by Paul Cleave
I check my phone. It has one bar of battery life, three bars of signal, but it still hasn’t been connected to the network.
The door is opened before I get to it. Patricia Tyler’s wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday. She probably slept in them. Or hasn’t slept at all.
“Something’s happening, isn’t it,” she says.
“Yes,” I tell her. There’s no way around it.
“We’re finding out today, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know yesterday? When you came to my house, when I let you inside. Did you know my daughter was dead?”
“I suspected.”
“Yet you said nothing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” she says, and her voice is calm and even, tired-sounding. “They called fifteen minutes ago. They didn’t say anything, but I could tell. They’re on their way to speak to us.”
There is nothing I can say to make her feel any better, so I say nothing. I wait her out, knowing she hasn’t finished, but also knowing I can’t wait too long—the police are going to be here soon.
“You’re sorry,” she says, “yet you came in anyway. You made me believe there was a chance my daughter was still alive.”
I didn’t make her believe anything. I could have shown up with her daughter’s hand in a plastic bag along with the ring and she’d still have held out hope. I think she’s still holding out for it now. “Can I come in?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A man killed himself in my office,” I say. “It was last night. He put a gun to his head and told me he had nothing to do with what happened to Rachel, and then he pulled the trigger.”
She doesn’t look shocked. Doesn’t look satisfied. She just looks tired, as if anything and everything is too much for her now. “I saw you on the news,” she says. “It didn’t make you look good. Do you think he killed Rachel? Did you kill him for what he did to her?”
“I didn’t kill him,” I tell her. “And I don’t know if he’s the one who hurt Rachel. You can never have justice for what happened, but finding who did this is as close to it as you can get. But if he was telling the truth, then there is still somebody out there who has to pay. That’s why I’m here. For Rachel’s sake.”
“For Rachel’s sake,” she repeats, and there is no inflection in her voice, and I can’t get a read on her reason for repeating it. “That reporter,” she goes on. “She said your daughter was killed. So you know. And maybe that pain we share will take you further than the police. Maybe it will make you fight harder for Rachel.”
“It will,” I tell her.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
She leads me through to the lounge. Her husband, an overweight guy with gray hair and dark shadows beneath his eyes, stands up from the couch, seems about to shake my hand, then pulls it back as if the contact will taint the news he’s about to get.
“Were you the one who found her?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“How . . .” He looks down, studies the carpet for a few moments as if it’s going to save him from something, then carries on without looking back up. “How’d she look?”
It’s the same question the boyfriend asked. They want to hear that she looked at peace, that she still looked good for a girl who was murdered two years ago. Only she didn’t look good. She looked like she died hard.
“Like she was asleep,” I say, hoping they’ll believe the lie, hoping that when they plead with the detectives to see her body they won’t be allowed to.
“It’s hard to believe she’s really dead,” he says, looking back up. His face is rigid, void of hope. Except for his eyes. His eyes are haunting. I have to look away. “It ought to be easier,” he adds. “You’d think two years would have prepared us for this.”
He probably knows exactly how many days it’s been. I think of my wife and daughter, and I think about what the last two years have prepared me for. Fate came along and destroyed the Tyler family, and a week later it destroyed mine.
“People keep saying that time heals all wounds,” he says. “They say we should get on with our lives. Like we’re just supposed to forget all about Rachel. Like we’re supposed to give up on wondering. Give up on our hope. They don’t get it. They think it’s like losing a puppy or misplacing car keys. They talk without experience; they offer advice, thinking they know what we need to hear, sure that the best thing for us is simply to move on.”
“But you know all of that, don’t you,” Patricia Tyler says.
“Why are you here?” her husband asks.
“For Rachel.”
“Shame you weren’t there for her two years ago,” he says.
“Michael . . .” his wife says.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just that, well . . .” He doesn’t finish. He sits back down on the couch and starts to look around the room as though he’s misplaced something.
“I’ve spoken to David,” I tell them.
“You spoke to David?” Patricia says.
“He said that Rachel liked to shop.”
Patricia looks to her husband. They stare at each other, the kind of look a couple shares when trying to decide whether to let the rest of the world in on the big secret. It’s an innocent statement, which I’m sure will have an innocent answer, but they’re both looking for a different question and answer here—they’re wanting the answers to what happened to their daughter. They’re trying to figure out how her shopping got her killed.
“Sure, she shopped,” she says.
“Did Rachel use a credit card?”
“The Goddamn bank sent us a bill,” Michael Tyler says. “They told us if we didn’t pay it they were going to get the debt collectors onto us. We explained Rachel had gone missing. Hell, it was in the news, so they already knew. Only they didn’t care. Their argument was nobody had any proof of what happened to Rachel and they shouldn’t end up footing the bill.”
“It was awful.” Patricia Tyler’s tears start to come now. For a few moments she does nothing to try to stop them, just lets them roll down her face as if she hasn’t noticed them. Then she raises a handkerchief and tries to dab them away, but they keep on coming. “Can you imagine that? Our daughter is missing, possibly dead—or, as it turns out, she was. Or is.”
