The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  'It's too early to tell,' he said, stalling.

  He gave bad news all the time, but he was reluctant to destroy this woman, and that was what he had to do. The toy horn was in his pocket. He had to show it to her, and he knew what it would mean when he did. Her hope would be shredded. Her prayers would have been met with silence. For all her calm, she was balanced on a precipice.

  'I already know about what happened to Regan Conrad,' she said. 'I won't pretend I'm upset.'

  'I understand.'

  'Where is Marcus?' she asked.

  'We're still questioning him.'

  She performed another even stroke with the blade. 'He was in her house?'

  'Yes, he was going through her medical files,' Stride said.

  'But Denise says you don't believe he killed her.'

  'Whatever happened in Regan's bedroom took place overnight. Was Marcus here?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then he didn't kill her.' Stride added, 'I was wondering if you had any idea what your husband was looking for in Regan's files.'

  He watched her hand stutter, and the point of the knife stabbed her finger and drew a drop of blood. She winced and put the tip of the finger in her mouth and sucked on it. When she took it out, a red trail of blood reappeared.

  'Are you all right?' he asked.

  'I'm fine. I'm not normally careless.' She ran cold water over her finger in the sink and then unwrapped a small bandage from the cabinet.

  'You didn't answer my question,' he said.

  'I'm sorry. No. I can't imagine what Marcus would have been looking for.'

  She was a bad liar. She knew what Marcus was looking for, but she wasn't going to admit what it was. Stride looked at her in a way that said they both knew she was lying, but she simply picked up the knife and resumed her work. This time, a single tear dripped from her eye, and he didn't know if it was the onion or her sense of impending grief.

  'I have to show you something,' he told her.

  'Oh?' Her demeanor had cracks, as if she were about to split apart.

  He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew a plastic bag, where he had preserved the powder-blue toy that Micki had found in the forest. He dangled the bag in his hand, close enough for Valerie to see. 'Do you recognize this?'

  She leaned forward, confused. 'What's that?'

  Then she saw. She understood. The warm blush on her face turned white. She reached out to take the bag, but Stride pulled it away. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Where did you get that?' she asked.

  'Do you recognize it?'

  One tear became many. 'They had those toys at the hospital that night.'

  'When Callie was born?'

  Valerie didn't reply. She walked away in a daze and ran the water again, letting it flow over the knife blade to clean it. She used a new sponge to rub the shiny surface and then wiped it dry with a towel. She laid the knife next to the wooden block, leaving the single slot empty. The onion sat on the cutting board in a mountain of perfect, tiny cubes. She walked away from the kitchen island and sat down in a chair beside the elegant glass dinette table.

  'Mrs Glenn?' he persisted in a quiet voice.

  'I told Serena that I was tired and in pain for much of the night,' she said. 'I didn't have any sense of time. I was alone a lot, waiting. I remember the noise of the horns waking me up. It was midnight. People were in the hall, and everyone was laughing, and they were kissing each other. A nurse came in to wish me happy New Year, and she put one of the toy horns on the tray near my bed.'

  'The horn she gave you, was it blue like this one?'

  'I don't remember. I think so. Where did you find it?'

  'Micki Vega says she found it in the woods near the Sago Cemetery. On the night Callie disappeared, her mother saw someone in the forest.'

  Valerie wrapped her hands around herself and rocked in the chair. 'Oh my God.'

  'I'm afraid we have to search the cemetery.'

  'Search?' she asked, dazed.

  'We have to see if someone buried something in the woods where the toy horn was found.'

  'Callie,' Valerie moaned.

  'Please don't assume the worst. It may mean nothing at all.'

  She covered her mouth with her hands and didn't say anything. The pull of her despair made him want to go to her and wrap her up in his arms. Stiffly, like a soldier, he stayed where he was, letting her suffer alone.

  'I have to ask you a few more questions,' he said.

  Valerie's empty stare didn't change. She didn't react.

  'Did you bring a toy like this home with you from the hospital?'

