Judgment of the Grave (3 page)

The woods were lovely, dark and deep.

He’d heard that somewhere before. In a book or something. But it was true, it was almost as though he’d thought it up himself. The woods were lovely, dark and deep. Pres Whiting could hear his shoes crunching on the ground, and when he stopped and breathed deeply, he felt that he was the only person in Concord. The trees seemed to go on forever. He breathed again. That was good. He felt better now.

Usually, he didn’t like going out there when it was almost dark, but he didn’t really have any choice. If he walked along the road, there was a chance that Gramma would see him, or if not her, one of her friends who would tell her. She’d dropped him off at the school that morning, to play basketball with some of the boys in his class. He’d promised her that one of their mothers would drive him home and had managed to stop her from waiting around to be sure.

“Mom said I should try to keep a sense of normalcy. Well, this is something normal. You all have to let me be a kid,” he’d argued. She hadn’t been able to say anything to that, so she had given him her cell phone and let him go.

The thing about letting him be a kid he’d gotten from a book he’d found in the drawer of his mother’s bedside table. The book was called
It’s Just Not Fair: Caring for Terminally Ill Children
, and it had a picture of a bald kid on the front. Pres had been nervous as he looked through it, in case his mother came in, but she hadn’t and he’d read a whole chapter about how you were supposed to let your kid do regular things, even if you were worried about his health. She must have read the book, he decided, because lately she’d been letting him do a lot more stuff, though she always looked scared when he left.

It had been okay at first, at the basketball court. There had just been a couple of kids there, Jeremy and Keegan and a kid from another class who was pretty nice. They had played horse and he had gotten a couple of baskets. But then, just when he’d been thinking about going home, Rachel Martino and a couple of other girls from their class had walked across the soccer fields and sat down to watch them play. Pres had talked to Rachel only once, when they’d been sitting next to each other at a stupid assembly about going for your dreams, and he’d whispered to her that probably the only thing the stupid guy onstage had ever gone for was a pizza. She’d laughed and they’d almost gotten in trouble, but ever since then he watched for her in the halls, hoping to talk to her again.

He hadn’t been able to leave the basketball court once Rachel showed up, even though knowing she was there made him feel sick and unhappy. Then Mike Farmer and a couple of other older kids showed up and they wanted to play three-on-three. Pres was starting to feel tired and during the first game he’d stumbled and tripped over Keegan’s foot. His baseball hat had fallen off and he’d felt them all staring at his head.

“If you can’t keep up, you should get off the court,” Mike Farmer had said. Everyone had been looking at Pres and he’d said the first thing that came into his mind, something he remembered his mom saying to his dad just before his dad left.

“Screw you!” he’d shouted. Then he’d picked up his hat and his backpack and taken off across the soccer fields. Once he was out of sight, he’d sat down behind a tree, trying not to cry. It hadn’t worked very well, but after a little while he’d felt better and he’d taken off for town, where he thought he could kill an hour looking around the cemetery and then walk back to Gramma’s. But then he’d met Sweeney in the cemetery. He’d never met a lady who looked like that before. She was almost as tall as his dad and her hair was so red that it looked like a Popsicle. And she had been nice. She had talked to him as if he were her age, rather than just a kid who didn’t know anything. He liked Sweeney, he realized, though it wasn’t the way he liked Rachel Martino, it was the way he liked Lindy Harris, who had been his babysitter until she’d gone away to college. It was the way he had liked Mr. Babyak, who had been his fourth-grade teacher.

He was almost to the clubhouse. He always knew because of the big maples that grew together in a circle along the path. They made a kind of bowl in the middle, and in the summer and the early fall, when the leaves were still on the trees, you could go in there and lie on the ground and look up at the leaves, and it felt good there, like it would be a nice place to live.

Passing the maples, he kept walking into the darkening woods. Most of the houses in Concord were right up next to someone else’s, but his grandparents had owned their house forever, so they didn’t have any other houses next to theirs, just the woods, which was where the clubhouse was.

