26: Chapter 26 Exhuming Bones and Examining Them: Poisonous Marks Discovered

Los Angeles, California, Rose Hills Memorial Park, 2:40 AM.

The dead of night in Los Angeles is different from Washington.

The night in Washington is heavy and dense, carrying the moisture drifting off the Potomac River and the lingering cold-white afterglow of the fluorescent lights that never turn off in the Federal Government buildings.

But the night in Los Angeles, even at past two in the morning, still retains the heat radiating from the asphalt after the day's scorching sun, mixed with the scent of palm trees and the syrup drifting from some 24-hour donut shop in the distance.

Rose Hills Memorial Park is situated on the hills in the eastern part of Los Angeles, covering 1,400 acres, and is one of the largest cemeteries in the United States.

During the day, you can see the cluster of skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles from the hills,

but at this moment, 2:40 AM, the entire cemetery is shrouded in a deep, ink-blue veil of night, with only a few low streetlights along the perimeter casting cold, orange halos on the ground.

Section C is on the west side of the cemetery, bordering a dense California oak forest; it is the lowest and most secluded area in the entire cemetery.

Most of the tombstones here were buried in the 1940s, the stone already weathered and mottled, and the inscriptions on some of the tombstones have been worn away by moss and the erosion of time.

Row 12, Plot 21.

Eli Walsh stood before that tombstone, looking down at it.

The face of the stone was a gray granite slab about two feet high, its edges weathered into tiny chips, the inscription so simple it was almost sloppy—

"Burton Cramer, 1900-1945, Rest in Peace".

No epitaph, no words of remembrance, no decoration to make anyone take a second look.

It was just as abrupt as the speed at which the person buried beneath this stone had been forgotten by the world.

But Walsh had spent a full forty-eight hours preparing for tonight.

Two days ago, he flew from Washington to Los Angeles,

using not the name Eli Walsh, but a backup identification document issued by the Federal Government to internal intelligence personnel, the name on it belonging to a person who did not exist in reality.

He didn't stay at a hotel; instead, he borrowed a gray Chevrolet pickup truck registered under a third party from a retired old intelligence officer he had collaborated with during his time at the CIA,

the license plate was local to California, but it could not be traced back to any meaningful owner information.

He had scouted the location during the day.

He spent an entire morning disguised as an ordinary middle-aged man visiting a grave, wearing dark casual clothes, holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums bought from a supermarket, walking through the Rose Hills Memorial Park section by section.

He memorized the location of every camera; the surveillance coverage of the civilian cemetery was as full of holes as a sieve,

memorized the shift change times for the patrol security guards—once at midnight and once at 6:00 AM—and knew that Section C was not on the security guards' regular patrol route,

and memorized the best route to enter the cemetery from the nearest highway; there was an abandoned dirt road that circled up from the back hill, with no streetlights and no cameras.

He even factored in the day's weather; the forecast showed low cloud cover in the early morning, which would block out most of the moonlight.

Then, before midnight, he parked the pickup at the end of that abandoned dirt road on the back hill, turned off the engine, switched off all the lights, and closed his eyes to rest in the driver's seat for two hours.

When 2:00 AM arrived, he opened his eyes, picked up a black nylon tool bag from the passenger seat, pushed open the car door, and walked into the darkness.

At this moment, 2:42 AM,

Walsh stood before Cramer's tombstone and confirmed three things.

First, there was no one around.

Section C was at the most remote edge of the entire cemetery, the nearest residential area was three miles away, and at this hour, even the stray cats in the cemetery were too lazy to come this way.

Second, no camera could capture him.

The nearest surveillance camera was at the entrance to Section C, but that camera was facing east, and Row 12 was in the blind spot behind the camera's field of view.

Third, the visibility was just right.

The low cloud layer compressed the moonlight into a layer of fuzzy, silvery-gray scattered light, making it difficult for him to be spotted, yet not so dark that he couldn't see what he was doing.

He opened the black nylon tool bag and took out a compact folding entrenching tool,

not the cheap imitation kind sold in military surplus stores, but a genuine military-spec model: carbon steel blade, locking hinge, weighing less than three pounds, and the sound of digging was an order of magnitude quieter than a regular shovel.

