by Alex Dolan
Leland feverishly tore up the earth with his hands. I felt his eagerness—he had waited so long for this—and I tried to keep up with him. The moist soil diffused into the air like ground coffee beans. Tesmer stood with the shovel, waiting for the surface layers to be cleaned off before she sunk the spade into the dirt. Our circle of spectators watched, quite literally forming a funeral gathering. At least one woman mopped her eyes with a shirt-sleeve. I wondered whose mother she was.
Once the loose debris was cleared, a subtly humped mound of solid earth remained. The dogs barked at the air as we stirred up trace scents of aged compost. Tesmer started in with the shovel, and I scooped what I could with a trowel from Royce’s backpack. I’m sure there was a more methodical way to excavate this plot, but no one much cared. None of us cared about procedure, not even the federal agent. No reason to, really. The criminals had already been caught.
Slowly, we amassed termite hills of clumped clay as we burrowed two feet down.
Tesmer alerted, “Look, look…” She’d found something, and then we all saw it: a sharp nub in the soil. Not a root, not a rock. Leland cast a look back at the rest of the search team. He seemed unsure of whether everyone should be watching this, but it was too late now. Some of the crowd stepped closer. Some averted their eyes and looked up at the branches above the clearing. Crouched by the pit, I could no longer see Veda or Cindy.
Leland’s glove stroked away the dirt. The nub became a tine. Its color faded from deep chocolate to birch bark. Daintily it protruded. When enough soil had been cleared away the nub became a knuckle. The knuckle became a hand. Onlookers moaned behind us. Leland’s head dropped between his shoulders. At first I assumed it was sadness, but his lips rippled in a silent prayer. When the prayer was over, Leland cleared away more of the soil, fiercely vigilant. Breathing through a clenched jaw, he siphoned loud inhales through his nostrils. Royce, Tesmer, and I worked at the same pace. Our first knuckle was a distal phalanx—the tip of a middle finger. It sat closer to the surface because the body had been buried face down, and the fingers curled. Based on the angle of the hand, we shifted where we dug and cleared away sections that revealed a torso and legs. I felt on the verge of a catastrophic sob, and yet I didn’t feel sadness.
As we unearthed a pelvis, a new feeling came: gloom, the dread of something unexpected, and the feeling that nothing good would relieve the hopelessness. Those bones were from a girl. Every cubic inch of dirt we cleared away made that more of a glaring reality. The dress, the hair, and the hips—even on a girl not fully developed, there were differences.
Her remains issued the tang of rotten strawberries. Royce’s arm covered his nostrils. Given what I’ve smelled on the job, I’d expected something stronger, but she’d been there for at least twelve years. Anything that would have given off those strong meaty odors had already nourished the ground.
The families around us reacted with wet, sickly sobs. Someone called to God. One man, maybe convinced this was his daughter, buckled to his knees and bit his fingers as he cried. His wife rubbed his shoulders. I couldn’t see Cindy or Veda.
Carefully we revealed the full figure. Three feet down in the hole, we uncovered a small skeleton with bird bones. Rags clung to the bone, and most of the fabric had been eaten. The remaining patches faded to an overcast version of baby blue. A pink plastic watch loosely coiled around one wrist. No shoes.
Leland motioned to her legs. He meant to speak to Tesmer, but we all heard. “The right leg’s been severed below the knee.” I thought this might be Julie Diehl, but then remembered Julie had been buried below the shed. A new dread struck me as I realized that what happened to Cindy Coates might have happened to others.
Leland gently rolled the skull to one side. His gloved finger glided along the teeth and stopped at one that was slightly off kilter. “She’s the right age. Most of her baby teeth are out, but there are still a few left. Some of the permanent teeth are still pushing their way in.”
I needed air. I stepped back from our fresh grave and withdrew past the rest of our search team, out through the circle of trees. The families were so consumed in their own grief that they didn’t acknowledge me as I passed.
