Cemetery Lake

PART II
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The city is white and cold and full of long shadows. The air is like ice. The heater is strong enough so only the edges of my windshield have frosted over, but not strong enough to stop the middle of it from fogging. There are circular smear marks from where I’ve wiped it with my hand. My drink seems to be keeping the cold at bay much more effectively than the heater.

It’s June now and Winter has arrived. The grass has become crisp with frost and cracks like glass underfoot. The shadows of the cement markers are longer than they were two months ago when I fell into the lake. At the moment the air is deathly still. The trees are motionless, caught in a snapshot. Nothing out here is moving. The church looks uninviting, as if the desperately cold temperature inside has convinced even God to move out. But it’s not completely empty. Father Julian is in there. Somewhere.

I take another sip. My throat burns. I shiver.

The clock on my dashboard is off by an hour because I never got around to changing it when daylight saving ended back in April. It says nine a.m., and I know that means I have to add an hour or perhaps subtract one-I can’t remember which. Not that it matters.

I watch the police car in the rearview mirror as it rolls to a stop behind me, the gravel twisting and grating beneath the wheels. Nothing happens for about thirty seconds as the occupants wait in the warmth. Then the doors open. The two men approach. I roll down the window just enough to speak through. The winter morning seizes on the moment and floods the car with such savage cold air that every joint in my body starts to ache.

“Morning, Tate,” the taller of the men says, using just the right tone to suggest he’s ready to haul my ass down to the cinder-block hotel. His words form tiny pools of fog in the air.

“I thought it was afternoon.”

“You can’t be here.”

“My daughter is buried here,” I say. “That gives me the right.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“This is public property.”

“There’s a restraining order against you, Tate,” he says. “You know that. You can’t come within one hundred meters of Father Julian.”

“I’m not within a hundred meters of him.”

“Yes you are.”

“I don’t see him,” I say.

“That’s because he’s inside.”

“But it would’ve been illegal for me to go to check, don’t you think?”

“What I think is that you’re doing your best to get arrested.”

“Then you need better thoughts. Shit like that will only bring you down.”

He nods, but he’s no longer looking at me, he’s looking at what’s in my hand. “Is that what I think it is?” He’s looking at my Styrofoam coffee cup that doesn’t have coffee in it.

“Don’t know. It depends on what you’re thinking. You’re a whole lot more negative than I gave you credit for.”

He looks over at his partner, then back down at me. “Jesus, Tate, it’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?”

“It’s happy hour somewhere in the world.”

“Then coming with us isn’t really going to set you back.”

They open the door for me and I step outside. My breath forms clouds in the air. The gravel crunches beneath my feet, tiny pieces of frost snapping between them, and the trees that were ever so still while I was sitting down seem to lunge toward me as I walk. The officers escort me to the back of their car and I have to reach out and grab hold of it to stop from falling over. Then they take the bourbon off me. Hell, what next? First I lose my family, now I lose my ability to drink?

The police car is warmer than my own, and the view somewhat better since the windshield isn’t iced over. The drive doesn’t include any conversation, and I pass the time by looking down at my feet and telling myself not to be sick since the car seems to be swaying all over the place. At the station we ride up an elevator that seems to move way too fast and I have to grab a wall. Then the men march me past dozens of sets of curious eyes. I don’t meet any of them; I just glance at their looks of disappointment before reaching an interrogation room.

They sit me down in front of a desk that in another life I used to sit on the other side of. They close the door and I stand back up only to find that it’s locked. I walk around for a bit before deciding I might as well sit back down. I know the procedure. I know they’re going to make me wait before sending somebody in. I need to use the bathroom, and if they wait too long I have no reservations about pissing in the corner. Why should I? If I can kill people, I can do anything.

It takes forty minutes before Detective Inspector Landry comes in. He’s carrying only one cup of coffee that I know isn’t for me, and a folder that he sits on the desk, but keeps closed. He looks like he hasn’t slept in about a week, and there are dark smudges beneath his eyes. He still smells of cigarette smoke and coffee. He looks stressed. He’s been a busy man with all the rest of the bullshit that’s been going on in the city while he’s been trying to figure out how those bodies got in the water. Other murders, other cases.

He sits down and stares at me. “Explain this obsession to me once again?” he asks.

“It’s not an obsession. Am I free to leave?”

“What do you think? You violated a restraining order. You were in an automobile, behind the wheel, while under the influence.”

“I haven’t been given a breath test.”

“You want to take one?” he asks.

“What would be the point? I wasn’t driving.”

“But I could argue that you drove there drunk. Or were about to leave drunk. Your keys were in the ignition.”

“You could argue that, and I could argue that you’re an asshole.”

“Fuck it, Tate, why the hell don’t you try to help yourself here? Huh? Why don’t you capitalize on the fact that right at this moment I’m the best friend you have in this city.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you made the call and gave us the names of the other two girls. That got us started.”

“That was two months ago,” I say. It was the same day I contacted Alicia North, the best friend of Rachel’s that David had told me about. Alicia North hadn’t heard of Father Julian, hadn’t heard of Bruce or Sidney Alderman, hadn’t heard of anything at all that could have helped me. It was also the same day I started cracking lots of seals on lots of bottles of alcohol in order to push the visuals I was having of a lifeless Sidney Alderman into the back of my mind. It was the first day after I had killed him.

“Yeah, it was two months ago, but I’m a giving guy and right now I’m giving you some goodwill. See, the way we’ve been seeing it, Sidney Alderman did a runner the same day you told me you had the names of the girls and a day before somebody rang the hotline with the anonymous information. Since then there haven’t been any more missing girls.”

