The Gravedigger's Ball Read Online Free PDF Page A

assignment took him out of harm’s way. Her belief was wrong.
    Her memories of Smitty were set aside as Sandy maneuvered around police cars and wagons at the scene. Her thoughts turned to Charlie Mann. He was, after all, the man who mattered most to her, and it had been that way since they’d begun seeing each other three years before.
    He’d made her smile when others couldn’t. He’d become someone with whom she could see a future. But things had changed between them since Charlie’s last case, right after he shot and killed a murder suspect and a serial killer. Though both shootings were justified, Charlie had become withdrawn and introspective, and while he never said it aloud, Sandy felt as if a piece of him had died that day as well.
    Parking her car, Sandy donned her cap and raincoat and tried to put Charlie out of her mind. That wasn’t so easy.
    When she got out of the car, however, and saw the scene before her, any thoughts of the man she loved disappeared in the urgency of the moment.
    There were barking dogs and shouting voices along with the steady hiss of rain. Flashlight beams stabbed through the darkness between the trees. Yellow raincoats and blue jackets moved in every direction, frantically searching the woods for any sign of life.
    A hundred yards in front of her, in the middle of the winding road that ran along the edge of the woods, there were hastily erected barricades. Beyond them were news vans and cameras, satellite dishes raised high on hydraulic lifts, and reporters fighting for space on the rain-soaked tarmac.
    Information was still scarce, but the media knew two facts for sure. They knew that Clarissa Bailey, one of the richest women in Philadelphia, had died at the Fairgrounds Cemetery in what could very well be a homicide. They also knew that a police officer had disappeared in the woods while searching for the suspect in Mrs. Bailey’s murder.
    Even as Sandy watched them, bits and pieces of information were posted online, and in minutes, the news went international. “Cop Missing in Search for Heiress’s Killer” was the lead story on Yahoo. “Fairgrounds Cemetery” became the most searched item on Google. “Cemetery Ghoul Kills Socialite” made its way onto AOL. But the one that stuck was the headline that was posted on TMZ.com: “Gravedigger’s Ball Starts Early.” It was linked on Twitter and tagged on Facebook, and while Internet sites repeated every rumor, the conventional media struggled to catch up.
    TV reporters at the scene did stand-ups in the pouring rain. Cameramen pressed against the barricades in an attempt to get past the police. Writers shouted questions at every commander within earshot. All of them hoped to be the first to report whatever the cops brought out of the woods.
    Sandy could see that it would take more than a few cops to handle the media contingent, so she got on the radio and directed sixth district officers toward the barricades. That was when she saw the commissioner arrive.
    He was all broad shoulders and stern demeanor, and even in the rain, she could see the stress in his eyes when he got out of his car.
    Kevin Lynch had already lived through more than his share of dead cops, with a string of them killed on duty in the past year. He wasn’t looking forward to experiencing it again, and he was in no mood to answer questions. As he watched his officers engage in a frenzied search for one of their own and listened to the media shouting queries from beyond the barricades, Lynch’s brown face clouded over.
    “Commissioner, what’s the next step after the officer’s body is recovered?” shouted a reporter from a national news Web site.
    The assumption that Smitty was dead angered Lynch, and when he turned to the freckle-faced reporter and saw the young man grinning sarcastically, the commissioner felt himself poised to explode. Then Lynch saw Sandy looking pointedly at him, her eyes begging him not to be goaded into a confrontation. That look