The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  'You think he was at the school?' Clayton asked.

  'Could be. I found a picture of the school on a photo card in his apartment. It was taken before you guys secured the property. He might have been scouting it for a raid.'

  'Damn, can't these guys just go bungee jumping or something?'

  'Tell me about it. Anyway, it may be a wild goose chase. For all I know, Garaldo was there and gone weeks ago, but it's worth checking out.'

  'I'll call Nieman and ask him to get out there today. I hope that kid's not inside. There's a lot of dangerous debris in that place. Not to mention rats.'

  'I'm not a big fan of rats,' Maggie said.

  'You and me both.'

  Maggie took another look at the police report from the Armory break-in. 'Hey, tell Nieman to keep his eyes open for something else, too.'

  'What?'

  'Red pistachio shells.'

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Stride and Serena spent the morning in silence.

  They sat on opposite sides of the desk in the war room in Grand Rapids, with a pretense of paperwork between them. Her perfume drifted across the short space and smelled sweet and familiar. The heat in the building had been cranked until it was uncomfortably warm in the tiny office. When her head was down, with her dark hair tumbling across her face, Stride found himself staring at her. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Complex, wounded, attractive. Three years ago, she had seemed like the perfect fit for him, as if two broken souls could come together and make a whole.

  Serena looked up and met his eyes. They didn't need to speak to send a message between them. She felt angry and rejected. It had been bad enough before, but it was worse now, and he realized that they were spiraling out of control. She knew it, too. She waited for him to talk to her, and when he didn't, she got out of her chair and closed the office door. She leaned against it and folded her arms.

  'You told her,' Serena said, her voice fierce.

  Stride didn't understand. 'What do you mean?'

  'Not me. You told her.''

  'Maggie,' he said.

  'Yeah. Maggie. She told me what's been going on.' Serena cupped her long fingers in front of her chin. 'I want you to understand something, Jonny. I'm hurting for you. I knew you were pushing me away, but I didn't know why. Now I do. I get it. And I'm sorry.'

  'So am I.'

  'But I'm having a lot of trouble with this,' she continued. 'You were going through hell, and rather than talk to me about it, you let it sabotage our whole relationship. And when you finally opened up about what was going on, it wasn't to me. Do you have any idea what it felt like to hear about this from her?'

  'You're right. I should have told you myself.'

  'But you didn't. You couldn't open up to me. I was hoping you and I were past that, but obviously we aren't.'

  'I guess not.'

  'But you were able to talk to Maggie.'

  'Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone who's not in the middle of it,' he said.

  'Yes, but she is in the middle of it, isn't she? She always has been.'

  Stride ran his hand back through his messy hair. He normally had a good poker face, but not now. He shook his head in frustration. 'It's always been complicated between me and Maggie. You know that.'

  'It's not so complicated. She loves you.'

  'That was years ago,' he protested.

  'It's not like a disease, and you wake up and you're cured. The only one in denial here is you. And I think it's because you have feelings for her, too.'

  'We're friends. We've been friends forever. Sometimes it's hard to know where the line is.'

  Serena sat down across from him again. 'I was getting a strange vibe at dinner last night,' she said.

  He didn't reply.

  'I thought about it all last night, trying to figure out what it was,' she continued.

  'Serena,' he murmured.

  She knew without asking, but she asked it anyway. 'Something happened between the two of you, didn't it?'

  He didn't even think about denying it. He met her eyes and nodded.

  Serena slashed her arm across the desk, tumbling stacks of paper to the floor. 'So with me you have nothing to give, but with her?' she asked bitterly.

  'I'm really sorry.'

  She stood up. 'I think we're done here.'

  'Let's talk about this,' he said.

  'Now you want to talk? Isn't it a little late for that? You've had weeks to talk to me, and you didn't. But in one day with Maggie, you managed to jump into bed and tell her everything that was going on in your head.'

  'It's not that simple.'