“So I’m in your good books and Alderman is in your bad books. Fine. You going to let me go?”

“The problem,” he says, and he makes a face when he sips at his coffee, “is Father Julian. Somehow he fits into all of this, and that’s a problem. For us, for him, and for you. If you thought the case was over, you’d be at home right now. You wouldn’t be following Julian. And if you believed Alderman was guilty, you’d be out there looking for him.”

“Now you’re the one who seems obsessed.”

“Strange that Alderman didn’t wait to see his son buried. He didn’t take his car. He didn’t pack any clothes. That adds up badly, Tate, and I keep coming to the conclusion that you know something about that. How many times have we pulled you in here now?”

“If you’ve got a point, just make it.”

“How about you take this chance to explain things to me, and maybe I can start to figure out what in the hell is happening to you. You’re more drunk each time we drag you in. This is the third time since the restraining order was issued a week ago. Anybody else and they’d be kept in custody. They’d be facing time. There ain’t going to be any favors if we bring you in for a fourth. Come on, man, you know sending an ex-cop into prison isn’t going to be pretty.”

“Can I go now?” I ask.

“No. Tell me about Father Julian.”

“What about him?”

“You’re practically camping outside his church in your car most nights. That booze is fucking up your brain because you can’t figure out what a restraining order means. He says you’re stalking him, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.” He takes another sip of coffee, puts it down, and leans forward. “Unless I’m missing something here, it looks like you want to end up in jail. Is that it?”

I shrug as if I don’t care, but the truth is I don’t want to end up in jail. If I wanted that, I’d tell him all about Sidney Alderman and where they could find him.

“So what is it about him that makes you want to sit outside his church watching?” he asks.

I try to maintain eye contact with him, but say nothing.

“Come on, Tate, give yourself a chance,” he says. “We’re through playing games. Next time we bring you in here, you’re staying. You get my point?”

“You’ve said it twice. I got it each time.”

“Yet here you are,” he says.

“Look, I’ve got nothing else to say.”

“Well, the opposite goes for Father Julian. He has plenty to say about you.”

“I doubt that.”

“Why’s that? You think anything you’ve said to him is covered by priest-parishioner confidentiality? You’re right-to a point. He says anything you’ve told him he can’t share. But what he can share is his concern. He said two months ago you went in there and asked him to help you find Bruce Alderman. We all know where that led, right? Next thing we know Bruce Alderman shows up in your office dead.”

“Look, Landry, he didn’t show up dead, okay? It’s not like he shot himself before walking into my office.”

“The following day you go see Father Julian again, this time asking for help in finding Sidney Alderman. It’s the same day you call me telling me you know who the missing girls are. Father Julian said that if he knew where Sidney was, he’d tell him to stay clear of you. Why do you think he’d say that?”

I look down at my thumb and the deep scarring from the bite that Sidney Alderman took. Sometimes it still hurts.

“You think Father Julian is guilty of something?” he asks.

“What would he be guilty of?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You tell me. You think he killed those girls?”

“This is bullshit,” I say.

“He knows something about you, something he wouldn’t tell me. But I’m figuring it out,” he says, and he runs his hand across the cover of the folder he brought into the room with him. The folder is thick, and the pages between its covers could be blank for all I know, though Landry wants me to believe they’re full of circumstantial facts that any moment are going to line up in the right order for him to arrest me for something.

I say nothing.

Landry fills in the silence. “See, it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. Yours are easy, because it’s a simple time line. The last two years, Tate, you’ve had a lot happen. The accident with your family. I sympathize with you-nobody should lose what you’ve lost.”

I still say nothing. I don’t want to help Landry get to wherever he is leading.

“What do you think ever happened to Quentin James?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You seem calm about that, Tate. Me, I’d be angry as hell. I don’t think I’d have resigned myself to the fact that he got away. I’d be jumping up and down and phoning the police and phoning the media and I’d be out there looking for him. I’d be annoying the hell out of everyone-asking questions, putting pressure on anybody I could to make finding Quentin James a priority. But not you.”

“Maybe he’ll show up one day and justice can be served.”

“If it hasn’t been already. It’s hard to go missing for that long, especially in this country. Then two months ago things change again. People die. They go missing. And what happens? You start drinking. You start showing up at the church drunk. You harass Father Julian. You hound him with questions. A week ago he files a restraining order against you and you just ignore it. Want to know what I think?”

“Not unless you’re going to charge me with something. Otherwise, I’m leaving.”

I stand up. The interrogation room sways a little. I reach down and grab the desk.

“Sit back down, Tate, before you pass out.”

“Charge me or I’m getting a lawyer.”

“You violated a restraining order,” he says. “That means we can charge you.”

“Then do it. You think I care?”

“You know, I don’t really think you do. And that’s the problem.” Landry gets up. He picks up the folder and his coffee, and he walks to the door. He juggles them so he can manage the handle. “I can see I’m wasting my time here. But let me warn you, don’t go back to the church. You go anywhere near Father Julian and I’m going to have you arrested. There’s going to be no more of this bullshit, right? No more of us feeling bad at the shit you’ve had to go through, no more of the people here feeling sorry for you and searching inside themselves to still care. You’re falling apart, and any loyalty you built up here is rapidly dissipating. You want to stay out of jail? Then you need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself and figure out what’s wrong. You get me?”

I get him.

“And for Christ’s sake, Tate, go home and take a shower. You smell like a brewery.”