Punishment

by Scott J. Holliday

  When Watkins and Franklin came to see Dawson that day, he was fully recovered though still under police protection in a nondescript safe house in Ferndale. Watkins walked into the living room where Dawson was sitting, drew down with a .45 Magnum loaded with hollow points, and turned Dawson’s head into a canoe before Franklin and the uniforms tackled him. There were still some brown stains on the lampshade and drywall behind the couch in that safe house.

  Watkins was currently held at Bracken Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. Word had it he was loopy and incoherent. In any case, his actions created an opening in Homicide, and Barnes had already applied to get out of Vice.

  “My theory?” Franklin said. “He thought he was finishing Calavera’s work. It wasn’t the poems that had gotten to him or the sight of dead bodies. It was the work. The deed. Whatever this mad dog is trying to say with this thing he’s doing, the message got through to Watkins. Through the machine.”

  “The machine is the best tool for this job,” Barnes said. “We wouldn’t be sitting here right now if I hadn’t questioned Jessica Taylor, and I wouldn’t have been onto her if Dale Wilson hadn’t dreamed about her. Deny that?”

  “We wouldn’t have checked Wilson’s locker at the school? Wouldn’t have found the index card? Hell, even without the card, we wouldn’t have gone through the last website pages Wilson visited? I was doing that shit by rote.”

  Barnes exhaled. “Let’s just do this.”

  “An hour ago you looked good,” Franklin said. “Now you’re back to looking like dog shit. Sneak-drinking?”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that?” He patted Barnes’s chest for a flask.

  Barnes stared out the window.

  Franklin shook his head. He drove down the lane toward the memorial center. They parked and got out. As they approached the doors, a woman came out of the building. She was mid to late fifties, dressed in a beige skirt suit. Her hair and glasses were secretarial. She turned to lock the door behind her, spoke over her shoulder. “Sorry, fellas,” she said. “You need to make an appointment.”

  “Detroit Homicide,” Franklin said.

  They showed their badges.

  “Oh,” the woman said. She turned fully toward them. “You’re the detective I talked to this morning?”

  Franklin nodded. He pointed at himself with his pen. “Lieutenant Detective Franklin.” He pointed the pen at Barnes. “Detective Barnes. You’re Sharon Bruckheimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s B-R-U-C-K . . .”

  Barnes looked out across the sprawling cemetery. The grounds were hilly and the place was much larger than it first appeared. The headstones were neat and orderly. They brought to mind the homes on Kensington Street. Cookie-cutter. Here the only differences were the colors of the flowers left in the little brass tubes at each of the graves. Some had no flowers at all. Barnes’s heart rate doubled when he noted a massive red cedar near the back fence.

  “So what’s this all about?” Sharon Bruckheimer said.

  “We’re investigating a multiple homicide, ma’am,” Franklin said. “One of the victims was Dale Wilson. As I explained on the phone, on the night Wilson died, he called your number. His former wife is buried here.”

  “As I told you earlier, no messages were left.”

  “We thought we might investigate the grounds,” Franklin said.

  “It was the Pickax Man, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s confidential, ma’am,” Franklin said.

  Sharon Bruckheimer frowned. “Well, I’m running late. There’s a guidebook in that box over there.” She pointed at a mailbox back at the fork in the road. “If you need to find a particular grave, it will help you.”

  “Might you have seen anyone around, checking out multiple graves here in the last few days?”

  “I’m usually just in and out,” she said, “and we tend to offer privacy to the people who come here. Oftentimes they’re in a fragile state, as you can imagine.”

  Franklin nodded.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No, ma’am,” Franklin said, handing her a card, “but please call if you think of anything else.”

  She snatched the card and started toward the back of the building where there was a small employee parking lot. Two cars. One was a sedan precisely the same color as Sharon Bruckheimer’s suit, the other an older-model pickup truck. Looked like a maintenance vehicle.

  “One more question, ma’am,” Barnes said.

  She stopped, looked back.

