Cemetery Girl

  “You say these things to me. I just can’t understand why you children hate me so much. Was I such an awful mother that you have to make these things up just to hurt me?”

  “No one’s making anything up, Mom.” I pulled loose from her grip, my anger swelling unreasonably. “No one’s making this up. Just admit what you know to be true.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She brought her hand up to her mouth. She looked like she wanted to keep the sobs from escaping from her throat. It worked, because none came. But she did manage to speak. “Not today, Tom. Please, not on a day like this.”

  “Why won’t you say what I want to hear you say?”

  Buster appeared on the stairs.

  He reached the top, apparently having heard at least some of our conversation. The raised voices. My mother’s pleas. He looked angry, but rather than taking my side—which I’d thought he would’ve agreed with—he took Mom’s side against me.

  “Tom,” he said, “this isn’t all about you and your hurt feelings. We’re all hurting here today. We don’t need you making this stuff up about Dad again.”

  “I’m not making anything up. I just want her to admit it.”

  Buster gritted his teeth. “Tom, you asshole.”

  Mom looked at the floor, wiping at her tears.

  I stared, waiting. The two of them formed a Maginot Line of denial. I couldn’t squeeze through. There wasn’t a place for me there. There never was. Never once were they on my side. Not against Paul, not against anything.

  I brushed past them and left the house.

  And I never saw my mother alive again.

  Chapter Forty-three

  I wasn’t sleeping. I knew that.

  In the days since Liann’s visit, my nights were spent staring at the ceiling of the guest room, the noise of an occasional passing car my only company. Caitlin was in our house, and John Colter was in someone’s house too. Free on bail. Charged with arson, second degree, just as Liann had predicted.

  Something tapped against my window.

  I sat up quickly.

  John Colter? Could he be there, trying to get into our house?

  I crossed the room to the window and looked down. My palms were flat against the glass, feeling the cold from the outside.

  Nothing.

  The street, the yard were empty.

  My imagination, nothing more.

  But I couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Instead, I went downstairs and made a circuit of the house, checking every door, every window, making sure they were locked and secure. They were. The heat was down for the night, and my feet were cold against the kitchen tile. I looked in the refrigerator. Finding nothing much, I picked up an apple but didn’t bite into it. I thought about the girl from the cemetery and the noise against the window upstairs.

  Was she out there again?

  It didn’t take me long to go back upstairs and dress. I paused on the landing and stuck my ear against the door to Abby and Caitlin’s room. I heard faint, steady breathing. They were still there, as safe as they could be, so I slipped out of the house like a burglar.

  The streets were quiet and empty. It was nearly one-thirty, and when I reached the main road a few cars passed. But even out there it was quiet. The streetlight flashed yellow, and in its strange glow, I scanned the sidewalk in both directions. I didn’t see anybody, and certainly no sign of the girl. My hands were stuffed into the pockets of my jacket, but I still felt a chill that made me hunch my shoulders.

  Even in the dark, the headstones were visible. Faint, stony outlines, solid and eternal. I crossed the main road, jogging slightly, cutting at an angle across the front of the park and toward the driveway that wound through the middle of the cemetery. A sign said the cemetery closed at dark, and on rare occasions a security car made a sweep through as the daylight faded. But mostly the security was lax.

  Trees lined both sides of the main cemetery drive. The trunks and branches were thick and gnarled, and in many cases grew close to the graves and knocked long-planted headstones out of kilter, tilting them to the side like falling towers.

  I slowed my pace the farther I moved away from the street. I felt a little exposed. If the girl was in the cemetery, she could be anywhere, hiding behind any of the monuments or mausoleums, watching me.

  And if she didn’t come alone . . .

  Even late in the season, with cool weather settling in, crickets still chirped in the grass. Above, through the breaks in the trees, the sky was clear, the stars bright. It was beautiful and peaceful. A wonderful place to spend eternity, if indeed we were granted an eternity to spend.

  I reached the back where Caitlin’s headstone—cenotaph—stood. I looked around, still not seeing or hearing anything.

  But then something rustled to my left.

  It was a quick sound, a crunching of fallen leaves. It could have been a branch falling or the skittering of a raccoon. But as I stood there, listening and looking for more, the sense grew within me that I wasn’t alone, that more than just the legions of the sleeping dead were there in the night.

  I waited, and the sound came again. It continued longer, a shuffling like footsteps through the carpet of leaves. And then I saw the girl.

  She emerged from between two headstones, very close to Caitlin’s monument. My heart jumped when I saw the girl. I took a step toward her. She backed up a half step, as though she wanted to run.

  “No,” I said. I held my hand out in what I hoped was a calming gesture. “Don’t go.”

  In the darkness, she looked as vague as the shadows between the headstones. I saw her blond hair, and the loose, baggy Windbreaker she wore hung to her knees. Her big eyes glistened like pools of water in the darkness. She raised a finger to her mouth and chewed on the nail.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  She kept chewing.