The clubhouse had been built by his dad and some of his friends when they were in high school. It wasn’t very big—just one room that had a couch and a table and a few other chairs in it. The furniture was old and it reminded Pres of the kind of furniture you saw on old TV shows, and the one window had these funny curtains made out of brown material that was the same as what they made towels out of. Someone had sewn green pom-poms all around the edges. It was pretty ugly, but Pres realized that he wouldn’t want to change it. It was how the clubhouse was. It was special.

Pres’s dad had once told him that they built it as a place to have parties, but Pres didn’t see what was so great about having parties—his mother had parties and they weren’t a lot of fun, just a lot of her friends standing around. He did like the idea of a secret place to go where nobody could find you. You could have a club there and let in only the people you liked and wanted to have in your club.

He rested for a minute and then kept going, and pretty soon he could see it up ahead, just a little bit of brown and a flash of silver through the trees.

Pres had once asked his mother if Gramma and Grampa were rich because they had a big house and the woods behind it, but she said that they weren’t rich, it was just that they had owned their house for a very long time and that was why and that if they wanted, they could sell it for a lot of money, but they were probably never going to do that because they liked their house and it was close to Pres and his mother’s house and also to Daddy and Lauren and Noah and Rory. “Your grampa likes having all that land behind him,” she’d said. “There are people in town who’d pay millions for it, but he’s too stubborn to do anything but what he wants to do.”

As he got closer to the clubhouse, Pres stopped and listened. A breeze rustled through the trees, making a soft, whispering sound. Even though he knew what it was, Pres shivered. It sounded like voices talking to him, scolding him. “Liar, liar, liar,” it seemed to say.

The breeze was what made him notice the smell. It was coming from the direction of the clubhouse, but Pres was confused for a moment, thinking that he’d stepped in something, or something had spilled on his shirt. He checked and found nothing. When the breeze died down, it was fainter, but it was still there, a rotten kind of smell, like when his mom left chicken in the garbage, or the time a rat had died in their wall and Grampa had had to come with his saw and cut a hole in the living room wall to get it out.

It was almost dark now. The light seemed to have been squeezed out of the woods, with just a little line of deep blue sky showing somewhere beyond the trees. The breeze picked up again and he started walking faster.

He’d never been in the woods when it was completely dark before, and where they had seemed lovely and private only a few minutes ago, they now seemed a little scary. That smell, for one thing. And the breeze was blowing louder; the voices were more urgent now. He’d just quickly check at the clubhouse, make sure everything was okay, and then he’d go right home.

He was fifty or so yards from the clubhouse when he heard the noise. Pres stopped and listened, his back rigid underneath the backpack. At first he thought he’d imagined it, but then it came again,
tap-tap-tap
. It wasn’t a sound he could identify, like footsteps or someone opening or shutting a door. And it was coming from the clubhouse.

He was frozen now. The air was murky and the night was coming on fast. He could just see the clubhouse up ahead of him, but when he turned around, the woods behind were a blur of reaching, skeleton branches, of spindly trunks and shadowy shapes. Something made him walk forward, his heart thudding so hard in his chest, he thought it might jump out.

There was a sudden movement, a quick rustling of the leaves and then someone was jumping out from behind the clubhouse, slamming against him, knocking him down. He screamed and shut his eyes, feeling the strong arms pinning him to the ground, the hot, wet breath on his face. It seemed to go on forever. He could hear breathing and feel the weight of the body on him, scratching at his face and neck.

And then came a bark. Pres opened his eyes and looked up into the brown eyes of the McClintocks’ golden retriever, Buster. He had jumped off Pres and was standing there, watching him and wagging his tail.

“Buster!” Pres dragged himself up and brushed the leaves and dirt off his pants and jacket. His backpack had fallen off and he retrieved it and put it back on. “Bad dog! Naughty dog!” It was what he had heard Mr. McClintock yelling at Buster before when he came to get him in the woods.

But Buster didn’t respond. He wagged his tail again and turned around, trotting around the far corner of the clubhouse. The sound came again,
tap-tap-tap,
and Pres realized what it had been: Buster’s tail wagging against the boards on the side of the building.

