“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant … uh, she saw me for a few minutes and she already had her mind made up. She’s a man-hater.”
Fowler sat holding the report. He did not respond.
“Damn it! All right, all right. I’ll start some weekly therapy, once a week. You recommend the person.”
Fowler continued to look at the report. “It says nix on psychotherapy. Says minimum a month clean and sober, first. Clearly recommends an alcohol/drug program; suggests thirty days at Mulcahey’s in Calistoga.
“I already checked. Our insurance covers it. So I am continuing your suspension, keeping your medical benefits active, and very strongly encouraging you to enroll at Mulcahey’s. The suspension will remain in effect until I receive written confirmation that you have successfully completed the thirty-day, continuous alcohol treatment. Any questions?”
“For shit’s sake, Dave—Lieutenant—this isn’t even legal.”
“Vern, I am not going to argue. I’ve established a paper trail on you that is substantial. You may be prosecuted, should Brenda choose to, along with the department, for sexual harassment. If you decline to comply with this directive, termination is my next option.”
Billup was too angry to speak. He was fighting the urge to climb over Fowler’s desk and beat him to a pulp. He stormed out of the office, down the stairs, and out of the building. He needed some breathing room!
Billup drove to Cottonwood, to the bar by the stockyards where he didn’t think he’d see anybody he knew. He was livid! What was it with people? Why were they out to screw him? It took three refills with draft chasers before he could calm down enough to think.
He hated Fowler, always had. Take Brenda’s word over his like a chickenshit. But it was the EAP bitch who had buried him. And Brenda. God! Women! Why couldn’t they just let him do his work? Help the homeless, get hookers off the streets, get that geeky little bastard out of the cemetery and into juvenile hall, where he belonged.
He decided to have another bump, maybe some single malt, and then bring the wrath of justice down! He realized he kind of liked his rage. It pumped him up. A treatment program, my ass!
BURIAL MIX-UPS
Murray was sitting with Edwin, waiting for Pearl, when she came down from the workshop. She plopped down next to him. “What’s new? Anything yesterday afternoon?”
Murray had thought about how he wanted to tell her, thought about leaving out the part about how scared he was. But he decided that she needed to know, needed to understand … what? That he might flip out again? Well, at least she needed to know that if he ran again, it wasn’t anything she did. And she should know just to let him run.
He told her. He could see that what he said scared her a little, too.
“Man,” she said, “what do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m hearing a girl crying like she’s in pain, and moaning, some kind of moaning. I mean, I’ve heard voices before, but not like that. It’s spooky. I don’t know how … I’m … I don’t even know that I can help.” He was reaching for words. “I can’t explain it.”
They didn’t say anything for a bit.
“So, do you want to come with me?” He amended, “I mean, will you come with me?”
“Should I tell my dad where we’re going to be, in case anything happens?”
“No. No, this is too weird. Nothing major’s going to happen.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Except I may get scared again. If I do, you go home, we meet tomorrow. Okay?”
When she didn’t reply, Murray started walking slowly across the graves. He could feel Pearl walking behind him. Maybe I can’t hear any voice when she’s with me. About three feet from the dark gray tombstone, the hair on his arms began to stand up.
He could hear it.
Groaning, crying. “Help me! Please find me! Please find me! Please.”
Where was the moaning coming from? Were the screams an echo? It seemed like several sounds running together. What if he disappeared in these sounds? Couldn’t bring his mind back? He felt like he was fizzing, bubbling inside.
Pearl took hold of his arm. The sounds gradually receded. The sound he was hearing was himself, he realized … at least there at the end.
Pearl moved up to stand close beside him. He could feel her heartbeat.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Are you okay? Do you want to go?”
No. Murray wanted to walk around to the front of the tombstone. He wanted to see what was on it. But he wanted her to keep holding his arm.
“Would you stay close like this and walk around to the other side with me?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said.
They went around. Murray read the name.
WILLIAM TAYLOR CRADDOCK PRECIOUS HUSBAND — LOVING FATHER
That can’t be right!
“What?” Pearl said.
He realized he had said it aloud. “I said, I don’t see how that could be right. I was hearing a girl’s voice.” He wanted to argue with the inscription. It doesn’t fit. It isn’t right. But he didn’t want to go close to the stone again. “Let’s walk,” he said. “Let’s take a break for a while.”
Farther up the hill, past the angel, they started talking.
“What do you do at school?” he asked Pearl.
“Oh, not much,” she said. “I take accelerated English and freshman Spanish. I have some friends but I’m not popular. I’m on the basketball team but I’m not great, so I don’t score much in the games, but I hang in there on defense and I get some rebounds.”
“How about you?” she asked. “What are you like at school?”
“Ah, jeez, you don’t want to know. I do okay in classes but not real well. I don’t care too much about school. Some of the assholes hassle me, but mostly people just ignore me, leave me alone.”
“Did you tell them to do that? You told me to do that.”
“No. I don’t know. Some kids teased me about my mother.”
“Why?”
