The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  He continued to carve out the grave. When he was done, he dropped the shovel and sat down with his back against a thick tree trunk. His sweat made him cold. His nose ran, partly because of the night air and partly because of the grief breaking inside him. He was at the point of no return, and he wondered if he could really do it. Lay the child in the ground, cover it up, and leave it behind.

  At least he had brought the child here, where the family ghosts could commune. Surely the dead souls would welcome a baby into their midst. Maybe, finally, God would come back and do what He had failed to do for so long. Watch over. Protect.

  He couldn't put it off any longer. Even at this late hour, on a lonely road, someone might drive by and wonder about his car parked on the shoulder. Take down a license plate. Call the police. A teenager from one of the nearby farms might see his light and decide to explore. There was no reason for anyone to search here after he was gone, as long as he came and went undetected.

  He picked up the child wrapped in clean cloth. It was practically weightless. He got down on his knees, balanced his elbows on the wet edge of the hole, and leaned down to lay the bundle carefully on the floor of the grave. Then he pushed himself up and wiped his face. He retrieved the shovel, took a wad of earth, and tipped it back into the pit. When the dirt hit the fresh white linen, his mouth twitched with dismay. He shoveled faster, covering up the body until only a postage stamp of white sheet remained, barely visible in the darkness. With the next scattering of soil, that was gone, too. His breathing came easier. He scraped all of the uncovered turf back into place, and then he began gathering handfuls of yellowed pine needles and scattering them over the circle of disturbed ground.

  When he shone his light down, the forest floor again looked pristine, as if no one had been there. There was no evidence of a grave. It was as if the child had never existed at all. He should have left it like that, but he knew there had to be some marking. Some memorial. He dug into his pocket and found a crumpled paper toy and decided he would leave it behind. With the solemnity of a father placing flowers at a headstone, he laid it down among the twigs and dirt.

  It was done.

  He picked up his shovel and retreated through the woods to his car. He saw fog gathering in the valleys and hanging over the road like a cloud. With his lights off, he disappeared into the mist.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Stride returned from the cemetery late on Friday afternoon and parked outside the Itasca County Courthouse in Grand Rapids, where the Sheriff's Department was housed. The three-story building took up an entire city block and included space for most of the county offices. He and Serena were lucky to have a top-floor office not much bigger than a closet that served as the war room for the investigation.

  He passed the granite veterans' memorial and under the snapping US flag on his way to the building entrance, but before he went inside, his stomach growled. He realized he hadn't eaten anything but a chocolate donut since dinner the previous night, and he was running low on caffeine to keep himself awake. On the other side of 4th Street, he spotted a Burger King restaurant, and he crossed the street to grab a late, greasy lunch.

  In the parking lot, he passed a rusting Ford Taurus. A wafer-thin woman sat in the driver's seat and wolfed down a double Whopper and an oversized pop. Their eyes met, and she spat a bite of her sandwich into a paper bag and hurriedly rolled down her window to wave at him.

  'Hey!'

  Stride stopped. The woman spilled out of her car, trailing the smell of fried food, and jutted out her hand. He shook it and wiped ketchup from his fingers.

  'It's Lieutenant Stride, right? I'm Blair Rowe with the Grand Rapids Herald:

  He groaned. 'No interviews, Blair. If I had something new, I'd tell you. I've got ten minutes to eat and then I need to get back inside.'

  'Ten minutes is great. Perfect. Off the record, just background. Please?'

  The last thing Stride wanted was to eat lunch with a reporter, but this was one case where more media exposure was a good thing. He needed Callie to stay on the front page until someone came through with a solid lead. 'Ten minutes,' he said.

  'Great, fabulous. Go get lunch, and I'll meet you at a table inside. I really appreciate it, Lieutenant.'

  Stride ordered a chicken sandwich, skipped the fries, and added a Diet Coke. By the time he got his tray of food, he saw Blair Rowe at a window table, waving both arms to get his attention. She'd already consumed most of her hamburger and was shoving three fries into her mouth at a time.

