The Life We Bury

by Allen Eskens

  “Maybe he was planning on putting an end to it, too,” Lila said. “Maybe his plan all along was to kill her that day.”

  I stared down at the coded pages, their secret knowledge taunting me. “I wish we could break that code,” I said. “I can't believe his lawyer didn't work harder to break it.”

  “He did,” she said. Lila pulled a piece of paper out of the file and handed it to me. It was a copy of a letter to the Department of Defense. The date on the letter showed that it was written two months before the trial. It had been signed by Carl's attorney, John Peterson. In the letter Peterson was asking the Department of Defense to help decipher the diary code.

  “Did the Department of Defense ever respond?” I asked.

  “Not that I could find,” she said. “There's no other mention of the code being deciphered at all.”

  “You would think that they would move heaven and Earth to decipher the code before they went to trial.”

  “Unless…” Lila looked at me and shrugged.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless Carl already knew what it would say. Maybe he didn't want the code deciphered because he knew it would be the final nail in his coffin.”

  I called Janet the next day and made an appointment for that evening to see Carl. I wanted to ask him about the diary and the code. I wanted to know why such an important part of the prosecutor's case went unchallenged. I wanted to see his face when he told me whether or not he knew what Crystal Hagen meant when she wrote in her diary that it “stops today.” I wanted to test his honesty. But first I needed to talk to Berthel Collins. It took me several tries, leaving messages each time. And when he finally called me back, I was already on the road driving to Hillview Manor.

  “What can I do for you, Joe?” he asked.

  “Thanks for calling me back, Mr. Collins,” I said. “I came across something odd in the trial file that I wanted to ask you about.”

  “That was a long time ago, but I'll do my best to give you an answer,” he said.

  “There was this diary, Crystal Hagen's diary. It had a code. Do you remember that?”

  Collins paused on the other side of the line and then, in a low, somber tone, said, “Yeah, I remember it.”

  “Well, I found a letter to the Department of Defense where Mr. Peterson tried to get it deciphered. What happened with that?”

  Another pause, then Collins answered. “Peterson signed that letter, but I wrote it. That was one of my contributions to the case. We didn't have personal computers back in 1980, at least nothing like we have today. We figured that the Department of Defense would have the technology to break the code, so Peterson assigned me the task of contacting the DoD. I spent hours trying to find someone to take my call. After a couple weeks of trying I found this guy who said he would see what he could do.”

  “So what happened? Did you ever get an answer?”

  “No. Things were moving at the speed of light on our end, but dealing with the DoD. was like swimming in jelly. I don't know if you saw this in the file, but Iverson demanded a speedy trial.”

  “A speedy trial? What's that mean?”

  “A defendant can request that his case be brought to trial within sixty days. We rarely do that because the longer a case lingers, the better it gets for the defense. We get more discovery; we have time to do a thorough investigation of our own; witnesses become less reliable. There was no reason for Iverson to demand a speedy trial, but he did. I was there when Peterson tried to convince him to back off the demand. We needed time to prepare. We needed to hear back from the DoD. Iverson didn't care. Remember how I said he didn't help with his case, like he was watching it on television? That's what I'm talking about.”

  “So what happened with the Department of Defense? Why didn't they break the code?”

  “We weren't a priority to them. This was before you were born, but that year, 1980, the Iranians were holding fifty-two Americans hostage. That was also an election year. Everyone was focused on the crisis, and I couldn't get anyone to talk to me or call me back. The packet I sent them disappeared into some black hole. After the trial I called them to tell them that it was too late, that they didn't need to work on our code anymore. They had no idea what code I was talking about.”

  “Did the prosecutor ever try to break the code?”

