The Life We Bury

by Allen Eskens

  When she walked in—when I saw her—I stopped breathing. Lila had unbuttoned her jersey almost to her navel, the curves of her breasts peeking out from behind the fabric, the tails of the shirt sliding across the smooth silk of her bare legs.

  My heart thumped so hard in my chest, I was certain she could see it. I wanted to speak but could find no words. I simply looked at her, taking in her beauty.

  Slowly, gracefully, she raised a hand across her chest and slid the shirt off of her right shoulder, the cloth falling to her elbow, her right breast revealed. Then she slid the shirt from her left shoulder, letting the jersey fall to the floor, her only clothing being a pair of lacy black panties.

  Pulling the covers down, she slipped in next to me, kissing the scrape on my chest, a cut on my arm, then my neck. She moved gently down my body, kissing my wounds, caressing my strained muscles, and touching me with a tenderness I had never known. She brought her lips to mine and we kissed, gently, my fingers lacing through her short hair, her body pressed against mine. I ran my other hand down the curve of her back, her hip, reading the magnificence of her form with my fingers.

  We made love that night—not the sweaty, clumsy, bounce-off-the-walls type of love born of alcohol and hormones, but the slow-melting, Sunday-morning type of love. She moved over me like a breeze, her lithe, sinewy body weightless in my arms. We cuddled and nuzzled and danced until she sat astride me, slowly writhing and churning. A slice of moonlight slipped through a gap in the curtains and fell across her body, her back arched, her hands braced on my thighs, her head tossed back, eyes closed. I stared in awe, taking her in, locking that vision into a place in my mind where the memory would keep forever.

  I woke before the sun came up. Lila was still in my arms, her back pressed against my chest, her hips and thighs curving with mine. I kissed the back of her neck, causing her to stir a little, but she didn't wake. I gently breathed in the scent of her body, closed my eyes to replay last night in my head, and let the memory lull me like a fine intoxication until I fell back to sleep. I didn't wake again until my cell phone went off at around 8:30. It took me a little while to locate my pants in Lila's bathroom and fish the phone out of the pocket.

  “Hello?” I said, walking back to bed.

  “Joe Talbert?”

  “Yeah, this is Joe,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “This is Boady Sanden from the Innocence Project. I didn't wake you, did I?” he said.

  “No,” I lied. “What's up?”

  “You won't believe the stroke of luck we've had.”

  “What?”

  “Have you been following the news story about the Ramsey County Crime Lab?”

  “It doesn't ring a bell,” I said.

  “St. Paul has its own crime lab separate from the BCA—the Ramsey County Crime Lab. A couple months ago three of their scientists testified at a trial that they did not have a written protocol for many of their procedures. The defense attorneys in the area went nuts and raised a huge stink about it. So the county stopped running tests until the protocol problem is fixed.

  “How is that a stroke of luck for us?” I said.

  “Well, it occurred to me that they won't be doing any DNA testing because without proper written protocols in place, any mediocre defense attorney will get the evidence thrown out. But in your case, it's the defense that is asking for the test. The prosecutors will never challenge the reliability of the test because to do so would force them to argue that the evidence they've been using for years is bad.”

  “I'm sorry, I'm not following.”

  “We have a lab full of scientists who are not testing anything right now because of administrative issues. I have a friend down there, and I asked her to rush our fingernail through. She said no at first, but when I explained the situation about Mr. Iverson being on his death bed, she agreed.”

  “You got the DNA test done?”

  “I got the DNA test done. I have the results right here.”

  I couldn't breathe. I think Sanden held off telling me the results for a moment just to let the anticipation build. Finally I said, “And?”

  “And they found both skin cells and blood on the fingernail—both male and female DNA. We can assume the female DNA was Crystal's.

  “What about the male DNA?” I asked.

  “The male DNA does not belong to Carl Iverson. It wasn't his skin, and it wasn't his blood.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “I knew it wouldn't be Carl's.” I pumped my fist in the air in a triumphant burst of energy.