  'How do you stay so thin?' he asked.

  'Adrenaline,' she replied.

  Blair never stopped moving. Even as she stuffed food in her mouth, she tapped her fingers on the table and crossed and recrossed her legs as she shifted in her chair. He felt a little motion sick, watching her.

  'You're reporting on the Callie case for CNN, right?' he asked her.

  'Yes! This is big, big, big. I'm going to be on Nancy Grace tonight. They want someone who knows the area. For once in my life, it pays to be in nowhere-ville, Minnesota.'

  'Congratulations.'

  She ran right over the irony in his voice. 'Thanks! This is a hell of a break for me. I mean, you know, it's a terrible thing, but I can't tell you how cool it is to be part of a national news story. My mom is TIVOing every broadcast. Normally, Grand Rapids in the off season is slow. If a clown throws up at some kid's birthday party, that's news here in November.'

  Blair's thick black glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose. She pushed them up with her index finger.

  'Have you been at the newspaper for long?' he asked.

  'Two years,' she replied, sucking pop through her straw. 'I'd love to get to the Cities, but the dailies are shedding jobs left and right. It sucks to be a journalist right now. Who knows, maybe I can make the jump to TV. I never really thought about being on-air talent, but it's fun when the red light goes on.'

  Stride didn't reply. Blair's intense personality felt like machine-gun fire, and he doubted how well it translated to the intimate medium of television. He also didn't think she had the coiffed, blown-dry, perfectly sculpted look of an on-air reporter. Her brown hair was stringy, and he could tell from the thickness of her glasses that she was almost blind without them. The glasses magnified her dark eyes and made them look larger than life. Her face was narrow, with a nose like a bumpy ski slope and a pointed chin. He saw a couple of pimples she was hiding with make-up, and her white teeth needed straightening. She wasn't really ready for her close-up.

  Blair finished her hamburger and licked her fingertips. She glanced furtively around the half-empty restaurant and leaned forward. 'So you know the question everybody's asking,' she whispered. 'Did Marcus Glenn do it?'

  'No comment,' he said.

  'Oh, come on, Lieutenant. We can help each other out. I know Grand Rapids inside and out. My dad's worked on the floor of the UPM mill his whole life, and my mom teaches seventh grade English. This is my town.' 'So?'

  'So there aren't many secrets around here. Heck, why do we need turn signals? Everybody knows where everybody else is going. You think I haven't heard rumors about Marcus Glenn for years?'

  'What rumors?' Stride asked.

  Blair grinned. She pushed her glasses up her nose again. 'You first.'

  'This isn't a game, Blair. We're trying to find a little girl.'

  'I know, but we both have our jobs to do. Mine is to stick my nose into everyone else's business.'

  Stride took two bites of his chicken sandwich and decided he wasn't hungry anymore. He pushed his tray away. 'I have to go.'

  'OK, OK,' Blair interrupted, grabbing his arm. 'I'll show you mine, and you show me yours. The word on the social circuit is that Marcus and Valerie Glenn's marriage is shaky. Really shaky. Did you know she sees a shrink?'

  'How do you know that?'

  'I keep telling you, it's a small town. Doctor-patient confidentiality isn't worth much when people have two eyes in their head. They see who goe
s in which doors in town, you know?'

  Stride was silent.

  'She's already had at least one nervous breakdown,' Blair continued. 'Everybody knows why. Marcus has a parade of other women. He flies off for weekends in Vegas, and you can guess what he does down there. It's a screwed-up family living in that house.'

  Stride shrugged. 'Show me a family that isn't.'

  'Yeah. Point taken. Everybody's got secrets. But I have a nose for what smells bad. Have you been to the hospital in Duluth where Marcus practices?'

  'My partner is going there tomorrow.'

  'I was there this morning,' Blair said with a smug smile. 'Hardly anyone will talk about him. They're scared.'

  'Why?'

  Blair tilted her bag of fries to drain the last crumbs and salt into her mouth. 'I love fries. Does anyone not love fries?'

