Cemetery Lake: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  The one I want is tidy—no weeds, no long grass—but there are no flowers there either. I stand in front of it for about a minute before heading back to my car.

  The second location is a large shed at the far northeast corner of the cemetery. It’s separated from the cemetery first by a wooden fence, then by a line of poplars. It’s about the same size as my house, but there are no inner walls or partitions. It’s full of garden tools and sacks of grass seed and plant seed. There’s a tractor and a ride-on lawn mower and a digger. The tools that were needed yesterday to exhume Henry Martins were here all along, parked in a row. Instead contractors came and used their own equipment, and I wonder how different things would be now if they hadn’t. I take a look at the place, but nothing stands out—there are so many possible murder weapons in here, it’d take a week to examine each of them. This shed could be a crime scene.

  There is a stack of cinder blocks beneath one of the benches. Hanging up on a nail near the window is a coil of green rope. I reach up and roll it between my fingers. It’s made up of hundreds of individual strands of what looks like hemp. It’s the same stuff that was connected to the bodies, and would have swelled when it got wet. Thousands of people in this city probably use it.

  I walk over to the digger. There is fresh dirt on the teeth of the scoop. Sidney Alderman used it to bring my little girl up into the light. He probably laid her in the giant claw and drove her back here in it. I move around the shed, looking in every shadow, behind every item, pushing aside anything that could possibly hide the body of my daughter, and after ten minutes it’s obvious she isn’t here. I look back at the tools and the rope and this shed could easily be the place where four young women met their deaths. I stand in the center and slowly turn around, covering each angle with my eyes. Two wheelbarrows. Pieces of plywood. Buckets. Boot prints with chunks of dirt, bits and pieces of wood, tarps, ropes, workbenches. A horrible place to die. The air is musty, and I can smell oil and grass clippings. There are cobwebs and stains and warped boards and cracks in the glass. There are patches of rust in the roof and plastic buckets set below to catch the rain. There are shelves full of mechanical parts—levers, cogs, engine bits, most of them rusted.

  I climb into the digger and start it up. The seat is uncomfortable, and has sharp splits in the vinyl where the foam bleeds through and looks like snow. I pull up a lever to slide the seat back. I’ve never driven one of these machines before, but the simplicity of the levers and pedals makes it easy enough after a few minutes’ practice. The digger vibrates as I roll forward. It bounces up and down with every small dip in the shingle road. The wheels leave deep imprints in the wet lawn. A set of imprints head off toward the area where Emily was buried. I make a fresh set as I drive to the grave I stood in front of twenty minutes ago.

  Getting my daughter back is the priority, and anything that happens in between I’ll put down to God’s will. That ought to keep Father Julian happy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  There is an abyss. Those it waits for can stand on the precipice, some live there, and then there are those who sink into the depths as if attached to cinder blocks. I’m not sure where I stand, and that might be one of the problems with the abyss—you never really know if you can keep dropping lower. That’s what the last two years have been like. I slid into the abyss, and what I saw down there frightened me; since then, I’ve been doing what I can to pull myself away. Perhaps, though, all I’ve been doing is staying at the same depth, just waiting for one more moment to sink me lower.

  I think that moment is here. I don’t know. I hope the fact I’m indulging in some self-evaluation means I’m aware of the slide, just as an insane man can’t be insane if he is wondering if he is. A man who thinks he has sunk as far as he can perhaps hasn’t sunk that far at all. The problem is, when you’re sinking and not looking for a life preserver to pull you back, then perhaps you really are gone.

  I try making another call, but Sidney doesn’t answer. His phone is switched on, because it goes to voice mail after five rings. He’s probably sitting there staring at it. He’s got my dead daughter in the back of his car and that means he’s going to ignore my calls. He’s got his own dead son whom he has to start making arrangements for lying on a slab of steel in a cold morgue with a sheet draped over him. He has to start picking out coffins and flowers and headstone engravers. He has to pick out a suit for his son, and a funeral home, and he has to let people know so they can show up. He’s got a lot on his mind. But he has to figure out first what he’s going to do with Emily. And he’s worrying about what I’m going to do to him.

  I close my eyes. I question what I’m doing, but not enough to stop doing it. I send him a text.

  I want my daughter back and you’re going to give her to me. We’re going to make a trade. Trust me, it’s a trade you’ll be willing to make.

  I’m sitting in the digger underneath one of the bluest skies this summer. I’m parked back by the shed. It feels like I’m melting out here. It’s taken me the best part of two hours to do what I figure would have been a twenty- or thirty-minute job for one of the Alderman duo. Nobody came over to investigate the sound. Cemeteries don’t get a lot of foot traffic in the middle of the week, and I’ve had this area all to myself.

  The phone starts to ring. I flip it open.

  “Fuck you,” he says. “You murdered my boy, and you think you have something to trade?” His words are slurred, and I realize he has crawled back into whatever bar he dragged himself out of to take my daughter away.

  “I didn’t kill your son.”

  “He’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “Bring back my daughter and we’ll talk about it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” I say. “I want to make a trade.”

  “Trade? You have nothing that I want.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. Until I started playing your game. The digger wasn’t that hard to use. I got the hang of it in the end.”

