Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

There are no police cars parked outside the Tyler house. They’ve either been and gone or are on their way. There is, though, a car parked up the driveway that wasn’t there last night. Probably the husband. He’d have got the call seconds after I left last night and rushed home. He didn’t put the car away. Didn’t get up this morning to go and move it. He’s waiting inside with his wife, waiting for the news. Waiting to hear about his dead daughter.

I check my phone. It has one bar of battery life, three bars of signal, but it still hasn’t been connected to the network.

The door is opened before I get to it. Patricia Tyler’s wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday. She probably slept in them. Or hasn’t slept at all.

“Something’s happening, isn’t it,” she says.

“Yes,” I tell her. There’s no way around it.

“We’re finding out today, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know yesterday? When you came to my house, when I let you inside. Did you know my daughter was dead?”

“I suspected.”

“Yet you said nothing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” she says, and her voice is calm and even, tired-sounding. “They called fifteen minutes ago. They didn’t say anything, but I could tell. They’re on their way to speak to us.”

There is nothing I can say to make her feel any better, so I say nothing. I wait her out, knowing she hasn’t finished, but also knowing I can’t wait too long-the police are going to be here soon.

“You’re sorry,” she says, “yet you came in anyway. You made me believe there was a chance my daughter was still alive.”

I didn’t make her believe anything. I could have shown up with her daughter’s hand in a plastic bag along with the ring and she’d still have held out hope. I think she’s still holding out for it now. “Can I come in?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A man killed himself in my office,” I say. “It was last night. He put a gun to his head and told me he had nothing to do with what happened to Rachel, and then he pulled the trigger.”

She doesn’t look shocked. Doesn’t look satisfied. She just looks tired, as if anything and everything is too much for her now. “I saw you on the news,” she says. “It didn’t make you look good. Do you think he killed Rachel? Did you kill him for what he did to her?”

“I didn’t kill him,” I tell her. “And I don’t know if he’s the one who hurt Rachel. You can never have justice for what happened, but finding who did this is as close to it as you can get. But if he was telling the truth, then there is still somebody out there who has to pay. That’s why I’m here. For Rachel’s sake.”

“For Rachel’s sake,” she repeats, and there is no inflection in her voice, and I can’t get a read on her reason for repeating it. “That reporter,” she goes on. “She said your daughter was killed. So you know. And maybe that pain we share will take you further than the police. Maybe it will make you fight harder for Rachel.”

“It will,” I tell her.

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

She leads me through to the lounge. Her husband, an overweight guy with gray hair and dark shadows beneath his eyes, stands up from the couch, seems about to shake my hand, then pulls it back as if the contact will taint the news he’s about to get.

“Were you the one who found her?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“How. .” He looks down, studies the carpet for a few moments as if it’s going to save him from something, then carries on without looking back up. “How’d she look?”

It’s the same question the boyfriend asked. They want to hear that she looked at peace, that she still looked good for a girl who was murdered two years ago. Only she didn’t look good. She looked like she died hard.

“Like she was asleep,” I say, hoping they’ll believe the lie, hoping that when they plead with the detectives to see her body they won’t be allowed to.

“It’s hard to believe she’s really dead,” he says, looking back up. His face is rigid, void of hope. Except for his eyes. His eyes are haunting. I have to look away. “It ought to be easier,” he adds. “You’d think two years would have prepared us for this.”

He probably knows exactly how many days it’s been. I think of my wife and daughter, and I think about what the last two years have prepared me for. Fate came along and destroyed the Tyler family, and a week later it destroyed mine.

“People keep saying that time heals all wounds,” he says. “They say we should get on with our lives. Like we’re just supposed to forget all about Rachel. Like we’re supposed to give up on wondering. Give up on our hope. They don’t get it. They think it’s like losing a puppy or misplacing car keys. They talk without experience; they offer advice, thinking they know what we need to hear, sure that the best thing for us is simply to move on.”

“But you know all of that, don’t you,” Patricia Tyler says.