  'What are the hospital people afraid of?' Stride repeated.

  'If Marcus doesn’t like you, you're fired,' Blair told him. 'No one would go on the record about him. But you know how somebody does something bad, and his neighbors and friends all say, no way, not him, couldn't be. Well, no one at the hospital was rushing to tell me that Marcus was innocent. What they did say was that they were surprised he and Valerie ever had a baby at all.'

  'That doesn’t mean anything.'

  'I hear you, Lieutenant. You have to play it close to the vest. Just answer me this. Can you rule out the possibility that Marcus Glenn murdered his daughter?'

  'As far as I'm concerned, Callie is alive, and I'm going to find her,' Stride said. 'The best thing you can do is keep her face on the news, so someone sees her.'

  Blair chewed on the end of her straw. Underneath the table, her knee bounced, rocking the table so hard that Stride's pop sloshed over the side. 'Oh, I will, but if there are skeletons in Glenn's closet, I'm going to find them.'

  'Just don't withhold evidence from us,' Stride snapped.

  'Withhold it? Are you kidding? You'll see it on CNN.'

  Stride reached out under the table, took hold of Blair's knee in an iron grip, and held her leg steady. 'Blair, you're new to the game. I know that the TV news shows don't set a good example because they turn every crime into a whodunit. But you're dealing with real people's lives here.'

  'I'm not stupid,' she said.

  'I don't think you are.'

  'But I'm impatient, and I don't like to wait for the police to throw me crumbs.'

  Stride stood up from the table. 'Do you have kids, Blair?'

  'Yeah, I've got a little boy. My mom looks after him when I'm at work. So what?'

  'Then try to put yourself in Valerie Glenn's shoes for a minute.'

  'Hey, I'm with you. I am. I hope you find her daughter. I'm just not convinced you ever will.'

  Stride turned to leave.

  'Lieutenant?' Blair called.

  'What is it?'

  'I know about the babysitter.'

  'Good for you,' Stride said.

  'You want to hear my theory?'

  He scowled at her. 'What is it?'

  Blair scouted the restaurant again and then stood on tiptoes and put her lips next to Stride's ear. 'I think Marcus Glenn and Micki Vega committed this crime together.'

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Serena drove from Grand Rapids to Duluth on Saturday morning. The sky was slate gray with wavy clouds like smoke trails, and ice crystals of snow whipped across her windshield. She passed boggy fields where skeletons of trees jutted out of the standing water. The northern woods were no longer brick red or flaming orange as they had been in September, but dirty shades of rust and brown. Every few miles, she drove across black rivers and sped through block-long towns, with nothing but an old brick liquor store or a shabby five-room motel to attract a few tourist dollars. Most of the time, she was alone on the road.

  As she drove, she thought about Stride. She'd stood at the foot of the bed this morning and watched him while he slept. Wherever he was, it was a million miles away from her. He'd been walking away, retreating, escaping, for weeks, until they were strangers again. They'd drifted apart as easily as they had come together. What made her angry was that she had let it happen without fighting back. She'd watched him go rather than confront the hurt she felt. If that was what he wanted, if that was how it was going to be, then she would protect herself and pretend she had known it would happen this way all along.

  Maybe she had. Maybe they'd both been kidding themselves. There had always been fault lines, little hairline cracks that seemed like nothing until the weight of pressure and time burst them open. She knew it happened that way, and there was no one to blame. Things are fine until suddenly, unexpectedly, they are not fine at all anymore, and both of you know it, and neither one of you wants to admit it.

  Her phone rang. It was him. The man she loved.

  'You didn't wake me up this morning,' he told her.

  Serena wiped her eyes and squelched the anguish she felt when she heard his voice. 'I'm sorry. You haven't slept much lately, and I thought you could use the rest.'

  'You're right. Thanks.' He added, 'You sound strange. Is everything OK?'

  'Sure,' she said.

  It was easier to lie. It was safer to pretend. Things are fine, Jonny, but we both know they're not. She heard him hesitate, as if he might push her for the truth, but she knew he wouldn't do that.

