In Silent Graves

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “There were five more inflated inner-tubes inside the structure. There was also another dead infant.”

  “Jesus,” whispered Lynn.

  Emerson, purposefully not looking at her, continued: “A preliminary search of the structure uncovered several empty bottles of formaldehyde that had been reported stolen from a funeral home near North Tenth Street a week or so before. We also found two heavy plastic bags that had been stolen from the crematorium out by Hebron—whether or not some of the corpses we found were stolen from the crematorium is something we’re still trying to find out. It’s a goddamn mess, is what it is.” He rubbed his eyes, cracked his knuckles, and then, looking sadder than Robert had ever seen him, went on: “Over the next couple of hours the bodies of seven other infants—all of them strapped onto inner-tubes and set afloat earlier—began washing up on shore between Church Street and where the Licking begins that weird little fork around Heath.

  “Just as we’re finishing up at the site, the dispatcher radios me about some guy a couple of restaurant employees found sleeping in the Dumpster behind their building. Except for the coat he had on, the guy was naked and babbling about water and babies in the stream. Don’t have to be Einstein to make the connection here.” He pointed to the television screen. “He didn’t give us any trouble when we came to get him. In fact, he seemed kind of relieved that someone had shown up. Like maybe he’d been hoping or praying for it.” He stretched his back, then asked Robert: “I’m guessing that you didn’t get a good look at his real face the second time, did you?”

  “I didn’t see anything this last time, Detective,” Robert lied.

  “I sorta figured.” He reached down next to his chair and lifted a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a large rubber Halloween mask that bore an unnerving resemblance to Rael’s face. “Is this the mask he was wearing?”

  “Oh, god...where did you—”

  “It was inside the lean-to. He had all sorts of masks and coats and hats and blankets and junk. But I remembered the way you described the mask he was wearing and guessed this was the one. Does it look like it?”

  Robert focused on the phrase look like, because then what he said next didn’t feel so much like a lie. “Yes, it looks very much like it.”

  Emerson looked at the mask, then set it down. “One of the desk sergeants tells me this mask is of that character Jason from those Friday the 13th movies. I guess this is what he’s supposed to look like underneath that hockey mask he usually wears.”

  “How can you be sure that he was the one who...who attacked me in my house?”

  Emerson reached for one of the brown envelopes on the tray-table, opened it, and removed several small plastic evidence bags. Each one contained a wrinkled newspaper clipping, some of them recent, others browned and brittle with age. The detective sorted through them for a moment, setting a few to the side while laying others in a row. When he was finished, he pointed to the clippings on the tray-table. “Recognize these?”

  Robert scanned the clippings. “Yeah. Those are all the articles that the Ally ran about what happened the night Denise died.”

  “He had these stuffed into the pocket of that coat you see him wearing there. These other clippings, they’re along the same lines, sort of.” Emerson sorted through the other stack of articles. “‘Mother Drowns with Four Children in Auto Accident.’ Here’s one about a couple of teenagers and a little kid who drowned when their fishing boat overturned at Buckeye Lake...there’s a whole bunch like that. They all have two things in common—the victims all drowned, and in every single case, at least one of them was a child. The drowning part I won’t even start to get into because, the way he tells it, there’s some kind of healing properties in the water that will bring the children back to life...guy’s nuttier than a wagon-load of pralines, that’s all there is to it. No, the thing that’s important here is that you lost a baby daughter, and he lost his baby sister when he was a kid.”

  “So you know who he is?” asked Lynn, pulling a tissue from her purse.

  Emerson nodded. “His name is Joseph Alan Connor—”

  “Connor?” said Lynn and Robert simultaneously.

  Emerson nodded. “Hang on, it gets better. When he was around five, he accidentally scalded his baby sister to death while trying to give her a bath in the kitchen sink. His sister’s name was Lynn.”

  Robert blanched. “Lynn Connor?”

  “Yeah.” Emerson looked at Lynn. “I don’t say this to scare you, Ms. Connor, but all things considered, I think it was damned near a miracle that he fixated on your brother and not yourself.”

  “Oh, that’ll help me sleep better tonight.”

  Emerson looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. But he’s in custody now and, believe me, he’s not going anywhere.” He shuffled through the papers from which he’d been reading the background information. “Neither of his parents were home at the time of the baby’s death—the mother was a barfly and the father was a drunk who, according to the Social Services reports, frequently beat Joe and may have sexually molested him on more than one occasion. During one beating, Joe suffered a severe skull fracture that left him with minor but permanent brain damage. The parents reported that Joseph had ‘fallen’ down the basement stairs. My guess is the father shoved him down those stairs, but that can never be proven. Mentally, he’ll never be more than seven or eight years old.”

  Lynn looked at the face on the screen and wiped at one of her eyes. “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Christ!” said Robert. “He looks twice that age.”