  “What do you want from me? Do you know me?”

  She studied me.

  “He sent me,” she said.

  “Who?”

  She didn’t answer, but the realization dawned.

  “John Colter sent you?”

  She nodded, the finger still in her mouth. “He wants to see her,” she said. “He wants to see the girl in your house.”

  “He’s going to jail.”

  “No,” she said. “He says he wants to see her.”

  “Is he here? Is he in the cemetery?”

  The girl craned her neck around, looking behind her.

  “Who’s back there?” I asked.

  I stepped forward, squinting past the girl, but saw nothing. After a long moment, I heard the sound of footsteps, heavier this time and again stirring up the leaves.

  I waited, and a figure resolved out of the darkness.

  I expected to see that face from the sketch, the one from the photo Ryan had placed in front of me. That hulking, ugly, scarred face.

  So it took me a moment to process the more familiar face I saw before me. The one that looked so much like my stepfather, Paul.

  I must have blinked my eyes a few times until he said my name.

  “Tom, take it easy.”

  It was Buster.

  Chapter Forty-four

  He moved slowly toward me, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted.

  I felt the earth turning, the sky moving above me, the stars streaking through the night like fireballs. Everything welled within me, a burning taste at the back of my throat. Anger, frustration, confusion. My hands went out and took Buster by the lapels of his jacket. I gathered fistfuls of the material until I felt my fingernails bend back with the pressure.

  “What are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing to me?”

  “Calm down, Tom. Calm down—”

  He grimaced as I shook him, his lips peeling back in a crazed-looking grin. But it was fear. He saw something in me. My own lack of control. My rage. I shook until he managed to get his own hands up. He gripped my biceps, slowing me down.

  “Tom. Stop. It’s me. It�
�s Buster.”

  “Paul—”

  “It’s Buster.”

  “You took Caitlin. You took her—”

  “No, no. Listen. Listen to me.”

  I don’t think I would have stopped, except the girl, the child who’d appeared outside my window, came up and grabbed ahold of me. She tugged on my belt loop and strained to be heard above our grunts and scuffling.

  “Stop it!” she said. “Stop doing that to him. Stop it! Stop it!”

  Her voice reached me through the fog of my anger. I turned to look down at her, and when I did, I loosened my grip on Buster.

  She was about twelve. This close, I finally saw her features. The greasy hair, the pale, almost translucent skin. Her clothes hung loose on her body, like she possessed next to no body fat. There were dark circles around her eyes. Malnutrition. The child hadn’t been eating enough.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  She looked scared of me, but held her ground. “He wants her back,” she said again. “The girl. Your girl.”

  “John Colter sent you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tell me!” I shouted.

  My voice echoed through the night. The girl swallowed, her throat bobbing. But still she didn’t answer.

  “Tom?”

  I spun around. Buster stood about ten feet away, his right hand rubbing his throat.

  “He did send her,” Buster said. “Colter.”

  “And you? What are you—?”

  He held his hands out again, asking for calm and patience. “Let me explain, Tom. Just listen.”

  I stayed rooted in place. My brain spun as fast as the planet.

  Buster went on. “I found the girl, Tom. This girl. She was outside your house tonight. You mentioned her in the papers that time, so when I saw her there, standing underneath your window, I knew who it was.”

  “What were you doing outside the house in the middle of the night?” I asked Buster. “Were you there to take Caitlin?”

  “No, Tom. I came here to see you. To help you. I saw in the paper that Colter was being let out, that they were only going to charge him with arson or some bullshit like that.” He brought his hands together and rubbed them against each other, steadily increasing the pressure. “I tell you, Tom, I was angry when I saw that. I can’t imagine how you felt. But I wanted to do something. I needed to do something about it.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” He punched one fist into the palm of his other hand. “I found something. I looked in the phone book. Do you know Colter’s number was in there the whole time? All this time he held Caitlin, his phone number was right there in the book. There he was, getting calls from telemarketers, people asking him to give money to charity, to switch his long-distance service, and he was keeping Caitlin locked away in some room in the basement.” He dug into his pants pocket and brought out a small, wrinkled piece of paper. “His mom bailed him out of jail, you know? She put up her house. Did you see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her number’s in the book, too.” He waved the paper in the air. “I called it. The old bitch answered, and I asked for John. She said, ‘Why can’t you reporters leave him alone? He doesn’t know nothing about that girl.’ I told the old bitch to fuck off. But you know what? That means we know where he’s staying. He’s staying there, at this address.” He waved the paper again.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  He shrugged. What do you think?

  I pointed at the girl. “What were you going to do with her?”

  “I saw her outside the house when I came up,” Buster said. “So I tried to grab her, to find out what she wanted. For you. But she ran this way, so I went after her. I caught up with her over here and asked her what she was doing outside my brother’s house. I probably scared the hell out of her. I didn’t mean to. But she told me something, Tom. Something really fucking freaky.”

  “What?”

  Buster looked at the girl. “Tell him.”

