by Paul Cleave
“I want you to drive home. Then call the police.”
“Okay.”
I help her into the car. She tightens the jacket around her when she sits down. I lean in and start it.
“Drive carefully, Stacey. You’re in a state of shock, you need to be careful. Do you think you can drive?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s another woman.”
“Where is she?”
“He made her make a phone call. He made her lie about where we were.”
“Where is she, Stacey?”
She starts to cry. “I was so scared. I couldn’t help her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.”
“Where is she?”
“He put her into the water. He tied something around her legs and she couldn’t swim with all that weight. She just sank. She sank real fast. It was so . . .”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Put your seat belt on, Stacey.”
“Okay.” She answers as if on automatic now. “Do you have a cell phone? I can call the police.”
“Not on me. If you don’t think you can drive, then wait at the exit from the graveyard.”
“What way is that?”
“Turn around and go back the way he came. You’ll see where to go soon enough.”
“Okay.”
“And Stacey?”
“Yes.”
“Take your time. There’s no hurry now. I have a promise to keep.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
There has to be a shovel around here somewhere, but I can’t see it. I don’t want to spend long looking for it, and after about a minute I figure that’s long enough. The night is quiet except for the wind swirling around the trees and the rain slapping on the ground.
I shine the flashlight into the grave, and David is lying there in the same position I left him.
“Hey, hey, David, wake up. Hey!”
I pick up handfuls of dirt and start throwing them at his face, hoping they’ll bring him around, but they don’t. My hand is aching from the punch I threw. I throw more dirt at David. He groans. He looks half-asleep as he tries to roll over inside the coffin. Things get a little awkward for him, and he reaches up to his face and a moment later opens his eyes.
Everything must flood back to him, because now he sits up straight. His arm is on a funny angle and he stares at it with a confused look. He seems to understand what has happened just as the pain hits him. His face tightens up as he tries to cradle his bad arm with his good.
“What the fuck?” he says.
“Remember me?” I ask.
He looks up at me, and I point the flashlight at myself so he can get a good look.
“Hey, look, mister, I don’t want any trouble here,” David says, as if I’m the one causing trouble and he just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Cut the bullshit, David. You’re not fooling me twice.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” he says, and two months ago he might have been able to act his way out of any situation. But right here, right now in this moment, the mask he wears to fit into and be a part of normal society doesn’t cover his eyes.
“You know who I am,” I tell him.
“And what if I do?”
“If you do, then you know you’re in serious trouble right about now.”
“So what, you’re going to kill me now? Is that your plan?” he asks.
“You know I really haven’t decided yet. That’s about as truthful as I can get. See, the last eight weeks have been kind of tough on me. Hell, the last two years. I’m trying to weigh everything up, and I just don’t know.”
“Fuck you.” He gets to his feet and starts looking around, probably trying to figure out if he can climb out before I get to him. I wonder how he got Father Julian out. He doesn’t look strong enough to have lifted that much weight. I point the flashlight at the ground and pick out drag marks across the grass. He probably tied a rope around the body and towed it with his car. Maybe he towed him all the way to the lake.
“Tell me why,” I say.
“Get me out of here, man. My arm is killing me.”
“Talk to me.”
“No.”
“Come on, tell me why,” I say. “Was it because you liked fucking your sisters?” I ask, trying to shock him.
He doesn’t answer. Just looks up at me.
“That’s why you raped them all, right? Because you loved it.”
“How can you know anything about anything?” he asks.
“I heard the tapes, David. I know you enjoyed it.”
“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it?” he says, and here is the calm David again. And perhaps the real one lives in both worlds—good and bad, light and dark—a man who balances his life between creating an illusion and playing a monster. “It’s simple to stand up there and look down on me, judging me, because you’re not the one with a head full of disgusting memories, you’re not the one who—”
“You’re a sick boy who acted out,” I say. “That’s the bit I understand. Rachel didn’t deserve what you did to her, not by any means, but I can at least figure out why. What I can’t figure out is why the others? Why kill them?”
