The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  'Strained,' Ellen said.

  'How so? Do they fight?'

  'No fights, at least not at the hospital. They're distant. She tries to get inside his head, but he doesn’t want anyone else in there.'

  'Do you know their daughter Callie?'

  'Sure, Mrs Glenn brings her in sometimes. Cute girl.'

  'What's Dr Glenn like as a father?'

  Ellen blew out a cloud of smoke and regarded Serena coolly. 'You mean, would he do something to Callie? No, I don't believe that. If Marcus Glenn is one thing in this world, he's a doctor. He'd never harm another human being.'

  'That's not what I asked.'

  'Well, that's what everyone's saying. Would I call him a loving, doting father? No. He's not going to get down on the floor and play games or make baby talk with a stupid grin on his face. That's not who he is. But a monster? I don't think so. Although you'd probably find people in the hospital who disagree with me.'

  'Is there anyone who hates him enough to want to harm him? Or his family?'

  Ellen's brow furrowed. 'That's a difficult question. A lot of people dislike him because he's a perfectionist. He has no patience for mistakes. But would someone hurt him by taking his daughter? That's hard to imagine.'

  'You said nurses have been fired because of him.'

  'Yes, that's true.' is there anyone who would hold a grudge?'

  Ellen shrugged. 'Most were reassigned elsewhere. A couple wanted to get out of nursing anyway. It chews people up.'

  'What about the personal side?' Serena asked. 'I've heard rumors about Glenn having affairs with women on the hospital staff.'

  Ellen cocked her head and stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete of the bench. She brushed ash on to the pavement. 'Yes, Marcus has a weakness for pretty young things. In his defense, nurses join the staff, and they see a tall, rich, handsome surgeon, and they make a play for him. It's not like he's going to leave Valerie for any of them.'

  'Maybe someone thought he would.'

  'Hey, you fool around with a married man, you take your chances. Don't look to me for sympathy if you get hurt.'

  'I heard there was one affair that was more serious,' Serena said.

  Ellen glanced at her watch. 'I should be getting back. I've already said too much.'

  'Come on, Ellen. Who was it? Do you know the woman?'

  'Oh, yeah. Everyone knows Regan.'

  'Regan?'

  'Regan Conrad. She's a nurse. I never saw them together, but I heard people talking about the affair. It was hot and heavy for a while, although you wouldn't believe it to look at her.'

  'Why?'

  'Well, Regan is no Valerie. Hell, she's almost anorexic, lots of tattoos, hoy breasts, lip ring. All I can figure is she must be dynamite in bed.'

  'Are they still seeing each other?'

  'No, I heard that Marcus wised up and dumped her earlier this year. I think he figured out she's crazy.'

  'Crazy?' Serena asked.

  'Volatile,' Ellen said. 'She's a good nurse, but man, she can go off on you. And she plays dirty, too. A few years ago, she had a run-in with a young lab tech. Not long after, they found hundreds of hardcore porn images on the guy's computer, so they fired him. And hello, who was Regan sleeping with at the time? Some geek in IT.'

  'She sounds like someone who carries a grudge.'

  'Oh, yeah, but if you're thinking she had something to do with Callie's disappearance, you can forget that. She didn't do it.'

  'How do you know?'

  'She worked the graveyard shift on Thursday night. So did I. I remember seeing her in the cafeteria, because she got into a shouting match with the cook over a hair she said she found in her pasta.'

  Serena didn't care if Regan had an alibi. 'How do I find her?' she asked. 'Does she work in the orthopedics area with you and Marcus Glenn?'

  Ellen shook her head. 'Regan is an obstetrics nurse in the maternity ward. She works with mothers and babies.'

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  Maggie Bei ripped open the latest letter from the lawyer at the adoption agency in Minneapolis. She unfolded it and read it carefully, then tore the letter into pieces. The paper scraps fluttered to the floor around her. She pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and slapped the dinette table with her palm.

  'Fuck it,' she announced.

