Cemetery Lake: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “I seen you on TV,” he says. “Didn’t realize you were still a cop.”

  “Technically I’m not, but I’m working for them. That’s why I still have the ID,” I say, hoping it makes some kind of sense.

  “Didn’t know there was a technically when it comes to working for the police.”

  I give him the What are you gonna do stare. “Nothing is how it should be these days,” I say. “All I know is the pay is better on this side of technically than on the other side of actually.”

  He shrugs, as if he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. I guess he doesn’t. At twelve bucks an hour, why would he?

  “I have a court order to access a customer’s account,” I say. “Can you point me in the direction of somebody to talk to?”

  “Sure,” he says, and he brushes a hand over the side of his head where a corner flap of his toupee is sticking up. He leads me to an open office door and knocks on it. A woman in her midthirties stands up from behind her desk and comes over. “There’s a guy here who wants to access an account,” he says, and she looks at him a little blankly because accessing accounts is what people come here to do. But then he adds, “He has a court order.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” she says, looking me up and down. “Hey, haven’t I seen you on TV?”

  “Probably. Can we talk in here?”

  “Of course,” she says, and she looks at the security guard with a dismissive gesture. He doesn’t seem to react one way or the other, he just walks away, but when he gets near the main entrance he looks a little more vigilant now that a former law-enforcement officer is around.

  She closes her office door and sits behind her desk. There’s a name plaque on the front of it. Erica. On the wall there’s an aerial shot of Christchurch that doesn’t show the true emotion of the city, and a couple of photographs, one of which shows Erica standing next to a man who looks vaguely familiar, probably somebody from one of the numerous banking ads on TV.

  “So, what’s this all about, Detective . . .”

  “Tate,” I say, and I don’t bother to correct her assumption that I’m still with the force. The business card I was going to give her stays in my hand, and the chances of coming out of here with what I want have just increased.

  “I have an account number here,” I say, and I slide the bank statement over to her. I have underlined Father Julian’s account number. I also slide her over the court order. The judge’s name on the top of it is as made up as his signature.

  The thing with court orders is a lot can come down to the timing of the delivery. Erica picks it up, and then she does exactly what I expect her to do—she glances at her watch. I’ve seen it a dozen times at the end of the working day when we’ve shown up with one of these orders: it was often the time we’d aim for. The other thing is that people don’t know what to do with them. They look at them, but they don’t know how to react because most people have never seen one before. They’ve seen them get delivered on TV and they figure that what happens on TV is probably the thing that happens in real life. They suddenly feel like the order has just taken away all their rights of refusal and they don’t argue it. They only ever fight it if they have something to hide.

  Erica reads it thoroughly. In the location area the words printed are “to access any and all available accounts of the account holder” and after that I’ve typed out the account number.

  “This is one of your bank account numbers, isn’t it?” I ask.

  “It is. Is this part of a criminal investigation?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” I say, and I figure she wasn’t expecting anything less.

  “I need to call my boss about the order,” she tells me.

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll probably need to fax it to him.”

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  She checks the time again. “Give me a minute.”

  “Take your time,” I say.

  She leaves me in her office, and I’m not sure whether it’ll be her or the police who come back in. I keep glancing at my watch, and each time I think I should just get up and go, cut my losses before Landry or Schroder arrives.

  “The account is in the name of John Paul,” she says when she returns. I figure the court order got faxed to her boss and not much further. Maybe to their law firm, but it’s probably the kind of firm that charges too much to be on retainer on the weekend, so it’s sitting in a fax tray somewhere. I’ve seen it dozens of times. She’s not giving me a lot, just a few details. She doesn’t see how it can hurt. She sits back down behind her desk. “Like the pope,” she adds.

  “How long has it been active?”

  She twists the computer monitor to face her. “Twenty-four years.”

  “I need printouts of payments.”

  “Okay,” she says. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  She taps away at her keyboard, then leans back. I don’t hear a printer going anywhere.

  “Did John Paul have any other accounts set up? Or was it just this one?” I ask.

  “Just this one. But . . .” She stops, then looks back down at the court order.

  “What?”

  “When he set up the account, he also set up a safe-deposit box.”

  “A safe-deposit box? Here?”

  “It’s even at this branch,” she says.

  “Can I access it?”

  “The court order doesn’t say you can.”

  “Listen, Erica, this is very, very important.”

  She seems unsure of what to do.

  “This safe-deposit box—did John Paul gain access to it with a key?” I ask.

  “Of course. That’s how everybody opens them.”

  “When was the last time he accessed it?”

  She looks at her monitor. “Ten weeks ago.”

  “How many keys were issued?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Can you tell me if this is it?” I reach into my pocket and drag out my keys. I twist the one Bruce Alderman gave me off the ring and hand it over to her.