  She spoke through her hands. 'I wanted to.' She wiped her eyes and slowly put her hands in her lap. 'I thought we should keep it. Save it. It was like a symbol of what that night meant to me. A new year. A new baby. A new lease on life. But it wasn't with the things we brought home from the hospital.'

  'What happened to it?'

  'I gave it to Marcus. I asked him to make sure we didn't lose it.'

  'Did you ask him about it?'

  'Yes. It was weeks later. There was so much to do with Callie being home, and she needed so much, and I was always so tired. I didn't have a chance to catch my breath for the first month. Then I started gathering up the keepsakes from her birth, and that was when I realized the little toy was missing.'

  'What did Marcus say?'

  Valerie shook her head. 'He told me he threw it away.'

  * * *

  Chapter Forty

  'I threw it away,' Marcus Glenn told Serena.

  They sat in the front seat of his Lexus on the dirt road near the Sago Cemetery. The night was ablaze with light - rotating red lights on the tops of the squad cars, flashlight beams intersecting the woods, and Klieg lights on tall tripods reflecting off the snow. Behind them, the road was blocked, keeping the media at bay. The windows of the luxury car were closed, leaving the interior oddly silent, despite the frenzied activity around them.

  'When was that?' Serena asked.

  'I don't remember.'

  'Did you bring it home with you from the hospital? Did you leave it in your office? Or did you never take it with you at all?'

  Glenn shrugged. 'I have no idea. It was a stupid ten-cent toy.'

  'What color was it?' Serena asked.

  'Do you think I paid any attention? It could have been purple, pink, red, blue, who knows.'

  Glenn's patience was wearing thin after hours with the police. They had spent the afternoon and early evening at Regan Conrad's house in the north farmlands. Just as Serena had been about to cut Glenn loose, she'd received the call from Stride about Micki Vega's discovery and the impending search in Sago. So they had driven here, accompanied by a Duluth Police car on the lonely stretch of Highway 2. Glenn didn't like it.

  'I don't know why you've brought me here,' he added. 'There's nothing I can tell you.'

  'I'm trying to figure out how this toy made its way from your wife's hospital room to the woods outside your family cemetery,' Serena said.

  'Oh, please. How many millions of those toys pour out of Chinese factories every year? You can't possibly believe that there's any connection at all between something that Micki allegedly found in the woods and a keepsake my wife had when she gave birth to Callie.'

  'Did your wife blow into the horn?' Serena asked.

  'What?'

  'Did she use it at the hospital that night?'

  'I don't remember. Everyone was using the annoying things.'

  'Then she may have left DNA inside the plastic mouthpiece. We'll test it.'

  'Wonderful. You do that. If you find any DNA, I'm sure it will belong to someone else.'

  'Why are you so sure about that?' Serena asked.

  Glenn thumped the dashboard in exasperation. 'Because I threw it away! Do you think someone went burrowing through my trash in order to plant that ridiculous thing in the woods eleven months later?'

  Serena watched the surgeon fidget. His long legs were uncomfortable in
the sedan, even with the seat pushed back. 'Coincidences keep piling up around you, Dr Glenn,' she told him.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well, say you're right. This isn't the toy that Valerie had in the hospital. Doesn't it seem strange that Micki Vega would find a toy just like that next to the cemetery you visit every month? That she'd find it two days after your daughter disappeared? That she'd find it in the exact place where her mother saw someone in the woods on the very night your daughter disappeared? That the toy left there would be exactly like the one Valerie asked you to keep as a memory of your daughter's birth?'

  Glenn stared through the windshield at the police officers gathered in clusters around the grassy field. His long, graceful fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel as if he were steering a race car.

  'I agree with you,' he said. His voice was calm and scientific.

  'You do?'

  'Yes, you're right. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.' 'Then how do you explain it?' Serena asked.

  Glenn twisted to face her. 'I can think of three explanations. First, it really is a coincidence, and that's just my bad luck. Strange things like that do happen.'

  'And the others?'

  'The second possibility is that Micki is lying. She may not have found the toy in the woods, or she may not have found it when she said she did. But personally, I think Micki is telling the truth.'

