Over Tumbled Graves

by Jess Walter

  “Let’s see ’em,” he said.

  Caroline’s hands were pulled tight into fists. “What?”

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “That’s my balcony.” He pointed to her chest. “People expect me to put on a good show. So let’s see what you got.” He had several strands of beads in his lap and he held one up for her.

  Caroline just stared at him.

  He reached for her shirt. “Come on. If you afraid to show me, then what good you gonna do me up there?”

  She pushed his hand aside and spoke clearly and plainly. “There’s a girl up there who looks about sixteen years old.”

  The guy just stared at her.

  “And there’s a forty-year-old guy undressing and fondling her for the crowd.”

  Still, he stared.

  “I’m an off-duty police officer and I’m hoping to stay off-duty. So what do you say we take care of this and you keep me from making a phone call?”

  The guy sighed, got off his chair, and lowered the rope. They climbed the steps and emerged in a dark hallway with ornate wooden doors on each side. At the end of the hallway she could see the silhouettes of swaying dancers and hear the cheering below.

  The doorman chattered as they moved down the hall. “I can tell ya, they ain’t no underage females in here. We card very aggressive, ma’am, very aggressive.”

  They emerged on the narrow balcony, crowded with people swaying and swinging mugs of beer and daiquiris, the women lifting their shirts and reaching for strings of beads thrown from the street. Caroline pushed past the doorman and through the tightly packed group of people. She found the plump girl and her friend, but couldn’t find the girl who just a minute ago had been on the verge of passing out.

  She glanced down at the team, still gathered on the street. Down there, they were so tall, their body language so insistent and demanding. But from this angle, their upturned faces were the simple faces of boys. She turned away.

  “Har!” A thin guy in glasses stepped in front of her, revealing the wide smile of the hopelessly drunk. “Har-rar-u?” Caroline squeezed past him.

  “I don’t see no sixteen-year-olds,” the doorman said stupidly.

  Caroline looked around the hallway. “What’s behind these doors.”

  “Hotel rooms, ma’am.”

  “You have a master key?”

  He grinned out one side of his mouth. “You wanna go into all them rooms, I ’spect you gonna have to make that phone call.”

  Caroline left the doorman and returned to the balcony. She found the plump girl, who had adopted the more patient dance of her friend, one breast at a time. Caroline grabbed her arm and she turned nervously, as if she expected to see her mother.

  Caroline yelled into her ear above the music. “There was a girl standing next to you! Wearing jeans and a T-shirt! Very drunk, like she was going to pass out!”

  The girl turned to face Caroline, her cheap plastic beads jangling. “Is she in trouble or something?”

  “I don’t know!” Caroline said. “Did you see her leave? With an older guy?”

  “They went downstairs for another drink!” The girl smiled. “To loosen her up!”

  Caroline left the balcony again and ran past the doorman, who was now bored with the whole thing. “That it, ma’am?”

  Caroline spoke to him without slowing down. “If that girl is harmed in any way, I’ll have this place shut down.”

  The doorman hurried to catch up but didn’t say anything.

  At the top of the stairs, Caroline paused and took in the crowded bar. Thick wooden beams held up the ceiling and made it hard to see the whole room. She finished descending the stairs and pressed through the crowd, from table to table, until she reached a small booth on the wall facing Bourbon Street. Sitting at the booth were two couples, facing each other, including the man and woman that Caroline had seen on the balcony. The woman was older than Caroline had imagined, maybe twenty-five, the man younger, maybe thirty-five. They were both laughing as they related for their friends their brief moment of balcony stardom. The woman was covered in Mardi Gras beads. Her head bobbed drunkenly as she spoke and a white string of spittle connected her lips, but she was very much conscious, very much an adult.

  “It made me seasick being up there,” she said, slurring the words to something like thea-thick. “Fucker hasn’t been that interested in my tits since our honeymoon!”

  The man defended himself. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to go up there…”

  “I’m kiddin’, babe.” The drunk woman fell against her husband’s shoulder and he kissed her gently on the top of her head.

  The husband noticed Caroline then, standing at their table. He turned toward her. “Hey,” he said, “can we get another round?”

  Caroline nodded, then walked away from the table and left the bar. Outside, she made her way down the sidewalk until she hit the first cross street, left Bourbon, and walked with her hands in her pockets down an increasingly quiet side street, past pawnshops and bookstores, the noise and grate of Bourbon Street fading behind her. She walked until she’d reached the Cafe du Monde, the all-night coffee shop in the French Market, where she sat and caught her breath and had a cafe au lait, thinking about the unreliability of human perception and memory. She thought of a robbery victim she’d once interviewed: The woman spent ten minutes describing the man who’d broken into her house, and it wasn’t until Caroline held up the police artist’s sketch that she realized it matched almost perfectly a photograph on the mantel of the woman’s dead son. She supposed some people see what they want, others what they dread.

  Caroline sat in the wrought-iron chair, watching the waiters in their dirty paper hats. The air was moist and smelled slightly septic. About twenty people were in the cafe—groups of men taking the edge off good drunks, couples in serious conversation, lonely men with newspapers and novels and sketchbooks. Men. Not monsters.

