The Impaler

Chapter 70

Markham sat down beside his wife’s grave and began to cry. The emotion came upon him without warning, frightening him with its rapidity, but soon he gave in, weeping openly until it passed.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and breathed deeply—gazed around at his surroundings and tried to imagine Michelle sitting there with him. The Elm Grove Cemetery had been one of their favorite places—an impeccably landscaped park set on the Mystic River less than a half-mile from the Aquarium. They often strolled here on Sunday mornings; actually had a picnic once by the water on a sunny-cool Sunday like today—a bit morbid, they agreed, but comforted themselves with the knowledge they were imitating their Victorian ancestors, whose Sunday outings often included a stroll through the local cemetery, too.

“Did I really used to talk like that?” Markham asked. “Words like stroll and outing?”

A breeze whispered its consent in the trees. Markham smiled.

“I don’t know who that guy is anymore,” he said. “Buried here with you, I guess. Weird thing is, I look back and I don’t like him; don’t pine away or long for him—don’t even see him anymore, really. There’s only you back there now—still whole, yes, but with these other pieces, like parts of a shadow that I assume is me. I think that’s what’s so hard now. More and more lately it seems like the shadow-pieces are trying to make you into shadow-pieces, too.”

You think too much, he heard his wife say. You’ll always miss me, but the missing will change as you change. It’s the cliché of not moving on that bothers you.

“Yes,” Markham said. “I think I thought my self-awareness of the cliché, the whole I’m-going-to-join-the-FBI-to-avenge-my-wife’s-death syndrome would keep something alive—you, me maybe. Christ, I don’t know anymore. It’s all the same now in the shadows; something’s lost in there—in the work, everything I’m doing. Gates called me out on it, you know—back at my town house in Quantico. Was one hackneyed phrase away from calling me a shell of a man. He settled for something subtler about my work defining who I am.”

It’s the cliché, Michelle repeated, combined with the futility of knowing none of it will bring us closer together. Let it go. Clichés are clichés because they’re true. Stop being so smart about it all.

“I don’t think you’d like the new digs,” Markham said, smiling. “Hardwood floors, yes, but the rest is pretty standard contractor grade. No wainscoting or built-ins—none of the character of the old place. Nice pond in back, though. Lots of ducks. You’d like them.”

Let it go.

Markham sat for a moment listening to the breeze, then asked, “Would you care for a stroll down by the river, madame?”

I ’d be delighted, Michelle replied.

He rose to his feet and started off toward the water, when suddenly he felt his BlackBerry buzzing in his pocket. He stopped and checked it. An e-mail from Schaap.

Think this has anything to do with our boy?

was all it said, but a link had been inserted into the body of the message above the words Sent from my Verizon BlackBerry. Markham clicked it—an article from the Raleigh Sun dated Tuesday, November 1, 2005.