Cemetery Lake (9 page)

‘Why is that?’ I ask.

‘What did my father say?’

‘You’re dad’s a real affable guy. He had plenty to say’

He pushes himself back into the seat but keeps the gun levelled at my head.

‘You think I k-k-killed those girls?’

I don’t answer. I look at Sidney Alderman’s house and wonder

what he’s doing right now. Could be Sidney knew his son was

out here waiting for me and was putting on a show, his own little performance of misdirection. Could be he didn’t know. It’s not like they could have anticipated my coming here. Bruce must

have been here all along, or he followed me from the church.

‘Please, “I … I need you to drive away from here.’

I turn back towards him and stare at the gun barrel. ‘Drive?

Where to?’

“I don’t — I don’t know’

‘I’m not a taxi service. I’m not going to take you somewhere

where you can kill me in private. You want to do that, you do

it here, and maybe your old man can help you dispose of my

body. Or you might luck out and the cops will hear the gunshot.

They’re not that far away.’

‘Is that w-what you want?’ he asks, pushing the gun forward

a few more inches. ‘You think I w-won’t do it? You think I’ve got something to lose by doing it?’

‘I don’t think that’s your plan,’ I say, trying to sound calm, ‘and I don’t think you’re going to pull that trigger. You’d have done it already. You want to tell me something. Maybe you want to confess. Maybe you want to tell me all about it before putting a bullet in my chest.’ His hands start to shake a little more. I figure I’m only a few shakes away from getting the back of my

head splashed on the windscreen. ‘But you don’t want that to

happen here.’

‘Maybe you’re wrong.’

I think about my wife. If I’m wrong, I won’t be seeing her

again. If I’m wrong — and if I’m lucky — maybe I’ll be seeing my daughter. Only problem there is I don’t believe in an afterlife.

I think of Bridget, already alone and about to become even more so. Except that she’d stare out the window as my death made the newspapers and TV and she’d never feel the loss.

‘So where do you want to go?’

Away from here. N-now.’

I manage to shift my eyes from the barrel to his pale face.

His features have sunken since the afternoon, as if the bubble of paranoia holding them in place is slowly deflating. His eyes dart nervously back and forth, unable to fix on any one thing for more than a fraction of a second, like he’s hyped up on drugs. There are beads of sweat dangerously close to rolling into his reddened eyes. Behind him, further up the road, dead people are being

found in other dead people’s places. I look back at the gun, then at his eyes. Back and forth, back and forth, his eyes are looking for something — whether for help or for the demons that have

chased him his entire life, who knows? Could be he’s looking for his caretaker father to take care of this.

‘Please,’ he repeats, more begging than demanding.

I turn around, and it’s hard to keep looking ahead with the

weight of the gun trying to pull my eyes back. I swing the car around, wondering if the old man is watching any of this from his filth-covered windows, or even if he can see through them. In the rear-view mirror the house in the glow of my brake lights looks like it’s set on Mars. I head past the cemetery, past the dozen or so people helping the dead and ignoring, for the time being, the living. I pass the large iron gates that look like they were sculpted two thousand years ago to guard some Greek mythological

fortress. I pass the church parked back from the road. I’m not sure what Bruce Alderman’s plans are, and I wish at least he was.

I pick a direction and stick to it.

We stop at the first intersection behind a beaten-up pickup

with a sun-faded bumper sticker on the back saying Oral Me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.’

The caretaker doesn’t answer.

“I can help you.’

‘Help me?’

‘You must want something.’

“Nobody can give me what I want.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know. It’s impossible. Unless you can turn back time. Can

you? Can you make the last ten years disappear?’

His stutter has gone and I suspect that’s because we’re away

from the cemetery. Or, more accurately, away from his dad. He

sounds like he did this afternoon when I spoke to him briefly

before the digger came along and unearthed all these questions.

He also sounds as if his question is genuine, as if he’s holding out hope that maybe I can make the impossible happen. I hope it’s

not part of his plan.