“Why are you here?” her husband asks.

“For Rachel.”

“Shame you weren’t there for her two years ago,” he says.

“Michael. .” his wife says.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just that, well. .” He doesn’t finish. He sits back down on the couch and starts to look around the room as though he’s misplaced something.

“I’ve spoken to David,” I tell them.

“You spoke to David?” Patricia says.

“He said that Rachel liked to shop.”

Patricia looks to her husband. They stare at each other, the kind of look a couple shares when trying to decide whether to let the rest of the world in on the big secret. It’s an innocent statement, which I’m sure will have an innocent answer, but they’re both looking for a different question and answer here-they’re wanting the answers to what happened to their daughter. They’re trying to figure out how her shopping got her killed.

“Sure, she shopped,” she says.

“Did Rachel use a credit card?”

“The Goddamn bank sent us a bill,” Michael Tyler says. “They told us if we didn’t pay it they were going to get the debt collectors onto us. We explained Rachel had gone missing. Hell, it was in the news, so they already knew. Only they didn’t care. Their argument was nobody had any proof of what happened to Rachel and they shouldn’t end up footing the bill.”

“It was awful.” Patricia Tyler’s tears start to come now. For a few moments she does nothing to try to stop them, just lets them roll down her face as if she hasn’t noticed them. Then she raises a handkerchief and tries to dab them away, but they keep on coming. “Can you imagine that? Our daughter is missing, possibly dead-or, as it turns out, she was. Or is.”

“Both, actually,” her husband interjects, and he looks close to tears too, and he shrugs a little, as if unsure why he made the comment. I know the moment I leave they will fall into an embrace neither of them will ever want to break.

“And those heartless thugs at the bank register us with a debt collection agency,” Patricia says, “and we had to pay it. Can you believe that?”

“Do you have that last credit card statement?”

“We have everything,” she says.

“Can I see it?”

“Why?” she asks.

“It might tell me where Rachel was that day, or in the days before.”

“The police already have a copy of it,” she says. “It didn’t lead them anywhere.”

“But it might lead me somewhere.”

She doesn’t argue the point. She just walks out of the room, leaving me and her husband alone in uncomfortable silence until she returns with the bill, which takes her two minutes. I keep waiting to hear the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. If Landry catches me here, he’s going to be truly pissed off. She hands me the bank statement. I scroll down. Clothes, CDs, more clothes. Gas.

“These are all standard places she went?” I ask.

“They’re on all of her bills,” Patricia says.

“Where was her car found?”

“At the university,” Michael says. “It was where she always parked it.”

“And the florist?” I ask, stopping my finger next to the purchase she made a week before she disappeared.

“She bought flowers for her grandmother,” Patricia says.

“Anything else here stand out?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says.

“Okay. Can I take this with me?”

“Don’t lose it,” she says.

She walks me to the door. Michael Tyler stands up, seems about to join us, but sits back down. The hallway is warm and there seem to be more pictures of Rachel hanging up than there were when I was here last night, as if the Tylers thought they could use them to keep the bad news at bay.

“The man last night. The reporter said his name was Bruce Alderman. You haven’t said it, but you think he’s innocent, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

I think of the look in Bruce’s eyes before he pulled the trigger. I think of the key in his pocket with my name on the envelope. “I don’t think he did it,” I admit.

“Will you find who did?”

“I’ll try. I promise.”

I’m halfway down the walkway when it strikes me. I turn back around and Patricia is still standing there watching me, watching the person who two years after her daughter went missing came along and told them all was lost. “The flowers for her grandmother. Was there an occasion?”

“My mother died a week before Rachel disappeared. It was one of the reasons the police thought she’d run away. Rachel and my mom were close. For the first few years my mother helped raise Rachel. The police assumed she was depressed and needed to get away. She bought flowers to take out to the cemetery for the funeral.”

“Which cemetery?”

“Woodland Estates.”

Woodland Estates. The cemetery with the lake. The cemetery with my daughter.

The cemetery where Rachel Tyler was found.