Pres followed him, worried about what Buster might be doing. Could he have gotten into the clubhouse…? No, the doors and windows were all closed. It must be something else.

He came around the corner and saw Buster rooting about in the dirt. Or maybe it was garbage, because there seemed to be some kind of cloth there. As the fact registered, he realized too that the smell was stronger than ever. And as he stepped closer, he realized what it was and he felt the sourness rise in his throat until he could no longer keep it down and he turned away, knowing he was going to be sick.

Pres knew about vomiting. He had done so much vomiting so far in his young life that he knew exactly how many times he was going to be sick. He knew that this sickness was caused by what he had seen, not by something in him, and he knew that after he threw up once, he’d probably be okay. He let the sour liquid go and stood up, wiping the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth and taking a deep breath.

He was terrified, his heart pounding, his head racked by a dull throbbing he thought was going to make it explode. But he turned around to look at the body.

The man was dead. There was no doubt about that. He lay on his back, one arm splayed out, the other curled toward the stomach, as though it were clutching at the wound.

In fact, the whole middle of the man was a mess of dried blood and leaves, as though he’d rolled around in the dirt after he’d gotten hurt. Parts of the cloth had been torn away. Pres forced himself to look at the face. It too seemed torn, but he could see a nose, oddly bent, and a bushy brown beard. Somehow, he couldn’t find the eyes. There was a lot of dark mess where they should have been.

And, he realized slowly—everything sluggish, taking its own time—the man was wearing a soldier’s uniform, a Revolutionary War soldier’s uniform, just like the ones he’d seen at reenactments. Pres turned away and sank down to the ground. He should run, he should call Gramma on the cell phone and tell her to get an ambulance. Except he knew that an ambulance wasn’t going to help the man, whoever he was. And thinking about Gramma reminded him that he had done something bad. He had lied to her and he had walked through the woods by himself. She would be mad. And if they came, if the police came, they might think the man had something to do with the clubhouse. He couldn’t let them go in the clubhouse.
He couldn’t.
He turned around again to look at the body. Maybe he could move the man away, then call the police. But as soon as he leaned down, he knew he couldn’t touch the body. The smell was too strong, for one thing, and the body looked a little mushy, like it might not stay together if he tried to drag it. Besides, he thought he remembered seeing something on TV about there being laws to stop people from moving bodies. He didn’t want to get arrested. There were laws about telling if you saw a dead body too. He was pretty sure about that.

No, he had to tell someone. But first he could look and make sure that everything was okay. Then maybe they wouldn’t go in there. He forced himself to look away from the man and walked very slowly around the side of the building. He looked under the rock for the key, but it wasn’t there. As he walked closer he realized that the door of the clubhouse was open very slightly, the key still in the padlock. He looked inside. It was empty.

Pres locked the door again and instead of replacing the key under the rock, he put it in his pocket. He was about to turn and run to his grandparents’ house when he looked up to find Sweeney walking toward him. He blinked, not sure if it was her. But then she said, “I’m sorry, Pres. I was worried about you,” and kept walking. He didn’t know what else to do, so he put a hand up, the way the crossing guards at school did to stop cars.

“No, don’t go there,” he said quickly. “There’s a dead man there.” He pointed to the side of the clubhouse.

“What do you mean?” She looked at the clubhouse and then back at him. She sniffed the air, and he saw her eyes get very big.

“There’s a dead man there. I just found him. I was just walking home.” She blurred in front of his eyes, as though she’d melted. He took a step back.

“Pres,” Sweeney said, taking a step toward him. “Are you okay? We should call someone. We should get help.”

“I don’t think anyone can help him,” he said, watching her green eyes watch him as he felt the woods pitch and the trees ran together, and then everything went dark.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 11

It was two in the morning when Detective Tim Quinn realized something was wrong with his ten-month-old daughter, Megan. She’d been fussy the night before and he’d had trouble getting her down. He’d just dropped off to sleep himself when he heard her crying, not her typical getting-his-attention-in-the-middle-of-the-night crying but an anguished howling that made him feel suddenly nauseous with fear.

