The Meadow 23 father never regained consciousness and I heard that their grandfather started stockpiling cash for a ransom demand that never came.” “What next?” Alannah asked, walking him back to 18B. They were just in time to see the body disappear into a thick white plastic bag. “Next, we wait until the medical examiner does his thing. Maybe we’ll get a print match and the kid will be a third generation pig farmer from Iowa.” Alannah smiled. “Instead of a third generation potato farmer from Idaho? I know you saw the scar above his eye.” Gaelan sighed, “I know. In just the right place for a little kid cut by flying glass in a car accident. And I agree that the resemblance to the statue is uncanny. But I want more to go on before I tell Randolph Ludlow, aka the man who runs the whole damn county, that we found one of his long lost grandsons in a shallow grave with a bullet in his head and, oh by the way, he was a junkie. If I were you, I’d be ready to throw a cemetery welcome party for my boss, because he is going to stroke out.” Alannah watched him drive away and began walking the cemetery perimeter on evening rounds. It was ridiculous to believe that wrought iron and barbed wire would provide security in a town designed to bore teenagers stiff. There were the pseudo-Satanists with their magic markers, dollar store decals, and sacrifices of half burned pink hair. There was the “I dare you to do me in the graveyard,” crowd with their used condoms and bright futures of soiled diapers and child support payments. The companion crypts were a favorite target of vandalism as were the larger Mormon stones with their temple carvings. Oddly enough, the chapel and embalming room had never been targeted. The kids Alannah chased out of the cemetery postured like pufferfish, but apparently God and the reality of bodily fluids scared the Bejeesus out of them. For the first time in a very long time, Alannah visited Caroline Greenburg Newman. “Your boy seems to be doing
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