Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“I know who you are.” The voice sounds a little familiar, but I can’t place it.

“Do you have something to confess?”

“You killed her, you know.”

“What are you talking about?” Father Julian’s voice has a rushed quality, as if he has just entered the confessional after running from the rectory.

“As if you strangled her yourself. What you do in life has consequences, wouldn’t you say, Father?”

“Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about doesn’t make sense.”

“All our actions have consequences, don’t they, Father. For all of us.”

“We need to be aware and responsible for our actions, yes, that’s true.”

“Even you, Father?”

A pause, and I can imagine Father Julian looking confused right here. “Do you have something to say?”

“Are there others?”

“Others?” Father Julian asks. So now he’s looking confused and shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Other children. Like me. Are there others like me.”

“We’re all children of God, no matter what our actions,” Julian says.

“I’m not talking about God.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m talking about you, Father Julian. I’m talking about your children. Are there more of us?”

“Oh my God,” Father Julian says, and now he’s no longer shaking his head. Instead he has a hand up to his mouth. All the confusion is slipping away. I imagine this moment was very real for him. As real a moment as any other.

“See, you do understand. Your actions have consequences, Father. Or should I say Dad?”

“I. . I don’t know who you are.”

“Would you like to know?”

“Of course! Of course I would!”

“I’m the man who just killed your daughter, Father. Her name was Rachel Tyler. She died slowly, Dad. She was my sister, and she died slowly.”

“No,” Father Julian says, the word coming out in a whisper, and I can hear the pain in his voice. I know that pain. I think I even said the same thing when I picked up the phone to learn Emily was dead and my wife gone forever.

“I told her about you. She never knew her dad, but in the moments before she died I told her. She knew everything she wanted to know and then more than she could handle. Do you think that knowledge comforted her?”

“I. . I. .”

“You what, Father? You don’t know? You don’t know what to say? How do you think I felt, finding out who I was? How do you think it felt being abandoned?”

“Please, please, don’t. .”

“Don’t what? You don’t even know what to do, do you, Father? You feel helpless. Do you suddenly feel as though God has abandoned you? I know all about abandonment. You feel helpless and that’s exactly how Rachel felt in those last moments. Tell me, Father, do you still want to do something good for her?”

Father Julian doesn’t answer. I can hear his breathing. It sounds louder than it ought to be on a tape recorder with such a small speaker. The vocals are tinny, but that breathing is deep, like a wounded whale.

“You can’t kill her,” Julian says at last, but it’s such a ludicrous thing to say to a man who has already committed the act. “Please, please, tell me this is wrong.”

“Bury her,” the killer says.

“What?”

“I’m giving you a chance, Dad. You can bury her and you can pray over her. You can visit her as often as you want-something you never did while she was alive.”

“This is madness,” Father Julian says.

“What other choice do you have? I have kept her for you to bury. She is here, at your church. You cannot go to the police, because you can’t afford your parish to know she was your daughter. Or that you have others.”

“I have no other children.”

“You have me. All you can do now is bury her and pray and maybe we’ll talk about it next time.”

“Next time?”

But the man doesn’t answer. The confessional door opens then closes. Father Julian cries out for the man to wait: there are footsteps, then nothing. A few seconds later the tape goes quiet, and ten seconds after that a new voice comes through the speaker, confessing to an attraction to somebody who isn’t his wife.

I rewind the tape and listen through it again. The words of Rachel’s killer are chilling and form knots in my stomach. Hearing them again is almost enough to take me there, to be inside that confessional booth. I wonder where Rachel’s body was left, whether she was placed on a pew or dumped on the doorstep. I picture Father Julian cradling her, part of him wanting to call the police, a greater part not wanting his secrets exposed. He was a coward who could not betray the confessional, a coward who asked Bruce, his son, to bury the girls and to bury the truth.

