Cemetery Lake: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  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 math 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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  On the way to the morgue I stop in at the store where I bought my last cell phone. It feels like a long time ago. Much longer than eight weeks. I spend a hundred and fifty bucks on a cell phone that has more features than even Gene Roddenberry could have dreamed 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 two months since I was last here. Before that it was two years. It means my visits are becoming more frequent.

  “Hi, Tate,” Tracey says, moving over toward 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, recognizing 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 gray and filthy-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?” I ask.

  “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 scab.

  “Aw, Tracey.” I pull my hand back.

  She drops the gauze into a bin. “I go to bat 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,” I say.

  “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,” she says. “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 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?” she asks.

  “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,” she says.

  “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, Theo. Not anymore.”

  “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?”

  She sighs. “Okay, Theo, I tell you this and then you leave. Sidney and Bruce Alderman. They’re not related. Sidney Alderman is not Bruce Alderman’s father.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  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 pizza boxes in his arms. Suddenly he really is my best friend.

  “Thought you might do with some food,” he says.

  “I’m in the middle of cooking something.”

  “I looked in that fridge of yours, Tate. What in the hell could you possibly be cooking?” He braces the pizzas in one hand, a bottle of Coke under his arm. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out my keys. “Might make it easier for you getting in and out. Saves breaking more windows.”

  “Seriously, Carl, this isn’t a good time for me,” I say, taking my keys off him. The small key I got from Bruce Alderman is still attached to them.

  “Spare me the bullshit. This place hasn’t had any food in it for a long time. Except for this kind. You’ve got enough pizza boxes stacked in your kitchen to build a fort.”

  My stomach starts to growl and my mouth waters.

  “I was going to bring beer,” he says, reaching under his arm and grabbing the Coke, “but something told me that was a bad idea.”

  “You’re a real funny guy.”

  We move through to the dining room. I grab some plates and a couple of glasses. The pizza has a range of different types of meat on it, so between that and the Coke I reckon I’ll get the nutritional value I need for the day.

  “So why are you here?” I ask him.

  “Look, Tate, Landry can be a real asshole, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “The fact you’ve become a real mess.”

  “I’m in the process of changing that,” I tell him.

  He looks around the room, absorbing the comment. “I guess you are.”

  “That’s what life-changing moments will do to you.”

  “And what was that?” he asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “The accident,” he says, and he’s right—it was the accident more than it was being taken into the woods, or being framed for murder.

  “It’s kind of ironic,” he adds.

  I know what he’s getting at. He’s saying that if it hadn’t been for me driving through that intersection and hitting that car, I would now be in jail. I’d have been arrested for murder. He’s saying that picking up the bottle and getting hammered was the only thing that kept the frame job on me from being complete. It all comes back to that word: luck.

  “Did you really think I did it?” I ask.

  “Sure we did. Until the weapon showed up. That threw a wrench in the works. Or a hammer, I guess, in this case. It messed everything up. So you were lucky.”

  “I shouldn’t have needed to be lucky. I didn’t kill the guy and that should have been enough.”

  “Come on, you know sometimes that isn’t enough,” he says, which is a really depressing thought.

  “So why are you here?” I ask. “Other than to make sure I’m eating okay?”

  “How long’s it been since we hung out, Tate?”

  “Probably around the same time you stopped calling me. Hell, it was the same time everybody stopped. If I remember correctly, it was around when Emily died.”

  “That had nothing to do with it.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was Quentin James,” he says. “Nobody believes he ran. We all know you killed him. But without a body, without any proof . . .”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Hey, I’d have killed him. Any one of us would have—and that’s why none of us looked real hard into finding him. It just sucked that it had to be you. And none of us wanted to hear you say it. What would have happened if over a few beers one night you told me what you’d done? What then? No, none of us could call you, Tate. It was the only way. It was safer. And not just for you, for us. It may not have been what you wanted, but it’s the way it had to play out. It was the way you made it play out.”

  I don’t answer him. I’m not sure if he’s made a valid point or whether he’s just made up an excuse that sounds believable. I guess if I were in his situation I’d have done the same thing.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, eating our pizza and getting through our Cokes. The Coke tastes different without bourbon added to it.

  “Tell me something,” I say, finishing one slice and getting ready to start another. “Bruce Alderman. Did you ever look at him for the murders?”

  “We looked at everybody.”

  “Yeah, but how much did you look at him?” I ask.

  “Not as much as his father.”

  “Which father?” I ask.

