by Paul Cleave
“And why’s that?”
“Because you made the call and gave us the names of the other two girls. That got us started.”
“That was two months ago,” I say. It was the same day I contacted Alicia North, the best friend of Rachel’s that David had told me about. Alicia North hadn’t heard of Father Julian, hadn’t heard of Bruce or Sidney Alderman, hadn’t heard of anything at all that could have helped me. It was also the same day I started cracking lots of seals on lots of bottles of alcohol in order to push the visuals I was having of a lifeless Sidney Alderman into the back of my mind. It was the first day after I had killed him.
“Yeah, it was two months ago, but I’m a giving guy and right now I’m giving you some goodwill. See, the way we’ve been seeing it, Sidney Alderman did a runner the same day you told me you had the names of the girls and a day before somebody rang the hotline with the anonymous information. Since then there haven’t been any more missing girls.”
“So I’m in your good books and Alderman is in your bad books. Fine. You going to let me go?”
“The problem,” he says, and he makes a face when he sips at his coffee, “is Father Julian. Somehow he fits into all of this, and that’s a problem. For us, for him, and for you. If you thought the case was over, you’d be at home right now. You wouldn’t be following Julian. And if you believed Alderman was guilty, you’d be out there looking for him.”
“Now you’re the one who seems obsessed.”
“Strange that Alderman didn’t wait to see his son buried. He didn’t take his car. He didn’t pack any clothes. That adds up badly, Tate, and I keep coming to the conclusion that you know something about that. How many times have we pulled you in here now?”
“If you’ve got a point, just make it.”
“How about you take this chance to explain things to me, and maybe I can start to figure out what in the hell is happening to you. You’re more drunk each time we drag you in. This is the third time since the restraining order was issued a week ago. Anybody else and they’d be kept in custody. They’d be facing time. There ain’t going to be any favors if we bring you in for a fourth. Come on, man, you know sending an ex-cop into prison isn’t going to be pretty.”
“Can I go now?” I ask.
“No. Tell me about Father Julian.”
“What about him?”
“You’re practically camping outside his church in your car most nights. That booze is fucking up your brain because you can’t figure out what a restraining order means. He says you’re stalking him, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.” He takes another sip of coffee, puts it down, and leans forward. “Unless I’m missing something here, it looks like you want to end up in jail. Is that it?”
I shrug as if I don’t care, but the truth is I don’t want to end up in jail. If I wanted that, I’d tell him all about Sidney Alderman and where they could find him.
“So what is it about him that makes you want to sit outside his church watching?” he asks.
I try to maintain eye contact with him, but say nothing.
“Come on, Tate, give yourself a chance,” he says. “We’re through playing games. Next time we bring you in here, you’re staying. You get my point?”
“You’ve said it twice. I got it each time.”
“Yet here you are,” he says.
“Look, I’ve got nothing else to say.”
“Well, the opposite goes for Father Julian. He has plenty to say about you.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why’s that? You think anything you’ve said to him is covered by priest-parishioner confidentiality? You’re right—to a point. He says anything you’ve told him he can’t share. But what he can share is his concern. He said two months ago you went in there and asked him to help you find Bruce Alderman. We all know where that led, right? Next thing we know Bruce Alderman shows up in your office dead.”
“Look, Landry, he didn’t show up dead, okay? It’s not like he shot himself before walking into my office.”
“The following day you go see Father Julian again, this time asking for help in finding Sidney Alderman. It’s the same day you call me telling me you know who the missing girls are. Father Julian said that if he knew where Sidney was, he’d tell him to stay clear of you. Why do you think he’d say that?”
I look down at my thumb and the deep scarring from the bite that Sidney Alderman took. Sometimes it still hurts.
“You think Father Julian is guilty of something?” he asks.
“What would he be guilty of?” I ask.
“I don’t know. You tell me. You think he killed those girls?”
“This is bullshit,” I say.
“He knows something about you, something he wouldn’t tell me. But I’m figuring it out,” he says, and he runs his hand across the cover of the folder he brought into the room with him. The folder is thick, and the pages between its covers could be blank for all I know, though Landry wants me to believe they’re full of circumstantial facts that any moment are going to line up in the right order for him to arrest me for something.
I say nothing.
Landry fills in the silence. “See, it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. Yours are easy, because it’s a simple time line. The last two years, Tate, you’ve had a lot happen. The accident with your family. I sympathize with you—nobody should lose what you’ve lost.”
I still say nothing. I don’t want to help Landry get to wherever he is leading.
“What do you think ever happened to Quentin James?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You seem calm about that, Tate. Me, I’d be angry as hell. I don’t think I’d have resigned myself to the fact that he got away. I’d be jumping up and down and phoning the police and phoning the media and I’d be out there looking for him. I’d be annoying the hell out of everyone—asking questions, putting pressure on anybody I could to make finding Quentin James a priority. But not you.”
“Maybe he’ll show up one day and justice can be served.”
“If it hasn’t been already. It’s hard to go missing for that long, especially in this country. Then two months ago things change again. People die. They go missing. And what happens? You start drinking. You start showing up at the church drunk. You harass Father Julian. You hound him with questions. A week ago he files a restraining order against you and you just ignore it. Want to know what I think?”
