Cemetery Lake (28 page)

‘You know, Theo, I don’t mean to sound hard on you, not after

everything that’s happened, so please, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s never too late to pull yourself together. We’re always next door if you need some help along the way’

I thank her for the use of her phone and for the muffin. She

gives me another one to take home with me. If more people were as forgiving and as helpful, maybe we could cut away some of the cancer that has set into the bones of this city.

It’ll take my mother an hour to get here with the car, so I kill some time by going to buy a newspaper. I keep thinking people

will notice me, that they’ll know who I am and what I have done, but nobody pays me any attention because my photo isn’t in the paper, only my name. The guy at the shop knows me, though,

because I’ve been coming here for years. He looks at me, looks down at the front page, and looks at me again. He seems to search for something to say, and I think all his angry one-liners trip over each other and he ends up saying nothing. He even gives me the right amount of change. I get back home and read the article.

It’s all about the accident. About me. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I read the article about Father Julian but it doesn’t reveal anything I don’t already know. At least my name isn’t mentioned here — yet.

I switch on the TV and watch a couple of minutes of the

morning news. Father Julian’s murder is the headline, and it looks like it’s going to be a busy day for the media. Casey Horwell gives a report. She talks about the murder weapon being found and she says where, offering my name as if she knew all along what I was capable of, her smirk suggesting she could see this coming even if the police couldn’t. I wonder how in the hell she found out where the weapon was found and who her source is. She talks about

Father Julian’s tongue being removed. I get angry just looking at her, and have to turn the TV off or risk throwing the remote at it.

I start to tidy the house and do some more laundry. Then

I spend a few minutes in my daughter’s bedroom. The police came through here last night, but they haven’t messed it up, just left things slightly askew. They showed some respect. They searched this room and found nothing except a lonely shrine and evidence of an even lonelier parent. Daxter looks up at me from the bed.

He follows me back down the house and I fill up his food bowl.

Six months ago I had a spare bedroom that seemed to be

a magnet for all the crap in my life that I couldn’t seem to fit anywhere else in the house or garage. These days it’s an office — or at least was until last night. I sit down at the desk and drag a pad out from the drawer. I start writing down the names and the dates of the women who were killed. I start compiling as many of the notes as I can remember, but the last four weeks have been a haze of alcohol, of guilt, of anger at the priest and at myself, and the small details have all slipped away, drowned beneath an ocean of self-resentment. I do the best I can with the details I remember, and I start to create another timeline.

When my mother arrives she looks around the house, unable

to stop herself from commenting about the mess, the smell, the stuffy air, the broken window. She looks me over. The gash in my head has closed back up, but it isn’t pretty. The bruises on my face she attributes to the accident, the same way Schroder and Landry did. There is a huge bruise running down the side of my neck,

and she can’t see the bruise across my chest from the seatbelt.

I have cuts all over my hands; the end of the finger bandage is stained with blood.

My mum is in her late sixties but thinks she is in her forties and that I’m still nine years old. Her hair isn’t quite as grey as my neighbour’s, and her glasses aren’t quite as big — but I figure in ten years they’ll be a match.

‘You need to go to a doctor,’ she says.

“I’m fine. I’ve already been checked over.’

‘Doesn’t look like they did a good job.’

She starts to tidy up. I tell her not to bother, but the only

thing she doesn’t bother to do is listen to my requests. Mum tells me how disappointed Bridget would be if she knew what was

happening, not just about the drunk driving but also the way I’ve been treating myself lately. I keep saying “I know’ over and over, but she doesn’t seem to get tired hearing it. After nearly an hour she lets me drive her back home and I keep the car.

“I’m also strapped for cash,’ I say, ‘and I need a new phone.

I hate asking, but can you help me out here?’

‘There’s already some in the glovebox,’ she says. ‘We worry

about you, Theo. More than you think. Are you going to come in and say hello to your Father?’

“I don’t know. I guess that depends on how disapproving he is

that I’m borrowing his car.’

