Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 12

Hatcher shook a small bag and the stones clunked together dully.

“The only source of gravel within thirty-five miles is a quarry in Clamden. They made one hundred thirty-five deliveries of grade-C gravel-this is grade C, it goes by size-within a fifty-mile radius of Clamden in the six weeks before we found Dyce’s-uh- operation.”

Hatcher laid a computer printout in front of Becker before he continued.

“These were still covered with dust-a fine rock powder, actually-that’s the residue of the crushing machine. Did you know they actually make gravel by crushing rock? I didn’t know that. I thought they just dug it out of a gravel pit, but they have to break up the big rocks into smaller ones, then run them through this machine-anyway, these still had the powder on them, which meant it hadn’t rained on them between the time they were crushed until Dyce acquired them-you realize this doesn’t tell us anything about when he actually got hold of them. They could have been sitting in his rock collection for ten years. Maybe he got a wheelbarrowful at a time and was just keeping them handy.”

“You know anybody who bothers to store gravel indoors?”

“So he got a fistful, put them in a flower pot.”

“And never watered the plant? Besides, he didn’t plan these things. He didn’t sit down and decide to kill eight men.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s not the way it happens.”

“Statements like that worry me, Becker.”

Becker studied the printout. “How do you think they make me feel? Look, Hatcher, you’re right. We don’t know when or where or how Dyce got the gravel. My bet is he didn’t take it until he needed it, and he didn’t need it until he’d already acted, but I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about Dyce. I’m just hoping to get lucky. You cross-checked with the weather bureau, right?”

“Right. Assuming Dyce got the gravel to use as a…”

“Headstone.”

“So you say. Assuming he got it on or within a day of the time he murdered Mick, and eliminating all deliveries from the quarry that happened before the last rainfall, which was fourteen days earlier, we have seven places the gravel was unloaded. They are marked with asterisks on your printout.”

Becker put his finger on one of the names.

“I know,” said Hatcher. “I thought that would appeal to you. They were using it for the pathways.”

“Riverside Cemetery,” said Becker.

“I know, I know.” Hatcher shrugged. “It’s ironic. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I agree,” said Becker.

“You agree?”

“Probably just an ironic coincidence.”

“Then why are you smiling? I really wish you wouldn’t do that, Becker.”

“Smile?”

“Smile if you have to. Just not at me.”

“Why?”

“Humor me. I don’t like it.”

“Did you interview the people who work at the cemetery?”

“Certainly. No one recognizes his photo or description. Did you expect them to?”

“I don’t hope to be that lucky. Who’s buried there?”

“In the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“In the whole goddamned cemetery?”

“He’s there to visit someone’s grave, isn’t he? Isn’t that why people go to cemeteries?”

“Most people don’t go at all,” said Hatcher, “except to bury somebody. People don’t ‘visit’ graves anymore, do they?”

“He was there for some reason.”

“We don’t know he was there at all. And even if he was, I thought you thought he was there to get a ‘headstone.’ “

“He could get a stone anywhere, pick one up out of the street. If they were using these for pathways… it’s not as if they’re consecrated rocks. I think he was there-if he was there-for some other reason and happened to see the stones at a time when he needed one. Which means either that he goes there regularly-if he goes at all-and his visit happened to coincide with a time when he needed a gravestone. What’s wrong with that theory?”

“Is this a quiz, Becker?”

“Just checking my thinking.”

“It probably wasn’t that he just happened to be there at a convenient time, because three of the stones still had dust on them, which means-since you don’t think he got them in advance-that he goes there when he’s killing somebody-or because he’s killing somebody-something along those lines?”

“Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

“It’s not hard,” said Hatcher. “Just toss logic and probability out the window and we can all be geniuses.”

Becker studied Hatcher a moment. “There’s no point in being envious of me. Hatcher.”

“Envious, Christ…”

“Because it’s no fun.”

“That doesn’t stop you from doing it.”

