In Silent Graves
Page 8
Once I saw a woman, and I beheld all her children not yet born. And a woman looked upon my face and she knew all my forefathers, dead before she was born.
—Kahlil Gibran
Sand and Foam
Chapter 1
It was an old movie theater full of winos and thugs and snoring bums and it stank horribly and was overcrowded and overheated and usually showed lousy movies but Robert didn’t care, especially tonight, especially after the last couple of days, and especially because he would not, could not sleep in that house.
The house.
Formerly known as home in a previous lifetime.
Robert looked at his hands and thought, I buried her, with these hands I dug up the earth and buried her. Jesus!
He hadn’t been able to sleep for more than an hour since that night—was it only three days ago? It seemed further in the past, somehow, something that he’d been carrying around like a filthy little secret for most of his life. He’d taken to ordering from pizza and Chinese places that delivered, and had even gone so far as to move the coffee maker and all the fixings into the living room, along with a gallon of bottled water, just so he wouldn’t have to go into the kitchen where his gaze inevitably found the back-door window and, beyond it, the site of his daughter’s grave.
More than once, he tried to convince himself that it hadn’t actually happened, but then he’d catch sight of the shovel and garden spade that he’d dropped inside by the back door, see the small clumps of soil that littered the floor around them, and know for certain that he hadn’t imagined it in some kind of grief-induced hysteria.
When he was finally able to bring himself to toss the shovel and garden spade down the basement stairs (making it easier to pretend they weren’t in the house at all, and since he didn’t have them, he couldn’t have done what he thought he’d done), a phone call from Bill Emerson had brought him back to reality.
“Mr. Londrigan? I was just calling to see how you were holding up.”
“Well as can be expected, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Emerson had cleared his throat and shuffled through some papers. “I just wanted to let you know that we haven’t made much progress on the theft of your daughter’s body. The searches at the frat houses didn’t turn up much—well, we busted about half a dozen students for possession of pot but I don’t imagine you much give a shit about that—”
Robert had laughed.
“What is it?” asked Emerson.
“Nothing. You know, I like you, Detective. You have this way of saying exactly what’s on your mind the second it occurs to you.”
“My wife complains about that all the time. Says I need to learn to either shut up or filter my comments. She never has friends over when I’m home. Should I take that personally?”
Again, Robert laughed. “Listen, Detective—”
“Bill, please.”
“Okay, Bill...listen. I, uh...I don’t need for you to keep me posted about this.” He almost, almost told Emerson then about what had happened; how much trouble could he be in? Emerson knew from driving him home that he’d been out of it that night, that his actions would have been those of a man under a great deal of emotional stress, the detective would understand, Robert was certain of that, just as he was sure that, if it came down to it, Emerson would testify to Robert’s state of mind if any charges were filed against him.
The moment passed, and Robert kept it to himself.
“I have to keep you posted, Mr. Londrigan—”
“Robert, please.”
“Okay, Robert. It’s departmental protocol—them’s the rules. I gotta keep you posted on any and all progress or lack thereof. Sorry.”
Robert found his gaze wandering toward the darkened kitchen and the back-door window, but he snapped his head around so he wouldn’t give in to the compulsion. “I understand. But...it’s just a thing, you know? Flesh, bone, tissue...it’s just something that would have contained her, given her something to walk around in. It’s not really my daughter.”
“The bastard still broke the law. He still did something obscene to you and the memory of your family. I don’t much care for that sort of thing.”
That sort of thing.
Robert wondered how Emerson would react to the sort of thing he himself had done.
He wondered how long it would be before someone found out, before a stray cat or raccoon or some other animal started digging around in the garden (Denise had complained enough about that over the years) and happened upon something buried there and, hmm, what’s this? Think I’ll dig in with my claws and find out and—hey! This tears pretty easy and—wow—something’s in there, so why don’t I just give it a little yank with my teeth and—
—stop it!
He pressed his hands against his eyes for a few moments, his body wilting into the lumpy, damp, torn cushions of the theater seat as he tried to follow the dialogue sputtering from a sound system that was probably considered state-of-the-art when Nixon was in office but now was so miserably outdated and badly maintained that what emerged from the speakers was the auditory equivalent of a Rorschach Test: a multi-layered, hissing, buzzing, popping, thrumming hubbub from which you had to decide for yourself what words you heard and string them together into a sentence, those sentences into dialogue, and that dialogue—combined with the all-too-frequently blurry images on the tattered screen—into something that resembled a plot.
That is, if you cared enough to pay it any attention.
Which Robert did not.
Especially tonight.
Right now he was trying to stop the pile-driver pounding in his temples and behind his broken nose which no amount of painkillers had been able to ease. It wasn’t the pain he was trying to stifle so much as its maddening rhythm, for with each damned beat came the words They’re dead.
Those words hung in his mind like drenched shirts on a clothesline being whipped by the wind, lashing around, then snapping loudly with the tempo of his blood.