“Not unless you’re going to charge me with something. Otherwise, I’m leaving.”
I stand up. The interrogation room sways a little. I reach down and grab the desk.
“Sit back down, Tate, before you pass out.”
“Charge me or I’m getting a lawyer.”
“You violated a restraining order,” he says. “That means we can charge you.”
“Then do it. You think I care?”
“You know, I don’t really think you do. And that’s the problem.” Landry gets up. He picks up the folder and his coffee, and he walks to the door. He juggles them so he can manage the handle. “I can see I’m wasting my time here. But let me warn you, don’t go back to the church. You go anywhere near Father Julian and I’m going to have you arrested. There’s going to be no more of this bullshit, right? No more of us feeling bad at the shit you’ve had to go through, no more of the people here feeling sorry for you and searching inside themselves to still care. You’re falling apart, and any loyalty you built up here is rapidly dissipating. You want to stay out of jail? Then you need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself and figure out what’s wrong. You get me?”
I get him.
“And for Christ’s sake, Tate, go home and take a shower. You smell like a brewery.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I sit back down and wait for a few minutes, thinking about what he’s said, trying to decide whether the police could help me if I told them the truth, or whether they would crucify me. When I get up, I have to hold on to the desk again while I get my bala
nce. In that time I come to the conclusion that Landry doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about—none of these people do—and that they should just leave me the hell alone.
From every cubicle and every corner of the fourth floor somebody is staring at me. I make my way to the elevator. Two years ago I was part of this atmosphere. I was one of the team, doing what I could to try to repair the broken bits of this city, to fight back the tides of surging violence in what was, and still is, a losing battle. Then things changed. The world changed. I handed in my resignation because I knew the department was going to ask for it. I didn’t want to stay and didn’t know what I was going to do once I left. The day I walked out of here, I had people coming up to me and patting me on the shoulder or shaking my hand and telling me that whatever happened to the missing Quentin James was something he deserved. Nobody came right out and said they knew I had killed him, because nobody knew and, more importantly, they didn’t want to know. They all had suspicions, and they were all on my side, but if any proof had come along they’d have locked me up without remorse.
Now these same people stare at me. Nobody approaches. They look me up and down; they study my wrinkled clothes and my unshaven face, and they wonder what shitty thing could happen in their lives to turn them into me. They’re wondering just how far away I am from drinking myself to death, whether the booze will get me or whether I’ll end up sucking back the barrel of a shotgun. Hell, we’re all wondering the same damn thing. I feel like shouting out to them that I don’t care anymore, and that I don’t want their pity.
I reach the elevator and before the doors can close Landry slips through. He has a packet of cigarettes in his hand.
The elevator starts its descent. I can feel it in my stomach, as if we’re falling at a hundred kilometers an hour. I hold on to the wall. Whatever conversation Landry is planning has to be short.
“I know you killed them,” he says. “Alderman and James.”
He turns toward me and lightly pushes me against the back of the elevator. He holds his palm on my chest and keeps his arm straight, as if holding back a bad smell.
“This Quentin James asshole, I don’t care that you killed him. Hell, it’s one thing we have in common, because sometimes, sometimes, I think I’m capable of doing the same thing. But that’s the difference, right? I haven’t had to cross the line because I haven’t lost what you’ve lost. And who knows? Maybe any one of us here would’ve done the same thing. This job, Tate, it’s a mission—but now you’re on the wrong side of it. See, we could forgive you with Quentin James. But not anymore. Whatever you’re doing now, it’s my job to find out. It’s not because I hate you, you know that. It’s because it’s part of the mission. You would have understood that once. You might be willing to let your world fall apart, but think of your wife. Are you really that prepared to let her waste away—”
I push him away and take a swing at him. He ducks, pushes my arm in the direction it’s going, and slams me into the adjoining mirrored wall. My face presses up against it and the view isn’t good. There are red, razor-thin lines running through my eyes, tying my pain to the surface for all to see. My breath forms a misty patch on the mirror.
“You done?” he asks.
“I’m done.”
The doors open and he lets me go. I walk out and he follows. He taps his cigarettes in his hands and walks off in a different direction. I do my best to hold a straight line, but it’s impossible. I use the ground-floor toilet before heading outside.
The cold air makes me feel sick, just as almost everything seems to now. The chill stirs up fragments of the conversations with Landry. The bourbon floating in my system doesn’t keep any of them at bay. I hail a taxi, and when I’m home I hover in the hallway in case I have to dash into the toilet to throw up. Then I stagger down to my bed. I crash on top of it and fall asleep for the rest of the morning and into the middle of the afternoon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There’s nothing like waking late in the day with a hangover. It’s something every cop goes through at some point. Perhaps the difference between a good cop and a bad cop is the frequency. Though even that may not be true. Good cops often drink lots just to help them get through it. And I’m not a cop anymore anyway.