“Both, actually,” her husband interjects, and he looks close to tears too, and he shrugs a little, as if unsure why he made the comment. I know the moment I leave they will fall into an embrace neither of them will ever want to break.
“And those heartless thugs at the bank register us with a debt collection agency,” Patricia says, “and we had to pay it. Can you believe that?”
“Do you have that last credit card statement?”
“We have everything,” she says.
“Can I see it?”
“Why?” she asks.
“It might tell me where Rachel was that day, or in the days before.”
“The police already have a copy of it,” she says. “It didn’t lead them anywhere.”
“But it might lead me somewhere.”
She doesn’t argue the point. She just walks out of the room, leaving me and her husband alone in uncomfortable silence until she returns with the bill, which takes her two minutes. I keep waiting to hear the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. If Landry catches me here, he’s going to be truly pissed off. She hands me the bank statement. I scroll down. Clothes, CDs, more clothes. Gas.
“These are all standard places she went?” I ask.
“They’re on all of her bills,” Patricia says.
“Where was her car found?”
“At the university,” Michael says. “It was where she always parked it.”
“And the florist?” I ask, stopping my finger next to the purchase she made a week before she disappeared.
“She bought flowers for her grandmother,” Patricia says.
“Anything else here stand out?” I as
k.
“Nothing,” she says.
“Okay. Can I take this with me?”
“Don’t lose it,” she says.
She walks me to the door. Michael Tyler stands up, seems about to join us, but sits back down. The hallway is warm and there seem to be more pictures of Rachel hanging up than there were when I was here last night, as if the Tylers thought they could use them to keep the bad news at bay.
“The man last night. The reporter said his name was Bruce Alderman. You haven’t said it, but you think he’s innocent, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”
I think of the look in Bruce’s eyes before he pulled the trigger. I think of the key in his pocket with my name on the envelope. “I don’t think he did it,” I admit.
“Will you find who did?”
“I’ll try. I promise.”
I’m halfway down the walkway when it strikes me. I turn back around and Patricia is still standing there watching me, watching the person who two years after her daughter went missing came along and told them all was lost. “The flowers for her grandmother. Was there an occasion?”
“My mother died a week before Rachel disappeared. It was one of the reasons the police thought she’d run away. Rachel and my mom were close. For the first few years my mother helped raise Rachel. The police assumed she was depressed and needed to get away. She bought flowers to take out to the cemetery for the funeral.”
“Which cemetery?”
“Woodland Estates.”
Woodland Estates. The cemetery with the lake. The cemetery with my daughter.
The cemetery where Rachel Tyler was found.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It’s a connection that was there two years ago, but nobody was looking for it. Nobody even knew to look for it. Why would they? No way could they have known Rachel Tyler was going to be found one day buried in a cemetery. No way could they have known that going to her grandmother’s funeral would send her into the scope of her killer. Is that what happened?
My cell phone rings, which is good news for me, since it means it’s up and running. I look at the display, but don’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“What are you doing fucking with my investigation?”
“Who is this?” I ask, even though I already know.
“Who the hell do you think? You visited the Tylers.”
“Look, Landry, I was . . .” But I don’t know how to finish.
“Jesus, Tate, what the hell are you playing at here? You’re going to seriously mess things up for us.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I tell him.
“If you knew what you were doing you’d still be carrying a badge. You’re going to mess things up, and if it wasn’t Bruce Alderman who killed those girls, that means we’ve still got a serious investigation on our hands. Which means there’s going to be a trial once we catch the guy, and suddenly we’re going to have to explain your actions at the trial. How’s that going to make you look? Or us? You think any defense lawyer worth more than ten cents isn’t going to be able to shred our case apart because you’ve fucked up all our evidence? Sidney Alderman is sure you killed his son. Come on, Tate, you gotta be more careful. You can’t let this bullshit happen.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I know that. We all know it,” he says. “But not Alderman. He’s sure you pulled the trigger. You might want to watch your back.”
“It was an empty threat,” I say, not believing it.
“Maybe. I’d still watch it anyway. He’s building up some Dutch courage.”
“What do you mean?”
“He went straight from the morgue to a bar,” he says. “He’s drinking himself into a state, and I don’t know whether it’s a better or a worse one.”
“Let me guess. You gave him a lift?”
“That’s a shitty question, Tate. I’m trying to help you out here.”
“Okay. Okay, I get the point.”
“I don’t think you do,” he says, “because somehow you got her ring.”
“What?”
“Rachel Tyler. You got her ring. You showed it to her parents.”
“Bruce gave it to me.”
“Bullshit. You had it yesterday afternoon. How’d you get it? You steal it out of the coffin? Where are you right now?”
I was outside the cemetery about thirty seconds ago, but now that I know Sidney Alderman isn’t home, I’ll give his house a visit instead. “I’m at home.”
“No you’re not. I’m at your house and you’re not here.”
“Good one, Landry. I’m standing in my driveway and you’re nowhere around.”