As I walked through the ferns, I saw Cindy and Veda against the thickest redwood trunk in the cathedral. No one paid attention to them, and in turn, Cindy and Veda ignored the rest of us. Cindy stroked her boyfriend’s forehead. Veda Moon lay stiff with his legs splayed on the ground. He looked somewhere between when he’s wet his pants and what I imagined would be a seizure. His body quivered as if freezing to death.
I climbed back inside the circle of trees and whispered in Leland’s ear, passing a message along about his son. He discretely stood back from the bones and circled the crowd to reach Veda, motioning to Tesmer to join us. Once the agent stepped away, the rest of the crowd stepped cautiously forward, taking a better look at the skeleton, wondering if she was theirs.
Tesmer and Leland helped his son to his feet. Veda looked confused, like he wasn’t sure how he got here. His father whispered in his ear. I stayed far enough away so I couldn’t hear. Veda seemed too consumed with his own emotions to listen, but he nodded when his father finished, faking understanding of whatever consolation Leland gave him. I retreated back to the crowd to give them privacy, but couldn’t help watching them. They gave each other a quick, violent hug, only lasting a moment before Veda pushed his father away. The two Moon men stared at each other. Leland tried to touch him again, but his son shrank from his father’s hand. Tesmer did the same, with the same result. Veda turned from them and walked back from where we came, toward the slope and the red rope. Cindy followed him, simpering apologetically to the Moons. She caught up to Veda and tried to touch him, but he shrugged off her hand as well. He seemed unreachable. I couldn’t articulate why I was so worried, but I sensed that however our discovery made me feel, it hit Veda Moon in a place no one could reach.
When Leland passed by again, I said, “You don’t have to be here. You can go with him.”
“Who else is going to do this?” He sounded so taxed. “Veda will get over it. Maybe not today, but eventually.” When I tried to touch him for comfort, he warned, “My son—my business.”
We waited for the local police. At that point Leland had to call it in. Leland also called the FBI, who would arrive later. The forensic team stretched yellow tape around tree trunks. Photographers with long lenses snapped every angle, and the pit was marked with a small yellow sandwich board with the number 1. I wish I’d been able to leave with Veda and Cindy, but the rest of us stayed behind so officers could interview and then dismiss us.
They asked everyone, “How did you know to look here?”
“Leland,” we all said. “He talked to Walter Gretsch.” The police would only speculate about what must have come up in those conversations.
The crowd petered out after they were dismissed. It was a quiet exodus. No one came back to Berkeley. I wished I’d been able to drive myself home. The same way that attending to every client reminded me of my own mortality, I felt closer to death now. I wanted to be alone. But my new rental car was parked at the Moon house, so I rode with Tesmer and Leland, knees cramped in the backseat.
Veda had left hours before we were able to drive back. Once the police came, we were overwhelmed by the flurry of activity and interviews. Now that we were headed back to Berkeley, I thought about the youngest Moon again. When he left, he seemed changed. The gravity of that girl’s remains seemed to eat at him worse than the phantom stench of Walter Gretsch. Without a hint of his usual defiance, I thought I’d detected a resignation in his face.
In the rearview, Leland locked on the oncoming road with a distressed squint. He said, “You made this happen.” For a second I thought this was an accusation, but then I realized he was thanking me. Even Tesmer looked over her shoulder and smiled.
I smiled halfheartedly. “I hope it was worth it.”
“You seem distant. What are you thinking about?”
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I answered honestly. “Veda.”
Tesmer had been messing with her phone the whole ride, and she checked it again. She said to her husband, “He hadn’t texted.”
“Does he usually?” I asked.
She seemed annoyed. “He does when I ask him to.” She tried to call her son, but the phone rang all the way to voicemail. She placed a hand over her heart and breathed deeply. It seemed all of us tensed at once.
Leland bit a knuckle. “Call Cindy.”
Cindy picked up when Tesmer called and confirmed that she’d dropped off Veda in Berkeley.
“Where are you?”
“My home,” she said through the speaker.
Leland accelerated.