  “All we need now is a swab of Lockwood's DNA,” Sanden said.

  And just like that, the balloon of my elation burst. “You haven't talked to Max Rupert yet, have you?”

  “Rupert? No. Why?”

  “Lockwood's on the run,” I said. “He burned his house to the ground and took off. Rupert said he destroyed any trace of his DNA.” I didn't tell Professor Sanden why Lockwood was on the run. I didn't tell him about my visit to his house, about the kidnapping. I knew that my actions, however well-intentioned, had caused Lockwood to flee. I felt sick.

  Lila sat up in bed, interested in my conversation. I hit the speakerphone so that she could listen in.

  “Well,” Sanden said. “We have the diary, the pictures, Lockwood's flight from justice and burning his house down—that might be enough to get us back into court.”

  “Is there enough to exonerate Carl?” I asked.

  “I don't know.” Professor Sanden spoke as if he were talking to himself, letting the pros and cons tumble from inside his head. “Let's assume that the DNA came back to Lockwood. He would simply say that he argued with Crystal that morning, that she scratched him. They lived in the same house after all. It's possible the DNA got there without him killing her.”

  Lila spoke up. “He said he didn't go back to the house until after she was killed. Wait a second.” Lila scrambled out of bed, throwing on her Twins jersey as she ran out of the room.

  “Who was that?” Sanden asked.

  “That was my girlfriend, Lila,” I said. It felt good to say it. I could hear her bare feet padding to my apartment. A few seconds later she came back with one of the transcripts open in her hand, her eyes skimming its pages. “I remember Danielle…Crystal's mom testifying…” She flipped another page and ran her finger down the lines. “Here it is. Crystal's mom testified that Crystal had been acting depressed, so she let Crystal sleep in that morning. After Doug and Danny left, she woke Crystal up…” She read to herself for a few seconds before she read the passage aloud. “‘I woke Crystal up and told her to get in the shower because it always takes her so long to get ready for school.’”

  “She showered after Doug left the house,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Lila closed the transcript. “The only way for Doug Lockwood's DNA to get on that that fingernail is if he saw her after school.”

  “If that is Lockwood's DNA,” Sanden said.

  “If you were a betting man?” I asked.

  Sanden thought for a second and said, “I would bet that it's Doug Lockwood's DNA on that fingernail,” he said.

  “So I go back to my original question,” I said. “Is there enough evidence without the DNA to exonerate Carl Iverson?”

  Boady sighed into the phone. “Maybe,” he said. “I have enough to get a hearing. If we could nail down whose DNA it is…I mean she could have scratched her boyfriend or another boy at school. Without a match, there's too much wiggle room.”

  “So we need Doug's DNA or we're sunk,” I said.

  “Maybe we'll find him by the hearing date,” Sanden said.

  I hung my head again. “Yeah,” I said, “maybe.”

  Lila and I visited Carl that day. I needed to tell him about the DNA and about Lockwood being a fugitive. I left out the part where Lockwood kidnapped me and tried to kill me. I also left out that Lockwood may still want to kill me and that every shadow I passed made me want to jump out of my skin. We walked into Hillview, nodded to Janet and Mrs. Lo
rngren as we passed, and turned down the hall toward Carl's room.

  “Wait, Joe,” Mrs. Lorngren called out. “He's not there anymore.”

  My heart dropped into my gut. “What? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” she said. “We moved him to a different room.”

  I slapped my hand to my chest. “You ’bout gave me a heart attack.”

  “I'm sorry,” Mrs. Lorngren said. “I didn't mean to scare you.” She led us down a corridor to a corner room, a nice room, where Carl lay in a bed facing a large window that framed a pine tree bent under the weight of the snow. They had decorated the room for Christmas with pine garlands looping high on the wall and Christmas ornaments hanging from the blinds and taped to the walls. Four Christmas cards stood upright, half opened, decoratively arranged on the table next to his bed. I glanced at the cards and saw that one was from Janet and another was from Mrs. Lorngren. Even though Christmas was over two weeks away, I called out, “Merry Christmas, Carl,” as I entered the room.