I’m pretty sure we both know the other one is bluffing.
“Stay out of my case, Tate. Your name comes up one more time, and I’m going to take some action. Got that? You could do time here, man. You’re compromising things. You stole evidence, which, by the way, I want back.”
“Okay, I’ll . . .”
But he’s already hung up. I step out of my car and look up and down the street, suddenly worried that Landry might be watching me after all. There’s no sign of anybody. He was right about one thing, though. My name is about to come back up in about twenty minutes when he goes and talks to David. Things, like he said, are fucked up.
I knock on the door and nobody answers. So I move from window to window, peering inside, but since even sunlight can’t seem to penetrate the grime there isn’t much chance I can see anything. A guy like Sidney Alderman would come out and tell me to go to hell if he knew I was looking through his windows. That means he definitely isn’t here. I try the back door. It’s locked. So is the front. I get out the key Bruce left for me and try both doors, but it doesn’t fit. It’s not even close to fitting.
There are still plenty of ways to get inside, and I opt for the less subtle approach of kicking in the back door. It opens easily enough, bouncing back off the wall and almost closing again, stopped only by the busted-up jamb. The cops will know who did it. But if I’m right about things, it won’t matter. They’ll be glad I did it.
The first thing I can smell is alcohol. I move up the hallway. The carpet is worn and the floorboards beneath it groan. There are three bedrooms, one messy, one tidy, and one completely empty—not a single piece of furniture or poster on the wall. Of the two in use, the tidy one is tidy only in comparison to the messy one, and the way things are all slightly out of whack in there suggests the police have been rummaging around looking for something and one of the Aldermans has rummaged around putting things back. I figure whatever evidence Bruce had hidden under his bed is now sitting on a desk somewhere in the police station.
The kitchen is swamped with dirty dishes and empty beer cans. In the lounge there are bottles and cans on every available horizontal plane. Sidney Alderman had a hard night. The arms of the lounge suite have been ripped up at the front, suggesting the presence of a cat, but there is no food bowl around, so maybe it got sick of the living arrangements and moved out. I’m surprised, though, to see photo albums scattered across a coffee table—Alderman didn’t seem the type to get hung up on family moments. I pull on a pair of latex gloves before opening the cover on the top one. Color photographs of happier times are arranged neatly in the pages. A man, a woman, a child. The Alderman nuclear family. They all look happy. Smiles, relaxed, candid moments, posed photos for birthdays and Christmas. Sidney Alderman is a different man here, the type of man who back then was mostly likeable.
I keep going. I already have a feeling about what is coming up. The man and woman and child start to get older. They grow. They still look happy. I recognize the house in the background of some of these shots. Summer photos. Winter photos. Snapshots from school plays and school sports. I move from one album to another. The house is neat and tidy and looks welcoming. It looks well maintained. Fresh paint, clean windows, no broken roof tiles.
Fashions change. The eighties become the nineties. Some of the furniture is updated. The carpet in o
ne photo is that awful orange and brown Axminster stuff from the late sixties and becomes that awful, flecked, pale green stuff from the early eighties. The TV is updated. A cat appears in some of the pictures, a black thing with a swath of white fur around its neck.
The parents get older, and the kid gets taller and starts taking on the features of the man I met and saw die yesterday. Sidney Alderman looks like a happy man. Looks happy in the holiday photographs. Beaches and boats and fishing lines. Ugly shirts and bad haircuts and boxy-looking cars with poor fuel consumption. The house stays the same. The smiles stay the same. On to the next photo album. More holiday snaps.
Then Alderman’s wife is no longer around. The smiles are forced and thin, and the gaps in time between photos start to extend. No more holidays. No more happy moments. Just forced moments. Like birthdays and Christmases that nobody wants to be at. The wife doesn’t come back, and the decaying state of the house in the photographs suggests she isn’t going to. The years pass with only a few moments caught on film, but nothing heartwarming—the participants are going through the motions, they’re drawing on the memories of how these events ought to be, drawing on them so they can remember how to smile. At the back of the photo album is a collection of newspaper clippings.
My cell phone rings and breaks my focus. It’s another number I don’t recognize. I answer it, but nobody speaks back. I don’t say anything either. There’s a slight hissing sound that every cell phone in the country must get, the kind of hissing that can never fool you into thinking you’re talking on a landline.
Then, after ten or twenty seconds, a voice comes on the line. “You took away my son.” The words are slow and solid, as if each is its own sentence, as if he’s struggling to say them and has to concentrate really hard. “You took away my son,” he repeats when I don’t answer him.
I look down at the albums and the empty booze bottles. Alderman found out last night that his son was dead. There’s no way in the world the police decided not to inform him immediately. No way they figured it was the sort of thing they could put off until they swung by this morning to take him to the morgue. It’s got to be why these photo albums are out. I remember doing the same thing, and even now I sometimes still do it. I wonder if over the last few hours he’s come to the conclusion that I’m to blame for everything—for his wife leaving him, for his house wearing down, for his son killing himself, and for his son burying others.