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  “I’m where you were ten years ago,” I say, and I hang up.

  A few seconds later the phone rings again. I switch it off.

  There’s a faucet outside the shed and I’m thirsty, but I don’t want my lips to touch anything that Sidney Alderman’s lips might have touched. I climb down from the digger and step into the shade. I start going through the tools. Gardening equipment, mostly, but some carpentry stuff as well. Could be that twenty years ago and in a different life, Alderman had a hobby. Maybe he and his son would hang out in the shed and make wooden stools or birdhouses, and they’d shoot the breeze with small talk about angles and miter cuts and joints. There are power tools for every occasion too. I ignore them all and pick up a shovel.

  I carry the shovel back to the grave rather than taking the digger. I rest beneath a tree that shelters me from the sun. I try not to think about the last twenty-four hours that have led me here, then I realize it’s actually the last two years that have done it. I wonder if the man I was back then would ever have thought of pulling the sort of crap he’s able to do now. I hope not, then I figure that if I was going to hope for anything it’d be that the last two years never happened.

  That immediately leads me to start thinking about Quentin James. I have had two lives—the one before meeting James, and the one after—and I have been two separate people. Father Julian would say there was Theodore Tate with his family, and then there was Theodore Tate who went down a path he shouldn’t have taken.

  The same could be said of Quentin James. There was Sober Quentin and Drunk Quentin. There was probably a third Quentin too. One who recognized the change, but one who was kept quiet with beer and sports TV and mortgage payments. There is a third Tate—one who can’t say no to whatever the hell it is that I’m doing now. I felt so many things when Quentin told me he was sorry, but pity wasn’t one of them. I don’t feel it now either.

  It takes Alderman thirty minutes. The sun is a little lower, but no
less hot. The beat-up SUV comes along the road, the sun glinting off the windshield, which is the only clean surface on the vehicle. The vehicle sways left and right as he struggles to control it.

  I don’t move. He parks as close as he can get, and when the door opens he steps out and pauses, looking around for what I can only guess is me. He doesn’t see me. He has to pass through the section of trees where I’m sitting, but still he doesn’t see me. He approaches the grave slowly, swaying slightly as he walks, as if the world is dropping away from beneath him with every footstep. Me, I’d have been running. He reaches it and he stands at the edge and he looks down and he does nothing. Just looks into the earth and sways, staring, just staring, until finally he climbs in.

  I move toward him. The angle increases the closer I get, allowing me first to see the opposite edge of the grave, then Alderman’s head, and then the rest of him. He’s in there trying to pry up the edge of his wife’s coffin, but it’s difficult because all of his weight is on the lid. My shadow moves across the casket and he notices it. He looks up, having to twist his body to do it, which is a little awkward for him. He’s straddling the coffin like a horse, except he can’t get his legs over the sides. He’s looking up into the sun and has to hold a hand up to shade his eyes.

  “You fucker,” he says.

  “Where is she?”

  He gets to his feet and has to reach out to steady himself against the dark walls. I show him the shovel.

  “You think I’m afraid of you?” he asks. “You think I haven’t been waiting for something like this?”

  I smack him in the side of the face with the shovel—not hard, but hard enough for him to fall back, his legs coming up and his head bouncing into the coffin.

  “Jesus,” he says, touching his face. He leans to his side and spits out some blood, then wipes his hand across his mouth. “Fuck.”

  “Where did you put her?”

  “Fuck you,” he says. “Is my wife in here? Is she, you piece of shit?”

  “She’s there, and unless you want to join her you’re going to tell me where you put my daughter.”

  “Your daughter? How about you tell me where my son is? Or have you forgotten? He’s down at the fucking morgue!” The words forced from his mouth are surrounded by booze and spittle. “Yeah, he’s getting cut to pieces with fucking bolt cutters and blades, and you know what? You want to know the fucking punch line? You put him there!”

  There’s no point in arguing. No point in telling him over and over that I did not shoot his son. Casey Horwell has already convinced him otherwise. “My daughter. Where is she?”

  “You shot my boy.”

  “Tell me!”

  “You’ll never find her.”

  “Goddamn you,” I say, and raise the shovel as if I’m about to hit him again. He flinches away, and I take a step back. “Goddamn it,” I repeat, and I throw the shovel at him. I throw it hard. The shovel head hits him in the shoulder and bounces onto the coffin lid. Alderman falls back and braces himself against the wall. He starts massaging the impact point on his body.

  I curl my hands into fists; I’m shaking, and I’m not really sure exactly where this anger is going to take me. The bottom of the abyss is waiting.

  Alderman picks up the shovel and uses it to get to his feet. He reaches for the edge of the grave. I figure he must be drunk, because he puts his hands over the edge as if he thinks he can pull himself out and not have anybody try to stop him. I squeeze my foot down on his fingers. He pulls them back, raking the skin off the back of his hand. He looks up at me as if he’s the victim here, as if he’s done nothing wrong. There is a patch of blood starting to spread on the shoulder of his shirt and now on his hand.

  “The girls, what happened?” I ask.

  “What girls?”

  “What girls do you think I’m talking about?”