  “If you’re trying to get at something, Tate, just spell it out.”

  “I didn’t mean his priest.”

  He sets down his pizza. “Who told you?”

  “That Bruce and Sidney weren’t related? I’ve known from the beginning. Do you know who the real father is?”

  He picks up his slice and starts back in on it. “Tracey told you, that’s what I think. Probably recently too. Maybe today. No way you could have known from the beginning.”

  “How’d you figure it out?” I ask.

  “Probably the same way you did. You want to share first?”

  “Come on, Carl. You wouldn’t have come around unless you had something for me.”

  “And you need to stop reading things into situations that aren’t there. I don’t have anything for you. I came around to check in on you.”

  “I appreciate that,” I say, “but come on, just give me that one thing. You know we screwed up two years ago. You know we could have stopped this, and three more girls would still be alive for it. I can’t let it go.”

  He sets his pizza back down. “I’m surprised it took you this long to play that card,” he says.

  I don’t answer. I just wait him out and he carries on.

  Like I said, we were looking at everybody, right? A case this big, all those girls—we’re gonna run all the DNA we can get hold of. Absolutely we’re gonna do that.”

  “And Alderman agreed to that?”

  “No, he didn’t agree. He didn’t even know. He came down to identify his son’s body. When he took a swing at you, he hit the wall, right? That gave us his blood. We threw it into the database we were building.”

  “And?”

  “And the results are still out on DNA. Come on, Tate, this shit still takes a couple of months to get back to us. Nothing has changed there. But we’ll know any day now. Blood tests proved the two Aldermans weren’t biologically related.”

  “Why’d you test?”

  “Like I said, all that stuff just gets done, right?”

  “What about Father Julian? You checking to see if his DNA shows up anywhere it shouldn’t?”

  “How did I know you were going to ask that?”

  “Well?”

  “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell us about Father Julian, Tate. You kept refusing. But, like I say, we’re still waiting for DNA results.”

  “Father Julian was Bruce’s real father, wasn’t he?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I think about what Father Julian said about Bruce being like a son to him. “A hunch.”

  “Don’t know. It’s quicker to disprove parenting through blood comparisons, which we’ve done. But it’s going to take longer to confirm. We’ll know soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “We’ll know when we know. That’s just the way it is.”

  I wish testing were as quick as it is on TV. It’s not. It’s about eight weeks of sitting around waiting while the specimens are sent out, tested, retested, and sent back. Like Schroder says, it’ll be any day now.

  “You’re going to compare the DNA you’ve been collecting against the samples found at the crime scene in the church?” I ask.

  “Gee, why didn’t we think of that? I didn’t realize the impact of you leaving the force.”

  “Yeah, good one, Carl.”

  “You fucked up,” Schroder says.

  “What?
”

  “This whole thing. You fucked up. And it’s only a matter of time until we find Sidney Alderman.”

  “When you do, can you ask him about Father Julian? Maybe he knows something.”

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure I do that. I’ll wrap his hands around a crystal ball. See if that’ll help the conversation. It sure has to be better than this.” He swallows the last of his drink, then stands up.

  I walk him to the door.

  On the step he turns around and faces me. “You know his wife died in an accident, right?”

  He knows I do. I found the article online and printed off a copy. It was pinned to my wall with all the others.

  “What of it?”

  “With everything that’s going on, some bright spark had the idea that maybe there was something more to her death.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say, suddenly worried about where this is going.

  “Nope. It’s bullshit, right? It’s a stupid idea. But the decision has come down from the top. One of those dot the i’s and cross the t’s that’s going to cost time and money and get no result. The upshot is we’re digging her up on Monday.”

  My stomach lurches upward, and I’m worried the motion is strong enough to knock me off my feet. My future flashes in front of my eyes. It starts with me throwing up all over myself. Then it skips forward to another exhumation that goes horribly wrong. It’s two-for-one Monday at the cemetery—it’s not just one Alderman being dug up, but two. Then it ends with handcuffs and another ride in a police car, interrogations and trials, then jail time. Lots and lots of jail time.

  “Don’t you need something more to be able to do that?” I ask.

  “The gun Bruce shot himself with,” he says, ignoring my question. “Do you know where he got it?”

  “I always wondered,” I say, and the visions are still happening. Two dead Aldermans and me in jail getting the shit kicked out of me by two guys I arrested years earlier.

  “It belonged to his father,” Schroder says. “I mean it belonged to Sidney Alderman.”