They’re dead...They’re dead...They’re—
—and there it was on the screen right before his eyes, grainy but clear enough: a shaky tracking shot of him walking toward Denise’s garden, a shoebox cuddled against his chest—
—stop it!—
—not him, not him at all up there, no shoebox or shovel or garden spade, just some young boy pressing his hands against a glass partition, looking at a newborn baby on the other side—
—he groaned, then leaned back his head and tried to take a deep breath only to find that his nostrils were clogged with snot and pressure. He yanked a handkerchief from his back pocket and readied to Sound the Foghorn (Denise’s expression, she’d always kidded him about thinking his nose was a tad too big) when he saw the first speckle of blood drip onto the cloth.
Clenching his jaw, Robert waited for the sound system to screech again, then blew his nose.
So much blood came out that for a moment he thought he was hemorrhaging. The center of the handkerchief was soaked through at once, his palms felt hot and sticky, and there was a sudden, almost overpowering taste of copper.
Clutching the sopping handkerchief against his nose, he lurched out of the seat and made his way up the aisle. Someone whose every exhalation sounded like a twittering bird suddenly coughed. Robert was almost to the lobby when he tripped over the Breather’s outstretched legs. He stumbled, stopped himself from falling by gripping the back of a nearby seat, then looked at the Breather and said, “I’m sorry, I was—”
The rest died in his throat when the guy raised his head.
He breathed through his mouth because he had no nose, and only one eye socket directly in the center of his forehead where two bright blue eyes struggled to stay in place. Above his eye was a rounded lump of pinkish-white scar tissue, and it took Robert a moment, but then he recalled the proboscis-like appendage in the photograph.
My brothers and sisters, Willy. Do you despair yet?
The guy struggled to his feet. Despite the off-center hump on his back that caused him to stoop and lean slightly to the left, he still towered over Robert; he had to be six-seven, six-eight, at least.
Robert pushed his hands out in front of him. “N-no....” He did not doubt that he was facing the child from the first picture Split-Face had shown him, now grown into full, frightening, impossible adulthood.
“Ian,” said the guy, slapping his massive hands against his chest. “Ian.” He had no upper teeth, and only a few on the bottom; as he said his name again, smiling like someone who’d just found an old, lost friend, his too-large tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, creating a steady, thick stream of drool that trickled onto his shirt and sheened his chin. Noticing this, he reached into one of his pockets and produced a handkerchief to wipe the saliva.
Something in the way he pulled out the handkerchief and opened it by snapping his wrist and letting it unfurl…the movement was obviously well-practiced, one he’d been taught to do so that he wouldn’t repulse anyone if he had an Incident in Public.
He seemed so...proud of himself for remembering to do this. In the flickering light of the movie screen, his smile seemed so hard-won that Robert couldn’t feel afraid, not now; there was nothing threatening or grotesque or pathetic or even sad about the guy: he was just happy to see Robert.
“Why?” whispered Robert.
He slapped his chest again. “Ian. Me Ian.”
Robert pulled in a breath; a fresh wave of blood from his nose backwashed down his throat, so he leaned forward and blew once more into his handkerchief, rendering it useless.
Ian produced a fresh handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Robert, taking the bloody one from him. “Here. Ian got lots.”
Robert nodded his thanks, blew once again—this time producing much less blood—but when he looked up, Ian was gone.
He jumped to his feet and looked around the theater with the urgency of someone who’d just lost track of a child in a crowd, but there was no sign of the giant.
What the hell just happened? he thought.
An unnerving thought came to him: He was following me.
Then, what was rapidly becoming his mantra: Stop it!
He continued up the aisle and into the lobby, making a beeline for the men’s room.
He was just passing the popcorn stand, remembering a time when the movie theaters in town used to serve real butter on the popcorn, when a familiar voice said, “Tell me again how you’re doing fine.”
Lynn, his sister, came up to him, smacked him on the arm, then began pushing him toward the front doors.
“How did you know where—?”
“—because,” snapped Lynn, “whenever you get stressed-out or depressed or start feeling cornered, you always go back to your old college haunts. That’s how they catch tigers in the wild, you know? They always return to a place of remembered happiness. You go either to Ye Old Mill in Utica for ice cream or Devito’s Bookstore or here. I used to hate your being so predictable. Now I’m glad. I—don’t you dare pull away from me like that! It won’t do any good.”
They were outside now, heading toward the parking lot, the physical state of the world creating a visual counterpart to Robert’s feelings.
The first snow had fallen early—in this case, November 1st, two nights ago, and it had been an impressive debut for the season. A half foot of now-old and crusty snow covered the ground. The last thirty hours had brought nothing more than dry cold, so the snow had merely aged and turned the color of damp ash (too much like Denise’s face that last night), mottled now by candy wrappers, discarded disposable diapers, empty cigarette packs, broken liquor bottles, and used condoms. The layer of snow whispering from the night sky was a fresh coat of paint, a whitewash that hid the ugliness and despair of the tainted world underneath.
A drunken voice, enraged, thick with mucus and pain, called out from somewhere.
Another voice, this one farther away and much fainter, sang, “Ian. Me Ian....”
In the distance, its echo hovering like the death rattle from the throat of a terminal cancer patient, a window shattered.
