by Jan Burke
I watched with irritation as Ian locked up the Jeep and set the alarm on it. He had kidnapped us, used my own car to drive us around, and he was already acting as if it were his to protect? From what, a criminal?
Eric’s cell phone rang. He listened for a moment, then said, “Have the chopper ready. We’ll call again.”
“The chopper?” I asked.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Mitch said.
The look Ethan gave me then made my stomach drop. I supposed we were thinking the same thing. If the Yeagers left in a helicopter, they might be able to get to a plane and perhaps out of the country before anyone knew what had happened to us. And if the people on the helicopter were armed or used a spotlight, we would have difficulty hiding among the tombstones until we were free.
I watched Ethan. For the next few minutes at least, my life was going to be in his hands. Everything would be decided by his ability to stall them without being obvious about it and to convince them that he had hidden something here.
“Do you have flashlights?” he asked.
Eric looked at him suspiciously, perhaps suspecting a joke at his expense, given their previous problems with fingerprints on flashlights.
“There’s only a little moonlight,” Ethan said. “The cemetery is torn up. We’ll need flashlights.”
“You have any in your car?” Mitch asked me with exasperation.
I considered a lie, decided against it, and told him where to find the flashlights in the Jeep — one in the glove compartment, the other in the back storage compartment. Ian got back in the Jeep, found them, and reset the alarm.
“Okay,” Ethan said, “untie our hands.”
“Giving a lot of orders, aren’t you?” Mitch said. “Not going to happen.”
Ethan shrugged. “That’s going to cause problems, but suit yourself.”
The first problem became evident as soon as the flashlights were distributed. Eric and Ian had to hold both a flashlight and a gun or risk not having a light to use to reveal their target. I could see Mitch didn’t like it, but he was too proud to back down.
Ian stayed with Ethan. Eric stayed with me. Mitch walked between us.
We followed Ethan as he walked slowly along a brick fence that had occasional panels of wrought iron. The view into the cemetery was again blocked by plywood panels temporarily in place over the wrought iron. There was already some graffiti on them.
I was glad for the slow pace, not only because we needed to stall but because I was feeling the effects of their earlier blows and the fall I had taken in the garage. Ian, impatient, told Ethan to move faster.
“If you hadn’t kicked the shit out of me, I could,” Ethan said, one hand on his ribs.
He led us toward the back of the cemetery. I wondered whether this was mere stalling on his part. If so, I hoped he walked us all around the perimeter.
As we moved from the street into the knee-high grasses of the field, the scenery changed a bit. The field was owned by the city, but was undeveloped. We were nearer some of the pumping units now, and could see their horse-heads bobbing up and down eerily in moonlight, their beams seesawing as the counterweights rolled.
The barrier along the back of the cemetery was a rusting chain-link fence — about seven feet high. It was not in good repair. Before the cemetery was closed for the investigations, visitors were spared a view of this ratty fence by the trees and the tall, thick oleanders that now blocked our view of the cemetery. I wondered if Ethan planned to have us crawl through one of the gaps near the foot of it, but he kept walking.
Eventually, we came to an asphalt driveway that led from the road on the western side of the cemetery to a pair of rolling chain-link gates near some large metal sheds. A heavy chain and thick padlock held them shut. As we came to a halt by the gates, Eric pocketed his gun and took hold of my elbow, apparently afraid I’d run off and leave Ethan behind.
“Why the hell didn’t we come in this way?” Mitch asked angrily. “We could have parked on that other street and saved time.”
“And have everyone in the world see a car parked here? That street isn’t a busy one, but it gets traffic.”
“Maybe I’ll tape your smart mouth shut next,” Mitch said.
Ethan stood silent.
Mitch smiled. “Hell, scream if you want to. Nobody inside that boneyard is going to come to your rescue. And you were stupid enough to bring us all the way out here. So now what?”
“We go in. As I said before, you’ll need to untie our hands.”
“Why?”