He sat up in bed, disoriented, then raced to her room. When he opened the door, she was standing up in her crib, gripping the top bar and looking at him as though she had been crying for hours. In the dim light from the hallway, he could see her flushed face, the wet eyes and running nose.

She had a cold.

“Poor baby,” he murmured to her as he walked back and forth across the hallway, holding her hot little body to his bare chest. “Poor baby. Do you have a cold?” Megan’s crying was now ragged, hiccuppy, as though she’d exhausted all of her resources just getting him to come to her. She looked up at him, admonishing.
What took you so long?
she seemed to be asking him.
I needed you!

He walked her up and down the hallway for ten minutes and then took her into the bathroom, where he wiped her nose and started a lukewarm bath. Maybe that would make her feel better. His mother had always run him baths when he was sick, as though getting clean would chase away the germs. When the bath was full, he got in with Megan, sitting her on his stomach and letting her splash around a little in the water.

At first, after Maura died, he had felt funny about getting in the bath with her. But not for long. It was so much easier to give her a bath when he took his own, and he’d even taken her in the shower with him a couple of times. She’d been scared at first, but now she laughed when the water hit her face. He’d never seen his own mother without her clothes, seen his father nude only a couple of times by accident. In his house you weren’t supposed to see adults in the nude. But at some point it had started to seem silly to him. Megan was just a baby. She didn’t care.

And maybe it was because of the way he’d felt since Maura’s death, like a…like a…eunuch. That was the word. He was no longer a sexual being. He was just a father, that’s all he was. He couldn’t imagine ever being with a woman in that way again. He thought back on all the people he had known who had lost wives or husbands and then gotten remarried, sometimes only months later. How was it possible? He couldn’t see it.

He lay back in the water, holding her up under her arms and letting her paddle at the water with her feet. It was weird how it had never bothered him being in the bathtub where his wife had died. He had thought it would, even considered ripping out the tub unit and putting in a shower stall or something, but it was just a bathtub now, with its pink tiles and peeling grout, the edges covered now with Megan’s bath toys, rubber duckies and
Sesame Street
characters. If he closed his eyes and forced himself to remember, he could see her again, lying in the warm, pink water, still wearing her pajamas and bathrobe, her wrists with the wounds like ribbons lying face up on her stomach, as though she were displaying them with pride. But he didn’t like to think about that and so he didn’t, most of the time.

“Okay, Button,” he said, standing up and lifting Megan out of the water. “You ready to go to bed?” She laughed. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” he murmured as he toweled her off and replaced her diaper and sleeper.

She smiled up at him, a gorgeous, angelic smile that said,
Yes. Thank you. You made me better.
His heart contracted. He couldn’t bear to put her down in her crib, so he brought her into bed with him and curled up next to the warm little body lying in the place where her mother used to sleep.

She was fussy the next morning but seemed better, and he gambled that she was well enough for day care. Still, it seemed to take longer to do everything—to get her dressed and into the car and out of the car again—and by the time he was at his desk at Cambridge police headquarters in Central Square, he was a good forty-five minutes late for work.

He thought he’d gotten away with it, but just as he lifted his phone to check his voice mail, Havrilek walked in and said, “Nice of you to join us, Quinn.”

“Sorry, sorry. I know. Megan was sick last night and it was hard to get her ready this morning.” He tried to keep his voice even, not resort to complaining about his kid.

Havrilek didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he spoke it was in a low, sympathetic voice Quinn wasn’t used to hearing. “Quinny, I feel for you, I really do. I think it’s a great thing you’re doing, taking care of your kid. But this is the fourth time this month you’ve been late and it’s gotta stop.”

“I know, I know. I think she’s fine now and I’ll make a real effort to be here on time. Sorry.”

“All right.” Havrilek studied him for a minute as though he was deciding something. “Listen, I got something for you. Missing persons.”

