The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  They didn't make love until six weeks later, and it was a short, awkward coupling, strangely devoid of passion. That didn't matter to her. What mattered was that he asked her to marry him the next day. It didn't even take her two heartbeats to say yes.

  Looking back, she knew how naive she'd been. It never occurred to her that he had simply added her to his collection like a butterfly, that she was exactly the kind of wife that a successful surgeon needed to show to the world. It was three years before she discovered that he had continued having sex with other women throughout their marriage. By then, they were in their new lake home, and she had a beautiful wardrobe and a new car, and she was on the board of nonprofit organizations in the northland where Marcus made lavish gifts. She had sold her soul, and it was too late to buy it back.

  Valerie descended into a loneliness that was so black she couldn't see her way out. She went through her days like a robot. She remembered spilling her soul to Denise and Tom, but Denise - who was pregnant with her third child at the time - had little time or sympathy for a sister who had been blessed with all the breaks in life: money, looks, the successful husband, the big house. That was the beginning, the real intersection where they began to drift apart as siblings. Valerie had never dreamed how empty she could feel with no partner in her life to talk to, with no one outside the sterile mansion who would listen to her.

  On one January night five years into their marriage, Marcus arrived home late from the hospital in Duluth. He had grown careless - or maybe he didn't really care at all - about hiding the evidence of his affairs. When he crawled into their bed, he stank of sex. After he fell asleep, Valerie lay awake for nearly three hours, crying soundlessly into her pillow, before she got up and emptied the remnants of a half-full bottle of aspirin into her sweaty palm and swallowed them down.

  She had awakened in the hospital. Marcus was there. She realized that, in his way, he loved her and had been frightened of the idea of losing her. She also knew that, if she was going to stay with him, she needed something else in her life that would take the place of an emotionally distant husband. He had been adamant when they got engaged that he had no interest in having a child, but she essentially blackmailed him by telling him the truth. Without a baby, she would try to kill herself again, and she would keep trying until she got it right. So he said yes. She threw away the condoms. And they had their usual sex, bareback now, every Sunday morning.

  Valerie never dreamed that three interminable years would pass from that breaking point. She had been tested; he had been tested. The first year had been exciting; the second year had been frustrating; and the third year had tipped her into a depression even deeper than she had known in the early years of her marriage. She knew perfectly well that she was the one who really wanted a baby. Marcus had his same perfunctory sex with her, but he didn't bother to pretend that he was disappointed when her period came back month after month. The loneliness came back along with it. And the emptiness. She craved a closeness with her husband to beat back her desperation, but that was something he could never give her. It wasn't who he was or would ever be.

  More and more, she had thought of suicide again. She even swore to herself that the next time she got her period would be the last. She would quit trying. She would just quit. And like a miracle, her next period never came. Instead, nine months later, Callie came. Her beautiful child. Her savior.

  Valerie sat on the floor of Callie's room, hugging her knees. She stared at the empty crib and didn't notice the tears on her face. Behind her, through an open window, cold air and wet flakes of snow blew on her neck.

  'Valerie.'

  She looked up as a shadow stretched across the carpet. It was Marcus.

  'Get out,' she told him.

  He hesitated, but he didn't leave.

  'Are you even disappointed, Marcus?' she asked him, her voice raspy with grief. 'Are you even sad that she's gone?'

  'Of course I am.'

  He sounded like a man who said what the world expected him to say. She had always known that he didn't love Callie the way she did, but she had never dreamed that he would be just as barren as a father as he was as a husband.

  'Tell me you didn't do this,' she whispered.

  'Oh, for God's sake, Valerie.'

  'Tell me.'

  'I can't believe I have to convince you. I didn't do this. It's absurd.' 'Is it?'

  He took a step closer. 'I may be a bad husband, but that doesn’t make me a bad man, Valerie. You know me, warts and all. Some things I do well, and some things I do badly. But harm Callie? I would never dream of taking her away from you. I know she's your whole life.'

  'You could have been my whole life, Marcus. But I guess I don't screw you like your whore in Vegas.'

