Cemetery Lake: A Thriller Read online

  “And?” I ask, not sure where he’s going with this.

  “And Alderman bought that gun years ago. He bought it the same week his wife died. About two days before she suddenly jumped out in front of a car by accident. Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “You think he bought the gun to kill his wife and pushed her in front of a car instead?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not saying anything,” he says. “But you remember what happened last time we started digging up bodies? I’m telling you, Tate, it’s going to be a long week. And take some advice—get yourself a good lawyer, man. These drunk-driving charges aren’t going to disappear, friends in the department or not. You’re going to be doing some time. Get yourself sorted, start jogging—you’ve put on what, three, four kilos in the last month? Get your life back on track. Do anything else but this case, man. I know we could have made a difference two years ago, but you have to let it go and let the rest of us take care of it.”

  His cell phone starts to ring.

  “Hang on, Tate.” He talks quickly into it, then hangs up. “I gotta go,” he says, and rushes to his car.

  All I can do is watch him as he speeds out of the street, and all I can think about is what they are going to find buried in the dirt when they exhume Sidney Alderman’s wife on Monday.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  For the longest time I can’t move. My breathing becomes shallow and I start to sweat. The house is cold and the air slightly damp because of the busted window in the lounge. There is a restricting pain in my chest. On Monday they are going to find Sidney Alderman buried on top of the coffin of his wife. He’s going to look like he died hard. There’ll be plenty of evidence that I’m the one who killed him. It won’t be like Quentin James, where they knew I did it, but didn’t try looking too hard to prove anything. This time they’ll make an effort because the man I killed was innocent.

  I walk outside to the garage and find a piece of plywood and some nails; of course, I have no hammer. I use a drill and some screws to hold the plywood over the busted window. The work helps to calm me, at least for a few minutes. When the last screw is buried, I start to go through my options, and the one that keeps coming up is that I ought to call Carl Schroder and tell him to come back here. We could sit down and he could listen to my sins.

  I sit down at the table and eat some more pizza, staring blankly at the wall, the act of eating a mechanical one that has no enjoyment. I need to start making the most of good food, since I won’t be seeing any for another ten years. On the other hand, Schroder was right. I should be joining a gym. Or at least running. Doing something. I reach down and grab a handful of stomach. Two months ago I was lean. Now I’m not. I reach up and find extra padding around my neck and jaw that shouldn’t be there either.

  I finish off the pizza and drink the rest of the Coke. Daxter comes wandering down the hall, probably hoping I kept him some pizza. I give him his usual and he seems placated by it. I head to bed and set my alarm clock. I slide it to the far end of the bedside table to kill the risk of my reaching out and slapping the snooze button while still in some dreamlike state. I stare at the dark ceiling and the dark walls and I think about Sidney Alderman and the expression that will be on his face. This strange image comes to me, of where they dig him up and there is still one more breath inside of him, one breath in which he can tell the police that it was me who did this to him.

  When I fall asleep I end up dreaming about my wife, about Emily, and in my dream they are both alive. They talk to me, but what they say makes little sense, because in the dream I seem to be burying my family while they’re still alive. Rachel Tyler appears—she’s a younger version, one of the Rachel Tylers on display in the hallway of her parents’ house. She accuses me of being a murderer, and in this world of dreams as well as outside of it that’s exactly what I am.

  When the alarm goes off it’s two o’clock in the morning and it’s raining. Daxter is curled up next to me, the first time he has done that in two years. I wonder if this means something. My house is cold and my mind is full of bad ideas. I get dressed and step out into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I throw a shovel into the back of my dad’s car and park outside my house. I look up and down the street, searching for a taillight, then drive off in the direction of the cemetery, taking random lefts and rights to make sure no one is following. Nobody is. I need to get Alderman out of the ground before the others go digging for his wife. They’re going to see the turned-over earth, they’re going to know something has happened, but they’re not going to know what. They may suspect—but they can’t know. They’ll see Alderman’s blood on the coffin lid, so I’m going to have to do something about that too.