  Caroline finished her coffee and left, walking until she reached the levee along the northwest bank of the Mississippi. A light wind moved with the river, seemingly at the same pace, stirring the thick, soupy air. She was relieved to be along a river, even one as broad and languid as this. Maybe she could stay here the rest of the night.

  After her father had left the family, Caroline’s mother suffered bouts of insomnia that became progressively worse. Caroline remembered the heightened anxiety of her mother’s 2 A.M. phone calls. She would begin speaking before Caroline even answered, so that it seemed her mother was starting mid-sentence, some hyperspeed version of herself, apologizing for a long-forgotten remark, obsessing over the menu for an approaching holiday meal at which it would just be she and Caroline, offering names—boy names and girl names—for Caroline’s future children. Maxwell and Corinna. Blake and Sandra. Caroline would listen patiently as her mother exhausted two or three topics and then started on television programs or something she’d seen that day in the newspaper. “Go to sleep,” Caroline would say.

  “Can’t,” her mother would answer, “too tired to sleep,” her voice pained and manic, “too much to do.”

  Caroline’s own insomnia had begun after her mother died, when she awoke one morning at three and imagined the phone was ringing. In her confusion, Caroline imagined it was her mother on the phone, asking whether Caroline thought soup could be served in the pasta bowls she’d brought home from Genoa, or whether Tracy was a better name for a boy baby or a girl baby. But when she got up the phone wasn’t ringing, and she couldn’t help thinking she’d missed the call somehow.

  Since that night, Caroline had stayed awake all night at least once a week. She wouldn’t mind so much, but when she got up the phone was never ringing and her mother was never on the other end. So she paced around or wrote notes to herself or went for walks, until she was raw with fatigue, ready to debate the names of children who would never exist or to plan the Labor Day dinner. Or, she supposed, to mistake a married couple on a balcony for a man molesting a girl.

  Caro
line had mentioned her insomnia to Dr. Ewing, the police psychologist, who told Caroline it was perfectly normal considering the pressure she’d been under: her mother’s death, her relationship with Joel, the trouble with Lenny Ryan and Thick Jay, her unresolved guilt over shooting the wife beater six years ago, and, of course, this case.

  This case. It had its own irrational and manic voices—Dupree, Jacqueline, and now Blanton—which had replaced the voice of her mother’s insomnia. These voices kept Caroline awake tonight, Blanton stressing the elemental importance of the male sexual fantasy, Jacqueline talking about the man who pulled her hair, Dupree’s theory of Lenny Ryan spinning out of control like a top. And other voices, ripples on her subconscious.

  Her brother: “I’m not like you, Caroline.” And her father: “You all right, baby?”

  She walked until she reached a park bench overlooking the Mississippi. From here, the river didn’t seem so different from the Spokane. All waters are connected, of course. Burn might as well be in this river as in the Spokane, or the Nile or the Indian Ocean for that matter. And her mother too. Eventually, the water rises up and claims us all and we float away. That fact was inescapable in a city like New Orleans, a city built below the sea. In a city like that, you can’t bury people in the ground and so you shove the bodies into family crypts, two-hundred-year-old marble and granite casings that might hold the remains of a hundred people. They just open the crypt, slide the old dust and bones to the back, and put in the next body. The oldest cemetery in New Orleans was called the City of the Dead and from a distance, that’s what a person saw, a skyline of crypts and statuary that became, up close, a rough assemblage of exposed brick and chipped granite. The cemetery had been full for years and was useful now only as a tourist attraction and a place for muggers to hide in the shadows of the crypts.

  Let the criminals have it, Caroline thought. It doesn’t matter. Eventually, the water prevails, even in cities of the dead. Eventually, the water comes for us all, washes over the statues and through the crypts, topples the headstones and tumbles the graves. Caroline sat down on the park bench, too tired to sleep. There was so much to do. She curled her legs up and began rocking, turning her face to the breeze.

  29

  Spokane Police Dept.

  Office of the Assistant Chief

  Meeting Transcript

  Date: 6 June, 0800 hours

  Case: Serial Murder Task Force

  Present at Meeting: Asst. Chief James Tucker, Major Crimes Lt. Charles Branch, Major Crimes Sgt. Alan Dupree

  [Begin transmission]

  TUCKER: Okay. Is this thing on? Okay. For the record, this is Assistant Chief James Tucker and—do you want to—

  BRANCH: No, why don’t you go ahead.

  TUCKER: —and from Major Crimes, Lieutenant Branch. We’re waiting for Sergeant Dupree to review his status as lead investigator of the serial killer task force and, specifically, his behavior—

  BRANCH: Can we say his performance instead?

  TUCKER: Yeah, that’s better. Yeah. His performance, okay.

  BRANCH: Because I think this is going to be hard enough without getting into, you know—

  TUCKER: Personal things. Right. Okay.

  BRANCH: Because he’s had some personal difficulties lately and I just think—

  TUCKER: Yeah, I heard. Left his wife, huh?

  BRANCH: —that the more we stay away from that—

  TUCKER: I couldn’t agree more.