‘You’re not the only one who wishes they could turn back

time. All I can do is listen to what you have to say. And then I can give you some options. You want to tell me why you killed

Rachel Tyler?’

‘You know her name?’ he says, instead of denying it like an

innocent man would.

‘I’m a quick learner.’

‘That’s why you’re looking for me, because you think I killed

those girls.’

‘You want me to think otherwise?’

‘I never killed anybody,’ he says.

“huh. Is that why you were in such a hurry to leave this

afternoon that you stole the truck? Is that why you’ve got a gun to my head? Doesn’t seem like the path an innocent man would

be taking.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he says. ‘Can’t know that. You’d be

doing the same thing.’

“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be.’

The intersection clears and we carry on, getting hooked into

the flow of other traffic.

‘You have an office, right?’

‘Why?’

‘You must do. All Pis have offices.’

“I don’t know all the Pis in this world. Half of them could be working out of their cars for all I know. Or their houses.’

He pushes the barrel into my neck. He seems to be getting

more and more confident. Only it’s a sliding-scale type of

confidence. He’s more confident, perhaps, than a six-year-old girl walking through a cemetery on a dare. Not as confident as a guy holding up a bank.

‘Will we be alone there?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’ I change lanes and start altering my course. ‘But the

coffee isn’t anything to write home about.’

He doesn’t offer any further conversation as we drive, and

I decide against asking for any. I let him sit in silence, allowing him time to figure something out.

I turn into the car park behind my building, and I take my

spot, which in the past I’ve had people towed out of.

‘Now what?’

“Is there a security guard on duty?’

‘This isn’t a bank.’

He stays out of reach as we walk to the back entrance, but comes in close when we get there. There’s a swipe pad mounted on the wall — it’s all very low-tech — and I slip a card through the reader. There’s a mechanical sound of metal disengaging from metal, then I push the door open. He follows closely behind me, and my first opportunity of getting rid of him by slamming the door on his face is lost.

‘How many floors?’ he asks.

‘How many floors what?’

‘What floor are you on?’

‘The eighth.’

‘Let’s take the stairs.’

I’ve already pushed the button on the elevator and the doors

have opened. ‘This is much quicker.’

‘Too confined.’

‘You claustrophobic?’

‘Where are they?’

‘This way.’

I lead him into the stairwell. It’s cold and our footfalls echo as we take the stairs two at a time for the first four floors, then one at a time for the remainder. When we reach the eighth floor, we’re both breathing heavily. We see nobody as we move down

the corridor. There are potted plants full of crisp green leaves and no brown ones, oil paintings that don’t represent anything, just colours and shapes thrown together in appealing ways.

We reach my office. I step in. Bruce reaches behind him and

shuts the door.

‘Sit down and keep your hands on the desk,’ he says.

I do as he asks, resting my palms either side of the watch

I took earlier. Bruce sits on the other side of the desk as if he were a client.

‘How much do you know?’ he asks.

‘About what?’

‘Don’t be like this,’ he says, slapping one hand on the side of his chair while keeping the other on the gun. Steady now, as if all the nerves are gone. As if being away from the cemetery has cured him. As if over the last fifteen minutes all the confusion, all the fear, all the guilt have somehow lined up, found a way to get along, and formed a brilliant idea about what to do next.

‘Okay, here’s what I know,’ I say. ‘From the moment you

found out we were digging up Henry Martins, you were nervous.

You hung around despite that, but as soon as the bodies started coming up to the surface of the lake you bolted. Things were

inevitable then. We were all on the same train ride. In the car a while ago you were surprised I’d identified the girl. Rachel Tyler.

You asked if I thought you’d killed the girls. Not people, but girls. That means you already know that when the other bodies

are identified, and the matching coffins dug up, there are going to be women in there. The only way you could know that was if

you put them there.’

He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me, his hand shaking a little, his options racing behind his jittery eyes. I hope he’s not coming back time and time to the one where he pulls the trigger. Maybe that was his plan all along, and he’s had it from the moment he climbed into my car. He partners up his free hand with the other one to steady the gun.