  “I already did,” she said.

  “Tell him everything you told me.”

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  The girl’s eyes ticked between the two of us.

  “Tell him,” Buster said again.

  The girl nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She started to bite her nail again but stopped. She curled her hand into a fist and let it fall to her side. “He sent me to your house to get the girl back. He wanted me to tell her that he shouldn’t have let her go. He thinks it was a mistake. He didn’t mean it.”

  “Let her go?” I said.

  The girl nodded. “He said he got scared, so he let her go. The story was in the paper, that drawing. He let her go during the night.” She crinkled her nose. “She was too old, he said. And he had me . . .”

  Buster made a disgusted gasping sound.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked.

  “He loves her. He says he misses her and he wants her back. He sent me to your house to get her back, but I didn’t know what to do. I stood in the yard and tried to figure out which room was hers. I couldn’t see. And then you ran after me that one night. And he ran after me tonight.” She pointed at Buster.

  “Did he leave a note here telling her to stay away?”

  The girl shrugged. “He changed his mind, I guess.”

  I took a step forward and bent down, trying to get closer to the girl’s eye level. Buster came up beside me. “Who are you, honey?” I asked. “Who are your parents?”

  “I go back to them sometimes. They don’t care.” She ran the back of her hand across her nostrils. “He said he doesn’t need me anymore when he gets your girl back.”

  “It’s not right for you to stay with him like that,” I said.

  “We should call the cops—” Buster cut in.

  “No,” she said and took two big steps back. Her voice was full of fear, like a child waking from a nightmare. “No. You can’t call the police.”

  “We have to,” Buster said.

  “He’ll run away,” she said. “He wants to run away. He doesn’t want to stay here. The police will take him. They’ll lock him up.”

  “That’s what should happen,” Buster said. He reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a cell phone.

  “No,” she said again.

  “Hold it,” I said to both of them. “Just hold it.”

  Buster held the phone in his hand, but stopped. He didn’t flip it open or dial. The girl stood still, staring at me, her eyes still wide.

  “What does he want?” I asked. “Colter. What does he want from Caitlin?”

  “Tom—”

  “Quiet. Listen.”

  Again her eyes moved between the two us. She looked like she could run at any moment. She finally settled her gaze on me. “He just wants to see her again,” she said.

  “You said he’s leaving.”

  She nodded. “He wants to. He wants to go away.”

  “So he wants to take Caitlin with him?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Buster’s hand landed on my arm. “Tom, you need to stop this.”

  I shook free. “Does he want to take her?”

  The girl fixed her eyes on Buster. I looked. He held his phone and used his thumb to dial a number. “I’m calling the cops,” he said. “This is bullshit.”

  “Goddamn it!”

  I swung and knocked the phone out of his hand. Then I heard the scurrying.

  I looked back. The girl was gone. She ran off into the darkness. I watched her disappear into the night, a faint blur moving jackrabbit quick. I took three steps in the same direction, then stopped. She was gone. Long gone.

  When I came back, Buster was picking up his phone.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “It’s dead. I never got through.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? That little girl is under the control of that creep. She must be the same age as Caitlin—�
�

  “I get it.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I don’t know.” I paced back and forth in the dark, moving between the headstones, my shoes kicking the leaves around. I started to sweat, and when the wind picked up and cooled the sweat, a chill came over me. “He’s going to get away with this, Buster. All of it.”

  “You’ve got this girl right here. He took her.”

  “She’s gone. We’ll never see her again. You scared her off.”

  “They’ve got the other witnesses. They can put it all together.”

  “And prove what exactly? That my daughter likes to date older men?”

  “Don’t joke about this, Tom. Don’t fucking joke around. This is serious. This is your daughter you’re talking about here.”

  “Is she?” I asked.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Is she my daughter after four years?”

  “Yes. Some animal came along and took your daughter, and he did do those awful things to her. Unspeakable things. But you can’t just let that go. You’ve got to fight for this. You’re in a fight, Tom.”

  “Unspeakable things?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the key right there, isn’t it? Caitlin refuses to speak of them. Not to me or Abby or the police. But we all know what we mean when we say unspeakable. Right? Just because it’s unspeakable doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. It doesn’t mean I don’t visualize it. Every night I see it.” My words came in a rush, so I paused to collect myself. “I see them in a bed. Or on the floor. I see that pig grunting and breathing over her. Mounting her. Kissing her. Everything. And worst of all, she’s doing it back and enjoying it.”

  I couldn’t look at him. My rear molars ground against other.

  “Do you think the truth is going to be worse than what you’ve imagined?” he asked.

  “It can’t be.”

  He put the phone away and crossed his arms. He looked like he understood.

  He reached into his pants pocket again and brought out the slip of paper. “My car’s over by your house,” he said. “We can leave right now.”

  I started to leave, then noticed Buster wasn’t by my side. I looked back into the darkness and saw his shape leaning over Caitlin’s headstone. He started grunting and huffing. I went back.