  “Joe,” Carl smiled, whispering his words in short puffs. He had a tube in his nose feeding him oxygen. His chest rose and fell with labored breaths, his lungs barely strong enough to gather air. “Is this Lila? How nice.” He held his trembling hand over the edge of the bed, and Lila grasped his hand lovingly between her own two hands.

  “It's nice to finally meet you,” Lila said.

  Carl looked at me and nodded toward my face. “What happened there?” he asked.

  “Oh, that,” I said, touching the cut left behind by the whiskey bottle. “I had to bounce a tough guy out of Molly's the other night.”

  Carl narrowed his gaze at me as if he could see through my lie. I changed the subject. “We got the tests back,” I said. “It wasn't your DNA on Crystal's fingernail.”

  “I knew that…already,” he said, with a wink of his eye. “Didn't you?”

  “Professor Sanden, who runs the Innocence Project, says it's enough to reopen your case.”

  Carl thought about that for a few seconds, as though he needed time to let the words break through the wall he had built up over the last thirty years. Then he smiled, closed his eyes, and allowed his head to sink into his pillow. “They'll undo…my conviction.”

  And with those words, I knew that despite his stoic protestations to the contrary, he did care about being exonerated. Clearing his name mattered more to him than he had allowed anyone to see, maybe even more than he himself understood. I began to feel a weight pressing down on me, forcing my shoulders into a slump. “They're gonna try,” I said, glancing at Lila. “They're gonna set a hearing. It's just a matter of time now.” The words slipped from my lips before I realized what I had said. Carl chuckled weakly and looked at me. “That's…the one thing…I don't have.” Then he turned his attention back to the window. “Did you see…the snow?”

  “Yeah, I saw it,” I smiled. The snow was a thing of such peace and beauty to Carl, but it had nearly killed me. “Quite the storm,” I said.

  “Glorious,” he said.

  We visited for almost an hour, talking about the snow, the birds, the bent pine tree. We listened as Carl told stories about his grandfather's cabin at Lake Ada. We talked about everything under the sun—except his case. It was like talking about the solar system without mentioning the sun. Everyone in that room knew that Carl's exoneration would not come until long after he was dead. I suddenly felt like that eleven-year-old kid again, watching my grandfather thrash in the river.

  As Carl's energy waned, we said our goodbyes, not knowing if we would see him again before he died. I did my best to hide my sadness from Carl as I shook his hand. He smiled back with a genuineness I couldn't understand. I found myself wishing that I could be as accepting and certain of my life as he seemed to be of his at that moment.

  We stopped off at Mrs. Lorngren's office to thank her for moving Carl to a nicer room. She handed each of us a peppermint candy cane from a box that she kept on her desk and motioned for us to sit down. “I couldn't help but overhear you say something about DNA,” she said.

  “One of the dead girl's fake fingernails broke off in the struggle,” I said. “It still has the killer's DNA on it. They tested the DNA, and it wasn't Carl's.”

  “That's just wonderful,” she said. “Do they know whose it is?”

  “It belongs to…I mean, it should belong to the girl's stepfather, but we don't know for sure. Right now, all we know is that it could be any man in the world except Carl Iverson.”

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The stepfather.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “He may as well be dead,” I said. “He's missing, so we can't get a sample of his DNA.”

  “Does he have a son?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Don't you know about the Y chromosome?” Mrs. Lorngren said.

  “I know there's such a thing, but I'm not sure I follow.”

  She leaned forward on her desk, placing her fingers together like a principal about to impart a lecture to some hapless student. “Only men have a Y chromosome,” she said. “A father will pass his genetic code to a son through the Y chromosome. Those genes are almost identical. There is very little change between the father's DNA and the son's. If you get a sample of the son's DNA, that'll exclude any man who is not a direct male relative of the son.”

  I stared at her, my jaw slackened with amazement. “Are you like some kind of DNA expert?”