When we reached Berkeley, he rolled fast into their driveway and skidded into park. Both doors flung open as the Moons spilled out of the car. Leland and Tesmer ran to their door. I was afraid to get out of the car.
Through the walls of the house, and through the glass of the car, the unmistakable scream of Leland Moon jolted me.
Chapter 17
I burst through their front door to find the living room vacant and the house still. I listened for a moment, but nothing made a sound. I lightly stepped through the hallway toward the bedrooms. A frayed black Persian runner softened my footsteps. All the doors were closed, which kept the sun out of the corridor.
The first door opened to the salmon bathroom I’d used that morning. The toilet bowl still showed streaks from a hasty towel wipe. Stray drops of water fell from the showerhead.
Emmanuel barked somewhere in the backyard, but I couldn’t hear people inside or outside.
I continued down the hall and tried the next doorknob, which sat loose in the bore hole with some of the gloss rubbed from the brass finish. I twisted slowly but the spring still whined. Inside I found a shallow closet with towels.
The next rattling knob revealed the master bedroom, where Leland and Tesmer slept. Not a trace of them. The windows looked out onto the backyard, and I saw Emmanuel trot in wide circles on the lawn, occasionally barking up at squirrels in the trees. Amid a predominantly white room, purple bed sheets stretched tight as a hotel mattress. A shallow trough indented the right side of the bed from where someone would have lain. The room connected to a private bathroom, which wafted a warm, damp musk. The mirror through the open door reflected an empty bathtub and deep blue tiles.
One more door remained at the darkest end of the hallway. This would have to Veda’s bedroom. My brain flickered with memories of medical calls, entering homes to find broken bodies on the floor and unique blood splashes. For just a moment, I flexed and released my muscles as if preparing for a terminus, anything to steel myself before I turned the knob and found whatever scene I would never be able to forget.
I pushed open the door. Veda’s room contained no humans. His running shoes had been kicked off on the gray carpet, one tipped on its side. A sweaty long-sleeve jersey had been dropped in a wad like a used tissue. The room was painted olive green, the same shade as the station wagon once owned by Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm. Unlike his parents, Veda drew his shades to block out the sun. The room stank with alkaline fumes from a young man who was sexually active with himself. Dresser drawers spilled out clothing. The posters on the walls featured graffiti art, one of which had been stylized to look like a vintage war propaganda poster featuring a monkey in a Mao hat. This wasn’t the bedroom of a young man, but a boy’s bedroom.
Above me, the ceiling groaned.
From upstairs, Leland let out a stifled scream, sounding as if he’d been holding it back for some time. A second voice barked something too muffled for me to understand. I ran back down the hall and scrambled up the steps.
The staircase to the office was coated in loose papers, and when I ascended to the landing, those papers littered the carpeting like crispy forest leaves. Maps had been torn off the corkboards so fast, pushpins still tacked up shreds. The files formerly stacked on Leland’s desk had been torn into confetti and cast across the floor.
I suspected that Veda had come up there and destroyed his father’s work when he came home, punishment for having kept his trauma so fresh for so long. At the top step I found a smashed photo frame. The frame had contained the paper from the post office, where years ago Veda had written his name and freed himself. Now it was lost among the rest of the debris.
The family gathered at the opposite end of the office, where the spare bed sat by the far window. Leland lay on the carpet, bleeding. Flat on his back, the same way I first met him in Clayton. His hand pressed against a large red wound in his abdomen. Tesmer kneeled by his head, and Veda stood over them both, a dark silhouette against the late afternoon sun.
In the corner, where the old spider webs clung under the eaves, stood Helena Mumm. Her nose crooked from when I’d broken it, and bruises hung under both eyes. Helena hadn’t seen a doctor to have it bandaged, or felt the need to cover up the injury.
She swayed from side to side, switching her weight from the prosthetic to the real foot. The floor moaned with each movement. Her left foot, the real foot, stepped on Leland’s semiautomatic pistol. She wore the same tropical dress she’d had on outside San Sebastián when she had visited her brother. I wondered if she wore it to keep her brother’s smell on her. Veda would be able to smell it too, but sallow as he appeared, I neither saw nor smelled evidence that he had vomited.