  He shrugs, but he knows. “I had nothing to do with them. And nor did Bruce.”

  “He buried them. He admitted to that. Did he kill them?”

  “Fuck you,” he says.

  “Or did you kill them?” I ask.

  “This is bullshit. All you’ve done is kill my son and you don’t even know why.”

  “How about you explain it to me?”

  “You’re asking the wrong man,” he says.

  “Who should I be asking?”

  “Who the hell do you think? Your pal Father Julian. Go ask him all about it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not saying another word until you let me out of here.”

  I back away from the grave.

  “Where are you going?” Alderman calls out.

  I don’t answer him. I walk over to his SUV. It’s dusty and there are several rusting stone chips across the front of it. The driver’s door is open and there is a ding, ding sound coming from the dashboard—his keys are still in it. I pop open the back door. My daughter is sprawled out in the back beneath a dark blue tarp, her hair all matted and limp, her favorite dress in better condition than her body. Her little body has been ravaged by decomposition. I lean against the SUV and I keep my eyes downcast, fighting the nausea, not wanting to look at her face because much of it has gone. It has rotted away, leaving a mask of such horror that all I want to do is scream. She should be in school right now. Should be two years older. Should be nine years old and looking forward to going home and getting her homework out of the way so she can spend time doing what nine-year-old girls do—which is what, I don’t know, but I should have been finding out. This world is so fucked up that it’s starting to make me think what Bruce Alderman did last night isn’t such a bad option.

  I close the door. I walk back to the grave. Alderman is still making his way out of it. He’s struggling because the dynamics are difficult for him. He’s drunk, his body can’t perform as well as a younger man’s could, his shoulder hurts and his fingers hurt, and he’s having difficulty getting up over the edge. He needs to be taller or stronger or younger or sober, or he needs a ladder. He looks up at me.

  “You son of a bitch,” I say.

  “So I was wrong. So you did find her.”

  “It’s time you gave me some answers,” I say, and I reach down and grab a handful of his hair in one hand and the front of his shirt in the other. I pull him up hard, wanting it to hurt, and he grunts as his body is dragged over the edge of the grave.

  “Ah, fuck, slow down, damn it,” he says, but I have no intention of slowing down.

  “I didn’t kill your son,” I say, and I keep pulling him upward.

  He braces both his hands over my hands to relieve the pain that must be flooding through the top of his head. I can hear scalp and hair beginning to tear. When he’s out far enough, he gets his knees on the ground and stops trying to hold on to my arms. Instead he twists his head, pulls down on my hand, and clamps his teeth over my thumb.

  “Shit,” I say, and I pull back my hand, but it’s no good. He’s biting hard, trying to sever the thumb.

  I can’t crash my knee into his chin because it’ll push his teeth all the way through. Instead I let go of him and hit him. His head moves, making his teeth rip at my thumb like a great white shark sawing through its prey by shaking its head. So I push forward. We both stumble, and a moment later we’re falling through the air.

  And back into the grave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mostly I land on Sidney Alderman. My elbow crashes into the coffin and my thumb is jarred from his mouth. My knee hits the wall, but the rest of me lands against the old man so the impact is cushioned. Alderman isn’t so lucky. He doesn’t have anybody to land on. Just his wife, except that her years of offering any support are over. So he lands hard up against the wood with the shovel beneath him—harder, I imagine, than if he were falling in there by himself. Because I’m falling with him, there’s my weight and there’s momentum and the laws of physics, and they all add up very badly for Sidney Alderman. His head bounces into the edge of the coffin.

&n
bsp; I push myself up, bracing my hands against the dirt walls and the coffin. Blood is pouring from my thumb. The edges of the bite have peeled upward, revealing bright pink flesh. I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief and wrap it tightly around the wound. It doesn’t hurt, but I figure in about twenty seconds it’s going to be killing me. I get to my knees and shake Alderman a little. There is no response, so I shake him harder. When he doesn’t stir, I take the next step and search for what I’m beginning to fear, putting my fingers against his neck. Blood starts to leak onto the coffin. The lid is curved slightly, so the blood doesn’t pool; it runs down the sides and gets caught in a thin cosmetic groove running around the edge of the lid. Drop after drop and it starts building up; it climbs up over the groove and soaks into the dirt.

  There is no pulse.

  I start to roll Alderman over, but stop halfway when I see the damage. The tip of the shovel is buried into his neck, its angle making it point toward his brain. His head sags as I move him, and the handle of the shovel rotates. His eyes are open, but they’re not seeing a thing. I let him go, and he slumps back against the coffin. My hands are covered in his blood. I stare at them for a few seconds, then wipe them on the walls of the grave, then stare at them some more, before shifting my body as far away as I can from Alderman, which isn’t far. I wipe my hands across the wet earth once more and clean them off on my shirt. All the time I keep staring at Alderman as if he’s going to sit up and tell me not to worry, that these things happen, that it could’ve happened to anybody.

  Jesus.

  I climb out of the grave. It’s a lot easier for me than it was for Alderman because I’m working with a whole different set of dynamics. I lie on the lawn, staring up at the sky that is just as blue as it was when I was sitting in the digger, digging up the grave.