by Paul Cleave
“Trust me,” I tell him, “and hear me out. Just listen to me, okay? Then you can ignore me or hang up on me or whatever, but at least hear me out. It’s important.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”
“Where are you?”
“What does it matter?”
“I need you to go to the church,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“Because you missed something.”
“Missed what?” he asks. “This tape recorder?”
“I’ll tell you when you get there.”
“Come on, Tate, stop playing games. It’s too damn late for your bullshit. I’m tired.”
“Just call me back when you get there, okay? I promise you won’t regret this.”
I hang up on him before he can reply.
I drive to Deborah Lovatt’s house, and can tell immediately that nobody is home. Her mother said she lived with two roommates. If they’re around the same age as Deborah, then they’ll be out in town drinking or at the movies somewhere. I get out of the car and walk around, but nothing stands out as being wrong. No busted doors. No broken windows. I leave a card wedged in the door so it hangs over the keyhole. I leave a note on the back saying it’s urgent I speak to Deborah. Deborah’s mother will have called the police, but the way things work in this city, that doesn’t mean help is coming soon.
Traffic is thick on the way back to town, full of people all looking for somewhere better to be. Lined up at the lights, I can hear the stereo in the car behind me, the thump thump thump making the chassis of my car vibrate. I can see movement in my rearview mirror—occupants of the car are treating the ride into town as a party. The girl in the passenger seat can’t be any more than fifteen, and she’s chugging away at a beer.
My cell phone rings and I answer it. The music from the other car drowns out Landry’s voice. I push my cell phone harder against my ear.
“. . . do now?”
“What?” I ask.
The light turns green. The guy behind me toots his horn even though it’s been less than a second. I move through the intersection and pull over. There’s a guy dressed like Jesus sitting on the side of the road. He’s biting into an egg carton. He looks up at me, his bloodshot eyes locking onto mine, and I realize he’s at the end of the road I’ll be driving along if I decide that maybe the drinking is for me after all.
“You there, Tate?”
“Give me a second.”
There are toots and yells and waves as the car behind me passes. I pull away from the curb and drive further up the road to find another place to park away from Egg Carton Guy.
“Okay, go ahead.”
“You’re really testing my patience, Tate. I’m at the church, so what do I do now?”
“Head down to the confessional booths.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay, okay. You know it sounds like you’re driving?”
“Well, I’m not,” I tell him.
“Yeah. Okay, I’m at the booths. Now what?”
“Open them up.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Check Father Julian’s side. Check the roof. The back wall. Just check all of it.”
“Check it for what? This tape recorder you’re telling me about? You think Father Julian was making secret recordings?”
“Just do it.”
“There’s nothing in here.”
“Yes there is,” I tell him. “Tap the wall or something.”
“Tap it? You think there’s a false panel?”
“Yeah I do.”
He starts tapping the walls. The small knocks carry through his cell phone. “This is a Goddamn waste of . . .”
He doesn’t follow it up, and I know what he’s found. There’s silence for five seconds. Then he comes back on the line.
“How the hell do you know about this?” he asks.
“Father Julian was recording the confessions. He was blackmailing people.” I look in the mirror and see Egg Carton Guy walking toward me. The mirror makes him appear closer than he actually is. “Since you hadn’t found it already, I reasoned the tape recorder was hidden. What better place to hide it?”
“That’s why you were following him? Fuck, Tate, why couldn’t you have told us? You sure as hell could have saved us a lot of work and a lot of pain. And finding out this way, man—it doesn’t look good. It looks like you put it there when you broke in last night.”
“I didn’t break in. All I knew was the tape recorder had to be there somewhere, and anyway, I only just found out. Look, Julian recorded his killer, right? He knows who killed those girls. Is there a tape in the machine?”
“Yeah.”
“Then listen to it. Could be the night Father Julian died, if he took a confession first. It could be the last voice you hear on that tape is his killer.”
“You need to come down to the station, Tate.”
Egg Carton Guy stretches out the bottom of his shirt and starts using it to wipe down the side window of my car, my father’s car. Egg Carton Guy moves his shirt in circular motions, but it isn’t the kind of detailing my dad would have in mind. I roll the window an inch and hand him a couple of dollars. He says something, but I don’t quite hear him, then he wanders away.
“Tate? You still with me?” Landry asks.
“Play the tape.”
“I’ll play the tape when I’m done with you.”
“Maybe Julian referred to him by name.” I say. “Maybe he did that because he knew what might be coming up.”
“I’m sending somebody to pick you up.”
“I’m not even home.”
“How can that be? You’ve lost your license. You out walking?”
“Besides, you’ve got something more important to take care of,” I tell him.
“Yeah? You got somewhere else for me to go?”
“There’s another girl.”
“What is it with you? Everywhere you go people are showing up dead, or never showing up again.”
“She may not be dead,” I tell him. “But you need to find her.”
“Tell me.”