  At the cemetery everything looks different, as though I’m still in the dream. The night is about as dark and wet as it can get in this city. There is an occasional sliver of pale light that breaks through and reflects off the windshield. It is completely still out here, and cold. I suspect if I tried digging deep into the ground to remove Sidney Alderman, it’d be like digging through quicksand.

  I park out on the street two blocks away and walk back to the cemetery. Naked branches that look like skeletal remains reach out overhead and lock fingers above me as I enter the grounds. I slow down and stay hidden in the shadows of several oak trees along the sides of the road in case there are any police around. There doesn’t seem to be anybody, but I go further onto the grounds before going back for the shovel, knowing I could only offer bad answers to questions about why I was carrying one.

  Satisfied I’m alone, at least in the cemetery, I start to make my way to the church. I stay in the trees, getting close enough finally to see a patrol car parked outside with a sole officer inside. He’s probably got the heater running to stay warm, and got a thermos of coffee as well. It’s standard protocol to protect a crime scene this early on. I bet he’s bored as hell. I stay in the same position, low to the ground, the cold making my knees and fingers hurt, and I spend ten minutes just watching. The rain beats on my jacket loudly, but not as loudly as it beats against the car. Occasionally a light comes on in the car from what I think might be a cell phone opening and closing. The guy’s probably sending text messages to his wife or girlfriend, or both. Probably complaining about what a waste of time it is out here.

  I need to return to the car, grab the shovel, and dig Alderman up. But now that I’m this close to the church, suddenly I have another, even stronger need—I have to know what’s inside. I need to know if there are answers in there. And anyway, Alderman won’t mind waiting another half an hour for the feel of the shovel.

  I pass behind the trees and some graves, and circumnavigate my way to the back of the church. I hide for another five minutes, just watching and waiting to see if there is anybody else around. There isn’t. The rain stays heavy and I’m pretty sure it’s the reason the cop keeping an eye on the church is staying in his car and not patrolling around the perimeter every few minutes like he’s been instructed to do.

  The church is darker and colder-looking than normal, as though God has moved out and some malevolent presence has moved in. There are no lights on inside. The man who devoted his life to this place is lying on a slab in the morgue, maybe with his God, maybe alone.

  I quickly make my way to the side door and I pause, waiting for either Schroder or Landry to step out of the darkness, or even Casey Horwell with her cameraman. Nobody does. There is police tape hanging in the lifeless air between poles that have been weighted on the ground. Police tape has been sealed along the framework. I try to pull it away without damaging it.

  I pull out my keys and look at the one I got from Bruce Alderman. I look at it and I look at the lock on the door, and even though they don’t look like they’re going to match up, I still try jamming them together. It’s useless. It could be for one of the other doors. I pull a lock-pick set from my pocket, hold a Maglite in my mouth, and go about working at the lock, nervous that the guy pa
rked out front is going to pick this exact moment to come looking around. It turns out to be a simple enough pin-and-tumbler mechanism made more complicated than it ought to be by the cold and my nerves. It takes me almost ten minutes to make my way inside. The air is cold, the black void ahead of me unwelcoming, and when I close the door behind me all I have is my Maglite to keep whatever demons are in here at bay.

  Before taking a step, I remove my jacket and shoes to avoid contaminating the scene with mud and water. I’ve entered the church corridor: to the left is the chapel and to the right, Father Julian’s office. There is a basin of what I assume is holy water standing waist high next to me. The flashlight cuts a small arc through the inky darkness, but is swallowed up when I point it at the far wall of the chapel—I’m sure it’s all but impossible to see it from outside. I run my hand along the top of the front pew where I sat last time I was here talking to Father Julian. It was when I was looking for Bruce Alderman. The following day I came back and we sat in his office and I was looking for Sidney Alderman.

