When she reached the box, Kat understood why someone passing by could think it was a coffin. It certainly looked casketlike. More than six feet long, three feet wide, and about two feet deep, it was definitely big enough to hold a body.
Kneeling next to it, she inspected the box for signs of where it had come from and, hopefully, where it was supposed to go. She looked for an invoice stapled to the side or a company’s logo branded into the wood. She found neither. As she ran a hand across the box’s top and along its sides, the rough wood scraped her palm. Whatever its intended use, the box was definitely homemade, most likely by an amateur. Any craftsman worth his salt would have subjected the wood to at least some form of sanding.
Leaning in close, Kat sniffed deeply, detecting a faint trace of pitch. Pine. Just as she had suspected.
She wanted to believe the box had simply landed there after falling off a truck, but instinct told her otherwise. It was in perfect condition. No scratches or scuff marks. No signs of impact with the road. The way it sat—on its back, stretched tidily across the ditch—also raised suspicion. No box tumbling from a truck could have landed so perfectly without some assistance.
Its location was no accident. Someone had placed it there. Someone had wanted it to be found.
Finished with her examination, Kat saw no point in delaying the inevitable. Coffin or not, the box needed to be opened. Tugging on the lid, she noticed it was nailed shut at the corners and at two points along each side. She marched back to her patrol car and grabbed a crowbar from the trunk before returning to the box. With the crowbar’s help, the nails barely resisted when she pried the lid open and yanked it away.
The first thing she saw was a pair of wheat-colored work boots. Next was a pair of mud-streaked overalls that continued over a red flannel shirt. Finally, framed by the shirt’s collar, was the face of a man in his late sixties.
The full picture sent Kat scrambling backward. Standing halfway between the box and her car, she turned away and clamped one hand over her mouth to calm her gasping. She pressed the other hand against her right side, where a sudden fear jabbed at her ribs.
When a minute passed, Kat willed herself to look at the coffin again. The second glance was accompanied by the sad, stomach-sinking realization that she knew who the corpse was.
His name was George Winnick, and until this morning he had been a farmer who tended fifty acres on the outskirts of Perry Hollow. Kat didn’t know him well. Other than exchanging greetings at the Shop and Save or in passing on the street, they had barely spoken. But he was enough of a fixture in town for her to know he had been a decent man—hardworking and dependable. She also knew there was no reason he should be lying dead in a pine box on Old Mill Road.
“George,” she whispered as she unsteadily approached the body again. “What happened to you?”
His corpse had been crammed inside the coffin like a doll stuffed into a shoe box. His arms were folded across his chest, each open hand resting against the opposite shoulder. The ashen shade of his hair matched the pale flesh on his hands, neck, and face.
Two polished pennies sat atop each of his eyes, hugged by bushy, gray-studded eyebrows. Both coins had been placed heads up, Abe Lincoln’s profile glinting in Kat’s direction. The effect was eerie, the pennies looking like eyes themselves—dead and unblinking.
A wound marred the right side of his neck, partially hidden by his shirt collar. Pushing the fabric out of the way, Kat examined the gash. About three inches long, it had been stitched shut with black thread. Beads of blood had frozen to the thread, like raindrops in a spiderweb.
Similar ice crystals could be seen on George’s lips, which were coated with rust-colored flecks of dirt. That’s when Kat realized it wasn’t dirt she saw. It was dried blood. Lots of it, crusted around more black thread that crisscrossed his lips.
George Winnick’s mouth had been sewn shut.
Kat gasped again as the pain in her ribs deepened. It was an overwhelming sensation—part nausea, part horror. Still, she managed to make it back to her patrol car and radio Carl.
“I need you to listen closely,” she said. “Call the EMS squad. Tell them to get here immediately.”
“There’s someone inside the box?”
“Yes. George Winnick.”
Carl reacted the way Kat had expected him to—he prayed. She waited as he murmured a quick prayer for George’s soul. After the amen, he asked, “How did he die?”
Kat told him she didn’t know.
“What I do know is that you need to get on the horn and call the county sheriff. Tell him to bring the medical examiner. We’re going to need some help, because this—”
She stopped speaking when she realized she had no idea what this was. Nor did she have the first clue how to handle it. All she knew was that she had been right about the relentless chill. The cold was a bad omen.
Very bad.
TWO
It’s called a death sentence—that single line in an obituary detailing who died, how, and when. Henry Goll, who wrote them on a daily basis, enjoyed the nickname. He liked its sly wordplay, its mordant wit. Plus, he appreciated how the name hinted at a deeper, darker truth just below its surface: from the moment we are born, we are sentenced to death.
Part of Henry’s job was to make sure every obituary printed in the Perry Hollow Gazette contained a death sentence. For the most part, it was easy. A grieving family gave the information to the county’s only funeral home, which in turn faxed it to Henry. Using that as a guide, he sat in his cupboard-sized office and wrote a respectful overview of the deceased’s life. The death sentence always came first. It was the meat of the obituary, the only thing readers really wanted to know. The rest—family, work histories, achievements—were just side dishes to be consumed later.
Henry knew the obituary for George Winnick was a fake because it wasn’t a complete death sentence. Other than a name and a time of death, it contained barely any information at all.
George Winnick, 67, of Perry Hollow, Pa., died at 10:45 P.M. on March 14.
Five years of being the obituary writer at the Gazette had made Henry an expert at spotting fakes, which arrived with alarming frequency. He had no idea how anyone could see humor in that kind of prank, but many did. The worst offenders were teenagers, who often sent in fake death notices of much-reviled teachers. Others were sent by the alleged corpse’s friends, usually during a milestone birthday. Under Henry’s watch, none had managed to sneak into the paper. Whenever he saw an obituary claiming someone had died on his fiftieth birthday, he automatically threw it away.
He was close to doing the same with George Winnick’s, which had been sitting in the fax machine when he entered his office that morning. But because there was nothing suspicious about the age and date listed, he figured it was best to at least confirm it was a fake before relegating it to the trash.
Henry’s first and only call was to the McNeil Funeral Home. Tucked away on the far end of Oak Street, McNeil was a father and son outfit that had a monopoly on Perry Hollow’s dead. If someone in town passed away, the folks at McNeil knew about it.
Deana Swan, the funeral