“Why not?”
He reaches his hand out to the ground above the grave and I step toward it. He pulls it away without the need for me to crush his fingers.
“When you were here two years ago for Rachel’s grandmother’s funeral, what happened? Who spoke to her?”
“It wasn’t her.”
“To you? Somebody spoke to you? Was it Sidney Alderman?”
“Just some old drunk who smelled like he hadn’t showered in about a month. I told him to fuck off. You want to know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘How does it feel fucking your sister, David? Is she juicy?’ I pushed him away and he just laughed at me, like he was somehow proud of it. I took a swing at him and knocked him to the ground. He stopped laughing then, but he wasn’t finished. He said, ‘Do you know who your dad is? Do you know who her dad is? Look it up, boy, look it up. And do something about it.’ I walked away from the guy, but his words, man, they just kept following me. It wasn’t because the guy knew who I was, it was something else. I found out the following day who my father was.”
“Henry Martins told you.”
He starts to laugh. “That old bastard was just as bad as the others. He told me all about Father Julian, and told me I wasn’t the only one. That priest had been sleeping with his parishioners for years. I asked him about Patricia Tyler. He knew, man! He fucking knew her. I went back to the cemetery. Bruce was my brother. The old man, he was messed up with drink, but Bruce was okay. A bit nervous, but okay. And the closest thing I had to family.”
“What about your mother?” I ask.
“You’re kidding, right? If she hadn’t been whoring around back then, none of this would have happened. I’d have had a normal life.”
“You wouldn’t have even existed.”
He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter.
“When you were alone at the funeral, how did Sidney Alderman know who you were?”
“How should I know? I guess he recognized my mother, and later I had all the proof I needed.”
“You told Rachel who her dad was, and took her to see him, didn’t you.”
“She confronted him and he admitted it. I waited outside for her. When she told me, I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I dropped to my knees and just threw up. When she tried to comfort me I pulled away. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. I told her to leave me alone, but she wanted to talk. Thing is, she couldn’t when I had my hands crushing her throat. The life had gone out of her, and still I couldn’t let go. You probably think that’s bullshit. You think that it was my plan to kill her if that old drunk was right about what he said, but it wasn’t. There was no plan. We were still in the cem
etery when it happened. I could even see the church.”
The rain is starting to get heavier and I wonder if it’s pooling inside the coffin or soaking into the wood. I have both hands jammed in my pockets—my right one is starting to throb painfully—so I start pacing around the grave. David keeps turning in the coffin so he can keep looking up at me.
“And the others?” I ask.
“What about them?”
“Why’d you kill them?”
“They were my sisters. I figured if it could happen once, it could happen again.”
“You’re full of shit. You’d already killed Henry Martins, which means you already knew the truth before driving Rachel to speak to Father Julian. That means you thought about it pretty hard. It means the knowledge of you being with your sister grew like a cancer inside your brain and the only way you could cut it out was to kill Rachel. You took her to see Father Julian knowing that she wouldn’t be seeing anybody else ever again afterward. Once you knew who those other girls were, there was no chance of accidentally dating one of them. You were killing them because you enjoyed it. What about the girl tonight? She’s not even one of your sisters, is she? You just can’t stop yourself.”
He shrugs. “So what does it matter?”
“Because you were talking to her like she was. It just goes to show how fucked in the head you really are. But why me? Why try and frame me for Father Julian?”
“You killed my brother.”
“He killed himself.”
I think about Patricia Tyler’s last words to me, the promise she wanted me to make. The last month has been full of broken promises. I think of the man I once was, the man I became when I was drinking, the man in between, and the man I am now. Which one of them is the real me? I could keep talking until the police arrive, or take him into the station myself. That would earn me some credit. They’ll lock David up and there’s enough evidence to put him away for a long time, but a long time in this justice system is only ten or fifteen years. Is that really justice? He won’t even be forty when he comes out. I doubt that would sound like justice to any of the girls. Or to Patricia Tyler. Can this sick kid be redeemed in ten years? Is redemption even possible?