Helena Mumm held a revolver in her left hand and a chef’s knife in her right. The knife was slicked with Leland’s blood. Her chest heaved as she wiped the blade clean on her dress. She kept her chin tucked, and her eyes burned under her brows. She was both feral and mountainous.
Helena’s pliable expression cast loving looks at Veda and boiling rage at the rest of us. When she saw me, she said, “Scum,” and spat on the carpet. In her next breath she sweetened for Veda. “Is she related?”
Veda forced a reply. “Does she look related?”
“You can never tell these days. Distant cousin, in-law—”
“She’s not family,” he said.
“Family,” Helena said to herself. From her inflection, I guessed she had considered this word’s assorted meanings. Perhaps she and Veda had even discussed it before we arrived. She might have spoken to him in that wistful tone she used when I first met her.
Veda seemed too terrified to move. The whites of his eyes were as wide as the night he peed himself at the dinner table.
She pointed the knife at us. “I went to pick up Walter’s body. You know they went ahead and burned him without my say-so? Now all I got is ashes.” The knife point waggled loosely like a twiddling pencil, so light in her hands. “What, do you think I’m stupid? I wouldn’t know what happened? Trash, all of you. Thought you were better than us. Thought I wouldn’t find you.”
I eased my cell phone out of my pocket, but for a diabetic in a dark room, she had keen eyes. “Doesn’t matter if you call the police. It’ll be over by the time they get here.” She was drawn back to Leland when he gasped from the pain. “He was our son, you know. We raised him. That was my man…” She gestured to Veda Moon. “This boy’s real daddy.”
Tesmer’s eyes darted everywhere, searching for a weapon or a shield. I caught her eyeing the gun under Helena’s foot. Helena scolded us, “You couldn’t just let him be. You had put him down like an animal.” In her rage, Helena intentionally let slip her poised manner of speech, and spoke in a tough accent so she could throw her primal disgust in our faces. “Well, I come for you now. I’m a-finish it. You want to have it all out in in private? I’m a-finish it in private.”
She barreled toward Tesmer and Leland. Her hulking mass shook with each step, but she moved faster than I’d have predicted a woman her size could move. She didn’t choose to shoot them. She intended to use the knife, and she held it blade up at her waist.
I was too far away to rush her. If I tried to charge her, she’d probably shoot me as if shooing away a bug. I didn’t mean enough for her to want to
cut me.
Veda stepped in front of his parents and straddled his father’s knees, and this intervention brought Helena Mumm to a shuddering standstill.
His face was calm and his voice easy as he said, “Come on, Mama.” That voice. That sickening, nightmarish baby voice he’d used at the dinner table. Tesmer grimaced when she heard it; the surreality of that voice coming out confused and horrified her. Leland’s agony consumed him too much for a strong reaction, but he winced too. But this was the tone that Helena wanted to hear, the sound of a young boy cooing to his mother.
Helena lowered the knife.
Tesmer gasped, fighting not to debase herself with sniveling.
The big woman was captivated by the entrancing stare of Veda Moon, and by his soothing, infantile tone. “Come on, Mama.”
I inched closer, until I’d entered the room too far to dive down the stairs if Helena decided to fire at me. The closer I got, the easier it would be for her to shoot me. She only needed marginally decent aim, and she likely had six shots to work with.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Veda myself, as he lifted his arm and touched the woman’s face. “It’s all right, Mama,” he soothed.
Helena gaped, her arms atremble at being so touched. She couldn’t stop from leaning her cheek into his fingers. Her face brightened. “I missed you,” she croaked.
“I missed you too,” Veda said in his baby voice. He drew her bulk into his arms. He was such a thin young man, but he managed to wrap his long arms around her easily and kissed the top of her head. She snuggled into his shoulder, whimpering with gratitude. Tears dripped onto his jersey.
“We don’t need this, Mama,” he said. He stroked the hand that held the gun.
I stalked two steps closer.