  “Considering the non-stop party his life’s been, I’m surprised he looks that good.” Emerson cleared his throat, stole a mouthful of Robert’s ice chips, then continued: “After his sister’s death—the scalding incident occurred a year or two after his skull was fractured, so there was never any question that it was an accident—he was removed from his parents’ home and placed in the custody of Children’s Services. He was shuffled in and out of foster homes for the next ten years; none of the families kept him longer than a year. They couldn’t deal with his nightmares and mood-swings, or with his limited mental capacity. When he turned eighteen, he was released.” Emerson sat staring at the photocopied forms he was holding.

  “What do you mean, ‘released’?” snapped Lynn.

  “I mean that once a ward of the state is eighteen, they’re given fifty dollars, set up with a job—in Joe’s case, he emptied garbage cans at strip-malls—and turned loose.”

  Lynn looked angry now. “Good God—did he even have a place to live when they ‘released’ him?”

  “As far as I know, he didn’t.”

  “Wonderful.” Her voice cracked slightly. She turned away for a few moments.

  “Bill,” whispered Robert. “I still don’t see how this led you to connect him to—”

  “My guess is that, since your sister’s name was Lynn Connor, and she was mentioned in a couple of the earlier articles, he felt that he was supposed to find you. After all, you had both lost baby girls.”

  Robert shook his head and pointed toward the newspaper clippings. “But the first of these clippings didn’t appear in the paper until after I was attacked in the morgue.”

  Emerson nodded. “He spent a lot of time at the Open Shelter. They’ve got a police-band radio there that’s always turned on. That’s how he heard what happened. He probably listened to the EMTs and cops talking back and forth and decided to head for the hospital. Once there, it’d just be a matter of listening to the nurses and interns and asking questions in passing.” Emerson shrugged. “It was kind of a busy night that night, according to the Reverend—the guy who runs the place; people are more prone to answer a question than waste their time trying to explain why they can’t answer something. So he listens and asks around, finds out your wife and little girl have been taken to the morgue, and sneaks down there. We haven’t been able to figure out how he managed to get there without a card key, or why the hospital
security cameras didn’t pick him up, but I’m figuring all of that will come out in the wash, so to speak.”

  “Why would he take Emily’s body?”

  “I think maybe he managed to convince himself that it was his sister, which would explain why he assaulted you. According to his records, he had no past history of violence.”

  “Can I ask you—”

  Emerson waved his hand, silencing Robert. “I need you to listen to him and tell me if his voice is the same one you heard either that night or when you were assaulted in your home.”

  Emerson depressed the “pause” button and the tape rolled.

  “Where did you find all the babies, Joe?” asked the detective on the tape.

  “Lynn tells me where I can find babies that nobody wants. And I always find them where she says. In alleys, in boxes and trash cans. And I always find them when it's raining or snowing. She uses the water to talk to me, see? She tells me that Mommy and Daddy didn't really want her so that makes these other babies, these trash can and alley babies, just like her.”

  His voice was that of an old, old man; ragged, tired, full of brittle sorrow.

  On the tape, Joe looked down at his folded hands and began to whisper: “‘Those who see me in the street hurry past me; I am forgotten, O Yahweh, as good as dead in their hearts, something discarded....’”

  Emerson paused the tape again. “Is that him? Is that his voice?”

  “What the hell was that he was saying?”

  “Part of Psalm 31. Does that sound like the voice?”

  Again Robert focused on like. “Yes.” Good God, was he condemning this poor man to prison every time he spoke?

  He reached for some crushed ice to wash the taste from his mouth.

  “That’s good enough for me,” said Emerson, turning off the tape.

  Robert waved a hand. “Not for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Okay, so maybe everything you said so far’s right, maybe that poor kid made some kind of...I don’t know, schizophrenic connection with my daughter’s death and his sister’s, and, sure, everything else might have happened the way you say it did, but how can you conclude that he’s the one who—”

  Emerson opened the large brown envelope and removed the photographs inside. “These are photographs of the body the kids called about and the seven dead infants that were recovered. Five were girls. None of them were too badly decomposed.” He sorted through the pictures, trying to not look at any one of them for too long. “Of the five girls, three of them had autopsy scars that matched those that would have been on your daughter.” He laid the three photographs on the tray-table. “If one of these bodies is your daughter’s, then we have the man who took her.”

  Robert cast a pleading glance at Lynn, who pulled in a deep breath and came over to his side, taking hold of his hand but not looking at the photographs.

  Robert looked.

  So small, so delicate, if it weren’t for the scars that split them down the center of their chests, these pictures might have been taken while they slept safe and warm in the cribs as Mommy and Daddy stood beaming over them, proud parents, she’s so sweet. Child, parents, family...home.

  It doesn’t matter, he told himself. The poor kid’s going to be put away no matter what you say or do here, these children are already dead and there’s nothing that can be done about that, so why not give Bill the satisfaction of knowing that he’s solved the case?

  It was a weak justification, but the only other option was to tell Lynn and Emerson the truth; if he did that....