  “Sure. This is for one of our boxes, though I can’t tell you if it’s specifically for John Paul’s box. We don’t label the keys for a reason, you know, in case they get lost and people try to use them.”

  I stand up. “I need you to take me to it.”

  “What?” She looks at her watch again, then rests the key on the desk in front of her. “I don’t know—I’ll have to check with my boss.”

  “Okay, do what you need to do. But you essentially just said that whoever has the key can gain access to the box, that’s why you don’t label them. If you want, though, I can get the court order amended—that’s fine too. I can get the judge to sign it and be back here in . . .” I glance at my watch, “an hour and a half. Two hours tops.”

  “Two hours?”

  “Yeah. That’s what it’ll take.”

  She gives it only a few seconds’ thought. “Okay. Since you have the key I don’t see any problem. The room is this way.”

  And she picks up the key, and I follow her out of her office.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Most of the safe-deposit boxes are a little bigger than a phone book, but there are perhaps a dozen or so that are two to three times bigger. There are three walls full of them, each numbered. Erica approaches them slowly, as if still reluctant to be doing this, but then she looks at her watch and remembers that it’s time to leave and Saturday night is waiting. She puts the key into one of the bigger boxes, twists it, opens the door, and pulls out a metal tray from within. She sits it down on the table, then points out three small rooms off to the side.

  “There’s privacy in there. Take your time,” she says, sounding as if she doesn’t want me to take my time, but to get in and out of there in under a minute. I intend to help her out there.

  The room doesn’t have much legroom. I can reach out and touch both walls at the same time without st
retching. I put the tray on the table and open it.

  Audio tapes are stacked side to side, the small microcassettes that take up less room. They are all labeled with numbers. I pull a large plastic evidence bag out of my pocket and start filling it up. There is also an accountant’s notebook, and I flick it open to see bunches of names and dates and figures before I throw that into the evidence bag as well. The box is now empty. I leave it on the table and I step out of the cubicle and find Erica is back. She looks at the evidence bag, but says nothing. I’ve closed over the seal and signed it so it all looks more official. She hands me the cardboard box she has filled with the printed bank statements.

  She walks with me to the front door. The security guard is waiting for me. “I always wanted to be a cop,” he says. “Would’ve done it too, but I have a banged-up knee that stopped me.” It’s a story heard from plenty of security guards over the years. It might have been a banged-up knee, or it could have been fear or lack of motivation, or he failed the psych test.

  The bank is almost empty now. The security cameras in the ceiling have captured my image from a dozen different angles and I know this is going to come back and really bite me in the ass. But that’s for another day. Maybe the same day they dig Sidney Alderman up. And today things are going well. Today my wife hugged a photo of my daughter and I hit a lead that could take me straight to Rachel’s killer. When you get those kinds of leads, you don’t slow down for anything.

  As the guard unlocks the door to let me out, Erica starts to turn away.

  “Just one more thing,” I ask her, and she turns back. She seems about to glance at her watch again, but pulls herself out of the movement. “The photograph behind your desk, there’s you and another guy—he looks around fifty, maybe sixty. He seems familiar.”

  “He was the bank manager here for many years,” she says. “You would have seen him around if you ever came in here.”

  “Was?” I ask, and I’m starting to figure out who it is.

  “Henry died a couple of years ago,” she says.

  “Henry Martins.”

  “That’s right. You knew him?”

  “I went swimming with him once.”

  Outside, the rain is still thick and heavy, and so is the traffic. I pass a guy scraping chewing gum off the sidewalks and depositing his collections into a plastic bucket. He’s wearing a T-shirt that has a picture of the Easter Bunny up on a crucifix. It says Jesus had a stunt double, and I wonder how Father Julian would have reacted to seeing it. Another guy sniffing glue is leaning up against a bike rack watching the guy. I guess Saturday brings the crazies out a little earlier.

  I get past them and run through the rain to my car.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  I’m anxious to listen to the tapes, but I have no way of playing them. I dump the contents of the evidence bag on the passenger seat. There are perhaps forty tapes inside it. I open the accounts book and see it’s a log of some kind. The dates seem to match up with dates scrawled across the sides of the microcassettes. I start looking through the bank statements. There are over two hundred and fifty of them, one for each month. I figure Erica must have had a few printers going to get them all done in the small amount of time she had. The statements are full of random amounts and dates and names. I look in vain for Henry Martins’s name, but what seemed like a random connection between Rachel Tyler and Henry Martins suddenly seems a lot less random.

  I toss everything back into the bag and pull away from the curb.

  I hit the mall and again struggle to find a parking space. Late Saturday afternoon and it seems nobody in this city has anything better to do than come out shopping an hour before the mall closes. At the electronics store the only thing they have in stock for recording conversations is digital, but they suggest another couple of shops to try. I finally find what I’m looking for.

