Cemetery Lake: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Jesus.

  I get up and start staring at Sidney Alderman from different angles that don’t improve the situation. I try thinking about Emily, looking over at the SUV that is hidden by the trees, knowing she’s in the back, hoping her presence will make things seem better than they are. Hoping to justify Alderman’s death by thinking he deserved it. I try this, but it doesn’t work. It should. But it doesn’t. He deserved the chance to tell me everything he knew about the dead girls, and those dead girls deserved that too. I think about Casey Horwell and I wonder how she’d react if I called her and told her where her story had led. I figure she’d be thrilled—it’d give her the airtime she is desperate to get.

  I walk over to the trees so I can see both the grave and the SUV. I look from one to the other. Is there a next step? I figure there is. There always is. I have, in fact, two first steps to choose from—the problem is each one heads in a different direction.

  The first one requires me to reach into my pocket for my cell phone and call the police. Only I don’t. They’ll say I wanted this to happen. They’ll say Alderman pushed me too far, and that I reacted. Only they’ll say I had time to calm down, because there were several hours in between Alderman taking Emily out of the ground and me putting him in it. Hours in which I dug up his wife’s grave, spoke to the priest, and continued the investigation. So they’ll say I didn’t snap. They’ll say it had to be premeditated, because I had plenty of opportunities to go to the police, but I didn’t. They’ll say I knew what was happening, that I looked into the abyss and dived right in.

  I go with the other direction.

  I climb back into the grave and roll Sidney Alderman over. His blood is now pooling on each side of the coffin. I tug at the shovel, but at first it doesn’t move. It’s caught on something inside his body. I shift it from side to side, loosening it like removing a tooth, and it comes away with the squelching sound of pulling your foot out of mud. I toss it out onto the grass and climb back out.

  I walk to the other side of the trees and scan the graveyard. There isn’t a soul in sight. I walk back and start to scoop dirt on top of Alderman. It hits him heavily: some pieces stay where they hit, others roll down his side and into the blood. The sound can’t be mistaken for anything other than dirt against flesh. I drop the shovel. There are black crumbs of soil stuck on the end of it, glued there by Sidney Alderman’s blood. I make my way back to the shed and return with the digger. I can only take the road so far before I have to drive over and around other graves and around trees to reach the plot, and when I get there it doesn’t take as long to fill the grave as it took to empty it. When I’m done I drive the digger back and I stand in the shed, trying to keep my feet under me as the world sways. Another Tate has just been added to my collection of personalities. Each one more messed up than the other. Leading me where?

  A tightness spreads across my chest, and suddenly the shed seems way too small, the walls cramping in, the ceiling lowering down. I get outside only to find that the whole world doesn’t seem big enough anymore.

  The clouds are back, the sun completely gone now. Dusk is here, and it’s a little hard to make out the scenery. I find the SUV and drive to my daughter’s grave. There I sit until a few nearby mourners leave the area. Then I carry her gently, scared she’ll fall apart, scared that I’m going to fall apart. I rest her on the ground, then climb six feet closer to the Hell that I’ve proven again I’m destined for. I reach out and scoop her up, then lay her down. She doesn’t look like Emily. She may be wearing the same dress, have the same hair, but everything else is different. It’s different in a way I don’t want to think about. I tuck her hair away from what face she has left and stroke it behind what ears she has left. I close the lid, not wanting to spend any more time with her, but at the same time I want to spend all night here, holding her hand.

  I use the same shovel that killed Sidney Alderman to bury her. It seems right that I do it this way, and I relish the pain that courses from my thumb and up through my entire arm. It takes me an hour, and when I’m done my shirt is covered in dirt and is damp all over, and the day is dark and the makeshift bandage on my thumb even darker. I throw the shovel in the back of the SUV. The vehicle is covered in my fingerprints. My own car is still here. I’m a murderer, and if I’m not careful the world is soon about to know.

  I drive back to the shed. I find some turpentine and soak some rags in it, then I go around wiping down every surface I’ve come into contact with. I drive to Alderman’s house and park up the driveway and I do the same thing there. I wipe down the SUV and I carry the shovel back to my own car. When I leave, nobody follows me. Nobody seems to care.

  I drive to the nursing home. The staff at the home doesn’t appear thrilled to see me. Carol Hamilton has gone for the day, and nobody else asks me what in the hell I was on about this morning. Nobody asks why I look like shit, my clothes messed up, my skin black with dirt, why I have a filthy handkerchief on my thumb. I spend an hour with my wife, and now more than ever I need something from her—a squeeze from her hand, or her eyes to focus on me and not past me—but she can offer me none of this. I don’t fill her in on anything that’s happened. I stare out the same window she stares out, and I see the same things, and this is the closest I have felt to her in two years. Part of me envies her world.