Becker paused. “Can’t argue with you.”

Breathing deeply to let the moment pass. Hatcher continued. “So you figure he goes there to commune with the spirit of someone when he’s in the act of- whatever?”

“I think it’s possible. I think doing this thing to men stirs him to the depths. Let’s find out who’s in the cemetery. Do a genealogy on Dyce.”

“We have. All his relatives are dead.”

“That’s fine. We’re looking for a dead one if Dyce visits him in the cemetery. While you’re doing the paperwork, I’ll go visit the cemetery. You were there, weren’t you? What’s it like?”

“What’s a cemetery like?” Hatcher could think of nothing appropriate to say about a cemetery. “Very nice,” he said.

The man behind the car-rental counter had the right look to him from the back. Dyce noted the pale hair, neatly trimmed, the long expanse of neck, the ears that pushed out from the head. When in a good mood, Dyce’s father had sometimes made fun of his own ears. “I’m just waiting for a good wind,” he would say, “then I’m going to take off and fly.” And he would wiggle his ears, his eyebrows moving up and down at the same time. Dyce would laugh, delighted by this inexplicable display of whimsy. His father looked so unguarded, so harmless.

“A regular Norwegian squarehead,” Dysen would say. “My mother used to cut our hair, practically scalp us, and those were the days when everyone’s hair was short. Everybody had big ears; look at the old pictures. But I was worse than most, practically a Dumbo, and don’t think the kids didn’t give me shit for it.”

And then his mood would turn darker as he recalled the slights of his youth. “I’d get back at them, though, don’t worry. They could laugh and fart around during class, but I’d be waiting for them after school. Your old man knew how to take care of himself, don’t you worry about that, old Rodger-Dodger.” He would sometimes try to return to the lighter mood, but the moment was past and Dyce had been reminded of the paranoia and anger lurking always just a fraction of an inch from the surface. He would no longer laugh with his father and that seemed to make the older man angrier.

The man behind the counter turned and the resemblance vanished. He had a round, vacuous face, a countenance without contrast of bone or flesh. His name tag read Tad.

Dyce lay his new driver’s license on the counter. “I’d like a compact car,” he said.

“Certainly, Mr… Cohen. Do you have a major credit card, please.”

Dyce produced a Visa card, as freshly minted as the driver’s license, also issued to Roger Cohen. This was the first test of the license since he had bought it for one hundred dollars two days earlier. He had already used the Visa card to get a cash advance against a nonexistent credit line of five thousand, some of which he used to pay for the license and credit card.

Dyce watched closely for any sign of suspicion as Tad went through the paperwork to release the car. If he had any doubts about the authenticity of the documents, none showed on his placid face.

He smiled routinely as he handed the cards back and gave Dyce the keys to his rented vehicle. Dyce carefully replaced the cards in his wallet, an item as new as the cards themselves. Everything about Dyce was new now, from the clothes he wore to the papers in his pockets, all of it financed with the several new cards in his wallet. The bruises on his face had nearly vanished, and the moustache, enhanced with mascara for the driver’s-license photo, was coming in nicely.

Once in the car and on his way out of Bridgeport, Dyce finally relaxed. The ease and simplicity of it all scared him more than anything. To think that an underworld of minor thugs and petty hoods could elude the system so efficiently. He could imagine how his grandfather would have inveighed against them, and how his father would have given them grudging admiration.

It was not until he reached New Haven and turned north on Interstate 91 that Dyce realized he had been automatically assessing Tad, the car-rental clerk. I must be crazy, he thought, thinking about that now. There was no time for it; he was being pursued. It was insane to even think about it and besides, he had vowed to put all of that behind him. It was not as if he had to do it. Surely he was enough in control of his emotions to deny himself such a dangerous pleasure. Especially in view of the disruption it had just caused. He promised himself to give it up, to give up even thinking about it. This was the perfect opportunity to start fresh in every way. The past was behind him now and he would keep it there; he was certain he could do it. He would shed the old skin and put on a new one as easily as he had slipped out of the hospital and created a new identity.