I lay it out for him. Not all of it, but most of it. And not all of it truthfully. I tell him about the photographs of Father Julian’s children, telling him Bruce gave them to me, but that I only just figured out the connection. I tell him how four of the girls are dead and there is still one out there. I tell him about the key Bruce left for me, and the tapes that I found, along with the log.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he says when I’m done. “You know you’re in for a world of shit now, right? Going into that bank like that? You should have just called me.”
“There wasn’t time, and like I said, I had a key,” I say, not mentioning the court order. That will come later.
“You’ve been holding out on me for the last two months, slowing down my investigation, and you’re telling me there wasn’t time?”
“Hey, it’s not my fault I’m ahead of you. And you should be thanking me. Most of what you have is because of me. If anything, I’ve sped up your investigation.”
“Fuck you, Tate. DNA would have told us those girls were related. We’d have figured out the rest.”
“Yeah, maybe you would have, maybe not, but you wouldn’t even be looking yet. Not until those results came in.”
“I’m coming to your house. Now. I want you to be there, okay? I’m coming to get all this stuff. And we’re going to have a nice long chat, just the two of us.”
He hangs up before I can debate the issue.
I drive back home and have barely gone inside when Landry pulls up. He looks furious. He has an edge to him that makes me wonder how many times he’s looked into the abyss.
“Where are they?” he asks. “The tapes?”
“You first. You listen to the one you found in the confessional?”
“Yeah. I did. There’s nothing on it of any use. Fact is, none of these tapes are going to be
any good. You know we can’t use them. Even if it was us who found them. Can you imagine the kind of shit storm we’ll have if the public ever finds out about them? There are going to be lots of confessions of people cheating on their husbands and wives, cheating with their taxes, cheating in all the possible ways the human race can cheat. There’ll be more too. Who the hell knows whether the sanctity of the confessional extends to a tape recording? Or is it limited only to the priest?”
“So you’re going to keep them quiet.”
“We’ll listen to them, that’s for sure, but I don’t imagine we’re going to be making any arrests from them. And if our killer is on these tapes—”
“He is.”
“Then we gotta find a way of working around it. We mention these things and we’re handing him a defense.”
I lead him into my office and hand over the log.
“Money comes in from blackmailing,” he says, “and money goes out for the kids. Looks like our Father Julian was a busy man. It’s probably a miracle he lasted as long as he did without anybody finding out.”
“Miracles are in his line of work,” I point out.
“Maybe not in the end.”
“I think Henry Martins knew.”
“What?”
I fill in the Martins connection. He absorbs it, but like me he doesn’t know what to make of it.
“His body was too decomposed from the water,” he says. “There was no way to get any toxicology from him. No way to tell if he was murdered.”
“What about the new husband? The one who started all of this?”
“Who?”
“The one who died and made you want to dig up Henry Martins.”
He starts to pile the tapes into the evidence bag. “His death was accidental. Turns out he was being exposed to some toxin through his job that he shouldn’t have been exposed to. I don’t know, it wasn’t my case. Lead paint or something. It was fairly prolonged. Weird how it’s all led to this.”
Weird. I’m not so sure that’s the right word for it, but it’ll do for now. It’s getting close to eleven o’clock, and suddenly I feel exhausted. All I want to do is get Landry out of my house so I can go to bed.
“Was this his? It looks new,” he says, picking up the small tape recorder.
“I just bought it today. I have a receipt.”
“Yeah, well, I’m taking it. Consider it your first step in cooperating with the police. Enough of those small steps might go a long way to helping you out, Tate. What’ve we got now—and I don’t mean the drunk-driving charges. We’ve got breaking and entering—”
“No you don’t.”
“We’ve got interfering with a criminal investigation. We’ve got—”
“Look, I get the point, okay?”
He picks up the photographs. “This them?”
“Yeah.”
He says nothing for a few seconds, and then, “I really should be taking you in.”
“Look, Landry, I’m about to crash here, okay? I’m beat. And I’ve told you everything I know, and I’ve given you everything I have. Go and do your job and figure out who this maniac is before he kills Deborah Lovatt.”
“The fifth girl.”
“Yeah. The fifth girl.”
“Okay, Tate. For once I believe you. But I still gotta take you in.”
“Look, if you take me in, then what? You’re going to want to listen to all those tapes first, and you’re going to want to run down everything I’ve told you about. So all you’re going to do is sit me in an interrogation room for twelve hours before you even speak to me. It’s pointless. Let me stay here, let me get some sleep, and if you want me tomorrow you’ll know where to find me.”
He doesn’t answer, but he slowly nods.
I walk to the front door with him, and as angry as he is at me I’m pretty sure that if he’d been the one two years ago to decide not to exhume Henry Martins, then he’d be the one now needing to find justice for those dead girls.
I listen to him drive off.
My head hits the pillow, and I think I might even have slept for about two minutes before my cell phone rings.
“Why do I feel like I’ve just been played?” Landry asks.
I don’t answer him.