I check the log and find the date the second girl went missing. I start forwarding through the corresponding tape, going through snippets of dialogue until I hear the same voice. I rewind it a bit and find the beginning of the conversation.

“You lied to me, Father.”

“I lied to you how, my son?” Father Julian asks.

“My son? That’s very accurate, isn’t it.”

“Oh my God.”

I pause the tape and check the time stamp against the log. This time Father Julian has written down Luke Matthews. Last time it was Paul Peters. I check off the rest of the dates and find more names that stick out: John Philips and Matthew Simons. Four names that are mixtures of names of the apostles. Father Julian never wrote down his son’s real name. Did he not know it? Was it a son he paid child support to? Or one he completely abandoned?

“I knew there were others. And now Julie is the second.”

“What have you done?” Father Julian asks.

“Did you know her?”

“What have you done?” Father Julian repeats.

“You probably never saw her, did you.”

“No.”

“Then thank me. You can give her the same burial you gave her sister. My sister.”

Father Julian starts to cry. His sobs through the tape are the hardest things I’ve ever had to listen to.

I press pause and go into the kitchen. I grab the drink out of the fridge. I need it. I get it up to my mouth and the fluid touches my lips, then I throw it into the sink. I make some coffee. Suddenly I don’t want to go back into my office. I don’t want to listen to the rest of the conversation. I just want to burn the tapes and drive to the nearest liquor store and immerse myself in the bourbon that has kept me so numb for the last month. I look into the sink, but none of what I just poured in there is left. Father Julian’s sobs have brought tears to my eyes. I close them and the tears break away and run down the sides of my face. I am almost with him as he listens. I know how he feels hearing for the first time his daughter is dead. I went through it once. He has gone through it twice. Did he go through it more than twice? I think he did. I think he went through it four times. Did it get easier or harder? Did it age him, did it break him, did it make him deny his God, or make his faith stronger? He could not break the confessional vow. Even when there was a pattern and he knew what was happening, he did not break it. He could break it to blackmail adulterers, but not to save his children. What twisted morals Father Julian had, but then churches are full of people preaching one thing and practicing another. Every day he must have struggled with the man he was. Perhaps he didn’t want to struggle anymore. He hadn’t been to his safe-deposit box in the eight weeks before he died. He knew the key was missing, and maybe he knew Bruce took it. Maybe he even figured out that it had been given to me. I think he knew that in some way this was coming to an end. I think he stood with his back to the man who would kill him, and he waited for it to happen.

I don’t touch the coffee. I leave it on the counter and walk back to the office.

“You can pray over them, Father. You can pray at the same time.”

“How did you know she was your sister?”

“Perhaps God can tell you.”

The confession ends. I find the third one, and match the time stamp to John Philips.

“Why are you doing this?” Father Julian asks as his son tells him he has met another of his sisters. “What did they do to you?”

“It’s what they could have done.”

“Why any of this? Why come here and tell me?”

“Because you’re the only family I have.”

I keep listening. The dialogue is similar to the others. Father Julian’s sobs are just as loud. A name comes up. Jessica Shanks. She was the third girl to have gone missing and the oldest. She was the one Father Julian started paying for in the beginning, five years before Rachel was born.

I stop the tape and find the last confession.

“They are all dead now, Father.”

“I don’t want you coming back here.”

“All of the sisters. You can see them whenever you like. Do you now finally take the time to visit them?”

“I want you to leave.”

“Am I right?”

“What?” Father Julian asks.

“There are no more, are there.”

“No.”

“If you’re lying to me, Father, I will find out.”

“I know.”

“And I won’t be happy.”

“I’m not lying,” Father Julian says.

“If you are lying, Father, I will do two things. I will find the girls and I will kill them. I will make them suffer. Do you want to know what the second thing is?”

“No,” Father Julian says, but there is no doubt he’s about to find out.

“I’m going to come back here, Dad, and what I’m going to do is cut out your tongue so you can never lie to me ever again.”