There is no way they will ever find me if I behave myself, Dyce thought. Criminals are creatures of habit; that’s how they are caught, everyone knows that. I am not a criminal, in the first place, and in the second I am too bright to let myself do anything stupid. He remembered the man in his hospital room, the one whose eyes seemed to cleave through Dyce’s skull. That man was the danger, Dyce thought. The Others do not frighten me. I could walk past them as if invisible-but the one with the searching eyes… He tried not to think about it.

After an hour Dyce stopped in the town of Waverly. Within five minutes he had located an independent insurance agent working out of a real-estate office, and asked to be taken on part-time as a salesman. The real-estate agent, happily surprised to find a man who was willing to canvass clients as well as do administrative work, hired him immediately.

“Do you know how to work one of these?” the agent asked, patting the personal computer terminal on his desk.

“Some,” said Dyce. “I’m sure I could learn what I need to.”

“I’m sure you could, too,” said the agent. “You seem like a bright guy to me.”

Dyce ran a hand over the terminal as if he were stroking an animal.

“Nice machine,” he said.

His father’s grave was marked by a simple marble stone whose original reddish-brown hue had aged into a darkish pink that seemed inappropriate to Becker. He remembered helping his mother pick out the headstone at a time when she was scarcely capable of making the least decision and the proper headstone struck her as a very important one. Ultimately she had opted for the slight reddish tint over the plain gray because she felt it would reflect some of the softer side of the man. Becker was not aware there was a softer side. He was eighteen and remembered his father as a stem, unyielding maker and enforcer of family law.

“There was much more to your father than you knew,” his mother told him, echoing a sentiment she had expressed to the rebellious boy throughout his teenage years. “He had a very sensitive side, too.”

Even now, many years later, Becker found his mother’s statement hard to believe except as an abstraction: Men can show more sensitivity to their wives than to their adolescent sons. But in reality he could not see how that could apply to his father. In his memories, Becker could never conjure up his father’s face. The man was always a looming presence, something large and dark and forbidding just at the edge of Becker’s awareness. He pictured the presence behind him, watching, and somehow in the frame of a doorway, as if just entering. Or just catching the young Becker in the act of something. “Authority,” Becker said to himself now, laughing inwardly as he heard the word coming in Gold’s voice. That looming presence you feel as your father is why you have such difficulty with authority today.

Typical of Gold, Becker thought. Quick and easy and cliched-but possibly right nonetheless.

A bird landed on the tombstone next to his father’s and cocked an eye at Becker briefly before taking to the air again, the white underside of its tail flashing intermittently like a burst of Morse code.

His mother’s stone was a plain gray. Becker had selected it himself ten years after the first one. She had possessed a softer side, too, no doubt, but it was obscured by his father’s shadow. And unlike his father, his mother had no advocate to sing her praises or hold forth for her better aspects. The only thing Becker could recall his father ever said about his wife was in praise of her industry, not her feminine sensitivity.

“Your mother works hard enough without your adding to it,” he had said, referring to some mess or other of the young Becker’s. Indeed, everything Becker did seemed to be resented by one or the other of them as adding to their burdens in life. Becker himself felt like the biggest burden of all, one borne out of duty rather than love or pleasure.

Some people should not have children, Becker thought, including himself in the proscription. They haven’t the gift or the patience for it and they do a bad job. Without knowing they’re botching it, probably. With reasonably good will and decent intentions.

Becker had been squatting on his haunches before the graves. He stood now and looked down at them, two grassy plots marked off at head and foot by stone but bordered laterally only in the mind, part of the broad sweep of tended grass, indistinguishable. Part of the lawn now, Becker thought. Surviving only in my memory, and there only infrequently. But alive in the way an artist lives on in his work; their handicraft walks above them now in the twisted framework of my psyche.