  Marcus sighed loudly. 'We've been down this road before.'

  'Yes, we have.'

  'You know it's only sex to me. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.'

  'Oh, get out, Marcus,' Valerie snapped. 'Get away from me.'

  'I've told you who I am,' he insisted, grabbing hard to the door frame. 'I want things I would never ask you to do. If I could resist them, I would, but I can't. You know that. I can't be a great surgeon and switch off my other needs. It doesn’t work that way. But this girl in Vegas was nothing.'

  'What about the nurse? Regan Conrad?'

  Marcus shook his head. 'I don't know what it was about Regan. That's the truth. But it was still all about sex. And when you told me to break it off, I did.'

  'She was there,' Valerie said.

  'What?'

  'The night Callie was born. She was there, wasn't she? She was at the hospital.'

  'I guess she was,' Marcus said, looking uncomfortable.

  'You guess? Tell me the truth. You slept with her that night, didn't you? Tell me! I was in a hospital bed giving birth to your daughter, and you were fucking your little nurse. Right? Don't you dare lie to me about it.'

  Marcus rubbed his tired eyes with one hand. With his other hand, he clung to the frame of Callie's crib. 'OK. You're right.'

  Valerie pushed herself off the floor. She marched toward the doorway, and Marcus grabbed her arm in a hard grip to stop her. She shoved him furiously away, nearly losing her balance. She stumbled down the hallway toward the stairs and heard her husband shouting behind her.

  'Valerie.'

  She ran, not wanting to hear anything else. She flew down the steps to the foyer and wrenched open the front door.

  'Valerie,' Marcus called again.

  She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him. His face was screwed up with rage and bitterness.

  'Don't pretend you're some wounded angel,' he bellowed from the railing above her, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 'You're not exactly innocent, are you?'

  Valerie stepped into the snow and slammed the door behind her. She saw police cars and media vans on the street at the end of her driveway, and she froze as heads turned in her direction. She reversed course and stomped to the rear of the house, making heavy footfalls in the slush as she headed for the lake. She went all the way to the shore, where a translucent glaze of ice crept a few feet on to the blue water.

  She crumpled to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Her jeans grew wet, and the cold worked its way inside her clothes. She hoped no one was behind her, that no one had tried to follow her. She stared at the lake and thought about wading in and allowing her body to grow numb as the frigid water shocked her skin.

  You're not exactly innocent, are you?

  No. That was true. She wondered if he was guessing or if, somehow, he knew what she had done. But she had given up trying to decide what it really meant to be innocent or guilty. Did God punish every sin, or did He forgive you for the things you did when you were desperate and had nowhere to go?

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

  Valerie yanked the phone out of her pocket and prepared to throw it into the lake. But it wasn't Marcus on the other end, calling to shred her last ounces of s
elf-respect. Whoever was calling had a blocked number.

  'Hello,' she said wearily.

  'Is this Valerie Glenn?'

  She didn't recognize the voice. It was a woman.

  'Yes.'

  'I know what happened to your daughter,' the woman told her.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Maggie sat in the chair and stared at herself in the mirror. With the black smock tied around her neck and draped over her body, she looked like a pawn in a giant chess game. Behind her, Sara Wolfe reached round and played with Maggie's bangs with her fingers.

  'Are you sure?' Sara asked.

  'Yeah, I'm sure. Do it.'

  'I just don't want you waking up tomorrow and blaming me.'

  'I know what I'm doing,' Maggie said.

  'Whatever you say, girl.' Sara worked at the dye with a mortar and pestle. 'Where's Stride, anyway? I haven't seen him in a few weeks. Either he's found someone new, or he's getting shaggy.'

  'He's been in a cabin in Grand Rapids for the last month. I'm seeing him tomorrow morning.'

  'Oh, now I understand,' Sara replied, winking at Maggie in the mirror.

  'What?'

  'Nothing, it just makes sense now.'

  'This has nothing to do with him,' Maggie told her.