“She’s been arrested before. She goes out with a lot of guys. Kids call her names and we argue and then they call me names.”
“My mom went out with other guys, too. A lot, I think,” Pearl said, “even though she was married.”
Murray was surprised. He hadn’t imagined Janochek would have a wife like that. He reached out and almost touched her shoulder.
“So,” Pearl said, “want to talk about it?”
“No,” he said.
“What do you think’s going on?”
Murray shook his head.
“Did you hear the voice?”
“Yeah, but there was other noise with it. I could hear this girl’s voice saying ‘help me, please find me.’”
“You’re going to help her, aren’t you?” Pearl asked.
Murray thought of the words he had wanted on his tombstone: Friend to the Deceased.
“I don’t know how,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you think Craddock did something to her?”
“The dead guy? No. I don’t think so. I mean, she didn’t say so. I mean, I really just don’t know.”
Murray looked around. Not that many people came up here to visit. This was the oldest section, and Murray thought most of the loved ones who would mourn here were themselves long gone. The old graves were crumbly and peaceful. The trees above them were bare, their branches like spider webs.
“Do you want me to talk to my father about this?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, coming back to earth. “What would you say?”
“I could ask him about Craddock.”
“Yeah, okay, you could try that, I guess, but don’t tell him anything else. Okay?”
“Sure. I mean, okay. I won’t. Want to go to the workshop for a while? The woodstove is probably going, and we could get a glass of water or something. I wouldn’t ask my dad anything while you’re there, if he’s around.”
“Will he mind if I’m there?
”
“No. I think he likes you. The poor misguided man!”
* * *
That evening after dinner, Pearl asked her dad. They were both reading, Pearl lying on the couch and her dad in a recliner in the corner of their small living room.
“Dad, do you know anything about that guy Craddock who’s buried down in the newer part?”
“No,” he said, resting his book on the arm of the chair. “Survived by a wife and two children, if I remember right. I don’t know what killed him, if that’s what you mean. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, uh, Murray thinks he knows … or might know a girl who’s buried around here somewhere and we were just walking and looking in the newer section today, and I saw Craddock’s marker.”
“That pretty gray one, nearly black with silver flecks. I think they bought that special. Ordered it from a place in Oregon. Granite with mica in it.”
“Dad, uh, do they ever make mistakes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Put the wrong name on a stone or put somebody in the wrong place?”
“Oh, I’m sure they do sometimes. Spell the name wrong. We’ve had that happen here.” He laughed. “Once, unfortunately, to a woman whose last name was Cutter. The stonemason made it ‘Gutter.’ Not a happy family!”
“How about put somebody in the wrong place?”
“I suppose it’s theoretically possible, if there were two or three burials on the same day, and the people present had not bought the plot themselves, so they didn’t know where the grave was supposed to be located. Or maybe days after the burial, the stonemason could unknowingly put the marker over the wrong person. Or, I guess a funeral home might mix up two nearly identical closed coffins, but it would be rare. Really rare.”
“How many people were buried the day Craddock was?”
“Pearl, what is this thing about Craddock?”
“Nothing, Dad. Just curious. How many?”
“Pearl, for crying out loud, I don’t remember stuff like that. We have over a thousand people here.”
“Isn’t it easy to find out? To look up?”
“Saints in heaven, Pearl. If I look it up, will you leave me in peace and let me read my damn book?”
“Sure, Dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bug you. I’m just curious.”
Janochek set his book on the end table and went out the side door to his file cabinet in the workshop. He was back in a minute or so. “William Craddock was the only person buried that day, October seventeenth. Him and nobody else here at this cemetery. Satisfied?”
“How about from the mortuary to the church service? Could they have mixed up the body then?”
“Pearl!”
“Well, could they?”
“Great Caesar’s ghost!”
Janochek got up again and stomped to his computer. He got on the Web to access the newspaper, searched obituaries during mid-October, and scanned them until he found Craddock’s.
“Died at home, natural causes, believed heart attack. Died overnight in bed. No reason to have a closed-casket funeral unless he had gone to the trouble to put it in his will, or maybe the wife couldn’t face him in death. But his service was attended by his family. Almost certainly open casket at the viewing, possibly even at the service.
“Let’s see. Service was at the mortuary down the street. They’re the people who prepared him. From the mortuary, carried by pallbearers to the hearse and then to here. I would say no possibility of a mix-up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He did not reply. She knew he wouldn’t. She could always read him like a book.
“HE KILLED ME”
Pearl, bouncing with energy, found Murray with James.
“I talked to my dad last night about the Craddock stone,” she said. “It’s him, all right. No one else was buried that day, so there couldn’t have been a mix-up. The same people took him straight from the funeral home to the cemetery.”
“You checked all that out?”
“Yeah. Or, I mean, Dad did. He said mix-ups were very rare and only likely to happen when multiple burials are going on. The voice you’re hearing is probably coming from another plot, close by. Start where you left the path yesterday and go on around the corner and then all the way back to the main road and I’ll be right beside you.”