The bird returned, flying close enough to Becker to make him flinch, then flapping off, disoriented.

They weren’t that bad, Becker thought now, granting his parents a half-hearted absolution. They weren’t bad enough to make me the way I am. The rest of it has to come from me, some element uniquely my own.

Then, without thinking or knowing why he did it, Becker stepped forward and stood directly atop his father’s grave. He stomped one foot on the soil, hard enough to leave a mark, then, in a confusion of feelings, he looked around to see if he had been observed before returning to the gravel pathway.

Gold will love it, he thought. His neck and ears were warm with the flush of embarrassment. Gold will have a field day… If I tell him. There is so much I haven’t told him, why start now?

It was not until he had walked for several minutes through the cemetery that Becker realized he had been practically running, trying to escape the shame of his action.

The bird seemed to be following Becker, swooping in erratic, confused figures around him wherever he went. Drunk, thought Becker. It must have eaten some rotting fruit. Drunk-or dying. The symbolism of that was a little too pat and he laughed at himself I am regressing, he thought. I came here to find Dyce, some piece of Dyce, some part of the fiend that I can identify as part of me, and instead I am turning into a sentimental, angry child stomping on my father’s grave, seeking portents like a superstitious mystic.

The bird landed on another headstone, then flew off again, but Becker’s attention was suddenly alerted. Atop the grave marker was a single stone, identical to those on the pathway. The name on the stone was Rosen, a woman who had died five years earlier. Looking about, Becker saw three more stones resting atop monuments, two of them also in the Rosen family, another several yards away in a plot belonging to a Martin Aaron who had died four months ago. Within five minutes Becker had located another ten headstones adorned with rocks from the path.

The caretaker looked at him in puzzlement, trying to figure out what Becker was so excited about. He was an old man, past retirement age, who still spoke with the accent of his native Italy.

“Jews,” he said with a shrug.

“What do you mean?” Becker asked.

“You ask who puts the stones on the graves? I tell you. The Jews.”

“I know the graves are Jewish, but how do you know the people who put the stones on the monuments are Jews?”

“Who else?”

“Have you seen them? Do you know if it’s a man? A woman? More than one?”

“Seen them? What do you mean, have I seen them? Sometimes I see them if I happen to be there. Most times, I don’t see them, but it’s Jews. That’s what they do.”

“What they do?”

The caretaker wondered if it was his English that was the problem. What he was describing was an everyday occurrence for him.

“They visit the grave, they put a stone, a pebble, a little rock on the headstone as a sign that they visit. It’s like a mark, hello, I been here. Somebody else comes by, he sees the stone, he knows Uncle Seymour’s been looked after.”

“Only Jews do this? Leave these stones for markers?”

“Only ones I know about, but hey, there’s no law. Anybody wants to can do it.”

“But it’s a Jewish tradition?”

“Tradition? I don’t know. I’m a good Catholic. They do it, that’s all I know. Every month or so, I go by, I take the stones off. You let them pile up, it looks sloppy, people think nobody’s taking care.”

The car skittered along the shoulder, the wheels spinning over stones and sand, until it veered back onto the road. Dyce’s father put the pint of rye whiskey between his legs and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve.

“Burns like a bugger going down,” he said, turning his half-crazed eyes toward Dyce and grinning. A blast of horn from a startled motorist in the oncoming lane made Dyce’s father swerve back from the center line.

“Assholes on the road,” said Dysen. “But you got to expect that. We’re in asshole territory now. That’s why your grandpa lives here. They named the place for him.” Dysen paused, waiting to be asked. As usual his son disappointed him. “Assholeville. Named after your grandpa.” Dysen laughed.

The boy continued to watch the road with riveted attention, his hands gripping the dashboard, his feet pressed to the floor as if he could control the car from the passenger’s seat.

“Relax. Will you relax? Sit back in your seat. I’m watching the goddamned road. That’s my job, not yours.”

