Free Judgment of the Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor Page B

round-skull carver seemed to have done most of his work, and still she’d found nothing.
    She was looking along one of the back corner rows when she saw the distinctive death’s-head. It wasn’t one of the round-skull carver’s, but immediately she recognized the shape of the skull and the strange Medusa hair. She knelt down in front of it and cleared some dead grass away from the base. The stone wasn’t signed, but it had to be by Josiah Whiting. She knew it as certainly as if he had signed his name. Sweeney felt a little buzz of excitement as she checked the date on the stone. The Abner Fall stone in the South Burying Ground had been dated 1760. This one had been made sometime about 1773, when John Stiles, buried beneath it, had breathed his last.
    In her notebook, Sweeney found the quick sketches she’d made of the Abner Fall stone and compared them with this one. The differences were startling. Between 1760 and 1773, Josiah Whiting had radically altered his distinctive Medusa head. This mask was elongated and the hair had a different feel to it. It rose above the head in a more frantic way, the strands thinner and longer. The skeletal face seemed more haunted and desperate, the eyes wild. Sweeney looked closely and found that the circles were smaller and the pinpoint pupils larger, which accounted for the look. Whereas the death’s-head on the Abner Fall stone had seemed peaceful and bland, this one looked to be in torment.
    She studied the lettering and took measurements. Her initial instinct that the letters were precisely centered on the stone was borne out by her tape measure. Josiah Whiting had been a singularly exact stonecutter during a time when many gravestone makers had made up for their lack of planning by squeezing extra letters in at the end of a line or above the other letters. She felt a sense of respect for this craftsman who had worked so long ago.
    Sweeney took a series of pictures of the stone in the midday light, made some notes, and was starting her search for more of Whiting’s work when she looked up to find Pres Whiting watching her from the back of the cemetery.
    “Hi,” she called out. He was wearing the Red Sox cap and a woolen sweater that looked a little too hot for the day. “What a coincidence.”
    He came closer, clutching his backpack and looking a bit afraid. “No,” he said nervously. “It’s not a coincidence. You said you were going to come to the cemetery, so I was checking for you.”
    “Oh. Well, I’m glad you found me. How are you?”
    “All right.” He stood awkwardly, looking around him at the stones.
    “So, what have you been up to since yesterday?” she asked.
    “Oh, just, like, school.” He blushed a little.
    “Yeah? Isn’t today Tuesday? It’s been a while since I was in school, but I remember we usually went on Tuesdays.”
    “Well…” He looked around the cemetery as though he was looking for someone. “I don’t know. It’s just that I get so bored there. I would rather learn stuff out here.”
    Sweeney, who remembered feeling the same way, had to refrain from telling him that he probably was learning more out here than he was in there.
    “I found another Josiah Whiting stone. I was just about to start looking around for more. Do you want to help me?”
    He brightened up at that and followed her up and down the rows of stones as she looked for something that reminded her of the carver.
    “Here we go,” she said as she stopped in front of a smaller stone with the characteristically skinny shoulders and a variation of the Medusa death mask.
    “Annie Gooding,” Pres read out loud. “She was born in 1761 and she died in 1774.”
    “It’s later,” Sweeney said after a moment, trying to figure out if he’d realized she was only thirteen. “His style has evolved over time.”
    “That man looks crazy,” Pres said.
    “He does. He looks really crazy.” She took some photographs and made a few notes.
    “Why do they put them on