  “Last one in stock,” the guy tells me. “Hardly anyone uses them anymore. Even secretaries use digital.”

  “I have a thing for old technology.”

  I get back to my father’s car only to find that a shopping cart has strayed from the flock and smacked into the back bumper, creating a small dent that I know my dad will spot around the time I’m turning the car into their driveway. This is the reason, he’ll tell me, he didn’t want to lend me the car in the first place. If he realizes that I’m driving without a license, then that will confirm it. If we can put a man on the moon, surely the digital age will reach a point where shopping carts can guide their way back into the supermarket by themselves.

  I load fresh batteries into the tape recorder and pick a tape at random. I’ve been pretty certain about what to expect, and when I push play my suspicions are confirmed after just a few seconds of hissing.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  Father Julian’s voice is deep and clear. It makes me shiver to hear a dead man’s voice, and I feel sick to know he was violating all of the people on these tapes. The other voice could be anybody. It’s a male. Could be twenty years old. Could be eighty. I pause the tape. I have to. I have to sit in silence and let what has happened sink in. I have to prepare myself to hear the things that I’m going to hear. It makes me feel like I’m complicit in some way just by listening. I press play.

  “I’ve done it again.”

  “Done what again?”

  I look at the names Julian has neatly written into his log. The confessional is supposed to be completely anonymous, but I suspect the reality is that it’s not. I think at minimum the priest has a good idea who they’re talking to because it’s likely to be somebody from their congregation.

  “Cheated. On my wife. I know it’s wrong, Father, but the problem is I can’t help it. It’s like another person takes over. It’s like I know what I’m doing is wrong, but at the time I can’t consider the consequences.”

  “Maybe you do consider them but choose to ignore them.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. It would explain a lot.”

  I push the stop button and fast forward the tape for a while. When I push play I hear Father Julian’s voice.

  “. . . to realize you are hurting more than just yourself.”

  “I know, I know.” It’s a woman’s voice. “It’s just that, well, sometimes I can’t help it. It’s like a different person takes over.”

  “Perhaps you should look at it from another . . .”

  I push stop. Is this everybody’s excuse? That they aren’t responsible for anything in their lives? That their actions are justifiable because another person takes over?

  “I’m a different person when it happens. I’m no longer me,” Quentin James told me as he stood by the grave he had dug, waiting for me to forgive him.

  Was that my excuse too?

  Maybe. But I don’t think so. I wasn’t switching between personae. Alcohol made Quentin James the man he was, and he would live with a foot in each of those worlds, existing as two separate men. I’m different. Quentin James made me into a different kind of man, and there’s no going back from that. There is only one Theodore Tate.

  When I get home my body is exhausted, but my mind is still racing with excitement: it’s a weird combination that makes me want to sleep, but at the same time pace the room. I don’t get to do either, because walking from the driveway to my house I’m brought to a stop by Casey Horwell and her cameraman. I don’t see a van anywhere, and assume they must have been camped out in a dark red sedan parked opposite. Again Horwell is wearing enough makeup to look like the media whore she is. I can see the thin lines and cracks in the foundation. She smells like stale coffee. I lower the bag of tapes and statements and hold it to my side, out of sight of the camera.

  “Mr. Tate,” she says, getting into my face. “It hasn’t taken you long to get behind the wheel of a car since losing your license. You manage this, and you’re a suspect in the murder of Father Julian. Your friends in the department you
seem exceedingly proud of must really be working overtime to keep you out of jail.”

  “I thought reporters liked asking questions, not giving statements,” I say, immediately wishing I was saying nothing.

  “Actually we do both.”

  “Just not accurately.”

  I start to move around her, but she sidesteps into my way. She probably wants me to push her, and that’s exactly what I feel like doing. I want to grab her by the arm and escort her off my property, but then I change my mind and go with a different tactic.

  “Would you care to tell us how the murder weapon came to be found in your garage?” she asks.

  “What murder weapon?” I ask.

  “The hammer.”

  “What hammer?” I ask.

  “The one that killed Father Julian.”

  “Who’s Father Julian?” I ask.

  She frowns a little, unsure of where I’m going with this. “The man whose church you have been parked outside of for the last four weeks.”

  “What church?”

  The frown becomes a deeper crease and breaks a line into her makeup. “Is this a game to you?”

  “What game?”

  “People are showing up dead and you’re the only commonality.”

  “What’s a commonality?”

  The creases deepen. Her smirk fades, quickly replaced by her annoyance, and beneath the surface of her makeup a different Casey Horwell is simmering.

  “Where is Sidney Alderman?” she asks.

  “What’s an Alderman?”

  She turns to her cameraman. “That’s it,” she says, and the camera is lowered.

  “You’re finished,” she says. “We got you on tape driving into the street, and that makes you look bad.”

  “You think that’s the best you can do?” I ask.