He also pulled a small electronic detector from the tool bag,

a modified device that could sense changes in underground soil density, used to confirm the exact location and depth of the coffin.

This modified detector had a nickname within the intelligence community: "The Gravedigger," which Walsh had used plenty of times back at the CIA.

Digging up a grave for evidence—to ordinary people, this was a gruesome business they would never encounter in their entire lives.

But for a veteran like Walsh, who had been steeped in the intelligence community for half his life, it was just a technical job.

Like infiltration, wiretapping, surveillance, and interrogation, it was all part of the basic skills of intelligence work.

During his time at the CIA, he had dug up the remains of victims in mass graves in the Balkans, dug up the bodies of informants hastily buried by coup forces in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and dug up document safes hidden in cellars by drug lords in Latin America.

Compared to those, digging up a coffin buried eighty years ago in a quiet, peaceful city cemetery in Los Angeles was practically like planting flowers in his own backyard.

But his hand, gripping the entrenching tool, did not swing down immediately.

Walsh stood before the tombstone, looking down at that gray-white granite slab for a dozen seconds.

The night wind blew from the direction of the oak forest, rolling a few withered leaves at his feet onto the base of the tombstone.

Burton Cramer.

1900—1945.

Forty-five years old.

A middle-aged man who ran a newspaper office that was neither big nor small in the old downtown area of Los Angeles.

He could have lived a safe and stable life,

even if the newspaper's business was poor, even if he went bankrupt, he could have changed professions, found a normal editing job in the post-war era of California when everything was waiting to be rebuilt, and lived out the rest of his life in peace.

But he happened to choose to investigate the secrets behind the Hoover Dam, happened to bet everything on the truth.

And then he jumped off the roof of his newspaper office building.

Or rather, he was thrown off the roof by someone, and then it was written up as him jumping himself.

Walsh inserted the entrenching tool into the soil.

When the first shovel went in, the blade cut into the dry California soil, making a dull, crisp friction sound.

He didn't pause; the second shovel followed immediately, then the third, then the fourth.

His movements were not fast, unlike those grave robbers who were in a hurry to finish digging the pit.

His rhythm was steady, the depth and angle of every shovel stroke were about the same, as if he were using the shovel to flip through a thick history book where every page was written with lies.

Layer by layer, the soil was turned to the edge of the pit.

The soil in Los Angeles was somewhat dry and loose in texture, so it wasn't strenuous to dig,

but the deeper he dug, the darker the color of the soil became, and the greater the humidity; eventually, the blade began to get coated with moist black earth.

Walsh's breathing gradually became heavy, but he didn't stop to catch his breath.

After digging for about forty minutes, the tip of the shovel touched something hard.

It wasn't a stone.

The feel of stone is brittle, thin, and inelastic.

But the feeling when the shovel tip struck it was dull, heavy, and carried the specific, muffled echo of wood that had been buried underground for decades.

Walsh stopped the shovel.

He set the entrenching tool aside, crouched down, and used his palms to brush away the last layer of soil on the coffin lid.

The coffin lid was revealed.

The dark brown wood had decayed quite severely, and because of the pressure of the soil layers and the erosion of groundwater, several vertical cracks had appeared on the surface.

But the overall structure remained; the materials used for coffins in the 1940s, even if just ordinary pine, were much thicker than those cheap, high-density composite coffins of today.

Walsh crouched beside the coffin, looking down at the rotten wood.

He suddenly remembered that old saying that had been passed around in the intelligence business for decades: Dead bodies don't lie.

People lie.

The living fabricate testimonies, the police fabricate case files, newspapers fabricate news, and governments fabricate history.

But dead bodies cannot.

Bones cannot.

The manner of death will leave indelible marks on the skeleton—

Knife wounds leave cut marks, gunshot wounds leave bullet holes and lead residue, falls from high altitudes leave multiple fractures throughout the body, and poisoning leaves changes in the color of the bone tissue.

These traces require no witnesses, no testimony, and no one's cooperation.

They only need someone who knows how to look to crouch down and read them carefully.

Walsh placed his hand on the coffin lid.

The wood was damp and cold, the surface covered with a layer of slimy humus.

He took a deep breath,

the air in the grave pit had an indescribable mixed odor: rotten wood, damp soil, and a faint, extremely subtle trace of chemical smell from preservatives left over from who knew what era.