  “Are there any other employees on the premises right now?”

  “One of the groundskeepers might be here,” she said. She looked back at the truck. “Antonio.” She put a hand above her eyes and looked out over the cemetery. “Could be he’s out back or in the shed. Feel free to look for him.”

  “Antonio got a last name?”

  “Reyes.”

  The detectives exchanged a glance. “Is he legal?” Franklin said.

  “As legal as you are,” she said.

  “Does he speak English?”

  She seesawed her hand and shrugged.

  The detectives stayed put while Sharon Bruckheimer got into the beige sedan. She started her car and pulled out of the parking lot. Franklin waved as she went and then turned to Barnes. “Reyes?”

  “Yeah,” Barnes said. “Plus there’s that cedar tree out back.” He pointed. “It’ll have the same leaves as the one I found on the Wilsons’ back patio. But here’s the problem: Calavera speaks fluent English. I’ve heard him plenty of times on the machine. And he writes those elaborate poems. I’m not sure a guy who speaks”—he seesawed his hand like Sharon Bruckheimer did—“so-so English can be our guy.”

  “Let’s go find out,” Franklin said. “Which way?”

  Barnes knew the way to his brother’s grave. The boy was buried in the Land of Cherubs, a section reserved for children ten years or younger. Ricky had barely made the cut. If they stayed to the right, and then took the next right when the gravel road forked again, they’d eventually wind their way to it. The idea of seeing his brother’s headstone sent a frightening pain through Barnes’s body. “Let’s go this way,” he said, pointing the other way. “Check the shed first.”

  They opened the shed’s service door. Inside were backhoes and lawn mowers, various tools of the trade, and a half dozen pickaxes against the far wall. Franklin called into the depths of the shed. “Antonio?”

  No reply.

  They exited the shed and took the left-hand path up the cemetery grounds. Barnes reached into his interior jacket pocket to find his Batman coin purse. He palmed it and kept it hidden from Franklin’s sight. He squeezed it to open the mouth, touched the quarters inside, closed it again. Over and over. He’d done the same thing ten years ago when he visited, and ten years before that at his brother’s funeral. His parents, the police, and a therapist told him Ricky’s death wasn’t his fault. They told him it could have happened to anyone.

  They crested the first hill. Barnes pointed. “There.”

  In the distance there was a man working next to a dark-green golf cart. He wore light-gray coveralls, work gloves, and a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His back was to them, and he was raking a pile of wet leaves toward two large garbage cans strapped to the back of the cart. The cart was parked in an area of old-growth trees and high, bulky headstones. The area was at the base of a hill that rose toward the back of the cemetery and was dotted with hillside crypts. The detectives moved off the gravel and onto the grass. They came silently along the road.

  The hair on Barnes’s neck stood up. He dismissed the feeling, thinking it had something to do with being in this place with his brother. Catching Calavera won’t be this easy. His hand pumped the coin purse.

  They came within seventy yards of the man and stopped. Barnes heard the swishing of his leaf rake echoing off the headstones around them.

  Franklin called out, “Antonio?”

  The
man stopped raking. His head moved slightly toward them, but his body didn’t turn.

  Barnes and Franklin exchanged a glance.

  Barnes put the coin purse away, put his hand on his Glock.

  “Detroit Homicide,” Franklin said. They stepped closer to the man, slowly. “We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Barnes stiffened at the sound of the man’s voice. There wasn’t a hint of accent, no struggle with word command. “It’s him,” he said sotto voce. He drew his gun. Franklin did the same. “Why don’t you just stay right there? We’ll come to you.”

  Calavera still hadn’t turned to look at them. He ignored Barnes’s command and walked toward the golf cart, which was pointing directly away from their position.

  “Hold it right there,” Franklin bellowed.

  Calavera slid the leaf rake, handle first, into a garbage can and hopped into the golf cart on the driver’s side. Barnes and Franklin separated. They moved in opposite directions to cover the cart from two sides. Between the headstones, they were like bishops running diagonally on a chessboard. Barnes caught flashes of the golf cart as the graves alternately blocked and opened sightlines.

