Raising Innocence: A Rylee Adamson Novel(34)

It smelled just like the boiler room, exactly like what the supernatural left behind after snatching Johnny. There was a short list of supernaturals who frequented graveyards and only one I knew of strong enough to make children disappear as they were. And no, it wasn’t a vampire. Contrary to popular fiction, vampires aren’t much into graveyards and coffins.
The problem was, even I didn’t know much about this particular supernatural I was suspecting, so if I was right, I was going to be in for some surprises.
Breaking into a jog, I was at the caretaker’s hut in no time, banging on the door. Suspicions were all I had, but if I was right, I at least knew what we were dealing with when it came to the kidnapper. Or at least it was a start.
“Hello? Anyone home?” I banged my fist on the door again, rattling the thin wood on its hinges.
A muffled voice shouted out at me. “Bloody hell, give me a minute to get me pants on!”
I stepped back as the door opened, an older man with long grey hair and squinting eyes peeking out at me.
“What you want? A burial?” He shooed at me with his hands, “Go to the church, they do the arranging of burials for you. I just dig the hole.”
He started to close the door and I put my hand on it, stopping him. “No, I’d like to ask you a question. Do you get many grave robbers here?”
His eyebrows shot into his hairline and I thought perhaps I’d been wrong. Staring at me, he shook his head. Damn it, I’d thought I’d been on to something. Looked like I was back to square one.
I turned to walk away when his voice stopped me.
“How did you know?”
I spun around. “Know what?”
“About the graves that have been disturbed. Robbed isn’t quite the right word for what happened here.”
“Will you tell me about them, the disturbances?” Fingers crossed, this could be the break I needed.
He beckoned me in. “No one would take me seriously, just brushed me off like I was a crazy old coot.”
I followed him into his hut, the heat from an antique pot belly stove taking the chill out of the air.
“I’m the caretaker here. Name’s Harold. Have a seat.” He pointed to a solidly built chair.
l lowered myself into it. “I’m Rylee.”
“Good name. Warrior name, I think,” he mumbled as he bent and rifled through a box next to the stove. “Was going to burn these papers, just never got around to it.”
With an almost casual toss, he flopped a stack of papers onto the table in front of me.
Each paper contained a number, name and date, along with pictures in many cases. There were over a hundred sheets.
Harold pointed at the paper on top. “That number there designates the grave, the name of the deceased and the date the grave was disturbed.”
“Why do you have all these? I mean, I understand you’re the caretaker, but this is . . . .” I looked at the stack of pages, knowing without counting that there were a lot. More than just keeping records. “Extremely detailed.”
Giving me a smile, he looked over my shoulder, as if seeing things that weren’t really there. “My pa was a details kind of man. Taught me the importance of keeping things until they were no longer needed. If you’d been a day or so later, might be that all these would be gone.”
I flipped through the pages quickly, staring at the few pictures that Harold had pinned to the pages. Each grave looked not as if it had been dug up, but more like it had been dug out. Like whatever had been in the grave had clawed its way to the surface.
Gripping the paper, a shot of excitement zipped through me. “Can you show me some of these graves?”
Harold bobbed his head, and then grabbed his coat. “But you know, they stopped—all the grave robberies stopped. Haven’t had one in, oh, about—”
I finished it for him. “The last two years?”
Blinking his squinty eyes of indiscriminate colour up at me, he smiled. “Yup, that’s right on the mark. You a bobby?”#p#分页标题#e#
Staring at him blankly seemed to get my point across that I had no idea what he was talking about. He cleared his throat and clarified. “A police officer?”
“Private investigator,” I answered without hesitation.
“Ah, I see. Makes sense, the police, they’re too busy to be bothered with grave robberies. Too busy by far.”
He grabbed two umbrellas and handed me one. But the weather wasn’t bothering me anymore. Shit, this was why O’Shea liked to ask questions. Because when the puzzle pieces came together it was a freaking high like no other!
We made our way around the graveyard, Harold pointing out the graves that had been disturbed. All of them were children, all under five years old, with the exception of one—the oldest grave.