  I turn off the flashlight and stand in the darkness. There is something here, I’m sure of it. Something dark. Perhaps the church itself is angry. Bad things have happened here. Sins have been confessed and sins have been committed. The bricks and the mortar and the stained glass windows have every right to be angry. They’ve absorbed a lot of what’s been said and seen over the years, and now that the keeper of secrets has gone all that sorrow and pain is starting to seep out.

  I turn the flashlight back on and start looking around the chapel, not searching for anything in particular. The only eyes watching me are those of the icons pinned on or hanging from the walls, created in colored glass and woven fabrics and tapestries. Jesus feeding the poor. Jesus turning water into wine. Jesus dying for our sins. Did Father Julian die for his sins? For mine?

  There are a few evidence markers placed variously around the floor. Whatever they indicated has been photographed, picked up, and is now gone. There are no blood splatters. No muddy footprints. The other night, did Father Julian’s killer make his way into the church using the same means? Did he come through the front door, allowed entrance by the priest? Through a side door? Did he come at night, or had he been here all day?

  Did they know each other?

  I rest my soaked jacket and shoes behind the first pew so I don’t leave water everywhere and head down to Father Julian’s office. It’s a tangle of books and papers and clutter strewed around the room—not from any type of struggle, but as though he was trying to find something in a hurry. Or perhaps the police were, and this is the aftermath of their search. This is the kind of thing I miss most about being on the force: losing the opportunity to see the crime scene in its original form. There are more evidence markers, yellow plastic disks with black numbers printed on them. Fingerprint powder, small plastic bags, plastic vials, cotton swabs. Somebody must be figuring the maid will take care of it all.

  I roll Father Julian’s chair away from his desk and sit down behind it, then splay my hands on the table. I can’t feel the grain of the wood because I’m wearing latex gloves, but the desk feels solid, cold, as though it could last a thousand years. A sudden memory of my family comes to me. I’m at the beach with Bridget and Emily. We’re building a sand castle; my daughter’s face is full of smiles and freckles, her blond hair shoved out at sharp angles by the Elmo cap pulled down over her head. The edges of the ocean are moving forward, the water reaching the moat we have dug, the walls of the castle only minutes away from falling into the sea.

  It’s okay, Daddy, my daughter says, and she stops digging, understanding the futile nature of what she is trying to save. We can always come back next weekend. We got forever more days to build another one.

  I take my hands away from the desk, and the memory disappears. I don’t try chasing it.

  I open the desk drawers one at a time, but all of them are empty. I pull them out completely and check underneath them—again, there’s nothing there. I put them back and start flicking through the books on Father Julian’s desk, hoping something might fall out from between the pages. Nothing does. No doubt somebody else has done this already. I search under the desk, but there’s nothing.

  I make my way around the room, unsure of what I’m looking for. I open Bibles and books, novels and how-to guides, flicking through them and finding nothing then putting them back. I remember two months ago when I came in here and how everything looked back then, like nothing was quite in place, like somebody had come through and moved everything slightly. Was Father Julian looking for something back then? In this instance it doesn’t look like Father Julian was the one who made this mess. The Father Julian I knew never would have allowed his office to get like this. There are holes in the plaster walls obviously formed by fists. There are other holes down lower, kick marks made by somebody becoming increasingly frustrated. Drafts of cold air come through them. The books pulled from the shelves have been torn down and tossed on the ground, discarded into piles. Some of the pages and covers have been ripped away. Did whoever did this find what he was looking for?

  I step out of the office and carry on through to the rectory. The beam on my flashlight is getting weaker, and I have the feeling that if it goes out completely the demons surrounding me will get a firm hold. Jesus looks down, probably in judgment, maybe wondering what in the hell a guy like me is doing in a place like this. Well, Jesus, I’m trying to make compensation. I’m trying to repent. That’s what you want, right?