  'Right. Sure. Well, tell him to stop by. I'll get out the machete and cut through that tangled forest he calls hair.' She put down the white bowl and primped the highlights in her own sandy blonde hair. 'You know, when my husband's on stage doing a guitar solo, I still get as breathless as a groupie sometimes.'

  Maggie eyed her suspiciously. 'Yeah, so?'

  'So it's nice when you've known someone a long time and they can still make you go weak in the knees.' 'That's not what this is about.'

  Sara nodded. 'I hear you, girl. Message received loud and clear.'

  'You're such a bitch.'

  'Never say that to someone who stands behind you with a pair of scissors.' Sara wagged her finger at Maggie and picked up the mortar and pestle again.

  'You're right. I'm sorry.'

  Sara's face grew serious. 'Are you close to nailing the guy who's doing these farmland murders? I have to tell you, all my girlfriends are pretty scared. So am I.'

  'We've got patrols blanketing the roads northeast of the city all night long.'

  'If I lived on one of those farms, I wouldn't be sleeping,' Sara said. 'I'd be sitting up with the lights on and a big gun in my lap and a couple German shepherds on either side of me.'

  'That's not a bad plan,' Maggie told her.

  Sara tilted the bowl and showed her the color of the dye. 'How's that? Is that what you want?'

  'Redder.'

  'If it gets any redder, you'll look like Ronald McDonald.'

  'I want it to stop traffic,' Maggie said.

  'You're the boss.'

  At nine o'clock on Monday evening, Kasey spotted the one headlight trailing behind her patrol car like a watchful eye.

  It appeared near the airport and matched her on the remote roads turn for turn. She didn't think anything was wrong until she turned for the fourth time, heading north toward Island Lake, and the same single headlight followed in her wake. When she slowed to draw the vehicle closer, whoever was behind her mimicked her speed. She was being followed.

  Kasey drifted to a dead stop, her engine idling, her eyes locked on the rear-view mirror. Giant stretches of black water loomed on both sides of the highway. Her patrol car shuddered as wind hurtled across the open lake, bringing streams of snow. Half a mile behind her, the car with the lone headlight stopped too. They played cat and mouse on opposite ends of the bridge.

  She didn't want to give in to paranoia. It might be nothing. It wasn't uncommon for teenage thrill-seekers to shadow police cars. She turned on her light bar, and almost immediately, the headlight winked off. She saw red tail lights as the person behind her did a U-turn and retreated at high speed. In the darkness, she couldn't make out details of the car that had tracked her.

  She waited another minute, and when the odd headlight didn't return, she continued to the far side of the lake and followed the highway where it hugged the north shore. On her radio, she listened to chatter among the other cops as they patrolled the farmlands, sweeping back and forth across the zigzagging roads. It was a cold, lonely evening. For the most part, they had the countryside to themselves.

  Her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her shirt pocket and saw that her husband was calling.

  'Is everything OK?' Bruce asked her.

  'Yeah. I'm fine.'

  He picked up on the nervousness in her voice. 'Are you sure? You sound freaked.'

  'It's nothing,' Kasey told him, glancing in her mirror again. 'I thought somebody was following me. I thought maybe it was him, you know?'

  'Jesus. I don't like the idea of you out there alone.'

  'I'll be all right. How are things at home? Are you taking precautions?'

  'I checked the basement and all the windows,' Bruce said. 'I put a baby monitor down there too, so I could hear if anyone tries to get in.'

  'Good. I should be home sometime after midnight.'

  'I'll be up,' Bruce told her. He added, 'We can't live like this forever, you know.'

  'I know. We're going to get out of here, just like we planned.'

  'So let's do it. Now. Pack up and head for Nevada. We can leave tonight.'

  Kasey let the silence drag out. 'Not yet.'

  'What are we waiting for?'

  'If we leave and this guy is still out there, I'll never sleep again,' Kasey said. 'I'll always wonder. It doesn’t matter where we go.'

  'Do you think he'd follow us?'