“I won’t be able to squeeze through the gate if they’re tied behind my back.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Okay, let Ian squeeze through. Once he’s in, I’ll tell him where to find the gate key.”
Mitch took Ian’s gun and told him to go in.
Ian, looking dubious, stepped up to the gates and pulled them apart. He got a leg through, then said, “I can’t fit, Uncle Mitch. It’ll take my balls off, trying to get through.”
Mitch glanced at Ian’s older brother and obviously realized there was no hope there, either.
“Get your lard ass back here, then. You two have turned into a couple of butterballs, lying on your big bellies on the beach all day. I still have to take care of things myself if I want them done right, don’t I? Never know how much you two will fuck things up on your own.” He eyed me briefly, then asked Eric what the fuck was wrong with him, standing there with nothing but his flashlight in his hand? Eric turned red, then switched off the light and exchanged it for his gun.
“Now grab on to her,” Mitch ordered, “and put that gun right up against her head…. Good.”He turned to Ethan. “Okay, smart boy, I’m going to promise you that once you are through that gate, you had better return in five minutes, or she’s dead.”
“That’s not long enough!”
“That’s how long you have. So Ian will cut you loose and give you a flashlight, and I had better be able to see where you are with that light every one of those five minutes—”
“Then we’ve come out here for nothing,” Ethan said. “The spare key isn’t hidden within sight of the gate, for God’s sake. It’s around the corner, on the other side of that maintenance shed. You won’t see me the whole time and I can’t do it in five minutes.”
Held by a beefy arm around my throat, feeling the painful press of cold metal on my temple, I couldn’t think very clearly, but I still managed to wonder if it was smart for him to be challenging Mitch in this way.
Then I saw Ian’s face, and the hint of amusement on it. Maybe Ethan was trying to undermine Mitch’s authority as much as he could.
“And why shouldn’t I just save myself a whole lot of time and kill you both? I’m trying to remember…”
“You think we did this not knowing who we were up against?” I said. “We made sure that if we were to vanish or to be found dead, the truth would come out.”
“Miss Kelly, I think you’ve watched too much television.”
“I haven’t had time for TV. I’ve been busy studying you for twenty years, you selfish old man. People have a habit of disappearing around you. Ian and Eric are too young to remember Gus Ronden or Betty Bradford, but—”
“I remember them,” Eric said. “What happened to them, Uncle Mitch?”
“We’re wasting time!” Mitch said. “Cut the smart aleck loose and let him get in there. And Eric, damn it, if she doesn’t keep her yap shut, shut it for her.”
Ian cut Ethan loose, and I watched Ethan wince as the circulation returned to his hands. Another moment passed before he had enough feeling in them to be able to hold the flashlight. Ethan walked to the gate, then held the flashlight out and said, “I’m going to tuck this inside my jacket. I won’t fit through the gates myself if I put it in my hip pocket. I just don’t want any misunderstandings.” He slowly tucked it in the pocket, making sure his hands stayed visible as he did it.
He pulled the gates apart and began to squee
ze between them. I heard his breath catch on a small sound of pain as his bruised ribs were pressed against the metal supports of the gates.
A moment later, he was through, and the flashlight was out again. Ian took Eric’s flashlight and tried to position himself to fire on Ethan should he reappear with a weapon or some other surprise.
“Where are you?” Mitch called.
“On the other side of the shed,” Ethan called back.
“I don’t like this,” Mitch said. “I don’t like this at all.”
We all listened, ears straining for sound. Nothing could be heard over the rumbling and creaking of the oil well pumps.
As what seemed like two or three eternities passed, I began to wonder if I had fooled myself into thinking Ethan cared about what happened to me. What if he just hared off, jumping over a fence on the other side of the cemetery and leaving me and the Yeagers standing in our little semicircle? Or hid in there the rest of the night, or at least until the police showed up? I could be long past being able to tell anyone my version of events.
I told myself that would not be the worst possible outcome. In all likelihood, that was the best we could hope for. Maybe Ethan was practical enough to see that.