  “I don't think so. I mean, why would he? The inferences all pointed toward Iverson. He didn't need the code to be deciphered. He knew that the jury would read into it what he told them to read into it.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of Hillview and parked my car, laying my head against the headrest. I had one last question, but I hesitated to ask it. A part of me wanted to believe that he was not the monster that the prosecutor talked about. But I wanted the truth. “Mr. Collins, a friend of mine thinks that Carl didn't want the diary to be deciphered. She thinks that he knew that it would have pointed at him. Is that true?”

  “Your friend is perceptive,” he said, thoughtfully. “We had that same discussion thirty years ago. I think John Peterson agreed with your friend. I got the feeling that John didn't really want the code solved, that's why he gave it to me to do. I was a lowly clerk at the time. I think John wanted to document that we tried, but he didn't really want to receive the results because…well…” Collins took in a deep breath and sighed. “The truth is, it can be hard sometimes, to give it all you got defending a man that you know murdered his victim.”

  “Did you ever ask Carl about the diary code?”

  “Certainly. Like I said, John tried to convince Carl to back off the speedy-trial demand. That was one of our arguments—that we might get some good evidence from deciphering the code.”

  “What did Carl say?”

  “It's hard to explain. Most guys who are guilty will take a plea bargain. He refused a second degree. And, most guys who are innocent will delay trial for as long as it takes to get their case prepared. He demanded a speedy trial. We were trying to decipher the code, and it seemed like he was working against us. I gotta tell you, Joe, it seemed to me like Carl Iverson wanted to go to prison.”

  I walked over to Carl and sat down in the lounge chair beside him, his slight sideways glance being the only acknowledgement of my arrival. Then, after a moment, he said, “Beautiful day.”

  “It is,” I replied. I hesitated before launching into our interview. I wasn't going to pick up where we left off—talking about the day he got his draft notice. Instead, I wanted to talk about why he wanted the speedy trial, and why he seemed to not want the diary deciphered. I suspected that my choice of topic would spoil the rest of Carl's day, so I tried to ease into the conversation. “I talked to Berthel Collins today,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Berthel Collins, he was one of your attorneys.”

  “My attorney was John Peterson,” he said. “And he died years ago, or at least that's what I heard.”

  “Collins worked as a law clerk on your case.”

  Carl thought for a moment, apparently trying to remember Collins, then he said,” I seem to remember a kid sitting in the room on some of the visits. That was so long ago. Is he a lawyer now?”

  “He's the chief public defender in Minneapolis,” I said.

  “Well good for him,” he said. “And why did you talk to Mr. Collins.”

  “I'm trying to figure out what those coded messages in Crystal Hagan's diary meant.”

  His gaze never shifted from the apartment balcony across the way. He seemed unmoved by my bringing up the diary, treating my announcement with the insignificance of a burp. “So,” he said, “you're a detective now, are you?”

  “No,” I said, “but I do like a good puzzle. And this one seems to be a real challenge.”

  “You want an interesting puzzle?” he said. “Take a look at the pictures.”

  That was not where I wanted our conversation to go. “I saw the pictures,” I said, as the images of Crystal Hagen's corpse flashed across my memory. “They almost made me throw
up. I have no interest in looking at them again.”

  “Oh…no. Not those pictures,” he said, turning his body so that he faced me for the first time since I arrived. A sickly pallor washed over his face. “I…I'm so sorry you had to see those pictures.” I could tell by his face that he could still see the trial photos in his mind after all these years, his features giving way to a thirty-year-old gravity. “Those pictures were terrible. Nobody should have to look at them. No, I'm talking about the pictures taken of the fire, before the police arrived. Have you seen those?”

  “No,” I said. “What about them?”

  “You ever read a Highlights magazine when you were a kid?”

  “Highlights?”

  “Yeah, you'd find them in dentist offices and doctor's waiting rooms. They're magazines for kids.”

  “Can't say I've seen one,” I said.

  Carl smiled and nodded. “Well, they have these pictures in them, two pictures that appear to be identical, but there are small differences. The game is to find the differences, find the anomalies.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I did those kinds of things in grade school.”