  Robert wiped his eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and pointed to one of the photographs. “Th-there. This is...is her.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” God forgive him. Joseph Alan Connor forgive him.

  Emerson marked the photo, then cleared them away. Robert leaned into Lynn, who stroked his cheek.

  “One last thing,” said Emerson, “and then I’ll let you get some rest.” He produced a final plastic evidence bag. “This is what cinched it. It was in his coat pocket. Is it yours?”

  Later, Robert would remember the following minute as having elapsed in slow-motion. He would replay it many times for the rest of his life.

  Emerson handed him the bag.

  He took it and at once recognized the object inside.

  Don’t bring it close, he thought. If you don’t look at it too closely then you won’t have to accept what it means.

  Then: Please, no.

  He lifted the bag closer, turned it over and read the delicate inscription on the gold back: From D to R, In the Second Year of Forever, then turned it back around.

  “Yes,” he croaked, barely able to get the next few words out. “This is my watch. Denise gave it to me on our first anniversary.”

  Emerson nodded, then reached for the bag. Robert pulled it away.

  “I have to hang on to this for a little while longer,” said Emerson. “I’m sorry, but—”

  Dear God, please, no, don’t let it be.

  “Bobby,” said Lynn. “What’s wrong?”

  Please, no, no, no, no, no....

  “I, uh....” He handed the evidence bag back to Emerson. “Would one of you mind getting me some more crushed ice? My throat’s really starting to bother me.”

  “Sure thing.” Lynn grabbed the pitcher and went out to the nurses’ station. Emerson held the door open for her.

  As soon as both of them were away from the bed Robert snatched up the pile of photographs and quickly flipped

  (...we got a call about a body that was discovered along the banks of the Licking River...)

  through them, all the while praying he wouldn’t find what he was

  (...it was fairly gruesome...)

  looking for.

  But he did.

  At the bottom of the pile.

  He covered his mouth with his hand in order to keep himself from shrieking.

  Then mindsputtered.

  There before him, in graphic black and white, was a picture of Ian: naked, alone, and very, very dead.

  He shoved the tray-table away and fell back against the pillows before Emerson saw what he’d done. The detective came back and assembled everything, slipping the photographs and newspaper clippings into their respective envelopes, then back into the shoulder bag. It was only as he was removing the tape from the VCR that he noticed Robert’s face.

  “Jesus, Robert, are you okay?”

  Robert couldn’t speak, there was too much pressure fanning out from his core. He was aware of the tears forming in his eyes and the way his lungs ached in his chest, but beyond those sensations, he had only one thought: Me Ian. Ian sew Good. Cheese-boooogies!

  Emerson put a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Listen to me, okay? I know it’s all horrible, it got to me like you wouldn’t believe, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think he meant to hurt you. I also don’t think he killed any of those babies, I think they were already dead when he either found or stole them. He’ll be taken of now, Robert. He’s on the sixth floor here, the Psychiatric unit. For observation. There’s no way that poor kid’s gonna be found competent to stand any kind of trial. They’ll keep him here until they find a decent institution that will take him. He’ll be okay, he won’t be alone anymore, he’ll be sent someplace where people will take care of him.”

  “All those children...,” choked Robert.

  “I know, I know. God. Damn. It.”

  Lynn came back into the room, took one look at her brother, and moved Emerson aside.

  “Oh, Bobby....” She took him in her arms and held him.

  Almost blinded by tears, and sobbing so hard that his throat ached and his eyeballs throbbed, Robert began to wrap his arms around his sister but stopped when something soft brushed against his hand. He turned his head and saw the handkerchief Ian had embroidered for him. He grabbed it in his fist and held it against his chest, silently swearing to the indifference of heaven that he would never, ever be
without it for the rest of his days. Me Ian. Today Ian’s birfday. Ian cook good cheese-booooogies!

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “Shhh,” said Lynn. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  “So, so sorry....”

  Bill Emerson stood still, not wanting to move and perhaps intrude on what was passing between them.

  “Shh, it’s okay now, Bobby, it’s all over, come on, come on....”

  Robert pulled back and looked at his sister’s face and was overwhelmed by the love he felt for her. “I’m sorry,” he said once more.

  “For what?”

  The intervals between sobs were getting longer now. “Do you remember when you were six and I used to get you ready for school because Mom and Dad both left for work at three-thirty in the morning?”

  “Yes...?”

  “Do you remember that one morning when I was in a really bad mood? It was my first year after high school and I didn’t have a job yet and college wasn’t in the picture because we couldn’t afford it? You were all shook up because you couldn’t find something you were supposed to take in for Show & Tell that day, so you asked me to find it for you, then went into the living room to put on your socks and shoes. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea—I could look up from the table and see you in there, putting together all your school stuff...you looked so serious and grown-up already—and I told you to find it yourself, it wasn’t my problem, and then you said something like, ‘You’re just lazy!’ I don’t know if that’s exactly what it was, but then you said, ‘I hate you!’ and that made me madder than hell...”