  'You do?'

  Glenn nodded. 'I don't believe she would deliberately try to do me harm.'

  'Except if you were sleeping with her, if you fathered her baby and her baby died, it can play with a girl's head.'

  'I never slept with Micki,' Glenn insisted. 'I wasn't the father of her child. If you want to dig up her baby to prove it, you can get a court order and do so. But you'll just look like heartless fools. Ms Dial, I freely confess to being a hard case in every aspect of my life except my medical profession. I helped Micki because I'm a physician and she needed someone. That's all.'

  'You said you could think of three explanations,' Serena said. 'What's the third?'

  'The third is that someone is deliberately trying to make it appear as if I was involved in Callie's disappearance. Which I wasn't.'

  'You mean someone planted the toy?'

  'Yes.'

  Serena knew the next obvious question, but she wasn't ready to go there yet. It hung unasked between them. She wondered if Glenn wanted to hear her say it. What are we going to find in the woods? Instead, she went another way.

  'How did you feel about your wife cheating on you?' she asked.

  'I haven't been a model of fidelity myself, so I can't really complain.'

  'Maybe so, but most men have a double standard. It's OK for me to cheat, because it's just about sex. But my wife? She better not look at another man.'

  Glenn shrugged. 'I'm not saying I feel good about it.'

  'When did you find out that she was sleeping with Tom?' Serena asked.

  He took a long time to answer. 'I found out the same time that you did,' he told her finally. 'When Blair Rowe blabbed the news to the world.'

  'And not before?' 'No.'

  'You took your time deciding what to say. Were you trying to figure out if there's any way we could prove that you knew about Valerie's affair?'

  Glenn didn't reply.

  'I hope you didn't tell anyone,' Serena continued, 'or hire an investigator to follow her. It'll come out if you did.'

  'I trusted my wife,' he replied.

  'Did you have any reason to doubt that Callie was your baby?'

  'Of course not.'

  'What about now?'

  'Now I can't help but wonder,' he admitted.

  'Didn't you wonder before? It was three years. You must have thought it was odd that Valerie couldn't get pregnant for so long, and then she suddenly did.'

  'It's not odd at all. I'm a doctor. People think conception is predictable, but it's not. It can happen with one sexual encounter, or it can take six months or six years, or it can never happen at all, even when both partners are perfectly healthy. Don't try to outguess God, Ms Dial.'

  'I thought most surgeons believed they were God.'

  'Confidence and ego make you a better doctor, but you also have to be smart enough to know when you don't have all the answers.'

  'You certainly seem like you have all the answers,' Serena told him.

  'I wish I did.'

  'Tell me something. Why did you cheat on Valerie? She's beautiful. She's smart. She loves you. Wasn't that enough?'

  'It has nothing to do with Valerie,' he said. 'It doesn’t mean I don't love her.'

  'She nearly killed herself because of your neglect.'

  She regretted saying it, but he didn't react with anger. Instead, there was resignation in his voice. 'Do you really believe that her suicide attempt was my fault? Valerie has suffered from depression for most of her life. It's a medical condition.'

  'Are you saying you bear no responsibility for her state of mind?'

  'I'm saying I didn't make her who she is. I may not wear my heart on my sleeve, but Valerie knew that from the beginning. I keep her clothed and fed and give her all the money she could ever use. A lot of women would welcome a marriage like that.'

  She didn't want to debate him. His warped view of love and marriage didn't matter. It was time to get back to what she really needed to say.

  'What are we going to find in the woods?' she asked.

  He didn't answer.

  'Did you hear me? They're starting the search. What are we going to find?'

  'I have no idea.'

  Serena pointed through the window. Across the dirt road, away from the cemetery, a short, balding man held tight to a beagle that strained at its leash. Its ears flapped, and its nose was buried in the long grass. The dog was hungry to run. Smell. Hunt.

  'See that dog?' she said. 'It's trained to recognize the gases of decomposing human flesh.'