  “If you like solving puzzles and riddles, find the pictures that were taken before and after the fire department arrived and look at them. Play that game. See if you can spot the anomaly. It's hard to see. It took me years to notice it—but then again, I didn't have the head start you'll have. I'll give you a hint, what you're looking at might be looking at you.”

  “You had the pictures in prison?”

  “My attorney sent me copies of most of the stuff in the file. Had all the time in the world to read it after they convicted me.”

  “Why didn't you take more of an interest in your case before they convicted you?” I asked. Carl looked at me like he was eyeing an unusual chess move. Maybe he saw where I was going with my question—my not-so-subtle segue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Collins said that you demanded a speedy trial.”

  He thought for a moment and said, “That is true.”

  “Why?”

  “It's a long story,” he said.

  “Collins said they wanted more time, but you pushed to go to trial.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “He thinks you wanted to go to prison.”

  Carl said nothing, setting his gaze back toward the window.

  I pressed on. “I want to know why you didn't fight harder to stay out of prison.”

  He hesitated before answering. Then he said, “I thought it would silence the nightmare.”

  Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. “The nightmare?”

  I watched as he paused his breathing and swallowed hard. Then, in a low, calm voice, a voice that came from somewhere deep in his soul, he said, “I've done things…things that I thought I could live with…but I was wrong.”

  “This is your dying declaration,” I said, trying to jump into his thoughts, hoping to grease the skids of his catharsis. “This is why you're telling me your story, to get this off your chest.” I saw the surrender in his eye, the desire to tell me his story. I wanted to scream at him to confess, but I whispered my words instead, hoping not to frighten him away. “I'll listen to you. I promise I won't judge.”

  “Came here to bring me absolution, did you?” He spoke barely above a whisper.

  “Not absolution,” I said. “But telling me what happened might help. They say that confession is good for the soul.”

  “They say that, do they?” His attention shifted slowly toward me. “And do you agree with what they say?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I think that if you have something that is troubling you…telling someone about it can be a good thing.”

  “Should we try that,” he said. “Should we test that idea?”

  “I think we should,” I said.

  “Then tell me about your grandfather,” he said.

  I felt a thump in my chest that stunned me. I looked away from him while I tried to calm my thoughts. “What about my grandpa?” I said.

  Carl leaned in. Still speaking in that soft voice, he said, “That first day that we met, I mentioned him, just in passing. I asked how he died, and you froze. Something heavy came over you. I could see it in your eyes. Tell me what happened to him?”

  “He died when I was eleven years old. That's all.”

  For a long while, Carl said nothing, letting the heaviness of my hypocrisy settle onto my shoulders. Then he sighed and shrugged. “I understand,” he said. “I'm just a school project.”

  An unsettling voice began to bounce around inside my head, fed by my own guilt, a voice that whispered to me, urging me to tell Carl my secret. Why not tell him, the voice said. He would take my secret to the grave in a matter of weeks. Besides, it would be my good-faith payment to him for the confession that he would give to me. But then another voice, a quieter voice, told me that good faith had nothing to do with why I needed to tell Carl my secret. I wanted to tell him.

  Carl looked down at his hands as he continued. “You don't have to tell me,” he said. “That was never our deal—”

  “I watched my grandpa die,” I blurted. The words escaped my brain and shot out of my mouth before I could stop them. Carl looked at me, startled by my interruption.

  Like a cliff diver leaving the safety of his perch, that single moment of courage or recklessness started an action I could not reverse. I stared out the window now, as I had seen Carl do so many times, and I gathered the details of my memory to me. When my thoughts were clear enough, I spoke again. “I've never told anybody this,” I said, “but it was my fault he died.”