  'Maybe it is, Jonny. Maybe it is.' She grabbed her coat from the hook. As she twisted the doorknob, she stopped and closed her eyes. 'Look, I know I'm not being fair with you. I haven't opened up to you, either.'

  'I'm not looking for excuses,' Stride told her. 'This is my fault. Not yours. Not Maggie's.'

  Serena shook her head. 'Let's not talk about Maggie. She knew exactly what she was doing. Don't tell me she didn't.'

  'It wasn't like that.'

  'Not to you, maybe. She saw her opportunity, and she took it. End of story.' She added in a quiet voice, 'Are you in love with her?'

  'I have no idea. I know I love you.'

  'But that's not enough for us, is it? Can you tell me right now that you're choosing me? That you can reject whatever feelings you have for Maggie? That's what I need to hear. If you can do that, then maybe we can try again.'

  'I want to say yes,' he told her.

  'But you can't.'

  'It's too soon. I don't want to tell you what you want to hear and wind up lying to you. For weeks, until yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. Not for you. Not for Maggie. Not for myself. Nothing. Now everything is flooding back, and I haven't had a chance to work through any of it. You can't ask me to sort this out in a few hours.'

  Serena nodded. 'You're right. That's not fair. We both need to think about what we're going to do.'

  She walked over to him and kissed him with her soft lips. He didn't need a reminder of how good it felt. Then she turned and left the office and closed the door behind her.

  Serena drove to Duluth on Wednesday afternoon and found a bar and grill north of the airport. She pulled into the parking lot and stared at the entrance door. Inside was vodka. Glass after glass of it. She could taste it and imagine it dulling her into unconsciousness. She hadn't fallen off the wagon in fifteen years, but now seemed like a good time. It was as if no time had passed at all since her last drink. She could still remember it on her lips.

  She hadn't anticipated this crossroads. She had been slowly getting her mind around the idea of staying in Duluth forever. Of staying with Jonny forever. Those weren't decisions she made lightly, not given her past, but she had begun to believe it. She should have listened to the warning signs and realized that nothing lasts forever. She loved Jonny. He loved her. That didn't mean they could make it work. They both had too many walls and sharp edges.

  She had no idea what she would do next. Stay. Go. Try again. Give up. It wasn't the first time in her life she had considered starting over, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Her instinct was to forgive Jonny, but she couldn't do it alone, and she couldn't do it without his whole heart in it. It killed her to think of walking away, but she wasn't going to sit in the background while Stride and Maggie worked side by side every day. The threesome was over.

  She stared at the door of the bar. The lure of vodka was so vivid and clear that she could hear it calling to her. She could see the liquid in the bottle. Watch it splash into her glass and swirl around the ice. One drink after another after another. Until she was in the same state of mind that Jonny had been, feeling nothing.

  Serena opened the car door.

  As she did, her phone rang again. It was Denise Sheridan. She answered the phone and felt as if she had been given a temporary rescue, dragging her back from a cliff's edge.

&n
bsp; 'What's up, Denise?'

  'I heard from the team we had following Marcus,' she reported. 'He was in Duluth this morning in surgery.'

  'So?'

  'So he left the hospital to go back to Grand Rapids, and they lost him.'

  'How?'

  'He knew they were back there. He deliberately ran a light and got them off his trail. It may not mean anything, but I wanted you to know.'

  'Where was he when he skipped?' Serena asked.

  'Rice Lake Road near Martin. They thought he was heading back home, but we staked out Highway 2 and he never showed.'

  'What's he driving?'

  'A burgundy Lexus.'

  Serena thought about Marcus Glenn speeding into the north farmlands. She was in the same area herself, and she was pretty sure she could read the surgeon's mind. 'I know where he's going,' she said.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Kasey, Kasey, Kasey. You're running, aren't you?

