Chuck Mays woke early on Sunday, skipped breakfast, and drove to the cemetery. Vince and Sam rode along, the dog in the backseat with his snout out the window. The Maserati handled the curves along the tree-lined highway with ease, and the way Sam was breathing in another perfect south Florida morning almost made Chuck jealous. It was Chuck’s intention to express his condolences to Neil Goderich’s widow at some point. But not today. In fact, he was nowhere near Miami Beach, where Neil had been buried two days earlier. Charlotte Jane Memorial Park was in Coconut Grove. It was McKenna’s final resting place.
Sunday would have been her nineteenth birthday.
Chuck parked on Franklin Avenue and followed the sidewalk around the corner to the main entrance. Older than the city of Miami itself, and situated on a few silent acres in West Coconut Grove, Charlotte Jane Memorial Park was in some ways the departed soul of a neighborhood that was rich in history and plagued by crime. Multimillion-dollar estates lay between the bay to the east and, to the west, the old Grove ghetto, where gunfights in run-down bars and package stores were all too common, and the “have-nots” tried not to get caught in the crossfire. After dark, street corners on Grand Avenue could service just about anyone’s bad habit, from gangs with their random hits to doctors and lawyers who ventured out into the night in deference to their addictions. But within Charlotte Jane’s iron gates rested the early settlers who sailed across the Florida Straits from the Bahamas. Shada’s family was from the islands, and she had chosen this historic cemetery for McKenna. Chuck was ashamed to admit it, but he had been too distraught to make such decisions. The fact that it was within a stone’s throw of south Florida’s oldest African-American Baptist church hadn’t fazed his wife. Shada’s father was Muslim, but religion had never been important in her life.
Chuck stood beneath the arching ironwork at the entrance gate and drew a breath. Even by Coconut Grove standards, Charlotte Jane was a unique burial ground. As was the old Bahamian way, bodies rested aboveground in tombs that looked like stone caskets. Tombs were so close together that visitors barely had enough room to step between them. Some were their original stone color, but others were painted white or silver and looked brilliant in the Florida sun. Many were in disrepair, however, either deteriorating with age or the target of vandals. Spanish moss hung from sprawling oak limbs like dusty old spiderwebs from a chandelier, and the overall impression was more one of haunted than hallowed ground. Chuck was fine with it. McKenna probably would have found it cool that Michael Jackson had filmed part of his famous Thriller video here-or at least that was the Miami lore.
“You okay?” asked Vince.
“I guess so.”
A large sign at the entrance warned him to lock his car and take his valuables with him. He hadn’t bothered. Visiting his daughter’s grave made it impossible to give a hoot about petty theft.
“Damn it,” said Vince.
Chuck turned and saw his friend sitting on a tomb and rubbing his shin. Vince’s guide dog had a sorry look on his face.
“What happened?” asked Chuck.
“Either I tripped over a tomb or a dead guy jumped out and kicked me in the shin. What do you think happened?”
Chuck gave him a minute, but he didn’t dare help him up. He knew how much Vince hated that.
“Sorry,” Vince said, rising. “I didn’t mean to snap at you like a royal smart-ass. Especially here. Today of all days.”
“Forget it,” said Chuck. He turned and continued toward the north end of the cemetery. Sam followed, and Vince was right behind his guide dog.
McKenna was buried beneath two large oak trees in one of the oldest sections of the cemetery. Hers was among relatively few tombs from the twenty-first century. The cemetery had been essentially full for years. Space came available only as the oldest tombs, holding bodies unknown, disintegrated. But it wasn’t just the new tombs that were decorated with flowers. Even Mrs. Blackshear, “Asleep in Jesus” since 1927, had a vase filled with plastic carnations. It was a touching gesture, even if by a stranger, but it saddened Chuck to wonder who might visit McKenna in eighty, ninety, or a hundred years.
And then he froze: A hundred yards ahead, between two oak trees, someone was at McKenna’s grave.
“What’s wrong?” asked Vince, sensing his vibe.
“Wait here,” said Chuck.
He started toward the grave, moving quickly between the tombs-much faster than he could have with Vince following behind him. The going was getting tougher, however, as he moved into the oldest part of the cemetery. Tombs were so crowded together that he had to put one foot directly in front of the other to walk between them. He was about fifty yards away when he noticed that it was a woman at McKenna’s grave. She was on her knees, clearing away weeds around the marker. But she wasn’t dressed like a maintenance worker. Her head was covered by a large scarf, hijab style.
Chuck picked up the pace until he was almost at a jog, but with his eyes riveted on the woman who was wearing the hijab scarf, he tripped and knocked over a porcelain vase. It crashed into pieces against the concrete base of a tomb.
The woman at McKenna’s grave looked up. Just thirty yards separated them, and Chuck’s gaze cut like a laser over the ragged rows of tombs. The scarf covered her hair, but she wore no veil or sunglasses. She stared back at him for a moment-and then she sprang to her feet and ran.
“Stop!” Chuck shouted. He started after her, but the tight spaces between tombs made it impossible to gather speed. The north end of the cemetery had no fence, and the woman was getting away.
“Wait!” Chuck shouted, but the gap between them was widening. Meaning no disrespect to the dead, Chuck hopped up on a tomb and ran at full speed, leaping from one to the next the way superheroes leaped from building to building. The woman was doing the same, but she was much lighter on her feet. Chuck was losing ground.
Come on, Mays, faster!
He picked up the pace, but the older crypts were spaced so irregularly that it was hard to hit his stride. He hopped from a white tomb to a silver one, and then to a crumbling marker for a pioneer unknown. He was keeping one eye on the woman, who was pulling away, when he caught sight of trouble. Vandals had destroyed the next tomb in his path. The lid was a pile of rocks, and the empty tomb lay open. Chuck reached for another gear and soared right over the battered tomb. He landed hard-all 240 pounds of him-on the next tomb over. It was a century old, however, and it couldn’t support his weight. Chuck crashed through the lid like a human cannonball. He was almost up to his knees in a smashed tomb, but the pain made the horror of it almost irrelevant.
“My leg!”
Chuck pulled himself out, rolled onto the adjacent tomb, and lay on his back. Surely the woman in the hijab scarf was long gone, and even if she weren’t, giving chase was out of the question. His only hope was that he hadn’t destroyed his ankle. He was staring up at the sky, trying to bring the pain under control, when he heard Vince approaching with his guide dog.
“I heard you yelling at someone,” said Vince, “and then a crash. What happened?”
Chuck groaned, then fed Vince his own line: “Either I tripped over a tomb or a dead guy jumped out and kicked me in the shin.”
“I’m serious,” said Vince. “Were you chasing after someone?”
Chuck was winded from the chase and needed to catch his breath. He listened for a car engine or other sound of the woman’s getaway, but the streets around the cemetery were quiet, and he was still trying to understand what had just happened.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” said Chuck.
“I already think you’re crazy.”
Chuck would have laughed under any other circumstances. Instead, he sat up, scratched his head in disbelief, and said, “I think I just saw Shada.”