The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

All she wanted to do was lay down. Lay down and sleep. Lay down and die.

  She waited in the frigid night for her last chance. The harbor water lapped at the shore behind her, and she could hear the louder rumbling of Lake Superior on the other side of the street. Behind the dune. Behind Stride's house.

  When she looked up and down the Point, she didn't see cops waiting for her. There were no squad cars, no flashing lights, no one patrolling in the shadows. There was only Serena and Valerie, at home where she had followed them along the deserted highway. She could see them in the front bedroom that looked out on the street. Bright lights were on, shining through the clean glass of the window. Valerie held Callie in her arms.

  Kasey's heart broke, seeing Callie. Her anger came back, the same anger that had propelled her for the past week. Fury that her child was dead. Fury at God's mistake. Desperation to hold a child again. Crying, breathing raggedly, she coughed and tasted something wet in her mouth and realized it was blood. She staggered and propped herself up with a hand on the wall. The gun slipped from her fingers and hit the pavement with a clatter. She bent down and picked it up.

  She checked the street again. Empty.

  In the bedroom, behind the window, Valerie hugged Serena as they separated for the night. Kasey saw Serena return to the great space behind the front door, and she ducked as Serena peered through the sheer curtains out to the street. Serena opened the door and stepped out on to the wooden porch, where she carefully studied the house and shadows around her. Kasey huddled behind a trash bin, hiding. When she peered past the bin, she saw Serena go back inside and heard the sharp click of the deadbolt. Inside the house, the lights of the living room went black.

  A moment later, in the other room, she saw Valerie reach for the light too. The entire house was dark. Valerie and Callie were alone.

  Kasey let fifteen minutes pass before she pushed herself off the wall and weaved across the narrow street. She eyed the parked cars as she passed quickly in and out of the glow of a street light. Flurries blew down in a cold rain and bit at her skin. The roar of the lake got louder, as if it were a large animal out of sight on the other side of the sand.

  She avoided the front door. On the west side of the house, she spotted a twisting wrought-iron staircase that led to the upper floor. She limped toward it, not caring about the tracks she left in the snow.

  When she tried to climb, she found the metal steps slippery with ice. She put a hand on the railing and dragged herself up step by step. The effort exhausted her, and the openness of the iron frame made her light-headed when she looked down. By the time she reached the top, she had to stop to let her vertigo subside.

  She looked down at her feet. Drops of blood dotted the snow like cherries.

  Kasey tugged the sleeve of her coat over her hand and punched the small chambered window near the doorknob. The window shattered with a low, musical crash. Glass sprayed on to the floor. She bent down to the broken window and listened for noise from the floor below. When she heard nothing, she reached through the hole for the doorknob, undid the lock, and let herself inside the house.

  The attic level was dark and cold. Nails hung down like teeth from the wooden beams in the ceiling. The unfinished floor was littered with boxes and equipment. Through the shadows, she spied a staircase leading to the ground floor, and she stepped carefully over broken glass to reach it. The stairs were pitch black, and she felt for a handrail and didn't find one. She held her breath and put her foot blindly on the first step. Then the next. She swayed and thought she would fall. Her eyes adjusted and she could see the outline of a dozen steps below her, but she froze with every footfall as the wood squealed in protest. She didn't know if the noise would carry through the closed door below her. To her, it sounded loud.

  Kasey reached the bottom step and waited. She felt warm air on the other side of the door. Silently, she turned the handle and pulled the door open. She could make out the shapes of leather furniture in the great space. Another handful of wooden steps led to the carpet. She heard wind sucking air up the chimney with a rush. The front door and the wall of windows leading to the porch were on her right. So was the bedroom where Valerie and Callie were sleeping.

  She made wet tracks to the door. She undid the lock and opened it, giving herself an easy escape to the street, and she thought about going through that door and walking away. Go back to the car. Drive. Start a new life. But it was too late for that. She had already lost Jack. And Bruce. She wouldn't lose Callie, too.