  “I do have a nursing degree,” she said. “And you don't get one of those without understanding biology. But…” she gave us a sheepish smile, “I learned about the Y chromosome from watching Forensic Files on TV. It's amazing what you can learn from those shows.”

  I said, “So all we have to do is get the DNA of a male relative?”`

  “It's not that easy,” Mrs. Lorngren said. “You would have to get the DNA of every male relative that was alive thirty years ago: sons, brothers, uncles, grandpa. And even then, all you would be doing is increasing the likelihood that the stepfather is the culprit.”

  “What a great idea,” I said. “We could show that it's Doug's DNA by using a process of elimination.”

  Lila said, “I thought that Max Rupert said to stay out of this case.”

  “Technically he said to stay away from Douglas Lockwood,” I smiled at Lila. “I'm not going after Douglas Lockwood. I'm going after everyone except him.”

  By the time we left Lorngren's office, I felt like a kid with a brand-new pair of sneakers, anxious to try them out. I could barely control the flurry of ideas that whipped around in my head as Lila and I drove back to her apartment. When we got there, we pulled out our computers. She researched Mrs. Lorngren's information on the Y chromosome, and I scanned the web for any information about the Lockwood family tree. Lila found some terrific websites on DNA, proving that Mrs. Lorngren was right. She also found that Walmart sold paternity DNA kits that had swabs and sterile packaging—kits we could use to gather skin cells from the inside of a cheek.

  I, on the other hand, found very little in the way of Lockwood relatives. I found a man named Dan Lockwood, with the correct date of birth, living in Mason City, Iowa, and working as a security guard in a mall. It had to be Crystal's stepbrother Danny. I stalked his Facebook page and any other social media I could think of and found nothing to suggest he had a male relative—not even a father. That didn't surprise me. If I were Danny, I would have done my best to deny the existence of that Bible-thumping psychopath, too. I came away hopeful that we would not need to track down too many Lockwood men in order to point a finger at Douglas.

  “So how should I go about getting Danny to give me his DNA?” I asked Lila.

  “You could try asking him for it,” she said.

  “Just ask him for it?” I said. “Excuse me, Mr. Lockwood, can I scrape a few skin cells off your cheek to use to convict your father of killing your stepsister.”

  “If he says no, then you're no worse off than
you are right now,” she said. “And if that fails…” She let her words trail off, as if contemplating a plan.

  “What?” I asked.

  “All we need is some of his spit,” she said, “like on a coffee cup or a cigarette butt. I found a story from California about a guy named Gallego. The cops followed him around until he threw away a cigarette butt. They picked it up and had his DNA. He went to prison. If all else fails, we follow Danny around until he drops a cigarette butt or throws a coffee cup into the trash.”

  “We? Who's this ‘we’ you keep talking about?” I said.

  “You have no car,” Lila said. “Yours is still in evidence, remember?” She leaned over the table and kissed me. “Besides, I'm not letting you finish this without me. Someone has to make sure that you don't get clobbered with another whiskey bottle.”

  Dan Lockwood lived in the older, blue-collar section of Mason City, Iowa, a block north of the railroad tracks in a house that blended in with every other house on the street. We drove past it twice, double-checking the house number with what we found on the Internet. After the second pass, we drove through the alley behind his house, bouncing over potholes, dodging snow drifts, and looking for signs of life. We saw a garbage can overflowing with white trash bags standing guard next to the back door of the house. We also saw that someone had shoveled a path through the knee-deep snow connecting the house to the alley. We made a mental note and continued on for a few blocks to park and go over our plan one last time.

  We had stopped at Walmart on the drive down and picked up a paternity test kit, which had three cotton swabs, a specimen envelope, and instructions on how to scrape skin cells from the inside of the cheek. Lila had the kit in her purse. We decided to be straightforward. We would go to Dan's house, ask him about any male relatives alive back in 1980, and then ask him to let us swab his cheek. If that failed, we would go to plan B—follow him around until he spit out his gum or something like that.