  Her face came into focus through the binoculars. She stopped in the front door of her farmhouse, as if she knew she was being watched. Her nervous eyes flicked to the woods behind their garage, then to the open fields and down the dirt driveway to the highway, where a police car was parked on the shoulder. A bored policeman eyed the traffic in both directions.

  Kasey balanced two boxes in her arms. She carried them to a rental truck parked next to the garage and disappeared up the ramp into the rear of the truck. A minute later, she returned to the house with empty arms for another load. He had been watching the back-and- forth from his vantage in the trees for nearly an hour. Kasey's husband had arrived with the truck around noon, and since then, the two of them had led a steady parade as they packed the truck with their belongings.

  You can't run, Kasey. It doesn’t work that way. We're not done.

  Bruce Kennedy opened the front door with his boot and trudged down the steps. He watched him. Kasey's husband was a big man, with fair blond hair and a bushy beard. He wore jeans and an untucked flannel shirt. He had the look of a plodder, a follower who did what he was told. No doubt Kasey could lead him around by the nose, but she deserved better. It made him angry, looking at Bruce Kennedy through the binoculars and imagining this clumsy man with no idea what a special prize he had. When he lost her, he wouldn't even have a clue what he'd possessed. The fool.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. He was secluded in the woods, invisible and out of earshot, but he looked around cautiously before answering.

  'Yes?'

  'Nieman, it's Matt Clayton in Buckthorn.'

  'What can I do for you?'

  'Have you been out to the school lately?' Clayton asked.

  Nieman hesitated. 'Yeah, I make the rounds out there every few days to make sure the site is secure.'

  'Do you think anyone could have gotten inside?'

  'Not likely. It's locked up tight. Why, is there a problem?'

  'I don't know. I got a call from Maggie Bei in the Duluth Police. She's trying to track down a missing person who may have had his eyes on the school.'

  'I haven't seen anything wrong out there,' he said.

  'When were you last inside?'

  'Sunday.'

  'Well, this kid supposedly disappeared on Saturday, so if you've been in there since then, there's probably nothing to worry about. Even so, I'd appreciate it if you could go over there today and do a walk-through, OK?'

  'Sure.'

  'The last thing we need is another insurance claim at that place.'

  'I understand.'

  'When you're done, call Sergeant Bei and give her a report.' Clayton rattled off a phone number. 'Oh, and keep an eye out for pistachio shells, too, all right? I guess this kid drops them wherever he goes.'

  'Yeah, no problem,' he said. He added, 'Why do the cops think this guy was at the school? Did somebody see him out there?'

  'No, nothing like that. He was taking pictures of the place. Like I said, it's probably nothing.'

  'I'll check it out.'

  'Thanks, Nieman. You're a good man.'

  He hung up and shoved his phone back in his pocket. He was annoyed at his bad luck. There was no way the cops should have been able to (tie Nick Garaldo to the school so quickly. He had found the kid's digital camera in his backpack, and he had gone to his apartment and taken out his computer and anything else that might have tipped them off that Garaldo was an urban explorer. But obviously he had missed something, which was the kind of mistake he didn't usually make.

  He knew he could report back to Clayton and the cops that he had found nothing amiss at the school. The stall would buy him a few days, but the clock was ticking. Sooner or later, they would circle back to the school and check it out themselves. It was only a matter of time before they broke inside and found his collection. He needed to disappear long before they made their discovery. Move on to a new city, somewhere in the south this time, where the winter was warm. Shed his skin, as he had done many times before. Start over.

  When he lifted his binoculars, he saw Kasey again. The wind blew her red hair across her face. Her jaw was clenched. She looked desperate and fierce, like a wounded animal that fights even harder when it knows it's about to die. He admired her courage. That was why he had something special planned for her.

  As he thought about it, he realized that the timing was perfect. Tonight was the night to wrap up his stay in Duluth. The hunt for Nick Garaldo might even work to his advantage. If he didn't act, Kasey would be gone in the morning, and he didn't want to risk losing her. He could chase her across the country if necessary, but it was much better to do it now. They had a date at the school, like a spotlight dance at the prom, while the others watched them.