  Kasey stared at the closed door of the bedroom. No light shot under the crack between the door and the carpet. She listened for breathing inside and heard nothing at all. The gun was heavy in her hand. She wondered if she would have to kill again and hoped it didn't come to that. She was tired of death. Tired of killing. Nothing had gone as she'd planned and dreamed.

  She reached for the knob and opened the door silently, pushing it inward. On the wall to her right, in the gloom, she saw a twin bed and the humped outline of a body. She took two tentative steps until she was fully inside the room. She lifted the gun and crept toward the bed.

  With blinding brightness, the overhead lights burst on and turned night to day.

  Kasey squinted involuntarily and thrust her arm in front of her eyes. When she lowered her hand, she realized that the bed was empty. The outline of a body was just pillows lumped under a blanket. When she looked at the opposite wall, she saw someone sitting in an easy chair by the window, staring at her, a gun in her hand, pointed at Kasey's chest.

  It was Maggie.

  'Put the gun down right now, Kasey,' she said.

  Kasey backed away toward the bedroom door, but as she did, she felt another gun, this one in the back of her skull.

  'She said put it down,' Stride said. 'It's over.'

  Kasey heard the thunder of boots everywhere around the house. On the porch. In the yard. In the great space. There were police at all of the windows. Faces. Guns. She stood, paralyzed and trapped, and felt Stride reach round and peel the gun away from her fingers.

  'Serena saw you coming, Kasey,' Maggie told her, getting up from the chair. Her voice was hard and sad. 'She called ahead to arrange a welcoming party.'

  'Oh, my God,' Kasey murmured. 'Oh, God, no.'

  Stride yanked her hands behind her, and she felt him clamp cuffs tightly round her wrists. He pulled her on her heels out of the bedroom. She let him drag her, and then she couldn't feel her legs anymore or support her weight. She toppled backward into Stride's chest. Her body collapsed in on itself. She felt him holding her under her shoulders and easing her on to the floor, and when she stared at the ceiling, she saw all of their faces going in and out of focus as they looked down at her. Stride. Maggie. Police in uniform.

  Somewhere in her head, she heard Stride say, 'She's lost a lot of blood. Get an ambulance down here.'

  She tried to get up, and hands gently pushed her down. The room spun and floated lazily away from her, carrying her down a river. She watched bodies come and go in a blur of motion, and among all the people crowding around her, she saw a new face. Valerie Glenn. Serena was behind her in the brightly lit living room, holding Callie. Kasey saw Valerie staring at her the way a mourner stares at a grave, and she wanted to say something, wanted to explain, wanted to scream, but she was lost in the fog.

  Valerie said aloud, 'Does anyone know what her child's name was?'

  Jack, Kasey wanted to say. It was Jack. He was my baby, and God took him away from me. Don't you understand? Doesn't anyone hear me?

  'Jack,' Maggie answered for her. 'It was Jack.'

  Valerie nodded. Kasey saw her squat down beside her. Her face was inches away, and her skin emanated the fresh smell of a mother holding a child. She put a hand on Kasey's cheek and caressed it, feeling the dampness of her blood and sweat. Valerie was crying. Kasey realized she was crying too.

  'I'm sorry for what happened to Jack,' Valerie murmured in her ear.

  Kasey tried to speak again but heard only
the wheeze of her own breath. The metal of the cuffs gnawed at the small of her back. She closed her eyes, but she could still feel the touch of Valerie's hand, and she felt it there, soft and warm, until the sirens drew near.

  * * *

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  First day. Last day.

  Stride sat in a folding chair in the long grass behind his cottage on the Point, watching the angry lake waters in the early morning. Red clouds on the horizon marked the glow of dawn, but it was still more night than day. His leather jacket was zipped to his neck, providing meager protection against the cold and wind. His hands were in his pockets.

  He waited for Serena. He didn't want to be inside as she packed the last of her things and loaded them in her Mustang. It was one thing to know she was leaving, another thing to watch her go. Sooner or later, he would have to go back home, after she was gone, and face the emptiness she had left behind. That could wait until later. He would be working until midnight, catching up on everything that had gathered in his absence, postponing the moment when he returned to a house where the only thing that lingered was her scent.

