They stopped at the entrance to the Robertson tomb. The door remained ajar, just as the crime scene units had left it.
But Jackson started walking the area in front of the heavy metal doors.
A patch of grass and a small walkway led down to the winding gravel lanes that went through the cemetery. He moved slowly, studying every tiny stone, speck of dirt, and blade of grass. Of course, he reminded himself that the area had been trampled in the time between now and when the killer had left their last victim. Forensic experts had been in the vault along with the medical examiners. But their concentration had been on the tomb and the newly dead.
Nothing, nothing, nothing...
Then, something just a little off-color in the grass and dirt caught his attention—amber rather than white or the brownish color of the dirt or the green of the grass.
He bent low, reached into his pocket for an evidence bag, and carefully extracted what he had found.
It was the butt of a cigarette.
The MEs and crime scene techs would never have been smoking at a crime scene, even if they did smoke. Of course, anyone might have been walking in front of the tomb. But it might well lead them to someone they already had on their radar.
He wanted the DNA from it.
“Angela?”
With the butt safely in the evidence bag, he stood and looked around. She was nowhere to be found. He circled the tomb again, then realized the door was further ajar.
She had gone on in. He hurriedly entered himself.
She stood by the dais and coffin where Ethan Robertson lay, a frown furrowing her brow.
“What is it?” Jackson asked.
The tomb’s air held a strange stillness, and the faint scent of decay and decomposition remained, even though the recently murdered and ghoulishly displayed victims were gone and at the morgue for their autopsies.
“Did they miss anything?” Jackson asked her, wondering at her expression.
Angela shook her head. “It’s not that... I mean, our people are good, and the city’s people are good, too. I’m sure they went over the inside of the tomb with a fine-toothed comb, so to speak.”
“Then what is it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Something about the tomb itself is bothering me,” she told him. “I have no idea what it is, but...”
Angela paused, shrugging. “Maybe it will pop into my head at three a.m. or something. But... well, I’m sure we’ll be back here. I think I may study up on the architect who designed the mausoleum. You never know. Something in its history might—”
“Maybe,” he told her. “Remember, we’re just beginning this investigation, and answers never really come easily.”
“I know. And it has been a successful day. At the very least, we have a contact now in Colonel Clayborn. A good contact.”
“That is true. And I don’t know if it will mean anything or not, but I found a cigarette butt just outside the entrance.”
“It will be interesting if we can match it up to one of the people on our radar. Or if we see in the videos—those we found of the funeral—that no one was smoking. That would likely mean that someone was here at a different time. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it could mean something. Every little detail matters,” Angela said.
“I think we should head back, find out how the interviews have gone, and get the writer into headquarters.”
“Right.”
She remained, that strange frown knitted into her forehead.
“Angela?”
“Yep, yep.”
But instead of heading out, she turned around and approached the side of the coffin in the center, moving from the door to walk around the rectangular inside of the tomb.
Jackson followed her.
In most modern mausoleums, coffins were sealed into the wall, the names and dates of birth and death recorded on the marble slabs that sealed the dead into their slots. But the Robertson tomb was very old. Coffins lay on shelves. And deteriorating shrouds covered other remains that had been reduced to little more than bones, dust, and bits of fabric. Pieces of metal were here and there, maybe a watch, a pendant, or something worn and cherished by the deceased that had been left with their remains.
“I’m thinking of New Orleans, I guess,” Angela said. “You know, how remains are set in family vaults. The sun is so hot it naturally cremates a body in a year and a day. There can be horrid heat in this area, too, but they don’t sweep the remains into holding cells at the end here so another body can be put in its place. I guess they were out of shelving room. Maybe that’s why they created a dais for Benjamin’s father next to Ethan’s.”
“Possibly,” Jackson agreed, studying each of the shelves himself.
He didn’t see anything that appeared to be anything but what it should be.
At last, Angela threw up her hands.
“Let’s go. We may have to come back. Or whatever is driving me nuts might come to me later. Besides, you’re right. We need to question the living.”
Colonel Clayborn was not sitting on his tomb when they exited the Robertson mausoleum.
“Maybe he’s seeking help from a friend,” Angela murmured.
“Let’s hope. We’ll look for him again tomorrow. I think he was probably a fine and ethical man in his day—and he has remained behind in hopes of being useful.”
“Colonel Clayborn said that many stay to watch over their families, which we knew. But I feel bad. I forgot to ask if he has family in the area,” Angela said. “I noted the date of death on his tomb. He survived the Revolution and died in the early 1790s.”
“He’s been gone for over two hundred years,” Jackson noted.
“But that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have family in the area. I may do some research on him, too. After we’ve gotten through a lot of other questions, of course.”
Jackson nodded, heading for the car. “I want to get this cigarette butt I found to the lab. You drive. I’m going to put a call through to Patrick and ask him to get someone talking to Jefferson Moore. I want to speak to the man.”
“Of course.”
They returned to the car, and he called Patrick. He was with Mark and Colleen and had already listened to the interviews they’d conducted that morning. Now, the three of them were watching all the videos they could find on the big screen in the third conference room.
“You’re on speaker,” Patrick told him. “Did you get anything?” he asked.
“So are you,” Jackson said. “And, yes, we acquired a new friend.”
“Ah. A dead one, I take it?”
“Colonel George Clayborn. He couldn’t tell us much, but I don’t think Benjamin Robertson locked the vault when he left after his father’s funeral,” Jackson said.
“Maybe that was it,” Patrick murmured.
“That was what?”
“I told you, I listened to the tapes of the interviews you did with Benjamin Robertson and Debbie Nolan. There was just something in the way they were speaking. They weren’t lying, but they weren’t telling you everything they were thinking, either. I couldn’t quite read what, though. Anyway, I think we should speak with them again. Maybe shake things up. One of us should maybe just drop in and tell them we’re reporting on what we have—which right now isn’t much.”