feet in the spot Virginia had indicated. “Then he walked to the wall.” Holmes held the ruler at his side and moved to the corner. He knelt down on the floor and continued. “He jammed the knife blade between two bricks and snapped off the handle, leaving the blade buried, and coated with Mary McShane’s blood.” Holmes stood up. “And then he just … walked out. Just in time to open his business for the day. The Siglik Family Funeral Home.”

“Wait,” said Virginia, sitting up. “Siglik. Like the two brothers?”

“Their grandfather,” said Marple. “It all started with him.”

“How do you know that?” asked Virginia. “How can you know that from so little?”

“To a great mind,” said Holmes, “nothing is little.”

“The first few murders were in 1954,” said Marple. “All young people without family connections. All within ten blocks of the Siglik funeral home. Mary was the first. After her, he figured out how to dispose of the bodies.”

Virginia turned as Poe walked over with a file folder. He opened it and handed her a yellowed piece of paper. “This is where it started,” he said. “This story is why we’re in this building.”

Virginia took the fragile scrap of paper in her hands.DEATH IN A BAKERY, the headline read. She took a deep breath. The newsprintfelt warm in her hands. As she ran her fingers down the column, her hand trembled. She looked up. “If Mary didn’t end up in the subway tunnel like the others,” she asked, “then where’s she buried?”

Virginia felt Marple’s hand on hers.

“I think I can figure that out,” said Marple, “within a yard or two.”

CHAPTER 114

VIRGINIA WAS SHIVERINGin the damp morning air. The ground on Hart Island was still wet from the hard rain the day before, which made the dig a little easier. Yellow police tape outlined the area around the interment site. Four uniformed cops had staked out the perimeter. A friend of Marple’s had signed the exhumation order the night before. A judge from Bedford. Now a man named Stephen was directing the dig.

The backhoe had already excavated the first three feet of soil. Stephen and his crew were digging through the next yard of packed dirt with picks and shovels. They worked slowly, respectfully, inch by inch. From the date of death and Stephen’s detailed maps of the site, Marple had narrowed down Mary’s resting place to this small patch of earth.

Virginia stood with Marple on the right side of the hole. Holmes, Poe, and Grey stood a few yards away on the left. The only sounds came from metal slicing into earth. Virginia was thinking that otherwise, it felt a little like church.

She wished she could have brought Baskerville along for moral support, but rules were rules. No pets in the graveyard. She felt safe with Marple, though. It was like being with an older sister.

When they reached six feet down, two of the diggers climbed out of the pit, leaving Stephen alone below. “Hand me the small blade,” he called up. One of the other workers grabbed a garden spade out of a tool bag. Everybody else leaned forward, peeking down into the rectangular opening in the ground.

“There,” Stephen said, running the edge of the spade over a patch of dark earth. He was leaning forward over the vague outline of a coffin. Only scraps of wood and rusted nails remained. Stephen explored gently with his fingertips and tapped his blade lightly into the dirt, from side to side. He stopped. His tool was tapping against something hard. Virginia gasped. She stepped back from the edge, flushed and light-headed.

“Virginia? Are you okay?” Poe called out. “I can walk you back to the ferry.”

Virginia shook her head. “No,” she said, “I want to be here.” She felt Marple’s hand on her shoulder.

Holmes was on his knees now, reaching into the pit with gloved hands. The gravedigger passed him what looked like a long greyish stick. Holmes held it gently in both hands and settled back on his heels to examine it.

“Definitely female,” said Holmes. “Late teens, early twenties. Interred for approximately sixty to a hundred years.” He lifted the bone to the light and gently brushed away a few small deposits of dirt. “I’ll have to do more tests to confirm.”

Virginia sensed a cold wave washing through her, from front to back. It lasted for only a second. When it passed, she felt warm and calm.

“No need, Mr. Holmes,” she said softly. “It’s her.”

CHAPTER 115

One week later

A WARM BREEZEwas blowing through Calvary Cemetery as the small funeral party entered the former Siglik family vault. Marple led the procession. The granite edifice was no longer a crime scene. The yellow tape and fingerprint dust were long gone. And, in fact, the building no longer belonged to the Siglik family at all.

Until a week ago, the mausoleum had been confiscated property, taken by the city as part of the sentencing agreement with the brothers. It had been sold to a shell corporation in the Maldives in a multimillion-dollar cash deal, with the condition that the funds be distributed among the families of the Siglik victims. No one would ever know that the actual purchasers were three PIs from Bushwick.

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