  I stop the flashlight on the floor where the dead priest lay while I stood outside two nights ago worrying about being caught. I crouch down by the dried blood. I close my eyes and think about the series of photographs that Schroder and Landry showed me. Father Julian was lying on his back, his head twisted to the side. Closer photos showed gashes in the back of his head from the impact of the hammer. I don’t know how many times he was hit, but it was more than once. Perhaps the first blow killed him. At the very least it would have dropped him to his knees. I figure he ended up dead face down, but was rolled onto his back. I try to imagine the thirty seconds before that. Did Julian know his killer was there—if so, why would he turn his back on him?

  The tongue had to have been cut out after he was dead. It’s not the kind of thing you can do to a man unless you’ve got him bound, and even then it’d be a struggle. The photographs didn’t show any evidence of that, nor of any defensive wounds on Julian’s hands. I look up and point the flashlight at the ceiling. There are lines of blood up there, cast off from the swinging hammer.

  I stand up. Father Julian’s tongue wasn’t cut out to frame me: that’s why it wasn’t dumped in my house with the hammer. It was cut out not as a message, but from anger. Father Julian wouldn’t tell his killer something he needed to know. That made him angry. That’s why there are holes in the walls even in the lounge of the rectory. What was he looking for?

  The entire death scene is horrible under the focused beam of a halogen bulb: it looks yellowish, like a faded newspaper article. Everything in here looks old too, like it all came out of a 1960s catalog. My immediate thought is that it can’t be a fun lifestyle being a priest. Everything you own has to be old and outdated. It’s a lifestyle that doesn’t rely on monetary possessions, but on scripture and love and peace. In Father Julian’s case, perhaps a little too much love if it turns out he is Bruce Alderman’s father.

  The rectory is as messy as the office. Papers and books everywhere. Furniture has been tipped up, the sofa and cushions torn open. The bedroom isn’t any better. The mattress has been pulled from the bed and sliced up, every drawer pulled out and tipped over, a clutter of clothes and toiletries spewed across the floor. In the bathroom the medicine cabinet is empty. So is the space beneath the sink. I head back into the bedroom. There are framed photographs on the drawers—some have been tipped down, some have cracked glass. I don’t recognize anyone in them except Father Julian and Bruce Alderman. Most of the others in the pictures are wearing cassocks
.

  I pull up the corner of the carpet in the bedroom then, and it’s a case of like father like son. There is an envelope beneath it. I wonder who came up with the idea first—Bruce or Father Julian—and then I make room for the possibility it was a genetic link.

  The envelope is full of photographs, fifteen, maybe twenty of them. Most are of babies; there are a few of young children and a couple in their teenage years. I recognize Bruce Alderman. The photos were taken when he wasn’t looking at the camera, as if he didn’t know the photographer was there. In most of the shots he is isolated, alone. But these images are out of context. They don’t mean anything by themselves.

  It’s hard to know how many children I’m looking at here; the ages and faces seem to change to a point where I can’t tell if a six-month-old baby is the same six-year-old or sixteen-year-old. There are sixteen photos in total. It’s obvious the age of the photographs changes by the quality and condition of the paper they’ve been printed on, and by the clothes the kids are wearing. Some pictures look thirty years old, some look like they may only be a few. It’s impossible to know whether Father Julian took them or was sent them. Other than the photos of Bruce, all the others are taken closer up—indoor shots of Christmas presents being opened, of birthdays, happy moments caught in time.

  I pull the carpet up further, then start lifting it in other areas of the rectory before returning to the office and doing the same thing there. Nothing. These photographs, these children—is this the secret Father Julian died for?

  I head back down the corridor. I’ve been here over an hour and Alderman is still waiting for me. I pass Father Julian’s office. When I was here a month ago he apologized for the mess. He’d obviously been looking for something. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to focus. Something here is falling into place. I can see the edges of it, forming, forming . . . and I think of the key that Bruce Alderman gave me. No numbers, no markings. Did that key belong to Father Julian? Is that what he was looking for?