“We’re going to the police,” I say.
“Fuck that.”
“It’s the only option.”
He goes quiet as he thinks about it. “Okay, but you’re going to have to help me out of here. My arm’s broken.”
“Don’t try anything.”
“I won’t.”
I close my eyes. I think of Emily. I think of all the dead girls. I think of a promise I made. I crouch down and lower my hand. He grabs it and pulls me down, and I fall, just as I have been falling since the day I drove Quentin James out into the woods. I let it happen, and I knew it would happen, and when I land on top of him my face doesn’t register the surprise he was hoping to see. His plan, his only plan, to pull me in and crack my head into the coffin or break my neck, hasn’t worked. He can see that now, and he can see his mistake.
The blood floods out over my hand. It’s warm and sticky and thick, and I hate the feel of it. When I pull it away from him, I leave the pocketknife I took from his car in his chest. He reaches down to it and pulls it out as if he’s just been stung by something, then looks at it as if he has no idea what it is. He stares at me, his face pale and streaked with blood and tears. His mouth opens and closes, but he can’t say anything; his mouth forms an O, but nothing comes out. This lonely boy who learned who he was and made the rest of the world pay for it. He breathes heavily until the breaths become softer and softer. The knife falls from his hand.
He sinks back down as he dies in front of me. I wipe my hand across the soggy lining of the coffin before pulling myself out. I sit on the ground and lean against the gravestone, and I watch the sky, looking for a break in the clouds, hoping for a break in the rain, wishing more than anything that I could have a drink right about now.
I’m not sure how much time passes before the police arrive, but I’m still sitting here when they do. Three days sober, and more positive than ever that I now know exactly who I am.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This US version is a little different from the version that came out in NZ back in 2008—it’s been a little tweaked and a little improved and is around five or six thousand words longer. I have a really cool team of people to thank for looking after the books—the team at Atria. I would like to start out by thanking Judith Curr, Mellony Torres, Emily Bestler, Janice Fryer, Lisa Keim, Daniella Wexler, Isolde Sauer, Anne Spieth, and Gillian Cowin. And, of course, my editor Sarah Branham, who has made this book sharper and better than the original, and to whom I’m eternally grateful and lucky to have in my corner.
I’m also eternally grateful to have the best agent in the world looking after me—Jane Gregory of Gregory & Company. Jane has been changing my life in great ways over the last few years. Working with Jane and also doing a fantastic job are Claire Morris and Linden Sheriff. Then there’s Stephanie Glencross, who is, without a doubt, one of the most talented editors I’ve ever worked with. I’m a lucky man to have her looking after me too.
And, of course, thanks again to all of you who have enjoyed the books, to those of you who send encouraging emails, have sent cool messages on Facebook, for showing up at book signings—you guys are the reason I do what I do and, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you guys are the reason I keep trying to make bad things happen (but only in the books . . . I promise).
PHILIP HUGHES
PAUL CLEAVE is the #1 internationally bestselling author of six thrillers, including The Cleaner, The Killing Hour, Blood Men, Collecting Cooper (a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2011), and The Laughterhouse. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Find out more at www.paulcleave.com.
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ALSO BY PAUL CLEAVE
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Paul Cleave
Originally published in 2008 by Random House New Zealand.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cleave, Paul, date.
Cover design by Alan Dingman
Cover photograph by Shutterstock
Cemetery Lake : a thriller / by Paul Cleave. — First Atria Books trade paperback edition.
p. cm.
1. Private investigators—New Ze
aland—Christchurch—Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. 3. Suspense fiction. 4. Noir fiction. I. Title.
PR9639.4.C54C46 2013
823'.92—dc23
2012047800
ISBN 978-1-4516-7783-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-7786-7 (ebook)
Contents
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part II
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