  He didn't look when he heard her footsteps in the snow behind him. She sat down in the chair next to him and didn't say anything. The two of them spent a minute of silence, putting off the inevitable.

  'You're ready?' Stride asked finally, when he couldn't stand the tension anymore.

  Serena nodded without looking at him. 'Yeah.'

  'You don't have to go,' he told her. 'You can stay in a separate bedroom for a few weeks if you like.'

  'We've talked about this, Jonny.'

  'I know.'

  That was the reality staring him in the face. It was done between them. Over. At least for now. At least for a while. 'You know I love you,' he told her.

  'I love you too, but you need time, and I need time. I don't know whether it was just the heat of the moment, but you're more comfortable with Maggie than you are with me. You opened up to her, and you shut me out. That doesn’t work for me.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'So am I. I'm not blaming you, Jonny. It's my problem, too.'

  'What's next?' Stride asked.

  Serena shook her head. 'I don't know yet.'

  'Are you going back to Las Vegas?'

  'No,' she told him. 'Not now, anyway. I could go back there and get a job, but it's not really home anymore. I'm not sure where home is to me. I'm not like you. I don't have roots.'

  'So what will you do?'

  Serena shrugged her shoulders, as if the future were a small thing compared to the present. 'Denise asked me to stay on with the Sheriff's office in Grand Rapids. I may do that for a while. Valerie's getting settled on her own with Callie, and I'd like to help her. She's renting a house and said I could use one of the spare bedrooms.'

  'I like the idea of you staying close by,' Stride said.

  It was an olive branch, but she left it where it was. He watched the sadness in her face and wished he could wipe it away. He knew there had always been something missing in Serena, some part of her unfulfilled. Maybe she just needed to be on her own. The prospect didn't seem to scare her as much as it scared him.

  'I have to go,' she told him, standing up. She cast her eyes out toward the lake and then at the cold sand of the beach. Three years ago, on a hot summer night, they had made love out there for the first time.

  'If you need anything at all, call me,' Stride said. 'Any time, day or night. You know that, right?'

  'You're always trying to protect the women in your life, Jonny,' she murmured. 'We don't all need protection.'

  'I'm just saying.'

  'I know. If I do need someone, you're my first call.'

  'I may show up on your doorstep someday,' he said.

  She gave him a weak smile. 'You never know, I may show up on yours first.'

  Serena put a hand on his shoulder as she turned away to walk over the snowy slope toward the cottage. He didn't watch her go. The lake was loud, and he couldn't hear the sound of her car engine on the street as she drove off. He waited on the beach, not moving, getting colder and feeling numbness on his face. Time passed, and by the time he got up, the sun had climbed over the edge of the water.

  The Detective Bureau in City Hall was mostly empty. No one was there to greet him. He had been gone, and now he was back. He went inside his office the way he had done thousands of times over the years and hung up his coat. The room still held a trace of Maggie's perfume about it. Otherwise, nothing had changed. Time had stood still while he was away.

  Stride didn't sit down immediately. He ran his fingers over the framed photos on his credenza and picked up the one of himself and Serena, taken atop the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas. He remembered thinking back then that he had borrowed time with her and that one day someone would ask for it back. Suddenly, unexpectedly, that time was now. He put the picture back down where it had always been, so he could still see her face.

  Leaning against the window frame, he looked out at the traffic on First Street and at the lake beyond the city buildings. Duluth was a city of struggle, of faded glory, of the new always colored by the old. It was small enough that you could wrap your arms around it and big enough that you could never quite hold it in your grasp. It was bitter cold, primitive, and intimidating, like an outpost on the border of the frontier.

  He realized he had an advantage that Serena didn't. He knew where his home was. Home was here. Home was Duluth.

  Stride sat down in his chair. He hadn't replaced it in years. It molded to his body the way old jeans did, moving when he moved. The three months he had spent away from this place felt like the longest, ugliest detour of his life. It had been a mistake to take refuge in a cabin in the woods; he should have followed his instincts and come back early. This was where he belonged.