  Glenn stared at the beagle. 'It's an awful skill to give an animal, isn't it?'

  'What is she going to find?'

  'I can only speculate. I don't know.'

  'So take a guess.'

  Glenn's face was oddly passive, as if he were detached from everything that was happening around them. 'I guess you're going to find Callie.'

  Serena felt her heart race. 'You think Callie is buried there?'

  'Don't you? Isn't that why we're here?'

  'Did you put her there?' she asked.

  'No,' Glenn told her with a raspy sigh. 'But if someone is framing me, if someone left the toy there for you to find, well, I can't escape the obvious conclusion.'

  'You think your daughter is dead.'

  'I'm afraid so. We'll find out soon enough.' 'That's all you can say?' Serena asked.

  'What else is there?'

  What else but grief, Serena thought. What else but tears and desperation. What else but a horrible, irreparable sense of loss.

  'Who could have done this?' She didn't add: if not you.

  'It must have been Regan.'

  'She had an alibi,' Serena reminded him.

  'So maybe she was working with someone.'

  Serena tried to read the surgeon's face, but there was nothing in his expression. 'You probably won't believe this, Dr Glenn, but I've been the one defending you. I'm the only one who hasn't been convinced from the beginning that you were guilty of murdering your daughter.'

  'And what do you think now?' he asked.

  'I think you may be the coldest man I've ever met,' Serena said. 'Cold men have no conscience. No empathy. They can do terrible things.'

  'Or they can save lives on an operating table,' Glenn replied with a shrug.

  Outside the car, the beagle unleashed a fury of impatient barking. Serena saw Stride approach the man with the dog and point to a spot on the north side of the trees. When he turned toward the Lexus, Stride caught Serena's eye and looked away.

  Micki Vega was by his side. She saw the Lexus too, and Serena watched her eyes wid
en in dismay as she stared at Marcus Glenn. Her mouth fell open, and she took a step toward the car as if she would run to him. Serena thought she might cry. Micki said out loud, in a voice that barely carried through the glass, 'I'm sorry.'

  Beside her, Serena watched Marcus Glenn offer Micki a small smile. He mouthed two words to her: 'It's OK.'

  Micki turned away, bowing her head.

  'Am I under arrest?' Glenn asked Serena. 'No.'

  'Then I'm going home.'

  * * *

  Chapter Forty-one

  Valerie sat on the floor. Her fingers kneaded the white carpet. Ten feet away, a fire burned in the middle of the stone fireplace that dominated the wall. It was a gas fireplace, with fake logs that burned forever and didn't crackle or pop like real wood. The circle of heat from the artificial flames barely reached across the drafty room to warm her shoulder. She was cold.

  She thought about the fire pit behind Denise and Tom's house by the river. Every year, on Christmas Eve, Tom stoked a bonfire that roared for hours, and the kids squealed and played games, and the adults drank beer and wine. Before she had married Marcus, she had joined them for their holiday tradition. She would sit silently in the shelter of the fire and envy her sister for everything she had. Husband. Kids. Responsibilities. Joy. Every year, she had felt like an outsider at someone else's feast, but even so, she missed being part of it. She missed simplicity. Christmas with Marcus was lavish but sterile. One year, they had gone to Italy. The next year, they had cruised in the Caribbean. Another time, they had catered a party for hospital staff with roast turkey, elaborate canapes, and expensive California wines. Even in her own home, she had felt as if she were on the outside, looking in.

  This year, she had thought that it would all be different, because this year, she would have Callie in her arms. They could build traditions of their own. But it wasn't going to happen now. It wasn't going to be like that at all. She would be as alone as an island in the middle of the lake.

  Valerie knew they were searching. They were in the woods, with lights and dogs and cameras. They weren't going to bring Callie back to her, pink and happy, giggling as her mother laughed and cried. They were going to call her with other news. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, shattering the silence. It would be Denise or Serena or Stride. Their voices would have the low, ominous bass of tragedy, and they would tell her how sorry they were. Marcus would put an arm around her, and his comfort would be as false as the logs in the fire that refused to burn.