  'What's the latest on the search?' he asked.

  He was a colleague talking to a colleague. Serena heard a noise in her head, and she thought it was a fault line, a crack, a fracture, splintering apart and growing wide.

  'We've gone through the guest lists from motels around Grand Rapids,' she reported to him in a flat voice. 'We're still doing follow-up, but there aren't any red flags. The Highway Patrol has been hitting gas stations with Callie's photo. We've got leads, but nothing hot.'

  'What about cameras on the roads in and out of town?'

  'We found a couple ATM cameras that face toward 169 and Highway 2. Between the fog and the video quality, there's not much to see. I sent them to the BCA to see if they could do a digital enhancement.'

  'I think we need to drag Pokegama Lake,' Stride said.

  Serena pulled her Mustang on to the shoulder of the highway. She switched off the motor and listened to the silence. 'That'll kill Valerie Glenn.'

  'I'm hoping we don't find anything, but if we wait too much longer, we'll lose the lake to ice.'

  'Give it a few more days.'

  'Yeah, OK, but I'm not feeling good about this.' He added, 'If it was an abduction for money, we'd have heard from the kidnappers by now.'

  'I know.'

  'I keep coming back to Marcus Glenn,' Stride told her. 'I don't want the reporters getting wind of it, but I think we should ask him to take a polygraph. He's already lied to us about Micki Vega. Who knows what else he's hiding?'

  'He'll lawyer up and stop talking,' Serena said.

  'That tells us something.'

  'I don't know. I don't like Glenn either, but I'm not sure I see him as violent or depraved.'

  'See what you can find out at the hospital,' Stride said.

  'I will.'

  When there was nothing left to say, the dead air between them stretched out and grew awkward. Serena stared across the highway at a wasted barn, its roof open to the elements in jagged holes where the beams had collapsed. Blackbirds flew from inside. The grass grew long and wavy around the bowing walls.

  'Hey, Jonny?' she murmured.

  'Yes?'

  'We're not so good, are we?'

  She couldn't believe she had said it aloud. That was all it took to quit pretending. Now they were on dangerous ground.

  Stride waited a long time, and then he said, 'It's me.'

  'No, it's not just you,' she told him.

  Two hours later, Serena walked along Superior Street in downtown Duluth with a nurse from St Mary's Hospital named Ellen Warner. At Lake Avenue, the two of them crossed the street and found a bench protected from the wi
nd. It was too cold to be outside comfortably, but Ellen had insisted that they talk where there was no risk of being overheard. Few people at St Mary's were anxious to talk about Marcus Glenn.

  Ellen opened a white takeaway bag and pulled out a hot dog from the Coney Island restaurant up the street. She unwrapped the foil and took a large bite. A drop of mustard stuck to her lips.

  'I appreciate your meeting me,' Serena told her.

  'Well, keep it under wraps, OK?' Ellen said, wiping her mouth. 'Dr Glenn is prickly. If a nurse gets on his bad side, she's gone.'

  Ellen was dressed in purple scrubs with a jean jacket over the top. Her sneakers were neon white. She was in her early fifties with short silver hair and a squat, heavy physique.

  'How long have you worked with him?' Serena asked.

  'Must be almost ten years,' she replied. 'I have to tell you, he's good. Make that great. The man's ego wouldn't fit in a football stadium, but he's a wizard in the OR. Good with patients, too. You wouldn't think it, because he's a titanic pain in the ass to everyone else. But he can switch it on with patients, and they love him. I've never understood people who can compartmentalize their lives like that, but with Dr Glenn, you have to overlook his personality and respect his talent.'

  'Do you know his wife, Valerie?'

  'Enough to say hello. She comes in every now and then.'

  Ellen finished her hot dog, crumpled the wrapper, and put it back in the bag. She reached into the hip pocket of her scrubs and removed a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and noticed the surprise on Serena's face. 'It's the stress. I know it's stupid, but that doesn’t stop me.'

  'What's the relationship like between Dr Glenn and his wife?' Serena asked.