  “Hands up, now!” Franklin said.

  Calavera put his hands high above his head, but they were hidden by the cart’s convex roof. Barnes thought he saw something metallic in Calavera’s right hand as it went up. “Drop your weapon!”

  “Is that you, Barnes?” Calavera said. He was still facing the opposite direction but turned his head slightly toward Barnes’s voice. “Well, hey, ten-three, good buddy.”

  Multiple surges of fear washed over Barnes—residual moments of the deaths he’d suffered. He felt a punch to his chest, a break in his clavicle, a pop of his spine.

  “Drop the gun!” Franklin said. He dropped to a knee behind a headstone at twenty yards from the golf cart. Barnes was rounding the cart from behind, a distance of thirty yards. He still couldn’t see the man’s face.

  Calavera fired at Franklin. A bullet pinged off stone.

  “Son of a bitch,” Franklin said. He ducked down and ripped off three aimless shots, gun hand over the top of his cover.

  Calavera slid to the ground beyond the cart.

  Barnes ran sideways to cut off an escape route. He called to Franklin. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine!”

  Barnes charged the cart, gun up. No one there. Only a hat and gloves. He stayed low as he scanned the area, couldn’t see shit with all the headstones. He moved up one row. Heard distant movement. Saw nothing.

  There—a flash of gray two rows down. He fired. Missed.

  Franklin fired. Missed.

  Calavera fired back.

  The detectives moved up and up, securing each row as they went.

  There, a sugar skull above a headstone. He was already at the back of the cemetery, up against a cyclone fence covered with ivy. The mask’s dead eyes were fixed on Barnes. He fired and missed. The mask dropped out of sight.

  “He’s at the back,” Barnes called out. “Near the fence.”

  Franklin charged ahead, staying low. He ducked behind the entrance to a family crypt set into the hillside. RUTHERFORD was carved into the marble above the door—a brown wooden rectangle with iron brackets and bolts. Franklin leaned against it, handgun ready.

  “I’ll cover you,” Franklin said. “Come up.” He stepped around the side of the crypt and lit up the hillside with bullets. They pinged off the headstones, sending white-and-gray puffs into the air.

  Barnes charged up and past the crypt, took shelter behind a headstone. He scanned the hillside and the back fence, eyes just over the top of the granite like an alligator in a river. A gate was now open, a swinging door of ivy.

  “See him?” Franklin said.

  “He’s gone out the back gate,” Barnes said. “Cover me.” He moved up three rows, expecting to hear his partner’s covering gunfire. Instead he heard shattering glass. He took cover. “What the hell, man?”

  Silence.

  Barnes looked back down the hill. Saw only rows of headstones and the grassy rooftops of the hillside crypts, each one with a stained-glass skylight. He moved down a row, peeked cautiously around a granite stone. His heart seized when he saw the diamond-shaped skylight above the Rutherford crypt was now a dark hole that dropped down into the chamber.

  Barnes ran down the hill. He put his back up against the wall of the crypt, steadied himself, and turned the corner, gun aimed.

  The crypt door was open.

  “Franklin?”

  The only reply was a wet gurgle. In the distance Barnes heard an engine turn over and then start. Tires squealed on pavement. He pushed the door fully open. William Franklin was lying facedown on the crypt floor with a bowie knife stuck in his back.

  15

  “Don’t die, you bastard,” Barnes said. He’d called in a ten-double-zero—officer down and was applying pressure to the wound with a compress he’d torn from his shirt and wrapped around the base of the knife. Franklin’s blood was bright red. Lung blood. The shirt material was too thin, and the blood bubbled up between Barnes’s fingers and over the backs of his hands.

  “Pull the knife out.” The crack addict.

  “No. You’re supposed to leave it in.” The mother.

  “Shhh.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Franklin said. He spat a glob of red across the crypt floor. “He pulled that door open. I was leaning on it. Fell right in.”