  BRANCH: He’s going to have enough trouble taking this—

  TUCKER: Yeah. I can see that.

  BRANCH: Okay.

  TUCKER: And you don’t think Detective Spivey should be present for this?

  BRANCH: Oh, God no. Not unless you want to clean the blood off your desk.

  TUCKER: Okay. You want some coffee?

  BRANCH: No. Thanks.

  TUCKER: Well, I guess we’ll just wait for Sergeant Dupree.

  [End transmission]

  [Begin transmission]

  DUPREE: Hi, honey. I’m home.

  TUCKER: Please come in, Sergeant.

  DUPREE: Probably be easier if I stayed out here and you just shot me from your desk there.

  BRANCH: Hi, Alan.

  DUPREE: Sit here?

  TUCKER: That’s fine.

  DUPREE: Look, I know my report was the wrong place for that joke. I want to apologize and…what’s with the microphone?

  TUCKER: With your permission, we’d like to tape this meeting because of the nature of the discussion.

  DUPREE: What nature is that?

  TUCKER: Well, we try to tape personnel meetings having to do with employment status. As a precaution.

  DUPREE: What the [expletive deleted] I’m being fired?

  BRANCH: No one’s firing you, Alan. We’re just trying to get a handle on this investigation. Sit down.

  TUCKER: At this time, I am providing Sergeant Dupree with—

  DUPREE: [Unintelligible]

  TUCKER: —a copy of a memo dated 5 June relating to—

  DUPREE: Six pages? You have six pages?

  BRANCH: Alan. Sit down. Let’s just get this finished. Okay?

  TUCKER: —relating to his performance as lead investigator of the task force investigating a series of recent homicides. As you can see, Sergeant, under the first heading, we have uncooperative and confrontational behavior toward colleagues and investigators from other agencies. Now below that heading are items one through nine detailing Sergeant Dupree’s uneven and occasionally improper conduct in this area. And so on.

  DUPREE: What’s this one? Confrontational attitude toward other agencies?

  TUCKER: I don’t think we need to go over each point.

  DUPREE: Just tell me about this one.

  TUCKER: I think it’s pretty clear. On 22 May, you sent the FBI a previously discarded lead that Lenny Ryan was seen caddying at a golf course in north Idaho and said that you couldn’t investigate it because to do so would mean crossing state lines.

  DUPREE: I thought it was funny. I thought the federales would appreciate it. I didn’t think they’d really waste a day looking into it. You’re punishing me for their stupidity?

  TUCKER: And after that, you ridiculed Agent Jerry Castle for investigating the lead, a lead that you sent to his office.

  DUPREE: [Unintelligible]

  TUCKER: At a subsequent task force meeting, you continued mocking Agent Castle by throwing a golf ball at his leg.

  DUPREE: Actually, I was aiming for Secret Agent Castle’s nuts, but the target was too small.

  BRANCH: Yeah, that’s a good idea, Alan. Just keep joking your way out of this.

  DUPREE: Where did this [expletive deleted] come from? What’s this one? Failure to properly record interviews?

  TUCKER: Our goal is not to go through each of these points, Sergeant Dupree. The entire report will be entered into the record of this meeting. So if we could—

  DUPREE: What’s this one? Failure to coordinate outside support? This is crazy.

  TUCKER: Again, our intent is not to go over this entire memorandum in this meeting, Sergeant Dupree.

  DUPREE: Failure to utilize necessary investigative techniques? What is that about?

  BRANCH: Damn it, Alan. The fact that you don’t even know what we’re talking about is half the problem. We applied for a ten-thousand-dollar grant for the FBI software that set up a computer database for analyzing and prioritizing evidence and you haven’t used it at all.

  DUPREE: I got tips coming in that Lenny Ryan left on a spaceship. You want me to put that in the computer so it can tell me that we should be looking for a little green man? Come on, tell me where this is coming from?

  TUCKER: What about the entomologist?

  DUPREE: The what?

  TUCKER: Another detective claims that you ignored his request to bring in an entomologist to analyze the insects and microorganisms on the victims’ bodies to gather a more accurate measure of the decomposition of the bodies.

  DUPREE
: Spivey. That [expletive deleted]. I should’ve known. Spivey didn’t get his bug doctor and so he came running to you. That little puke.

  BRANCH: This is a different kind of investigation, Alan. We’re not convinced you appreciate the full spectrum of investigative techniques at your disposal and maybe a detective with more recent investigative training—

  DUPREE: I appreciate how to be a cop! I appreciate when someone’s trying to clean me like a [expletive deleted] fish!

  BRANCH: Alan, even if these other complaints weren’t true, you have screwed up every chance to bring in a profiler—

  DUPREE: Bunch of voodoo crap.

  BRANCH: That’s what I’m talking about. Whatever you think of its effectiveness, this kind of case requires behavioral profiling. And your antagonistic attitude toward Agent McDaniel and Curtis Blanton has kept them from consulting on our case—

  DUPREE: My antagonistic attitude? Blanton told me to go [expletive deleted] myself until we got to [expletive deleted] double digits! My [expletive deleted] attitude?