He pushed hard.

The coffin lid was pushed open by him from above.

The rotten wood made a long, sigh-like cracking sound the moment it was pushed, then slid diagonally to the side.

A complete skeleton lay quietly at the bottom of the coffin.

Eighty-plus years of time had dissolved all the skin, muscles, and organs,

leaving only a complete, neatly arranged human skeleton, which, under the faint moonlight, presented a slightly yellowish, aged ivory color.

The skull was positioned upright above the cervical vertebrae, the eye sockets staring emptily at the sky.

Walsh did not immediately reach in.

He crouched beside the coffin, silent for a few seconds.

It wasn't fear; he had seen more skeletons than living people when he was at the CIA.

This was a colder, more analytical examination that had nothing to do with fear.

Like a hunter who had finally found the hoofprints of the prey he had been tracking for three days and three nights, he would scan the surrounding terrain before crouching down to examine them.

Then he took a pair of thin white latex gloves from his tool bag, put them on, and took out a small flashlight.

He held the flashlight in his mouth, directing the beam into the coffin, and leaned down.

His gaze moved downward starting from the skull.

Cervical vertebrae, complete, no abnormalities.

Clavicles, complete, no abnormalities.

Ribs, twelve on each side, neatly arranged, no signs of fractures.

If he hadn't dug it up himself, he would have thought this was an anatomical teaching model from a medical school, with every bone in the place it was supposed to be.

His gaze continued downward.

Arms, complete, no fractures.

Pelvis, complete.

Leg bones, complete.

Ankle bones, toe bones... all complete.

From head to toe, there wasn't a single fracture.

Walsh took the flashlight out of his mouth, straightened his back, and looked at the complete skeleton below.

The expression on his face, in the darkness and under the moonlight, was almost unreadable,

but the frequency of his chest rising and falling was exactly half as slow as it had been a moment ago.

A person who committed suicide by jumping off a building.

A person who jumped from the top of a four-story office building.

Four stories...

According to the standard ceiling height for commercial buildings in the old downtown area of Los Angeles in the 1940s, the vertical distance from the roof to the ground was between forty and fifty feet.

Hitting a concrete floor from this height, the impact force would be enough to cause multiple fractures throughout the body.

At the very least, the leg bones would shatter, because your feet would hit the ground first.

At the very least, the pelvis would crack, because the impact force would travel upward along the lower limbs.

At the very least, the ribs would break, because after your body hit the ground, it would roll to the side or slam face-down onto the ground.

If the head hit the ground first, then the cervical vertebrae and the skull would not remain intact.

But Cramer's bones, from head to toe, every single one, were complete.

Not a single fracture.

Not even a trace of a hairline fracture.

Walsh moved the beam of the flashlight closer to the skeleton and began to examine the color of the bone surface.

He hadn't noticed this detail when looking at the whole earlier, but now that he was closer, the strong light of the flashlight hitting those old ivory-colored bones revealed something unusual—

The color of the bones was not uniform.

It wasn't that natural, overall yellowing caused by being buried for over eighty years, but a faint, dark blackness seeping out from deep within the bone tissue.

He focused the flashlight beam on the connection between the mandible of the skull and the cervical vertebrae, then looked down along the spine.

The dark black traces were particularly obvious at the small joints of the vertebrae, as if some substance that had once penetrated into the interior of the bones had left traces behind even after eighty years.

He then moved the beam to the ribs; the same dark black markings were most concentrated near the points where the periosteum attached to the ribs.

Poisoning.

Walsh slowly straightened his back.

His back leaned against the wall of the grave pit, the cold, damp soil pressing against his skin through the fabric of his jacket.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Cyanide?

Arsenic?

Or something else?

He wasn't sure,

he was no forensic pathologist, and he couldn't accurately determine the type of poison without a laboratory.

But what he was certain of was that Burton Cramer did not die from a fall.

A person who died from a fall could not have bones that were completely intact,

a person who died from a fall could not have bones covered with traces of poisoning.

This man's body, before it fell into the hands of the police, was already a corpse sent off by poison.

As for the "jumping off the building" from the roof...

That was staged.

Or rather, it was staged by someone.