My bedroom is a mess. I can’t remember the last time I made the bed, and I’m not even sure what the point of it would be. Socks, underwear, shirts, and more socks and underwear cover the floor. In the kitchen there are bourbon bottles and pizza boxes all over the counter. There are glasses everywhere and smells coming from cupboards I haven’t opened in a long time. It’s just like the Alderman house. I pour a glass of water and gulp down a pair of painkillers. I should probably eat, but never seem to have any appetite—though the number of pizza boxes suggests differently. I open the fridge on the off chance that might change, but when I see what’s in there I reckon I’ll probably never eat again. I make some coffee, then take a shower. It’s been a while since I used a washing machine or an iron, and I don’t see any point in breaking a tradition that seems to be working. I grab some clothes from the top of one of the hampers, figuring they’ll smell less than the ones at the bottom, and definitely less than the ones I just slept half the day in. I dig my hands into the hamper and pull up the clothes from the bottom, recycling them to the top where they’ll air out more.
The dining table has a stack of unopened bills. Bills for power, for the phone, for the mortgage, and for my wife. Most of Bridget’s bills are covered by insurance, but not everything. There’s even an outstanding bill from the florist. The rent on my office has expired—or, more accurately, I stopped paying it, and a message left on my machine says the lease is being terminated. I think after what happened the last night I was there they were quick to kick me out. The industrial cleaners came out to give me a quote, but I wasn’t there to see it. They tried contacting me for a bit, but then gave up. I don’t even know what in the hell happened. There’s probably a bill in here to tell me.
I don’t have the money to pay for another taxi—I’m not even sure how I paid to get home from the station. The small amount of cash left in my wallet already has a designated purpose. I don’t have a lot of options.
It takes me over an hour to walk to the cemetery, by which time the day is fading and my hands and feet are almost numb. The church looks dark and gloomy. Mine is the only car parked out front. I’m violating the boundaries of the restraining order even approaching it, but that’s just one more thing I couldn’t really give a damn about.
Just as I get the car started, a van pulls up behind me, blocking me in so that I can’t go anywhere. It’s a similar view to the one I had this morning, except it isn’t two policemen who wander over, but a reporter and a cameraman. I recognize Casey Horwell immediately. She pulls down on the front of her suit jacket to try to get her breasts looking a little better than they are, and it occurs to me that if she can’t get a miracle like that in a church parking lot she’s never going to get it.
“Just a few questions,” she says, knocking on my window. Her voice is muffled behind the glass.
“No comment,” I say back.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t drive anywhere, and I can’t talk to these people, and I can’t just sit here hiding, because that makes me look guilty or stupid or both. The only alternative is to open the door and climb out. Which I do. Then I think there was another alternative, but it involved pushing Casey Horwell over into the gravel and stealing the cameraman’s camera. Instead, I try my best to put on a blank face and use it to look into the camera.
And I say nothing.
“You’re back here at the cemetery where it all began,” she says, and I wonder how she knew I would be here—a tip-off or a lucky guess. Maybe luck didn’t have anything to do with it. Just logic.
I don’t respond.
“Which is strange, because it’s now on public record you have had a restraining order filed against you. You were picked up this morning violating it, and
instead of being thrown in jail, the friends you so proudly have in the department let you out, and what’s worse is they bring you right back here so you can get your car.”
I let her carry on, not bothering to correct her mistake on how I got here. The last thing she wants me to do is to say absolutely nothing and give her dead air. She starts to scramble, trying to keep up.
“Would you care to comment on the disappearance of Sidney Alderman?”
I don’t answer her.
“Because my source tells me that you’re involved with his disappearance.”
Still nothing.
“What do you think Father Julian’s involvement is in all of this? How long will you keep stalking him? And how far do you think you will take it?”
Her questions are suggestive, but I don’t answer them. I’m sure that on camera I look tired and hungover and every bit the murderer she wants me to be. But there’s no way I’m going to say anything to her.
Finally she gives up. “That’s a wrap,” she says, and drags her finger across her throat. The cameraman lowers his camera. The light switches off.
“Who’s your source?” I ask.
“Didn’t think you were talking,” she says.
“Who?”
“You don’t seriously think I’m going to tell you that?”
“You can’t, can you, because there is no source,” I say. “You keep pissing people off, Horwell, and it’s going to catch up to you.”
“And you’ll take care of that? It’s what you do, isn’t it?”
I climb back into my car. She walks with the cameraman back to the van and I think I hear her saying there’s enough time to do something with the piece tonight. Great. That means I’ll be making the ten o’clock news. Just when my parents are likely to be watching.
The van pulls away and I wait until the lights disappear before driving off in the same direction, heading for the nursing home. I don’t want to spend any more time with the dead. I’m aware of the irony, of course—sitting with Bridget is hardly like spending time with the living. But Bridget doesn’t seem to mind the way I look or that my clothes are covered with stains that were once food related. She doesn’t care that I no longer show up with flowers. She lets me hold her hand while I stare out the window at the same useless view she’s been staring at for twenty-six months now. I don’t talk to her. What would I say? That I spent the first third of the day drunk, the second third asleep, and I’m planning on repeating one of those thirds for the rest of it?