  What I remembered most about my Grandpa Bill were his hands, powerful bulldog paws with stubby fingers as thick as lug nuts, fingers that pulsed with agility as he worked on the small engines that he repaired. I remembered him holding my hand in his when I was little, and the feeling it gave me that everything would be okay. I remembered how he moved through the world with utter patience, giving attention and purpose to every task he performed, whether it was cleaning his glasses or helping my mother through a bad day. He had been there for her in my earliest memories, his whispers drowning out her shouts, his hand on her shoulder able to tame a storm. She had always been bipolar—that's not a condition you can suddenly catch like the flu—but when my Grandpa Bill was alive, the waves never grew into whitecaps.

  He used to tell me stories about fishing the Minnesota River, up near Mankato where he grew up, hauling in catfish and walleye by the boatload, and I would dream of the day when I might go fishing with him. Then, when I was eleven years old, that day came. My grandpa borrowed a boat from a friend of his and we launched at the landing at Judson to float down the river with its slow yet powerful current, the plan being to end up at a park in Mankato before nightfall.

  That spring, the river had overflowed its banks with the snow runoff, but by July, when we went fishing, it had settled down. The flood had left behind a scattering of dead cottonwood trees jutting up from the river bottom, their branches breaking the water's surface like skeletal fingers. Grandpa Bill kept the motor of the little fishing boat idling so we could maneuver around the trees when we needed to. Occasionally, I would hear the screech of wood on aluminum as a branch, hiding just below the surface, scraped against the hull. The sound frightened me at first, but Grandpa Bill acted like it was as natural as the breeze rustling the leaves around us. That made me feel safe.

  I caught my first fish within the first hour, and I lit up like it was Christmas. I had never caught a fish before, and the feel of catching that fish, the twitching of my rod, seeing him lift out of the water flipping and flopping, thrilled me. I was a fisherman. The day meandered beneath a clear blue sky with him catching a few fish and me catching a few more. I think he fished without bait some of the time just to let me get ahead.

  By noon we had a decent stringer of fish. He told me to drop the anchor so that we could keep our lines in the water as we ate our lunch. The
anchor, which was attached to the boat at the bow—where I sat—dragged along the bottom of the river for a ways until it finally caught and brought our boat to a halt in the middle of the river. We washed our hands with water from a canteen, and Grandpa Bill pulled ham-and-cheese sandwiches out of a plastic grocery bag. We ate the best sandwiches I'd ever tasted, washing them down with bottles of cold root beer. It was a glorious lunch, eaten in the middle of a river at the apex of a perfect day.

  When my Grandpa finished his food, he folded his sandwich bag into a small wad and carefully placed it in the grocery bag, which had now become our trash bag. Then, when he finished his root beer, he put his empty bottle in the bag, using the same deliberate motion. He handed the bag to me so that I could follow his lead. “Always keep the boat clean,” he said. “Don't leave trash lying around or the tackle box open. That's how accidents happen.” I listened with one ear as I sipped my root beer.

  Once I drained the last of my drink, Grandpa Bill told me to pull up the anchor—another thing I had never done before. He had turned his attention to the motor, pumping a little ball in the gas line to get it ready to start. He wasn't watching as I laid my empty bottle on the floor of the boat. I would throw it away later, I told myself. I gripped the nylon rope that tethered us to the anchor and pulled. The anchor did not budge. I pulled harder and felt the boat edge upstream, the anchor still not moving. The boat had a flat stem plate for a bow, so I braced my feet against the stem and pulled hand over hand, pulling the boat slowly toward the anchor until my progress ground to a halt. Grandpa Bill saw my struggles and coached me to pull left and right, to work the anchor loose, but the thing would not come up.

  Then, behind me, I heard Grandpa Bill stir in his seat. I felt the boat rock. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw him making his way forward to help me. As he stepped over a bench seat that separated us, he put his foot down on my empty bottle. His ankle twisted, curling his foot sideways. He tilted and fell backward, his thigh crashing against the side of the boat, his arms swinging at the air, his torso wrenching around to face the river as he hit. The splash drenched me as the river swallowed my grandpa.