“Then you’d best be on your way’ she says, grinning at me.

She leans over then, and gives me a hug, and for the briefest of moments I feel like everything is going to be okay.

When I get to the library I open the glovebox and find an

envelope with a thousand dollars in cash. She must have dropped into a bank on the way. She knew I didn’t forget to pay the phone bill, that I didn’t pay it because I haven’t worked in weeks. I suddenly feel like turning around and giving it all back — the money and the car — because I don’t deserve anybody to worry

about me. But I don’t. There are too many dead girls, too many dead caretakers and a dead priest, all pressing me forward. Plus somebody out there tried to frame me for murder.

The library is warm and quiet. Plenty of people who live in

different worlds from me are sitting down reading about worlds similar to the one I’m falling into. I find the newspaper sections on the computer and print out all the articles that mention

the missing girls. There are the ones I got from beneath Bruce Alderman’s bed, plus the stories that have been in the papers

since the girls were discovered. I spend the rest of the afternoon re-reading these stories and printing them out. I print out the stories about Bruce Alderman’s suicide and about his Father’s

disappearance too. I end up with a stack of paper dedicated to the dead almost a centimetre thick.

I leave the library and hit five o’clock traffic. SUVs are blocking views at intersections, and not for the first time I figure they’re the reason everybody in this world is going nuts. It sure as hell was my reason. I look at the money my parents gave me, and

the maths is simple — there’s enough here for me to drink my

way out of this and every other problem for the next few weeks.

I could go into a bar — there are several en route — and things would be okay again, at least for a little while.

WWJD?

What would James do? I figure Quentin James would have

pulled over. He’d have slipped inside and let five minutes turn into ten, ten into an hour, an hour into a night. Or maybe if I’d let him live things would be different now. Perhaps he’d have found redemption, or God, or something that would have kept him out

of those bars. I don’t know, and thinking about James kills any desire to go inside. I drive past them all and don’t look back.

On the way to the morgue I stop in at the store where I bought my last cellphone. It feels like a long time ago. Much longer than four weeks. I spend a hundred and fifty bucks on a cellphone

that has more features than even Gene Roddenberry could have

dreamt of. I ask to get my number transferred over and am told it’ll take an hour or two.

There’s a security officer sitting behind a desk at the entrance to the morgue. I give him my details and he checks my name on

the list. He gives me a visitor’s pass and I attach it to the front of my shirt. He seems friendly enough, which I suppose must mean

he hasn’t spent any time reading the papers or watching the news.

The guy probably gets a big enough dose of reality working the morgue.

As I head down the corridor the temperature drops with every

footstep. I go through the large plastic doors that separate the corridor and offices from the freezer, where all the work is done.

It’s been a month since I was last here too. Before that it was two years. It means my visits are becoming more frequent.

‘Hi, Tate,’ Tracey says, moving over towards me from the

large sets of drawers in which are stored the other people unlucky enough to be here at six o’clock on a Friday night. ‘You just caught me.’

She looks different. Her hair is a little frazzled. She looks paler and tired, more worn down, as though both life and death are

starting to get on top of her.

‘It’s been a rough week,’ she says, as if acknowledging my

thoughts.

‘Yeah. Tell me about it.’

There are empty metal tables with sheets and tools but no

bodies.

“I could really use a drink,’ she says, then pauses, recognising her mistake. ‘Sorry Tate, that was a bit insensitive.’

‘Yeah, so is drinking and driving. How is she?’

‘She’s doing okay. She’s pretty banged up, but she’s out of

the woods. The head trauma was the problem — there was some

internal swelling, but the pressure’s been relieved. She’s going to have some tough months ahead of her, but it could have been

worse, right? You know that more than anybody’

You know that more than anybody. How many people have

said that to me over the last twenty-four hours? ‘So … she’ll get back to a hundred percent?’

‘That’s what they’re saying.’