But even with Eric’s gun at my head and a cold feeling of certainty that I would not survive the night settling in on me, even knowing that Ethan had screwed up so many other times in his life and was a self-acknowledged liar and manipulator, I thought of how he toughed out those days at the paper and couldn’t bring myself to believe he was abandoning me. I was not cheered by this thought. I didn’t much want to die alone, but I wanted less for the two of us to die together.
In the next moment, he came back around the corner, his flashlight beam marking his progress as he returned to the gate. Fool, I thought, close to tears. You brave damned fool.
The Yeagers were relieved. I could feel Eric relax his grip slightly, and he eased the pressure of the gun away. A moment later, as Ethan fit the key into the padlock, Eric stepped back from me.
The chain fell free, and Ethan pulled the gates in. He looked toward me and said, “Welcome to my cemetery.”
67
HIS CEMETERY LOOKED AS IF IT HAD BEEN TOSSED. “Most of the grave robbing was done to the older ones,” Ethan said. “They figured no one who cared about these people would still be around. But they also went for a few of the newer ones.”
Mounds of dirt stood next to open graves, vaults were aboveground, and excavation equipment was parked here and there. The investigation had not yet extended into every corner of the cemetery, but where it was under way, it seemed doubtful the permanent occupants were resting in peace.
The odors were much stronger inside the cemetery. Rain had fallen during the weeks of investigation, and water collected in the bottom of the graves, intensifying the dankness and scents of decay. I could also smell traces of formalin and other chemical smells from embalming. Perhaps not in fact, but in my mind, the scent of human decay overrode all the others.
In a cemetery where no one had disturbed the burials, this rank smell would not have been present, but the practice of opening coffins and moving bodies from coffins into graves where more than one body was placed, or reburying bodies without coffins, had obviously made the soil here subject to saturation with it.
Ethan walked us past a few graves, then suddenly looked around, as if confused.
Not hiding his disgust, Mitch said, “You never found anything in Maureen’s belongings, did you?”
“Not exactly,” Ethan admitted.
“You son of—” Ian said angrily, but Ethan held a hand up.
“Irene got it from Betty. Betty stole it from your desk at the farmhouse. You know what I’m talking about?”
Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “The locket. That bitch. I always wondered … but that doesn’t prove shit, does it?”
“Oh, together with what we found among Maureen’s papers, yes, I think it does. Which is why we had to find a safe place for it.”
“Where is it?” Mitch asked. “Where’d you put it?”
“I have to find the right vault,” Ethan said, looking around again. “I was afraid of this — they’ve done more digging. I need to find the tombstone of Alice Pelck.” He spelled the last name.
“Who’s Alice Pelck?”
“Hell if I know, I just used her tombstone as the marker. It’s one of the big ones with an angel looking down from it.” We looked across the cemetery and saw about fifty angels. He used his flashlight to make his way over to the nearest one. “No, that’s not her.”
“Don’t go running off,” Mitch said, ordering Eric to hand over his gun and stay close to Ethan and Ian. Mitch would stay with me. I didn’t like that much — I had been hoping we could separate the brothers.
Ethan said to me, “They moved the excavator that was parked near here, and now I can’t find her. Do you remember where she is?”
“I thought she was over there,” I said, pointing to a nearby section, one that was crowded with equipment, old trees, and at least two dozen stone angels. They must have been all the rage at some point in Las Piernas’s history.
Moving the flashlight in a sweeping motion, spotlighting grave markers here and there, Ethan walked toward the area where I had pointed, Eric close behind. Ian held both flashlight and gun and began to run the light over tombstones, joining the search for Alice Pelck. Eric, although far from helpless, now had no gun and no light. Glancing uneasily around him, he jumped when a breeze stirred the shadows of the tree branches over the tombs. He ordered Ian to give him the flashlight. Ian refused. “Uncle Mitch—” Eric called back to us in complaint.