  She stomped into the kitchen and swung open the doors of the liquor cabinet. She extracted a half-empty bottle of Brazilian cachaça, then grabbed a lime from a basket near the refrigerator. After slicing the lime and squeezing it into a lowball glass, she added sugar and ice and filled the rest of the glass with Brazilian rum. Out of deference to the remnants of her head cold, she also dropped in a couple tablets of vitamin C and watched them fizz. She swirled the concoction around, drank it down in two swallows, and made another.

  'That's better,' she said.

  Maggie carried her drink into the living room of her condominium. She lived on the upper floor of condo units built over the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Duluth, with a view toward Lake Superior. There were still unpacked boxes scattered around the apartment. She had moved in a month earlier, and since then, most of her time had been taken up with the murder investigation in the north farmlands. She'd barely had time to do anything in her new place except sleep.

  Maggie sipped her caipirinha and stared at the lake. She knew she shouldn't be drinking, but she didn't care. It was Saturday afternoon, and she needed to pick up Kasey Kennedy in a few hours. The two of them were going to visit Troy Grange, whose wife Trisha had disappeared on Halloween night more than two weeks earlier. She could sugar-coat it however she wanted, but after the discovery of the fourth victim, Troy knew the truth. He was now a single father to two young girls.

  The intercom near her front door buzzed. Maggie put down her glass and walked over and pushed the button. 'Yes?'

  'You've got a visitor downstairs,' the lobby guard told her. 'Her name's Serena Dial.'

  'Tell her you need to do a strip-search.'

  Maggie heard an expletive in the background.

  'She's coming up,' the guard said, laughing.

  'Thanks.'

  Maggie retrieved her drink and waited. Two minutes later, she heard a knock on the door.

  'Hey, stranger,' she told Serena.

  'Hey, yourself.'

  Serena nodded her head in approval as she cast an eye around the apartment. 'Very nice. I love the place.'

  'One day I'll actually move in,' Maggie said, nodding at the boxes. She swirled the ice in her drink. 'You want something? I can do nonalcoholic beverages under duress.'

  'No thanks.'

  Maggie slumped sideways into an oversized chair and dangled her feet over the cushion. 'Have a seat. Talk to me. The diet's working; you look great.'

  'The last five pounds are the hardest,' Serena said. She took a seat on the sofa opposite Maggie and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. 'You look good, too.'

  'Yeah? How do you think I'd look with red hair?' Maggie asked.

  'Red? You?'

  'There's this cop named Kasey Kennedy with this amazing red hair. Makes me want to try it. I'm bored with black.' She added, 'I hear you're back on the job.'

  Serena nodded. 'I'm official.'

  'Good for you. Are you in town because of Callie Glenn?'

  'Yeah, I was asking questions over at St Mary's,' Serena told her.

  'Tonight I'm seeing a nurse who lives on the north side of Duluth. She was having an affair with Marcus Glenn.'

  'The media has been hitting the doc pretty hard,' Maggie said. 'Do you think he was involved?'

  'We haven't crossed him off the list.'

  'How's Stride?' Maggie asked. 'Is he still coming back next week?'

  'I guess.'

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. 'You guess?'

  'Something's wrong, but he won't talk about it,' Serena said.

  'I'm sorry.'

  Serena took a long time to reply. 'Yeah, it's the old story with us. Tw
o stubborn people with baggage.'

  'He loves you,' Maggie said.

  'I know, but if he won't let me in, what the hell am I there for? I'm getting tired of being alone even when we're together.'

  Maggie didn't say anything. This wasn't a conversation she particularly wanted to have with Serena. They both knew the score. Maggie had made her one and only play for Stride in the months after his wife died, but to him, she was still the young kid he had hired as his partner. Not a lover. Then Serena - who wasn't much older than Maggie - had arrived in town, and Stride fell for her hard. Maggie liked Serena as a friend and a cop, but they still tiptoed around their mutual feelings for Stride, trying not to let the competition come between them. She couldn't help the occasional stabs of jealousy that Stride had turned to Serena, not her.

  'What do you think I should do?' Serena asked.

  'I wish I could tell you.'

  'I know I'm not a saint in this. I should push him, but I'm too busy wrapping barbed wire around myself.' She got up impatiently. 'I want a drink.'

  'No, you don't.'

  'I'm not going to, but I want one. I hate that.' She shook her head and changed the subject. 'What about you? How are you?'