‘What do you want from me, Bruce?’ I lean back, keeping my

arms out so my hands don’t leave the table. ‘Just tell me.’

‘I need a cigarette,’ he says, and reaches into his pocket.

“I have a No Smoking rule in here,’ I say, and when he pulls his hand back from his pocket it’s empty. He doesn’t complain.

‘I’ve never killed anybody’ he says, after a few seconds of

staring down at his shaking hands, one of which is wrapped tightly around the gun. “I know you think different, but it’s the truth.

I have proof. It’s underneath my bed. I could take you there. You could talk to my father. He knows the truth.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘But you wouldn’t let me take you there, would you?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t believe me at all, do you?’

‘Why don’t you give me a few more details first?’

‘There’s no point. You’ll never believe me. And I knew you

wouldn’t.’

‘Then why bring me back here? Why go through all of this?’

“I didn’t have anything to do with them dying. Nothing. But

I buried them — I had to. The girls, they deserved that. And

now,’ he says, ‘now their ghosts will leave me alone, and you, you will take me seriously’ My heart races as he twists the gun and jams the barrel beneath his chin. It’s almost as frightening as having it pointed at me.

‘Wait, wait,’ I say, and my instinct is to reach out to stop

him, but I keep my hands flat on the table. ‘Listen to me, listen, Bruce.’

He relaxes the gun for a moment, looking at me as if I must be an idiot not to understand him, but it’s just enough of a moment to make me believe there’s a chance neither of us has to die here.

Not much of a chance, not long enough of a moment.

‘Why did you take the bodies out of the graves? What did

these girls deserve?’

For a moment he looks confused, as if he can’t find the right

words, then suddenly his face becomes calm and relaxed as some perfect clarity washes over him, and I know it’s the clarity of a man who has made peace with his decision, and that there is

nothing I can say or do to avoid his next step.

‘For dignity,’ he says, ‘they deserved the dignity’

The gunshot rings in my ears. I smell cordite and burning

flesh long after the pink mist settles, long after pieces of bone and brain are buried into the ceiling above him.

It’s a life moment. One of those snapshots of time that never

leave you, never seem to fade away. In fact it’s the exact opposite — the colours, the imagery, the detail, they don’t dilute, they grow stronger, clearer; the moment becomes more powerful over

the years while others slowly disappear. The smell — the smell of cooking flesh, the coppery smell of blood, the gunpowder, the

stench as his bowels let go, the sweat. The air tastes hot, it dries out my mouth and makes my tongue stick to its roof. All I hear is a ringing sound that seems as though it will never diminish, as if it too will only grow more powerful.

It’s a life moment. I sit still, I stare ahead, I take it all in.

I don’t know if there are others in the building. Don’t know if the gunshot has already been reported. Blood has formed thick

splotches on the ceiling. They seem to hang there, motionless, unaffected by the gravity. Bruce Alderman’s body also seems to hang there, the hand still on the gun, the gun still pressed into his neck. The front of his shirt is clean, not a speck of blood on it.

His hair is messed up, the bullet forming a volcano shape in the roof of his skull. And still he sits there, as I sit there, motionless, staring at each other, a life moment for me, a death moment for him. Time has paused, as if in snapshot.

Then it begins again. His hand, still gripping the gun, falls

away. It hits the top of his thigh, slides into the arm of the chair; the gun clicks against it and falls onto the carpet. His head drops down, his chin hits his chest; the gunshot hole in his skull is like an eye staring at me, the blood falling through it, giving the impression it’s winking at me. Blood-matted hair falls into place and blocks the view. Blood pools on his shirt. It starts to pull away from the ceiling, droplets that form stalactites before breaking away and raining down. They pad softly into the carpet, make small thudding noises on the fronts of his legs, the back of his neck, the top of his head. It drops onto my shoulders, onto my arms, onto my hands that are still on the desk for him to see.