Quinn looked up quickly. He was a homicide detective, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t do runaway teenagers anymore. “But I thought I was on this gang thing.”

“Yeah, but with Marino on his back, you’re without a partner. I want you to do this.”

Quinn watched Havrilek’s pale blue eyes, trying to figure out if he was being punished. “Look, I know I’ve been preoccupied, but I’m trying, I really am. I’ve already done some legwork on the gang thing, I’ve got—”

“This is what I want you to do.” His voice was final and he reached across Quinn’s desk and offered up the message. “I don’t know why she waited so long to call. It’s been a week now that she hasn’t heard from him. Go figure. Some people are funny that way.”

Quinn looked down at the little slip of paper.
Beverly Churchill. Husband Kenneth, age 46, missing since a week ago Friday.
There was a phone number and an address in an expensive part of Cambridge. He folded it in half and put it in his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “You got it.”

Havrilek nodded. “Good. I need you to go out to the house and get a statement.” He picked up the picture frame on Quinn’s desk, looked at the picture of Megan for a second, and then replaced it. Quinn saw him glance over at the picture Marino had on his desk, his wife in a bikini on a Florida vacation that must have been twenty years ago now. Quinn had put his picture of Maura away, mostly because it made the other guys uncomfortable. “We could make her come in, but in case it turns out to be anything, it might be good to kind of check out the house, see what’s what.”

Quinn knew exactly what he meant. When these missing-persons cases turned out to be murder, you could pretty much count on it being the spouse.

“Just outta curiosity, why does she say she waited so long to call us?”

“She said he was away for the weekend or something. Supposed to come home last Wednesday. She waited all the way through the next weekend to see if he’d decided to stay. When he didn’t come home by last night, she was worried, so she called us this morning. I don’t know. You never know about people’s home lives, huh? Pretty crazy shit that goes on.” It took him only a second to realize what he’d said, and he colored, then cast his eyes down at Quinn’s desk.

Quinn was embarrassed for him and hurried to cover it up. “Okay, I’ll get right on it,” he said quickly. “I’ll give her a call.”

*   *   *

If Marino had been with him when he pulled up in front of Beverly and Kenneth Churchill’s house, he would have made some kind of a joke about latte-drinking liberals.

The Churchills lived in a magazine-perfect Cambridge house, a big white Victorian with a row of rocking chairs on the wraparound porch and a huge wreath made of autumn leaves on the front door. There was even a Volvo parked in the driveway. Quinn knocked on the front door and waited a few minutes. Nothing. He tried once more and, again getting no answer, went around back. A dark-haired woman was kneeling by some flower beds along the side of the house, using a pair of hedge shears to trim a neat row of tall green plants. A big gray cat rubbed against her, switching its tail among the greenery.

“Mrs. Churchill?” Quinn called out.

She looked up and waved. “I’m sorry, I lost track of time. It always happens in the garden. Hold on, I’ll be right there.” She made one last trim and then lay down the shears.

In the moment that she stood up, brushed off her jeans, and started toward him, two things struck Quinn. One was that Beverly Churchill was very, very beautiful. The other was that she had not been lying when she said she had lost track of time. However much she was missing her husband, it hadn’t stopped her from getting completely wrapped up in her gardening.

“When did you realize that he might be missing?” Quinn asked her once they were sitting at the dining room table, she with a mug of Earl Grey and Quinn—who didn’t like taking food or drink on the job—a glass of ice water.

“Wednesday,” she said. “He had gone out to Concord on Friday for the encampment and he was going to stay for a couple of days to do some research.” She had light blue eyes, sled-dog eyes, that reminded him of Havrilek’s, and perfectly black hair to her shoulders. Her well-placed cheekbones gave her face a sharp, exotic look that made her seem very aloof and very calm. But her hands worried on the table, and drawn by the movement, he looked down at them. They were raw and red, the skin peeling and cracking along her knuckles. “Hands like chopped meat,” his mother would’ve said. Despite a lifetime of cleaning houses, she had kept her own hands as soft and young-looking as a girl’s, slathering them with thick cream she got through the mail and wearing a pair of white cotton gloves to bed every night. After she’d died, he’d found pairs and pairs of them in her bathroom.