Robert shuddered as he tramped through the slush and ice and new snow, his gaze darting around as he remembered how terrific this section of town used to be when he was younger, when the Midland Theater was the place to see the latest flicks on the weekend, and the shops and restaurants surrounding it were always full of laughing couples or groups of friends out having another great Friday night while they were still young enough to enjoy it.
That was before the change took place and left those memories in ruins. Robert supposed every city had an area like this, one that was once clean and popular and exciting until one factory too many decided to close its doors and move elsewhere, leaving only confusion and anger and poverty in its wake. Eventually those who used to be proud to live here, who helped create the glory of the past, became too frustrated and too poor and woke one morning to find themselves dubbed “white trash” by those who still had jobs and some semblance of a dream. Ignorance, violence, and defeatism lived here now; within the decaying, condemned buildings, scuttling through dank, waste-stinking alleyways, hiding behind rusted garbage cans, ready to pounce on any of the odd, damaged people who wandered these streets where assault, robbery, drugs, even murder and rape were commonplace enough to be considered the norm, all of it somehow invisible to those who lived on the other side of the East Main Street Bridge.
“You always did have a knack for finding such charming, out-of-the-way places,” said Lynn, pulling him along with more immediacy. “I used to think there wasn’t any place that couldn’t be made beautiful by snow. Guess this shows me, huh?”
“It used to be nice,” said Robert. “You’re too young to remember it in its heyday, but this used to be the greatest place before the casket factory burned down back in the late Sixties. The city never did follow through with reconstruction plans and so everything here went to shit. It didn’t used to be that way. It used to be great. I came here all the time when I was a kid. I was...I was just hoping to catch a glimpse of its ghost, that’s all.”
Lynn’s husband, Danny, was standing next to their Toyota. His shoulders slumped with relief when he saw them.
“Keys,” said Lynn.
For a moment Robert thought she was talking to Danny, but then her hand reached into his own left jacket pocket and snatched his car keys, which she tossed to her husband while pushing Robert toward the Tercel.
“Hold on,” he protested, more weakly than he would have liked. “I’m perfectly capable of driving myself—”
“Oh, shut up,” snapped his sister. “You’re in no shape to do much of anything right now—or haven’t you noticed that your schnozz is doing a Niagara Falls? On top of that, you’re shaking.”
“...haven’t eaten since lunch,” he muttered, remembering the limp, leftover, room-temperature pizza he’d nibbled on right out of the box because he didn’t want to put it in the refrigerator because that would have meant going into the kitchen, and in the kitchen was the back door, and in the back door was a window, and through the window there was a view of the yard, and in the yard was Denise’s garden, and in Denise’s garden there was a flagstone, and under that flagstone—
“—lunch yesterday, I’m willing to bet,” said Lynn. By now they were in the car. Lynn blew a kiss to Danny as he drove away in Robert’s Audi.
Robert cleared his throat. “I, uh...I don’t—I wasn’t planning on going back home—um, to the house tonight.” He winced at petulance that had entered his voice. He couldn’t get the taste of copper out of his mouth.
“Good,” said Lynn. “I’d hate to think we tidied up the guest room for nothing.” She put on her seat belt, fastened Robert’s, then started the car.
“I’ve got half a nerve to punch your lights out—disappearing the night before your wife’s funeral and trying to lose yourself in this shitty section of town.” She shook her head as she drove away. “Did you see that the lobby has piss stains on the carpeting? Place doesn’t exactly scream ‘Good, clean family fun.’ Danny wanted to bring his gun along when I told him that we were going to Coffin County. It’s goddamn dangerous down here, Bobby! I don’t need you acting like some character out of Eugene O’Neil, you hear me? The iceman probably wouldn’t cometh to these parts, anyway. Christ, you gave us a scare. Eric was in tears, afraid that he’d never see his uncle again.” Like a stone from a slingshot, her right hand crossed the distance between them and struck him hard in the shoulder. “You deserved that for making Eric worry. Kid’s only four years old.”
Cringing from the pain—damn, she had a wicked punch!—Robert leaned against the door. “You discipline your students like this?”
“Even for teenaged hormone-slaves, they’re mature beyond their years compared to the way you’ve acted.”
“I just had to...to get out and be by myself for a while, all right? There’s just been so much to deal with. Too many people, too many flowers, too many phone calls....”
“God forbid that anyone care enough to check on you.”
“I’ve had nothing but people checking on me for the last three days! From the station, at the funeral home—”
“—so what? Did it ever occur to you that maybe all these people are keeping tabs on you because they were worried you might do something stupid like wander off and not tell anyone? Of course not—that would make sense.”
“You sound like an older sister now. I remember when you were little, you always followed me around like some lost puppy, you always wanted to do everything I did—‘My big brother Bobby’s the bestest!’—remember that?”
“Pardon me if I don’t feel much like waxing nostalgic with you.” She sighed disgustedly as she took the on-ramp to the freeway. “Dammit, Bobby! You’re the only brother I’ve got. I know you thought I was a pain in the ass when we were kids—and to tell you the truth, when I started getting older I thought you were some kind of freakazoid—but I love you. I love you, and I can’t stand to see you push everyone away so you can go through this alone. You had to handle enough stuff on your own when Mom and Dad were still alive—”