  'I don't know!' Kasey shouted. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice, reining in her panic. 'I have no idea what he'll do next. He's obsessed with me now, don't you get that?'

  'All the more reason to get away,' Bruce pressed her.

  'Let's talk when I get home. OK? I can't talk about this now.'

  'I know. Watch your back.'

  Kasey hung up. Her hands were trembling. She chewed her upper lip and peered through the windows. Farmhouses and vacation homes were notched into the forest every quarter-mile or so as she wound through the roads bordering Island Lake. She spent an hour doing a reconnaissance of the gravel roads near the water. Twice she had to break for deer frozen in the lane, staring at her. The animals were the only things out here that were alive and awake.

  She knew that Maggie wanted a mammoth police presence to spook the killer. Let him see cops on every road. Let him know that the risk of another assault was too big to take. If it was a waiting game, though, he was bound to win. There were too many long miles of rural land to watch them all.

  Kasey radioed in her position. The dispatcher routed her on a reverse course south and east toward Highway 44. More travels through no- man's-land.

  She retraced her path and headed across the open stretch of lake again, where the wind was worst. As she cleared the bridge, she spied a black van parked on the shoulder, its lights and engine off. She didn't think the van had been there as she headed north, but she'd been distracted. As she passed, she studied the driver's window but didn't see anyone inside. There was no steam gathered on the glass.

  She pulled on to the side of the road twenty yards ahead of the van. Watching for movement behind her, she opened her door and climbed out next to the patrol car. She unhooked a flashlight from her belt and aimed it at the van's license plate, but the surface of the plate was caked with mud. She couldn't read the numbers. When she shot the beam at the windshield, she realized that the van's windows were smoked. She couldn't see through them.

  She didn't like it.

  At that moment, inside her patrol car, the radio crackled to life.

  'All units in vicinity respond to a nine one one emergency call, felony assault in progress.' The dispatcher gave the address, which was on Highway 12 in the heart of the north farmlands. Kasey was fifteen minutes away at high spee
d. It had to be him.

  She hesitated, studying the black van. Had it been there the whole time? Was it abandoned? She didn't have time to worry about it. She got back in her patrol car, slammed the door, and shot southward along the highway between the dark columns of pines.

  Less than a mile later, her eyes flicked to her mirror, drawn to a sudden beam of light like a moth.

  'Shit,' she said aloud.

  The single headlight was back. Following her.

  Kasey had a split second in which to decide whether to join the units responding to the assault call or find out who was in the van behind her. She chose the van. At the next intersection, she spun the patrol car into a hard U-turn. She pushed the accelerator to the floor, and the car leaped forward with a growl. Ahead of her, she heard the squeal of brakes, and the van lurched into an awkward turn in the middle of the highway. Its engine was no match for Kasey's patrol car.

  'I've got you,' she whispered, taking one hand off the wheel to unsnap the thumb break on her holster.

  She closed the gap quickly, but when she was a quarter-mile behind the van, its lights vanished. She switched on her high beams, but the black stretch of asphalt was empty. The vehicle had disappeared. Too late, she spotted a dirt road winding eastward off the highway toward the lake. She braked hard, but as she turned the wheel over, the rear of her car skidded on the snow piled on the shoulder, and her tires spun. She jammed the accelerator, but the wet slush gave her no traction. Frustrated, she feathered the pedal, and the car inched forward in fits and starts until it cleared the shoulder, where the tires grabbed the road and shrieked as she bolted forward.

  The dirt road was barely a crease in the forest on her left. Nearly a dozen mailboxes leaned out toward the highway. When she turned, she realized she was on a private road that dead-ended at the water. There was no way out. The van was trapped somewhere ahead of her, between her car and the lake.

  She slowed to a crawl, studying the maze of driveways that split from the main trail toward the lake homes, which were dark squares nestled among the trees. Snow-covered spruce branches dangled over the road, hanging low enough to brush the roof of the car. Gravel scraped under her tires. She drove for a mile until the road ended at a concrete boat launch that sloped downward, disappearing into the dark water.