I move from foot to foot, trying to get some warmth back into

them. My finger with the missing nail is throbbing. The bandage is dark grey and grotty-looking, and hasn’t been changed.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asks.

‘It’s okay’

‘Let me re-dress it for you while we’re talking.’

I follow her through to the office and sit down. She drags

her chair around, pulls on some latex gloves and takes the old bandage off my finger. The gauze has caught a little, blood and pus having set on the outside of it.

‘Have you worked on the priest yet?’

‘Come on, Theo, you know I can’t share any of that with

you.’

‘It’s important.’

“I think you’re forgetting that I’m still pissed at you for stealing Rachel Tyler’s ring.’

“I’m sorry about that.’

‘Oh, well that covers everything then, doesn’t it? As long as

you’re sorry’ She pulls the gauze away, ripping off the scabbing.

‘Aw, Jesus, Tracey.’ I pull my hand back.

She drops the gauze into a bin. “I go to the mat for you by

never mentioning it, and suddenly Landry’s down here this

morning asking me about it. Now I’m the one who’s gonna get

crapped on.’

‘Let me make it up to you.’

‘Give me your hand.’

“No.’

‘Come on, Theo, grow up. Give me your damn hand.’

I reach back over and she starts to clean the wound.

‘Look,’ I say, “I think I’m entitled to some information here.

After all, I’m the one they accused of killing him.’

‘If anything, that entitles you to absolutely no information at all. When was the last time you let a suspect walk down here and ask whatever he wanted about the crime?’

‘This is different.’

“Not to me. Not to anybody. You shouldn’t even be here.’

She cuts off some fresh gauze and places it over my fingertip.

Then she adds some padding. ‘Goddamn it, Tate, if there was

somebody as qualified to take over, I’d probably already have

been suspended.’

‘They know I didn’t do it. Did Landry tell you that?’

‘Yeah. He did. But that still doesn’t change anything.’

I look over my shoulder at the drawers through the office

window. One of them contains Father Julian. Two nights ago

I came close to occupying another one. The throbbing in my

finger grows stronger, and Tracey starts to bandage it.

‘It changes it for me, right? Think of it from my perspective.

The cops know and I know that somebody killed Father Julian

and tried to pin that on me. I think that means I have a stake in this investigation. I think that it means I deserve to be told as !# . .!S

much as possible so I can try to defend myself.’

‘Defend yourself against what? They already know you’re

innocent.’

‘Come on, Tracey You know the score. You know three of

those girls would still be alive if I’d done my job properly two years ago. I want this guy off the street.’

She tapes off the bandage and leans back. ‘People who you

want off the street are never heard from again, Theo. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you anything.’

‘Was the hammer the cause of death?’

“It’s getting late. I’ve got a family to get home to.’

‘Come on, give me something here. Bruce Alderman, his father,

now the priest — they’re dead for a reason. And this person who planted the hammer in my house is probably the same person

who killed all those girls.’

‘Sidney Alderman is dead? How do you know that?’

“I’m guessing, but it makes sense, right? Everything is

related.’

“Not everything,’ Tracey says.

‘What do you mean?’

She sighs, and her shoulders slump as if she’s sick and tired of talking to a ten-year-old.

‘Please, just drop it.’

‘Would you? Come on, Tracey, name me one detective you

know who wouldn’t be trying to do the same thing.’

‘The problem is you’re not a detective. Not any more.’

“I know, but…’

‘Look, one thing, okay? I’m going to tell you one thing, then

I want you to leave.’

‘Okay’

‘And you can’t come back. You promise?’

I’ve heard that line before. ‘What is it?’

‘Sidney and Bruce Alderman. They’re not related. Sidney

Alderman is not Bruce Alderman’s father.’

I pin the photocopies of the newspaper articles up on the wall in my office and stare at the spot where my computer used to be until knocking at the front door breaks me out of the fugue. I think about ignoring it but it just keeps going. I head into the hallway and swing the door open. Carl Schroder is there holding two