Dyce acted as if he didn’t hear his father. He stared straight ahead, trying to keep the car on the road by strength of will. Mr. Dysen looked over at the boy, ignoring him as usual, trying to thwart him, and felt his anger rising sharply.

“I said relax,” he said, and struck the boy with a straight, sharp punch on the shoulder.

Dyce looked at his father, startled but not surprised.

“That was just to get your attention. Now relax.”

The boy sat back, rubbing his shoulder.

“I am relaxed,” Dyce said.

“You’re about as relaxed as your grandpa’s ass muscle. Boy, that came down in a straight line, didn’t it? From old Nate through your mother straight to you. Ass muscles tight as a fist. A fart couldn’t get out of any one of you. Especially your mother.”

Dyce turned away and looked out the side window. Christ, now he’ll sulk, thought Dysen. Can’t say a damned thing about his mother without him acting like that, all teared up and defiant. What the hell does he know about her? I was the poor bastard who married her. He only had to deal with her for four years before she died. What the hell does he know?

Dysen lifted the bottle to his lips again, just a sip this time. He didn’t want to be drunk when he dealt with asshole Nate-but he sure as hell didn’t want to be cold sober, either… God, it felt good. Not going down; it never stopped burning going down, but when it hit bottom and spread out like warm fingers, it was as good as coming. Get to come in your pants a dozen times or more for the price of a pint. Can’t beat that.

When he looked, Dyce was trying to steer the car from the dashboard again. Dysen relented. It couldn’t be easy, having no mother, and he had to admit that sometimes he was a little tough on the kid himself. It was good he’d only tapped him on the shoulder, Nate got on his high horse if he found bruises on the boy. Especially on the face-that drove him crazy. As if any normal eight-year-old boy wouldn’t have bruises. He had gotten banged up worse than his son ever had, just running around, getting into fights on the playground, whatever. Still, he couldn’t afford to alienate old Nate any more than normal, not as long as the old bastard still had control of his checkbook.

Dysen rumpled Dyce’s hair. “Old Rodger, old Rodger-Dodger, old Rodger-Codger-Lodger-Dodger.”

The boy tipped his head away from his father’s hand, waited a tactful moment, then smoothed his hair.

The little son of a bitch hates me, Dysen thought, furiously. He wanted to smack him across the face, he wanted to pull the car to the side, get out, and kick his ass properly. He clung to the steering wheel until his fingers hurt, steadying himself before he took another drink, which he deserved as a reward for self-control. The warmth of the whiskey brought with it a wave of sentiment and suddenly Dysen was close to tears. My son hates me, he thought. I love the little shit and he hates me. I took care of him all his life, and he can’t stand to have me touch him. But he loves his goddamned grandfather. That old fart could paw the boy all he wanted, pet him like he was a fucking dog, stroke him until it looked unhealthy to Dysen. The little shit never pulled away from that. Stroking and cuddling and kissing like two women. It didn’t look right for men to carry on like that. And whispering to him about Jesus. Christ, that old fart and his Jesus.

“Never trust a religious man,” he said aloud.

Dyce was silent. The car had to negotiate a series of blind curves, weaving its way through the last of woodland and then they would see the sign that said, “Minnot. Town Limits.” Then through the town with its white, three-story houses and green lawns, through the three stoplights, and out into the country again, but this time startlingly different as the land flattened out and a shallow basin of green corn and yellow wheat replaced the forested hills. Dyce urged the car forward, through the dangerous turns, through the town, and to his grandfather’s huge stone house-and safety.

“Especially if he gives up his religion and finds God,” Dysen said.

“Grandfather has a personal relationship with Christ,” said the boy.

“Which is pretty interesting, considering ‘grandfather ‘ is a Jew.”

“Jesus was a Jew.” said Dyce.