“When I’m listening, don’t touch me.”
“Sure, okay.”
Murray felt edgy as soon as they got to the part of the lane behind the dark tombstone. He thought he could hear those sounds again, but he didn’t try to tune into them yet. The sounds got fainter as he rounded the corner, stronger as he moved up the last lane that passed in front of Craddock. He shuddered. The wailing became gradually softer as he walked slowly back to the main road. At the intersection, Murray stopped and tuned up his listening. He could still hear it, very dim, no clear words.
He headed back to Craddock’s marker and turned to Pearl.
“It’s here,” he said. “I’m pretty sure.”
“It can’t be,” Pearl said.
“I think it is.”
“Sit down in front of it and touch it,” she said.
God! I’d rather be shot. He made himself sit.
Murray pictured being electrocuted as soon as he touched that stone. He took a deep breath and waited for Pearl to sit down beside him. Then he reached out and touched the stone in front, next to the name.
Murray did feel a charge, but it wasn’t like an electric shock, exactly. More like a dial tone, or when they turned the PA system on in the gym and you could hear a faint hiss and buzz. Right away he heard her.
“Found me. You found me.” The moaning faded. Her voice was weak, like she was exhausted.
“I heard you, and I’ve been looking for you,” Murray said.
Crying again.
“He killed me.”
Murray didn’t know what to say.
“He hit me. I couldn’t breathe.”
Murray could hardly stand to listen.
“He killed me!” Sobs. Hiccuping. “He killed me! And he wanted to cut me up in smaller pieces so he could get rid of me.”
Murray let go of the stone and fell back.
“Breathe!” Pearl was yelling at him. “Come on! Take a breath!”
And he did, and then he was breathing hard, as if he had been running again.
“What happened?” she asked. She was holding him. Supporting him.
Murray told her.
Pearl was quiet until he caught his breath. “Can you find out what happened next?” she asked.
Murray got to his feet and Pearl did the same. He wanted her to understand what it was like for him … but she couldn’t. Nobody could. Except maybe Dearly and Blessed and Edwin. Murray had never felt so alone. He pictured a paper sack filled with sadness and fear, blowing down streets and through empty places. It didn’t belong to anybody, didn’t have any substance. Somebody’s trash.
“You going to run?” Pearl asked him.
Murray erupted. “These people need me. Everybody needs a friend!” That’s what Murray thought. But his heart was churning with fear.
Pearl took a step back, uncertain. Waiting.
Murray sat again and Pearl followed his lead. Murray closed his eyes and put his hands out slowly, until both were touching the stone. This time there was no buzzing. Maybe the softest sound of ocean. He waited. She began to speak.
She told him the guy offered her a ride. She knew him and it was raining and he asked if she was going to her car. When she said yes, he said he would drive her to it. She was in good spirits, thinking about the game the next day, and she got in. He asked her if he could talk to her, and she felt sorry for him. While she was answering, he put his arm around her, touching her shoulder and neck. That was so out of line that she shoved his arm away without even thinking. He got mad and said he needed her to listen to him for a minute, but he kept getting close to her. He put his arm out like he was reaching for her breast and she shoved his hand
away as hard as she could. He reacted with a kind of karate move and fired the side of his hand at her, but her arm was lower and he hit her in the throat instead. And after that, she couldn’t breathe. It was horrible. It was probably like drowning. And she suffocated and died and nobody knew it. Nobody even knew where she was.
When he got her here, beside the grave, he pulled at her clothes, but it was raining and muddy and he stopped. Then he took out his pocketknife and sawed at her hip like maybe he could take her legs off and make her body smaller and more manageable, but it wouldn’t work, so he gave up.
She said the guy laid his head down on her in the rain and started moaning. And then she faded away and everything went black for a long time. And then she started calling for help. It seemed like forever until Murray found her.
“I didn’t think anyone ever would,” she told him.
Murray tried to picture her, like he did the others, but he couldn’t. Maybe he was too tired. Or maybe she was too tired. He took his hands off the stone.
Pearl stayed beside him. She didn’t say anything. Murray felt so sleepy. After a while, he turned around and told her what the girl had said. When he finished, they were quiet again. They had lost their energy.
“Everybody knew about it, everybody talked about it.” Murray was thinking out loud.
“It’s Nikki Parker, isn’t it?” she said.
That’s when he started crying.
Pearl held Murray while he wept. Not tight or anything. Just held him, and didn’t squirm or try to talk him out of it. She didn’t say a word. After he settled down, she said, “I’ve got to ask my dad one more thing.”
“What?”
“Can you put two bodies in one coffin?” she asked.
And just like that she got it.
RUN, ROBERT, RUN
Gates was waiting in the car with the window down when Robert walked out of TacoBurger. Robert seemed to be in a reverie; he would have walked right past without even seeing Gates, if Gates hadn’t said his name. But when Robert looked, there was no recognition. He was wide-eyed, staring at the car, and then he started running out the back lot. Gates lost sight of him when he cut around a building.
Dead Connection Page 11