  When I get home I use a saw to cut the shovel into half a dozen pieces. I wipe each of them down, but I know I’ll need to do more than that—will have to dispose of them where they’ll never be found. I climb into the shower then, and watch the dirt and blood wash away, though I still feel covered in it. I remove the handkerchief from my thumb and rinse the wound, which continues to bleed weakly. It needs stitches, but I’m not going to get them. I bandage it and make some dinner, but I can’t eat. I turn on the TV, but can’t understand what the news anchors are even talking about. I grab a beer and sit out on the deck and stare at a piece of concrete we left exposed five years ago when we built the deck. The cement was wet and we carved our names into it so they could never be washed away. Daxter comes out and jumps up on my lap, but only stays a few seconds before jumping back down. I stare at the names in the cement as I finish my beer, and then I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom while looking for sleep. I think of Quentin James and the Alderman family and the four dead girls I’ve never met. I have robbed their families of any closure, because the man who could help me is dead. Any hopes they had for answers I took down into the abyss with me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  At four in the morning I give up on sleep and sit at the table drinking coffee. I keep going over what I’ve just done, as if by picturing each detail there might still be the chance to go back and change it.

  Two years ago, after I spoke to Quentin James, I slept like the dead. I got home and made some dinner, I watched some TV, and an hour after midnight I went to bed. It was a new day and I was a new man, and when I slipped between the sheets I closed my eyes and pictured my family and I fell asleep. There were no nightmares. No questions. No guilt. I remember waiting for the guilt. I went and spoke to Father Julian and confessed my sins and waited for it to kick in, but it didn’t. I slept like a baby that night.

  But not this time.

  I drive back to the cemetery. The night is cold and daylight is still a few hours away. On the way I throw yesterday’s clothes into a dumpster, just as hundreds of guilty men before me have done. At the gravesite where Rachel Tyler was dug up I stand next to the corner of the lake and I think about the choices that have made me who I am. Then I realize they were choices made for me. Quentin James started me down this road. He gave me no option but to drive him out to the middle of nowhere and leave him behind. What else could I have done? Let him serve his time in jail so he could kill again when they set him free? Fuck those people who think that alcoholism is a disease. Cancer is a disease. Tell people with cancer that alcoholism is a disease and see what their views are. It’s all about choice. People choose to drink. They don’t choose
to get leukemia. So James had only himself to blame. He chose to keep drinking. He could have chosen to stop. Could have chosen to get help. He chose the path I took him down.

  I kick a clump of dirt into the water and watch it disappear. Do I have limits? Do I kill the next person I suspect is a murderer? Hell, what about the next time I have to stand in line somewhere and I get sick of waiting? Gun down those ahead of me? Shoot the guy servicing my car because he tries to stiff me on the bill?

  The crime scene still has tape fluttering in the breeze. It isn’t really a crime scene. It’s more of a depraved scene, where the dead were replaced by a different dead. The digging equipment has gone. The tents have been taken down. The grass has been trampled flat. The circus that came to town has left. I stare out at the lake. I wonder how deep it goes, and how it was down there in the water for the divers. I go over the last two days, trying to filter everything until the answers are clear, but if there are any answers I keep missing them.

  When I move away from the water, I don’t look back. I reach the caretaker’s grave and I stand next to the turned-over dirt, and I listen to the wind and the early morning and I listen for a voice coming from beneath my feet. There is none. I drive to the church. I leave my car running and walk up to the big doors and start banging on them, breaking the promise I made to Father Julian that I’d never return. There is no response, so I walk around the side and start banging on a much smaller door.

  Father Julian yells at me to hang on. A few moments later the door unlocks, then swings open. He is wearing a pair of faded pajamas and a robe. His hair is stuck up on one side.

  “Theo. What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?”

  “You have to help me,” I tell him.

  “Help you? I’ve done enough of that lately.”

  “Please, this is important. Sidney Alderman, was it him?”

  “I can’t . . .”

  I reach out and grab hold of his arm, and rest my other hand on his shoulder. I grip him tightly and pull him forward so our faces are almost touching. “Was he the one?”

  “Theo—”

  “If he was, you don’t have to tell me. You wouldn’t be breaking the confessional seal,” I say, and I can hear the desperation in my voice. “But if he isn’t, if he didn’t confess, you can tell me. God won’t care about that.”

  “What have you done, Theo? What have you done?”

  “Tell me.”

  He looks into my eyes, because at this distance there is no alternative. Slowly he then starts to shake his head. “Go home, Theo.”

  “Not until you tell me.”

  He reaches beneath my grip and pushes me in the chest. I stumble back and don’t fall down, but I feel like I’ve fallen anyway. Back into the abyss.

  “Bruce buried those girls for somebody,” I say. “Was it his father?”

  “This has gone on long enough.”

  “Was it for you, Father?” I ask, unsure where the question is coming from. “Did you kill those girls? Was Bruce burying them for you? Sidney said to ask you about it. He said you knew a lot more than you were saying. How deeply are you involved? Did you kill those girls? Or are you just happy to protect the man who did?”

  “Get out of here, Theo. Get the hell out of here or I’m calling the police. I mean it.”

  He takes a step back and slams the door.

  I stand in the same spot for half a minute, wondering if the exchange really happened the way I recall it—whether Father Julian had Bruce bury those girls—and questioning what insanity has come over me to think such a thing.