  'Welcome back, boss.'

  He looked up and saw Maggie in his doorway. Her neck was bandaged, and she grimaced in pain as she came into his office, but she slid sideways into the chair in front of his desk the way she always did. It had been the same for more than a decade.

  Boss, she said.

  Was that how it was going to be? Partners, not lovers? He wondered if they could really stay that way. Or if either of them wanted it that way.

  He pointed at the bandage. 'Shouldn't you be flat on your back right now?'

  'Is that the way you want me?' she asked with a wink. She was serious but not serious. Joking but not joking. Things were already complicated.

  'You're such a pain in the ass,' he said.

  'Actually, that's the one place where I don't have any pain.'

  He shook his head and looked away. Maggie read the soberness in his face and followed his eyes, which had wandered to the photograph of Serena.

  'So?' she asked.

  'She's gone.'

  Maggie swore softly. 'I'm really, really sorry.'

  'It's not your fault.'

  'Yeah? Then why do I feel like it is?'

  'Don't go there, Mags. It won't change anything.' After a moment, he added, 'Maybe things happen the way they do for a reason.'

  'Or maybe things just suck on a completely random basis,' she replied. 'Did you think about that?'

  'I'm trying not to think about it at all right now.'

  She nodded. 'Understood.'

  He dragged his eyes away from the photograph and changed the subject. 'Did you see the news? Kasey's lawyer is going to use an insanity defense. He claims the death of her child and the manipulation by Regan Conrad left her incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.' 'A jury just might buy it,' Maggie said.

  'Do you think she was insane?'

  'Don't you think so?'

  'I think she kidnapped a baby and killed three people,' he said.

  'Yeah, but she was also a mother who had to watch her child die.' Maggie added pointedly, 'We all have our breaking points.'

  He didn't reply, but he thought to himself, yes, we do.

  'What about Nieman?' he asked. 'Wh
at have you found out about him?'

  'Nieman's a ghost,' she said. 'We're going to be unraveling his secrets for months. So far, we've linked him to murders in Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico, but we still don't know exactly who he is or where he came from. The FBI is helping us put the pieces together.'

  'Kasey's lawyer will claim that killing him was a public service,' he said.

  'It was.' Maggie stared at Stride with her hair falling across her face. 'What now? Do you and I plead temporary insanity too?'

  'Minus the temporary part,' he said.

  'So do you want to get to work right away or do you want to do it on the desk first?' she asked.

  Stride couldn't do anything but laugh. 'You're going to make sure this isn't easy for me, aren't you?'

  'Damn right.'

  'Are you done?'

  'For now.'

  'Then let's get to work,' he said.

  Maggie pointed at a file folder on his desk. 'Remember that teenage boy who washed up from the lake last year? We called it suicide, and the parents said it was murder. We got some new evidence, and it looks like they might be right.'

  'OK, I'll catch up with the file,' he said. 'We can go talk to them this morning.'

  'You got it.' Maggie climbed out of the chair and headed for the door. He realized that nothing had changed, and nothing was the same.

  'Hey,' he called after her.

  She turned and looked back at him.

  'I like your hair,' he told her.

  Maggie grinned, pushed the blood-red bangs out of her eyes, and left.

  Stride stared at the dusty oak surface and everything that crowded his desk. The silver letter opener, shaped like a knife. The stacks of yellow pads scribbled with notes. The clock ticking away the seconds, minutes, hours, and days. The crime files. His whole life.

  He grabbed the case folder and pulled it toward him. As he did, his hand bumped against the silver letter opener and sent it tumbling to the floor. His eyes followed it. He tensed, waiting for the flashback to wash over him. His heart rate accelerated. He felt sweat on the back of his neck as he wondered how bad this one would be and how long he would be gone. But the attack never came. He didn't fall through the black night air toward the unforgiving water. The bridge was somewhere else, out on the lake, and he was still in his office.