“Damn it, Ian, give him the light,” Mitch shouted. “Never mind looking at the graves, keep an eye on the smart boy there.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Fucking morons.” He waited to see that Ian obeyed him.
With Mitch staying near me, I gradually started drifting farther away from the others, supposedly to find dear Alice. “Try that one,” I would say, and while he bent closer, I’d move to the next one.
I gradually lured him into a place with more treacherous footing, a muddy spot between two open graves. I could smell the stagnant water that lay along the bottom of each.
Despite his instructions, Ian got caught up in finding Alice Pelck’s grave now, distracted by reading the tombstones Ethan illuminated, not paying close attention to Ethan himself. Eric was nervously darting his flashlight all around, peering into empty graves and pulling back with distaste.
“I think I see it!” I shouted, moving closer to one of the open graves, blocking Mitch’s view of its monument.
Ian turned toward us. Mitch moved forward to try to read the tombstone, telling me to get out of the way. Eric turned his light toward us, but Mitch was now between me and Eric. Eric’s beam of light fell on Mitch just as he bent over me, and just as I rose and shouldered into him with all my might.
I lost my footing on the slippery ground and fell face first into the mud, but Mitch was off-balance and fell backward into the stinking open grave. I heard him hit bottom with a splash as I hurriedly scooted myself behind the cover of the tombstone.
Ian fired at me, his bullet striking the wing of the stone angel above me. A shard of stone flew off and struck me on the cheek, but I ignored its sting and rolled to my feet. Eric came running toward me. Ian shouted at Eric to get the hell out of the way. I glanced back in time to see Ethan take his chance — while Ian and Eric started toward me, Ethan used his flashlight to deliver a cracking blow to Ian’s head.
Even though I was some distance from them, I heard the sound of it. Ethan’s flashlight broke. Ian pitched forward. Ethan disappeared behind some equipment.
I ran, dodging between trees and tombstones, watching for open graves. Glancing back, I saw Eric, unsure of which of several disasters to attend to first.
“Get your ass over here and get me out of this fucking grave!” Mitch screamed. “Now! And bring some damned light!”
&nb
sp; I ran awkwardly from tombstone to tombstone, tree to tree, wishing my hands were free to allow me better balance and speed. I gradually headed toward the gates — until I saw Ian stumble to his feet and head in that same direction. He looked dazed, but not necessarily too out of it to fire a shot that might kill me. Not the gates, then. I altered my course and wound my way to the oleander, trying to see Ethan, thinking once or twice that I caught a glimpse of movement in the dark.
I reached the oleander and burrowed into it, then watched for Ethan while catching my breath.
I couldn’t see much. There was only one flashlight now, and it was shining eerily up out of a grave, illuminating the face and wings of the angel above. Eric had taken off his jacket and was using it as a lifeline to Mitch, bracing himself against the tombstone, trying to pull Mitch out without being pulled in himself. It didn’t seem to be working well, judging from Mitch’s shouted obscenities. Apparently, he had sprained or broken an ankle in the fall. Eric tried grabbing hold of his clothing and hauling him up, but this also failed — he lost his grip on Mitch’s muddy clothing, and dropped him for a second dunking.
I tried desperately to think of a way to draw Ian’s attention away from Ethan, without getting caught myself.
I searched along the chain-link fence as quietly as I could and found a place where someone or something had previously burrowed in or out. The gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence was narrow, but I lowered myself to my belly and began to snake my way through the opening. Metal prongs of broken fencing caught at my skin and clothes, but I made it through. I came clumsily to my feet. I ran to the Jeep and slammed myself against it.
The car alarm went off.
Over its din, I heard Eric and Ian shouting that we were getting away.
“Never mind!” Mitch yelled. “Just get me the hell out of here.”
I hurried back through the fence, but stayed hidden within the oleander. Ethan might have made his way free by now, but I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to abandon him. I decided I’d wait where I was a little longer. With any luck, the car alarm might attract the attention of a passing patrol car.