  He smiled as he stood in the shadows of the spruce trees. He would wait until dark, and then he would bring the game to an end.

  * * *

  Serena turned off the highway into the driveway at Regan Conrad's house. She saw the nurse's black Hummer near the garage and, beside it, a wine-colored Lexus with a custom license plate that read KNEEDOC.

  It was Marcus Glenn's car.

  She parked behind both vehicles, blocking them in. She didn't want a repeat of her night-time visit to Regan's house, when the old Escort had slipped away while she was inside. She climbed out of her Mustang and kept an eye on the living-room window as she walked up the front steps. No one watched her.

  Before she rang the bell, she realized that the door was ajar. She put her ear to the inch-wide gap and listened for voices. When she heard nothing, she pushed the door open with her shoulder and crept into the foyer. The house was dark and frigid. She waited in the cold and listened again. A cop's instinct whispered to her that something was wrong. The house was too cold. Too dark. Too quiet.

  Serena looked down and spied a smear on the light oak near the door. The stain was dried and red. She knelt and caught a mineral smell that was unmistakable.

  Blood.

  She reached inside her jacket and withdrew her gun. Overhead, she heard the noise of footsteps. She kicked off her shoes rather than let her heels click on the wooden floor. As she made her way to the stairs, she watched the balcony above her. The lights were off, and the doors to the second-floor rooms were closed. She tested her weight on the first step, but the stairs didn't give off a sound. Slowly, she climbed to the upper floor.

  She studied the doors stretching down the hallway. One door, at the very end of the hall, was half-open. She heard the slamming of a drawer, followed by the rustle of paper. With her gun leading the way ahead of her, she moved toward the room. Through the crack in the doorway, she saw a metal file cabinet with its middle drawer open. File folders were littered across the floor. She heard frantic, agitated breathing.

  Serena held her gun high as she peered around the door frame. She saw Marcus Glenn with his back to her, on hands and knees in the middle of the office floor. He pawed through a foot-high stack of files, tossing each one aside as he reviewed it.

  'Don't move,' Serena
called.

  Glenn spun round in shock, his eyes wide. He clutched one of the files as papers spilled to the floor.

  'Put your hands in the air,' she told him.

  He saw her gun pointed at his chest, and he spread his fingers wide and jerked his hands over his head. The folder fell to the ground beside him.

  'What the hell's going on?' she asked.

  Glenn stammered. The normally unflappable surgeon was terrified. His skin was drained of color. 'I was looking for something.'

  'What?'

  'I wanted - I thought she might have—' he began, then stopped himself. 'I don't think I should say anything.'

  'Where's Regan?'

  'She's not here.'

  'How did you get in?' Serena asked.

  'The door was open.'

  She pushed apart the file folders with her foot and realized that Glenn was reviewing medical records. Baby records. 'You want to try again, Dr Glenn? Exactly what were you looking for?'

  He hesitated, and she thought he needed time to come up with a convincing lie. 'I began to think you were right. I wondered if Regan could have found someone to steal Callie or to - to harm her. I thought maybe I would find something in her files. Something to tell me who.'

  'Did you find anything?'

  'No.'

  'Did you search any of the other rooms?' Serena asked.

  'No. I knew she kept her files here.'

  She looked at him. 'There's blood near the door.'

  'Blood? I didn't notice.'

  There was a false lilt in the way he said it. The panic in his face wasn't just about being caught in the middle of a break-in. Something else was going on.

  'Where's Regan?' she repeated.

  'I told you, I don't know. The house was empty when I arrived.'

  'Exactly what did you do?'

  He stammered again. 'The door was open, and I came inside. I called for Regan, but she didn't answer. When I realized she wasn't here, I came upstairs to see what I could find in her files.'