Quinn looked up. “Wait. Encampment. What’s that?”

“What’s that?” She stood up abruptly and led the way into a sort of family room off the kitchen. The walls were covered with rifles and muskets equipped with bayonets, and a huge gun case against one wall held another twenty or so weapons. Quinn looked around in amazement. The place was an arsenal.

“That,” Beverly Churchill said, pointing to a black-and-white photograph framed and hung below a large machete, “is an encampment.” Quinn leaned over and looked into the depths of what seemed to be a very old photograph of a bunch of soldiers sitting around a campfire, a grouping of primitive tents behind them. They were wearing Revolutionary War–era uniforms he remembered from school history books and had strangely long hair or ponytails. “And that’s Kenneth.” Quinn followed her finger and saw a tall, dark-haired man standing behind a seated group. “It sounds silly to anyone who doesn’t do reenactments, but he’s part of a Minuteman company that re-creates famous battles from the Revolutionary War. On the weekends that they don’t have battles, they do these encampments. They dress up and cook their food over campfires and sing old songs. I always thought it was just an excuse to act like twelve-year-olds again, but he loved it.” He saw a look of horror come over her face. But she didn’t say, “Loves, I mean. Loves,” or try to cover up for her use of the past tense.

Quinn looked at the rest of the pictures on the wall. His eyes rested on one of Kenneth Churchill, wearing tan khaki fatigues and standing in front of a tank.

Beverly Churchill noticed him looking at the photo and said, “Kenneth was in Desert Storm. I know it seems, well…” She gestured around at the house, and Quinn knew she’d read his mind. “I mean, there aren’t a lot of college professors who joined the Marines. But it was important to him. He’d had his education paid for by the Corps and he felt it was important to go back in when his country needed him.” There was a note of annoyance in her voice, as though she’d explained this so many times to herself that she was tired of the words.

She stepped away from the wall and went back into the dining room. He followed her and they sat down at the table again. Her hands, resting on a woven place mat, were active, the nails scratching and picking at the skin.

“So, he went out to Concord on Friday the first—this is a little over a week ago—and then…?”

“And then…nothing. He was supposed to be home that next Wednesday night and he didn’t come home. I thought he might call to say that he was staying another day, but…”

“Wait, so you didn’t talk to him all weekend? Was that unusual?”

“Well, you see, he couldn’t. I mean, they weren’t supposed to use modern inventions of any kind.”

“What about after the encampment?”

“No.” She picked up the corner of the place mat, twisting it between her fingers. “I guess I should explain. Kenneth is an American history professor. He’s writing a book. About a Minuteman from Concord who disappeared in 1775. His name was Josiah Whiting and he was a stonecutter, a gravestone maker, in Concord. Kenneth was…well, he was kind of obsessed with Whiting. It had turned into a…
obsession
is the only word for it.”

She looked at him as though she expected him to understand, but when he didn’t say anything, she went on. “He was gone almost every weekend over the summer. If he wasn’t at reenactments, he was doing research. He’d been spending a lot of time in cemeteries, doing research on Whiting’s stones. He always used to call when he was away, to check in, but this summer he stopped doing that, because of the book, I think. He was so wrapped up in it.”

“So, he didn’t come home Wednesday and…then what?”

“I just thought maybe he’d decided to stay. There was another reenactment this past weekend. I thought maybe he hung around for that, but when he didn’t come home last night, I started to get worried.”

Quinn waited for a minute, in case she was going to go on and say it for him. “I hate to have to ask this, but was your husband involved with anyone else, another woman?” He asked the question in what he hoped was a nonchalant way. No big deal if he is, he wanted his voice to imply, happens every day.

She hesitated for a moment and he had the sense that she was about to confide in him when they heard the front door slam. Beverly Churchill stood up—gratefully, Quinn thought—and went to the door of the dining room, saying, “In here, Marcus.”