  'If I'm thinking about dyeing my hair red, what does that tell you?' Maggie asked.

  'I heard you got DNA on the bastard who's been snatching these women.'

  'We do, but we don't have results back. Either way, we still have to catch him, and I don't think he's done yet.'

  'What about the adoption agencies?' Serena asked. 'Are you any closer to finding a kid?'

  Maggie clucked her tongue in frustration. 'I always thought this was the good old USA, where money can buy you anything. Apparently not a baby, however.'

  'Give it time.'

  'Yeah, time. I don't have time for a kid, so I don't know why I'm trying.' Maggie raised her glass in a toast. 'We're really having a Thelma and Louise kind of day, aren't we?'

  'Totally.'

  Maggie finished her drink and climbed out of the chair. Outside the window, the sky grew blacker as dusk approached. Serena came and stood next to her, and they watched the lights come on around the harbor below them. An ore boat muscled through the canal underneath the city's steel lift bridge. Beyond the bridge was the strip of land called the Point, where Stride and Serena lived.

  'This nurse you're seeing, where exactly on the north side does she live?' Maggie asked, is it in the city or in the farmlands?'

  'Up in the farmlands. Lismore Road near McQuade.' Serena added, 'And no, you don't have to remind me.'

  Maggie nodded, but she reminded her anyway. 'That's not a very safe place to be these days.'

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  'You're telling me that Trisha is dead,' Troy Grange said.

  Maggie winced. Troy didn't waste time with pretty ways to share bad news. 'We don't know that for sure,' she told him. 'I don't think we can automatically assume the worst. One woman is dead. That's all we know for certain.'

  'Liar,' Troy snapped.

  He wasn't being hostile, just honest. Maggie knew he was right, but she couldn't say so. She couldn't say that to any victim's spouse and certainly not to a friend.

  Troy Grange was the senior Health and Safety Manager at the Duluth Port. They had worked together for five years on immigrant smuggling, outbreaks of communicable disease, and crimes in the harbor ranging from arson to rape. Through it all, she had never known Troy to hide behind his lawyers or his budget. Anything that went wrong in the port was on his watch. He was solid.

  Troy ran his hands over his bald head. He was forty years old, not tall, but built like a circus strongman. His face was big: lumpy nose, broad chin, and puffy cheekbones like a squirrel with a mouthful of acorns. He wore a form-fitting red undershirt and baggy black sweatpants.

  'You know what I keep thinking about?' he said. 'I used to work on the ore boats, but Trisha made me give it up. She said it was too dangerous, and she didn't want to be left alone with the kids. And now I lose her from inside our own house.'

  'I'm so sorry, Mr Grange,' Kasey Kennedy murmured.

  Kasey sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Maggie, her knees pressed together. She looked uncomfortable, her eyes darting between Maggie and Troy. Maggie felt bad about bringing Kasey into the middle of this scene, but she wanted Kasey to understand that investigative work wasn't glamorous. Too often, it was filled with suffering.

  'You saw him, didn't you?' Troy asked Kasey. 'You saw this bastard?'

  'Not his face, but yes.'

  Troy got up from his chair and folded his arms over his barrel chest. The floor timbers shivered as he paced in front of the fireplace.

  'Tell me what you think,' he said. 'You saw what he did to this other woman. Is he just a fucking murderer? Is there any way my wife could be alive?'

  'I don't know what to tell you, Mr Grange,' Kasey stuttered. 'I sure hope she's alive.'

  Maggie wanted to say: If Trisha's alive, she's better off dead. But she didn't.

  'How are the girls, Troy?' Maggie asked.

  He sat down again and wiped his nose on his bare, thick forearm. 'I took them to visit Trisha's parents in Chicago on Friday, and I left Emma there. I've got to go back to work on Monday, and I can't take care of a baby right now. Plus, it will be good for her parents to have something else to focus on.'

  'What about Debbie?'

  'Debbie doesn’t understand what's going on.' He twisted his silver wedding ring around his finger and added, 'I shouldn't have gone to that goddamn Halloween party. Not with that other woman disappearing in October.'

  'You had no way of knowing,' Maggie told him. 'We didn't know we were dealing with a pattern crime.'

