Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I lie on my side and bring my knees to my chest and squirm around to bring my hands up under my feet. It doesn’t work. I roll around, but the plastic ties are securing my wrists, and there isn’t enough room to stretch my arms all the way around. I get back to my knees and sit down, stretch my legs out, and start rubbing them back and forth across a mossy rock. The moss scrapes away and exposes an edge for me to saw against. It takes only about a minute for the binding to snap through. I do the same with my wrists, then pull the syringe needle out of my arm. I toss it on the ground next to my busted cell phone.

I head in the same direction as the lawyer. My clothes are damp and cold. Donovan Green, if that’s his real name, may not have finished me off with a bullet, but that doesn’t mean I’m getting out of here alive. Unless I can rub some bandages together and make a fire, I’m going to freeze to death out here. The trees and ferns brush at me, scraping my hands and snagging my clothes. Small grazes lead to cuts and then to bleeding. My head is still throbbing, and my chest is sore from the Taser barbs. My hand hurts the most: the finger with the ripped-off nail feels as if it’s on fire.

The lawyer has left a path, and for a moment I wonder if Father Julian would suggest this is the path I created two years ago, the path in which there can be no redemption. I keep my eyes on the ground and follow the twin lines that have been cut into the dirt by my dragging feet. I figure he would have parked nearby, not wanting to drag me far in these conditions, and a moment later I hear a car pass by. I pick up the pace and break through some trees and onto a road. Red taillights are disappearing in the distance.

The mud has had a snowball effect on my shoes, and I kick and scrape them against a tree to break it off. With no other options, I dig my hands into my pockets and start walking. No other cars come past as I walk in the same direction as the one I saw. I still don’t even know where I am. My teeth are chattering and every minute or so my body gives an involuntary spasm that lasts a couple of seconds. Quentin James would have had a similar walk if I’d have let him, except his would have been in nicer conditions. I brought him out on a sunny day, a warm day, as sure as hell a nicer day to die than today.

I reach an intersection and a couple of cars go by. I wipe my sleeve at my face to clean away some blood. I start to have an idea where I am. Nobody pulls over to offer me a lift, and I don’t put my bite-scarred thumb out to ask for one.

The road heads toward the city and, eventually, toward home. It’d be a fifteen-minute trip if I was driving. Walking, it’s going to take me a few hours. At least. If I was driving I’d be doing eighty kilometers an hour out here. I figure at the very least I deserve to be walking. At the very least I’m lucky to be alive. And there’s that word again. Luck.

The day becomes evening and the evening is dark. The rain begins again. It gets heavy for a while and washes the mud and dirt down my body before lessening to a drizzle. My joints grow increasingly numb. My feet feel like slabs of ice. The walk is a sobering end to a day and to a way of life.

It’s almost midnight when I get home. I don’t have my keys and I hadn’t even thought about them until now. They’re in my car, and my car is in an impound lot somewhere, or maybe a wrecker’s yard. I sit down on the front step and lean against the door. I’m exhausted. The soles of my shoes have small stones and slivers of glass buried into the tread. I feel like I could fall asleep here. I feel like I want to cry.

I rest for a few minutes before getting up and walking through to the backyard. I grab a rag and a roll of duct tape from the garden shed, wrap the rag around a small rock, put the tape across the window to muffle the sound, then smash the glass.

While the shower warms up I find a bottle of bourbon and sit down in the living room. I wonder what Quentin James would have done had I let him walk home. Would he have taken a drink? I figure he’d have needed one. Would he have kept on drinking until one day he killed again? I carry the bottle into the kitchen. I grab a glass. I fill it to the brim and then I pour the rest of the bottle down the sink. I scour the house for more bottles. There are plenty of them, a few with just enough in them to make me feel warm if I allowed it. I tip them all down the sink, and then I drop every single empty in a recycling bin outside. I head back inside and stare at the one glass I filled.

I strip out of my clothes and throw them into the washing machine. The shower is still going, steam flooding into the hallway. I walk around the house, picking up other clothes I’ve worn over the last few months and I stuff as much as I can into the machine. I set it going. I stand in the kitchen with only a towel wrapped around me. I stare at the drink. I put my hand on the glass. It’s cold and smooth. Just one more drink and then I’m done. That’s all.

I have it halfway up to my lips when knocking comes from the front door. I set the glass back onto the counter. I head down the hallway. A red and blue light is arcing through the windows and lighting the walls. There are two possibilities. One I can live with. It means one of my neighbors made a call because they heard somebody breaking in. The second one means Emma, the sixteen-year-old girl I hurt last night, has died. Maybe I poured away all that bourbon too soon. I have the urge to run back to the kitchen and grab that last drink.

Instead I head to the door. I’m as nervous as hell when I open it. It’s Landry.

“You’re going to have to come with us, Tate,” he says, ruling out possibility number one.

“She’s dead, isn’t she,” I say.

“What? No, no, it’s not about that.”

“Then what?”

“Just get dressed, Tate,” he says. “We’ll talk about it at the station.”

“Talk about what?”

“I said we’ll talk about it at the station.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you unless you tell me what this is about,” I tell him.

He sighs. “It’s about Father Julian.”

“What? Look, this is bullshit. I haven’t been near him all day.”

“You’re coming with us.”

“It’s true. I’ve been in jail half the damn day, and I spent the other half with my lawyer. He can vouch for me.”

“Tate, it’s simple. Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

He sighs again, this time much deeper, and this time he slowly shakes his head to stress just how tiring he is finding me. “Come on, do you really want to play this game?”

“Humor me.”

“Okay, fine. We went to speak to Father Julian this afternoon. You remember Father Julian, right? He’s the man you’ve been stalking? Well, we were going to ask him if you were there last night on account of the fact we’re pretty sure you were. And I’m sure he would have said yes.”

“Would have?”

“See, that’s the problem, Tate. He’s dead. Somebody murdered him last night. And right now my money is on that somebody being you.”