He carries on. “I pressed play on that tape recorder of yours to get a preview of what was to come.”
“And?”
“And what? It was up to Sidney Alderman. He was confessing about killing his wife. I guess that’s the one you wanted me to hear first, and it means you knew I was going to take your tape recorder. You knew I’d listen to it. Why?” he asks.
“Makes you wonder what he was capable of, right? Guy like that, makes you wonder.”
“Good night, Tate.”
“Good night, Landry.”
I hang up and turn off my cell phone, satisfied that the police no longer have any reason to dig Mrs. Alderman out of the ground.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
At first I’m not sure where I am. I wake up feeling exhausted and confused, and then it comes rushing back to me—not just the last day, but the last two years. These moments are the worst. Sometimes I can wake up and for the first two or three seconds everything is okay—I’m going to roll over and Bridget is going to be there and Emily is going to be in the lounge watching TV. Then those two seconds pass and the reality kicks in and it hurts all over again, the pain as intense in those moments as it was two years ago.
I get out of bed, still feeling groggy. I turn on my cell phone and find a message waiting. It’s Landry. I figure if I don’t ring him back real soon he’s likely to show up. I carry the phone through to my office and sit down on my desk. For the second time within days everything I’ve built up has been taken away. All I have left are the newspaper stories I printed out at the library, along with the new time line I was making and some notes. I look at the articles with the pictures of the girls, and all I can think about is their killer’s confession. These young women are looking to me to find them justice. There is still hope for them. It’s a different kind of hope, but I promise not to abandon them.
I phone Landry back.
“You’re holding out on me, Tate.”
“I told you everything I know.”
“But you didn’t give me everything you have.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tapes,” he says. “We’re one short. According to the log Father Julian kept, you’re on it.”
“Yeah, well, I was. And that was a confession between me and my priest. Try and sound as angry as you want, Landry, but you know there’s no way in hell I’d let you have that tape.”
“Because of what was on it? The date suggests it was around when Quentin James went missing. The timing suggests a whole lot of things, Tate.”
“What do you want, Landry? You gotta be ringing me for more than just this.”
“When was the last time you saw Casey Horwell?”
“What? I don’t know. Why?”
“Come on, when?”
“Yesterday. She blindsided me at my house. She had a bunch of accusations she wanted to share.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Why? Should I be turning on the news and seeing the story? You know she’s bullshit. Most of what she—”
“She’s missing,” he says, interrupting me.
“Missing?”
“Yeah. Nobody has seen her in twelve hours.”
“That doesn’t constitute being missing,” I say. “She’s probably just sleeping off a hangover somewhere.”
“Maybe. But you don’t sound upset about it.”
“Upset? Why would I be upset? You think something has happened to her?”
“Her producer said that last night Casey contacted her. She said she had a lead she was going to follow up, and it involved you. And her cameraman said you threatened her. Did she come back and see you last night?”
“You were here last night. Did you see her?”
“After I left.”
“I turned my phone off and went to bed. That’s it. I never heard from her. And I didn’t threaten her. I warned her about her source. Somebody was feeding her information about the case. And there’s a good chance it’s the same somebody who framed me for murder. Don’t you think it’s possible he wanted to tie up one more loose end? After all, that’s what he’s doing, right? He got rid of Father Julian, he’s after his last sister, and Horwell got herself caught up in all of that because she was too arrogant to see she was being played.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s more than just a maybe. You need to find out who her source was.”
“Her producer didn’t know. Either that or she wouldn’t tell me.”
“It’s the same guy who was on the tape. You can feel it, right? You feel it the same way I feel it. You know that’s what happened.”
“Okay, I’ll check it out,” he says. “But here’s what I need you to do. You need to stay the hell away from everybody today, okay? Everybody.”
“What about Deborah Lovatt? You need to find her.”
“I know, but the simple truth is that we don’t know she’s missing yet.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding you,” he says.
“She’s been gone longer than Horwell.”
“Before you get too bent out of shape, Tate, we are looking for her. And the best thing you can do right now is stay out of the way.”
He hangs up.
I sit out on the deck, trying to put some distance—even if it’s only thirty minutes and fifteen meters away—between me and my notes. For some reason everything I’m learning is becoming white noise. I can’t focus on any one thought, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. I would have been working a homicide. It would have been years ago. My life was different and I was different. The names that come from the tapes, the bank statements, the burials—there are facts here that for the moment aren’t facts at all, but shapes floating around in the back of my mind with nowhere to fit, each piece swirling just a little too far out of reach. I try thinking about something else, but it only makes the images move faster, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
I head down to the office and I stare at the girls and I try filtering through everything again, looking for something that doesn’t seem to be here. Most of all I look at Rachel. In a way she is the one I think about the most. She is the one I saw stuffed into that coffin with the dirty diamond ring next to her hand. Hers is the pain I think about the most. I hold her picture and study her features, and the white noise I was hearing earlier starts to disappear.