Free The Gravedigger's Ball by Solomon Jones Page B

literally change the course of mankind. Those scholars believe that’s what ‘The Raven’ was really about. And some of those scholars—men like Irving Workman at Penn—believe the place where Poe stood is somewhere at Fairgrounds Cemetery.”
    Coletti remembered that Workman was one of the names on the e-mail Clarissa sent regarding Lenore’s visit. He asked his next question while jotting down Workman’s initials. “Do you know Irving Workman?”
    “I met him once or twice when I was lecturing at Penn, but Clarissa was friends with him,” Ellison said with disdain. “Workman had Clarissa convinced that Poe discovered his gift of sight here in Philadelphia. He even took Clarissa and her friends to the house where Poe lived.”
    “And where’s that?”
    “Seventh and Spring Garden.”
    Coletti wrote down the location. “So why did you think it was dangerous for your wife to listen to Workman?”
    “Because he kept telling Clarissa that there was another seer—a woman who could decipher what Poe found at the cemetery. Clarissa was obsessed with that woman, almost to the point where she’d do anything to find her. If a reasonably stable person like my wife could get so lost in Workman’s teachings, I figured there were those who would give their very lives for those beliefs, or worse, take the lives of others.”
    Ellison shook his head sadly. “Turns out I was right.”
    Coletti’s cell phone rang as Ellison stared down into the last few drops of his martini. When the detective took the phone from his pocket and saw the number, he answered immediately.
    “Okay,” he said after listening to the voice on the other end. “We’ll be right down.”
    Ellison looked on as Coletti disconnected the call.
    “That was the medical examiner’s office,” Coletti said solemnly. “They’ve found something on Clarissa’s body.”
    *   *   *
    With every passing second, Kirsten Douglas realized just how fortunate she was. Unlike Clarissa Bailey and Officer Smith, she’d seen the Gravedigger face-to-face and survived. Kirsten was the only one other than Mike Coletti to do so. It was that distinction more than anything else that landed her a guest spot on CNN.
    In less than a minute, she’d be on the air, and she was sweating profusely. Sitting in the studio at VideoLink for her first television appearance in twenty years as a crime reporter, with Philadelphia’s skyline superimposed on the greenscreen backdrop, Kirsten was nervous. Not only were the lights intense in the tiny room, but the air-conditioning seemed to be broken. And while the satellite technology was impressive, the squiggly wire attached to her earpiece was tickling her.
    In the hours since she’d sneaked past the police barricades and taken the only picture of Officer Frank Smith’s mud-covered body, Kirsten had become a national figure. She’d talked to the police commissioner. She’d generated millions of Internet hits. She’d sparked a fierce debate on media ethics, but she still couldn’t get a call back from Mike Coletti.
    As she waited for the interview to begin, a bead of sweat trickled down her face. She reached up and dabbed it dry with a napkin. Fortunately, her face was devoid of makeup except for a bit of lipstick. Studio makeup was apparently reserved for the truly important. Despite her instant fame, Kristen was not yet among them.
    “Five seconds.” The director’s voice came through the earpiece as she stared at the square camera in front of her.
    She reached up nervously to adjust her hair and took a last look at the notes she’d jotted down in front of her. Then suddenly the host’s voice was in her ear, and she forgot about her talking points and points of emphasis and everything other than the truth.
    He recapped what she’d done and who she was, and as Kirsten tried to focus on what he was saying and what she would say in response, she somehow heard the host welcome her to the show.
    “Thanks for having