Dysen clenched his jaw. “You don’t have to believe all the shit the old man tells you. You could try some common sense for a change. “

“And I’m a Jew and a friend of Jesus, too.”

“Goddamn it, stop that shit!” Dyce recoiled to avoid the blow, but Dysen merely turned down the windshield visor in front of the boy to reveal the mirror.

“Look at yourself. You‘re a Dysen, you look like me. That means you‘re a Norwegian; you go back to the goddamned Vikings. You’re not a Jew, that’s ridiculous.“

“My mother was a Jew.”

“Your mother is dead. Look at your face, look at yourself. Look!” Dysen squeezed his son’s head in steely fingers and made him stare at his reflection in the mirror.

“See what you see? Those care Dysen bones, that’s a Dysen nose and ears and eyes and mouth. Look at your chin, boy. Look at my chin. Jewish, my ass. You’re a Norwegian, and proud of it, or you better be, or I‘II kick some pride into you.”

When Dysen released his grip they were through the curves and into the town. Dysen was still muttering.

“Jew, my ass. The old bastard is just trying to steal my own son away from me.”

Yes, please, thought Dyce. Please, please, grandfather.

“It’ll take more than a goddamned check every blue moon to get my own flesh and blood off of me. He can’t buy you, Rodger-Dodger, he can’t buy my boy.”

Dysen was close to tears again, swept up with love for his son-until the boy tipped his head, eluding another affectionate ruffle of the hair.

Dysen took one last sip at the final stoplight in town, and to hell with anyone who happened to be watching.

The cultivated basin beyond the town came upon Dyce with all the welcome warmth of an embrace. He could smell his grandfather in the scent of overturned earth, he could see his beard moving with the wheat, sprouting from the ears of corn. When they reached the turnoff for the long drive through fields to his grandfather’s house, Dyce was holding his breath. His heart still raced from the mention of his going to live with grandfather. It was the first time he had heard anyone else mention the possibility. Until now he had thought it was a secret wish held only in his own heart.

Buy me, grandfather, he yearned. Buy me away from him. Let me come to live with you. I’ll pay you back no matter how long it takes or what I have to do for the money.

The house had been built over one hundred fifty years earlier to shelter the owners of the farm against the harshness of the Connecticut winter, and it was built to last from stone wrenched by the plow from the New England soil. The original builders had been clever in the use of stone-they had had to be because the land was covered with them like leaves from a tree after a storm. Stones made the fences separating fields, and stones made the wells, and stones made the houses, rough, uncut stones that still had the shape with which they had been yanked from the soil. The house was stone piled on stone three stories high and laid across by beams cut from the timbers of Connecticut’s forest. There were two chimneys on Nate Cohen’s house, one on either exterior end of the huge building and, like the walls, they too were constructed of stone. It was not a house that wind or storm or fire would defeat.

Much of the original farm was gone, split into parcels and swallowed by the more successful neighbors, but the house and the barn and the outbuildings remained, still intact and maintained scrupulously, just as Nate Cohen maintained all that over which the Lord had given him dominion. Because he was a good husband to the Lord and that which was His, and because he despised all that which was slothful and decayed and fallen to ruin-including his son-in-law.

He waited for them now on the porch of the old farmhouse, having spied them when they turned onto the access road and watching their progress since by the thin trail of dust that followed above and behind their car as it drove through the fields.

The old man was the first thing Dyce saw, before the house, before the barn. Standing on the porch impatiently, his hands on his hips, waiting for his grandson.

He was also the first thing Dysen saw and he muttered under his breath, “king of the assholes, “but Dyce didn’t care now. He was safe now and protected, at least for the length of their stay.

Dyce ran from the car while his father was still slipping the bottle under the seat and chewing on a clove to hide the scent of alcohol. He ran to his grandfather, who came down the porch steps, arms extended. The boy leapt into his arms and was lifted off the earth and pressed against the old man’s neck and beard. Dyce could smell skin and hair and sweat and he thought his heart would burst.