  I’m sure he watches me from somewhere inside the church as I make my way back around to the car. I feel dizzy, and I feel sick, and my stomach feels hollow, as if I haven’t eaten in months. I climb into my car, and I drive away from the graveyard, certain now that the man I killed was certainly one sick son of a bitch, but he was also innocent of murder. I drive away, thinking how much right now I could really do with a drink.

  PART II

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The city is white and cold and full of long shadows. The air is like ice. The heater is strong enough so only the edges of my windshield have frosted over, but not strong enough to stop the middle of it from fogging. There are circular smear marks from where I’ve wiped it with my hand. My drink seems to be keeping the cold at bay much more effectively than the heater.

  It’s June now and Winter has arrived. The grass has become crisp with frost and cracks like glass underfoot. The shadows of the cement markers are longer than they were two months ago when I fell into the lake. At the moment the air is deathly still. The trees are motionless, caught in a snapshot. Nothing out here is moving. The church looks uninviting, as if the desperately cold temperature inside has convinced even God to move out. But it’s not completely empty. Father Julian is in there. Somewhere.

  I take another sip. My throat burns. I shiver.

  The clock on my dashboard is off by an hour because I never got around to changing it when daylight saving ended back in April. It says nine a.m., and I know that means I have to add an hour or perhaps subtract one—I can’t remember which. Not that it matters.

  I watch the police car in the rearview mirror as it rolls to a stop behind me, the gravel twisting and grating beneath the wheels. Nothing happens for about thirty seconds as the occupants wait in the warmth. Then the doors open. The two men approach. I roll down the window just enough to speak through. The winter morning seizes on the moment and floods the car with such savage cold air that every joint in my body starts to ache.

  “Morning, Tate,” the taller of the men says, using just the right tone to suggest he’s ready to haul my ass down to the cinder-block hotel. His words form tiny pools of fog in the air.

  “I thought it was afternoon.”

  “You can’t be here.”

  “My daughter is buried here,” I say. “That gives me the right.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “This is public property.”

  “There’s a restraining order against you, Tate,” he says. “You know that. You can’t come within one hundred meters of Father Julian.”

  “I’m not within a hundred meters of him.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I don’t see him,” I say.

  “That’s because he’s inside.”

  “But it would’ve been illegal for me to go to check, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is that you’re doing your best to get arrested.”

  “Then you need better thoughts. Shit like that will only bring you down.”

  He nods, but he’s no longer looking at me, he’s looking at what’s in my hand. “Is that what I think it is?” He’s looking at my Styrofoam coffee cup that doesn’t have coffee in it.

  “Don’t know. It depends on what you’re thinking. You’re a whole lot more negative than I gave you credit for.”

  He looks over at his partner, then back down at me. “Jesus, Tate, it’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?”

  “It’s happy hour somewhere in the world.”

  “Then coming with us isn’t really going to set you back.”

  They open the door for me and I step outside. My breath forms clouds in the air. The gravel crunches beneath my feet, tiny pieces of frost snapping between them, and the trees that were ever so still while I was sitting down seem to lunge toward me as I walk. The officers escort me to the back of their car and I have to reach out and grab hold of it to stop from falling over. Then they take the bourbon off me. Hell, what next? First I lose my family, now I lose my ability to drink?

  The police car is warmer than my own, and the view somewhat better since the windshield isn’t iced over. The drive doesn’t include any conversation, and I pass the time by looking down at my feet and telling myself not to be sick since the car seems to be swaying all over the place. At the station we ride up an elevator that seems to move way too fast and I have to grab a wall. Then the men marc
h me past dozens of sets of curious eyes. I don’t meet any of them; I just glance at their looks of disappointment before reaching an interrogation room.

  They sit me down in front of a desk that in another life I used to sit on the other side of. They close the door and I stand back up only to find that it’s locked. I walk around for a bit before deciding I might as well sit back down. I know the procedure. I know they’re going to make me wait before sending somebody in. I need to use the bathroom, and if they wait too long I have no reservations about pissing in the corner. Why should I? If I can kill people, I can do anything.

  It takes forty minutes before Detective Inspector Landry comes in. He’s carrying only one cup of coffee that I know isn’t for me, and a folder that he sits on the desk, but keeps closed. He looks like he hasn’t slept in about a week, and there are dark smudges beneath his eyes. He still smells of cigarette smoke and coffee. He looks stressed. He’s been a busy man with all the rest of the bullshit that’s been going on in the city while he’s been trying to figure out how those bodies got in the water. Other murders, other cases.

  He sits down and stares at me. “Explain this obsession to me once again?” he asks.

  “It’s not an obsession. Am I free to leave?”

  “What do you think? You violated a restraining order. You were in an automobile, behind the wheel, while under the influence.”

  “I haven’t been given a breath test.”

  “You want to take one?” he asks.

  “What would be the point? I wasn’t driving.”

  “But I could argue that you drove there drunk. Or were about to leave drunk. Your keys were in the ignition.”

  “You could argue that, and I could argue that you’re an asshole.”

  “Fuck it, Tate, why the hell don’t you try to help yourself here? Huh? Why don’t you capitalize on the fact that right at this moment I’m the best friend you have in this city.”