  'Yeah, but security's what I do. I knew there was a risk. Hell, I upgraded our security system three days after I heard about that woman going missing. A lot of good that did us.'

  'Don't blame yourself.'

  Troy shrugged. 'I do.'

  'We're going to be blanketing the north highways with cops every night,' Maggie said. 'If this guy tries again, we'll get him.'

  'That's a lot of ground to cover,' he said, shaking his head. 'I don't want to sound skeptical, but you're going to be spread pretty thin across a few hundred square miles.'

  'We've got extra manpower. Volunteers. Nobody's sleeping, Troy.'

  'I know. I appreciate it.' He looked at Kasey. 'Will you be out there too?'

  'Um, yeah, I'm sure I will,' Kasey murmured.

  'You be careful.'

  Kasey nodded and stared at her hands.

  'Daddy?'

  All three of them looked up. Debbie Grange, six years old, stood in the doorway of the living room. She wore polka-dot pajamas and carried a stuffed Pooh bear under her arm. Troy Grange sprang up immediately.

  'What is it, sweetheart?'

  'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' Debbie murmured.

  Maggie felt her heart breaking. She saw Kasey look away and bite her lip. Troy wrapped his bear arms around his little girl.

  'I'll tuck you in, baby,' he said.

  'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' the girl repeated.

  'Oh, honey, I know, but Mommy's not here. Remember? She had to go away.'

  Fat tears dripped down the girl's face. 'Where is she?'

  'I told you, sweetheart, she had to take a trip, OK? I'll tuck you in. I'll stay right there with you.'

  'No. I want Mommy.'

  Troy cradled his daughter as the girl cried into his shoulder. He sang to her under his breath, and Maggie found she could barely watch. She gestured to Kasey, and they both stood up. Maggie met Troy's eyes and pointed at the front door. He nodded.

  'Thanks for everything,' he called to her softly. 'You too, Kasey. Please keep me posted.'

  They left without saying anything more. Outside, on the front porch, Kasey leaned heavily against the railing and looked sick. 'God,' she said.

  'Yeah, this is the worst part of the job,' Maggie told her.

 
'Do you ever get used to it?'

  'Nope. I hope I never do.'

  Both women climbed inside Maggie's yellow Avalanche. Maggie normally drove fast, even at night, and she punched the truck to seventy-five miles an hour on the highway. Beside her, Kasey clutched the handhold on the door. The headlights lit up the dark stretch of road through the lonely farmlands.

  'Do you still want to work on the investigation?' Maggie asked.

  Kasey leaned her cheek against the cold glass and stared at the fields whipping by outside the window. 'I don't know. I don't even know if I want to be a cop anymore.'

  Maggie glanced sideways at Kasey's face. 'You had a rough experience that night,' she told her. 'Some people never get over it. Even tough cops.'

  As she said it, Maggie thought about Stride. He was a tough cop, but she knew that he took all of his stress and grief and sucked it inside himself, where very little of it ever escaped. She remembered how lonely he had been in the months after his wife died, when his wound was greatest. She had tried to fight her way inside to rescue him, but he had pushed her away, just as he was doing to Serena now. She wondered if he knew how to ask for help.

  'I keep thinking about that woman's eyes,' Kasey said.

  'You can't change what happened. It's over.'

  'Yeah, but I feel so guilty.'

  'You have to put it behind you.'

  'That's the thing. I just want to get out. I want to forget all about it.' She turned and stared at Maggie. 'Do you think I'm wrong if I quit? Would you feel like I was running away?'

  'That's not my call, Kasey,' Maggie said.

  'I don't know what to do,' Kasey told her. 'I can't get that guy out of my head, you know? I feel like he's haunting me. Like he's still out there.'

  Under the night sky, he was barely visible, just a silhouette marching quickly through the field in the north farmlands.

  He kept his hands in the pockets of his fleece jacket. His breath became a warm cloud in front of his face. He splashed through ice- glazed puddles in the indentations where tractors ploughed the spring soil, and the noise made by his boots was like glass breaking. Needles of frost made the brown grass brittle. His nose picked up the animal smell of cattle from the barn across the highway.