  “Don’t talk,” Barnes said.

  “Listen,” Franklin said. “Don’t let him get to you. Go see Watkins.”

  “Watkins?”

  “Stay off that machine. Stay out of my head.”

  Distant sirens wailed.

  “Quiet,” Barnes said. “They’re coming. You’re going to get through this. I won’t need the machine because you’re going to tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Franklin’s eyes lost focus. His pupils dilated. He whispered something unintelligible.

  “Shut up!” Barnes said. The sirens were close now. The ambulance lights spilled through the open door and ran across the crypt walls. Franklin was still whispering. Barnes leaned in close.

  “Barker just gonna pop another one up,” Franklin said. “It don’t matter.”

  “If it don’t matter, then what have you been doing all these years, huh?” Barnes said. “Why get a degree in criminal justice? Why walk a beat? Why make detective? You’re full of shit, you know that?”

  “Fuck you, Barnes,” Franklin said. He closed his eyes. “Fuck you.”

  Warden was first through the crypt door, the machine in tow. Martinez stayed outside, as there was little room to maneuver inside the crypt.

  “Get that thing out of here,” Barnes said.

  Warden said, “We need to do this while—”

  Barnes turned on him. “I said get that goddamn thing out of here.”

  “You’re interfering with an investigation,” Warden said. He held battery-operated clippers and was coming down toward Franklin’s head with them. “Step out of the way.”

  Barnes held the bloody compress in his left hand, used his right to loose his Glock and place the barrel against Warden’s forehead.

  Warden stopped cold. His beady eyes widened.

  “Jesus Christ,” Captain Darrow said. He stood, arms folded, at the mouth of the crypt. “Get that thing out of here, Warden.”

  Warden backed the machine out of the crypt. Barnes released the compress and followed.

  The paramedics stormed in.

  Barnes wiped his hands clean while an ambulance hauled Franklin away. He was still alive, still breathing when the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance.

  “I’m gonna overlook that little stunt you just pulled,” Darrow said, looking off.

  “Like hell you will!” Warden said. He was fuming, the red-dot indent of Barnes’s gun barrel visible on his forehead.

  “Can it, Warden,” Darrow said. �
��Get your ass to the hospital and follow up with Franklin. Now!”

  Warden stomped off.

  “Don’t put him on the machine,” Barnes said. “He’ll live. Besides, we’ll get what we need from Bruckheimer.”

  “It’s not your call,” Darrow said.

  Barnes sighed. “I moved ahead too quickly. I left him behind.”

  “Put it in your report,” Darrow said. “Right now we need to go after Reyes. There’s an APB on his truck and his plate. We got his home address from the cemetery’s employee records. SWAT’s gearing up.”

  Barnes rode in the passenger seat, head against the glass, while Darrow drove. He picked dried blood from beneath his fingernails. His cell phone buzzed. A text message from Jessica.

  Maybe Detective Mackey will come by my place tonight around dinnertime, see what I’ve got cooking?

  Barnes didn’t reply. He slid the phone back into his pocket, turned his head away from Captain Darrow, and watched the asphalt speed by, the white line on the side of the road. It was like the car was a rolled-up dollar bill inhaling cocaine at an absurd speed. He imagined the car veering off and colliding with a concrete barrier, imagined the impact, his body crashing through the glass and landing outside, busted up like a rag doll. Some housewife might stop her car and get out, come running. She’d throw her hands to her cheeks and say, Oh my God, oh my God. And someone else might say, Somebody call for help, even though they have a phone in their hand. Later, someone might put a roadside memorial there, on the very spot, and for a few months people would say, That’s where that policeman died. But soon they’d forget what happened, and they’d wonder what those wilted flowers and that wreath were about. The memorial would eventually be removed, or maybe it would just fall over, and Barnes’s blood and bones and teeth would decay and become dust and pebbles on the side of the road. Hundreds and millions of people would drive by, just talking or listening to the latest pop sensation on their radios.