Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

There isn’t any answer that will satisfy her, so I don’t offer one. Instead I push on. “Your father, did he own a watch?”

“Yes.”

“Was he buried with it?”

“I. . I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t really know.”

“Okay. Can you remember what kind of watch it was?”

“Not really. It was old, though.”

“Old?”

“Yeah. He’s had it my entire life. Is it weird that I can’t remember if he had it when he was buried?”

I run some names past her, but she doesn’t recognize any of them. Then I thank her for her time. The Tag Heuer didn’t belong to Henry Martins, because it is ten years old at the most. I switch my computer on and go through the file I was creating yesterday, tapping at the keyboard tentatively and barely touching the mouse because they have blood splatter on them. I head back onto the missing persons website and look for young women who went missing two years ago. Rachel Tyler’s name comes up again, and so do four others. I read the files. One of them was found two months later. The others have never shown up. I look at the photos. One of the girls was seventeen, another was thirty-two. Could be both are in the ground in the cemetery. The seventeen-year-old, Julie Thomas, definitely shares some characteristics with Rachel Tyler. Similar height, similar age, long blond hair, both good-looking. Most serial killers have a type. Looks like I’ve found it, but to make sure I check for the reports of women who went missing six days earlier. There is only one. Jessica Shanks was twenty-four years old and was reported missing by her husband the day she didn’t come home from work. I read through the details. The file hasn’t been reported as being closed, but I imagine sometime within the next twenty-four hours the update will have been made.

I print out the photos, one for each of the girls. I set them side by side on the floor since I can’t use my desk. Rachel Tyler, Julie Thomas, and Jessica Shanks. Without a doubt, the killer had a type. Somewhere in this database is another young woman to complete the set.

I print out the files, and then I power down my computer and unplug it all. I remove the tissue from my nose, then carry the computer down to my car: I don’t want it to get damaged by the cleaning crew, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Until all the blood is gone I’ll work out of my house.

When all the gear is loaded into my car, I return for the whiteboard, which I wipe down with more wet tissues. I also grab my cell phone. It has one bar showing on the power scale-I should’ve bought a car charger too. I leave the easel behind and carry the whiteboard to my car, nodding at the people who ask me questions on the way and ignoring their requests to stay and hang out a while to catch them up on all the gory details.

David the boyfriend lives in a house that is almost as run down as Sidney the retired caretaker’s. The place hasn’t seen as much in the way of paint over the last few years as it has rust and spiders. The guttering has corroded away, the windows are covered in grime, the siding warped and unwelcoming. It’s in the middle of dozens of others, each one in need of a handyman’s touch or a wrecking ball. I can’t figure out how David still lives here. I can’t figure out how anybody could live here longer than a week. But maybe he likes it and it’s a simple case of me not getting it. Perhaps this is the stereotypical pop-culture way to live. Derelict is the new black. Grunge is in, being broke is in, making sure the house you live in looks like crap is in. He doesn’t own the place, but rents it, like all the other students in this area, which means he slips easily into the day-to-day routine of not giving a damn about the condition of the property, and the owners know one day they’re going to bulldoze or burn it down anyway and don’t care as long as the rent is paid. This isn’t suburbia; most of the people living around here are university students struggling to survive. Rachel Tyler was a student. I can’t imagine her staying here for more than a few days before returning home to grab a few things or a good night’s sleep or the chance to step out of a shower cleaner than when she stepped in.

A young guy with studs in his ears and lips and nose opens the door. He must have real fun going through the security foreplay before boarding a plane. He’s squinting because the cloudy glare is too bright for him. His T-shirt reads The truth is down there with an arrow pointed to his crotch. All of a sudden, the last thing I want to know is the truth.

“David Harding?” I ask.

“No, dude, he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

The guy shrugs. “Studying, I think. Or sleeping.”

“Sleeping?”

“Yeah, man, you know, that thing you do in the morning after being out all night.”

“I thought people slept in the night,” I tell him.

“What planet are you from?” he asks.

“An older one. Does he sleep here?”

“Yeah, man.”

“So if he’s sleeping, could it be that he’s sleeping here right now?”

He seems to think about it. “It could, I suppose.”

“Then how about you put that university education of yours to some good use and figure it out for me.”

“Whatever, bro,” he says, then turns and walks up the hallway, grabbing the wall twice as he goes to make sure neither it nor he falls down.

I take a couple of steps inside, figuring Stud-Face here is happy for me to do so, but simply forgot to extend the invite. It’s colder inside than out-probably an all-year-round feature of these houses. The air is damp and the carpet, wallpaper, and furniture could do with a permanent dehumidifier. There are posters on the walls, but no photographs of friends or family. I can hear mumbling from the other end of the house, but can’t decipher it. It sounds like hangover talk.

I keep walking. The hallway takes me into a kitchen straight out of the start of last century, and with rotting food lying around that could be from the same era. The kitchen bench has a Formica top patterned with yellow flowers and strewed with the remnants of fast-food packets. The coffee pot is hot. I pour a cup just as Studly comes through. He doesn’t seem surprised at all that I’ve invaded his house and made myself at home. I figure it’s a student thing.

“He’s tired,” Studly says, summing up the hangover in an ambitious lie.

“He’s this way?” I ask, heading out of the kitchen and back into the hallway.

“Dude, I said he’s tired,” Studly says, louder this time. “He doesn’t want to talk.”

I turn around and stare at him, and there’s something in the way I look at him that makes him decide he doesn’t seem to mind anymore whether I go and wake David or not, as long as I’m not bugging him. He shrugs and goes about riffling through the fridge for something that could be food.

David Harding’s bedroom is dark and smells worse than the rest of the house. I turn the light on, but it doesn’t really help much. On the floor is a double mattress with no base. It looks like it’s had a dozen people jumping up and down on it. David doesn’t look up. He has his head buried in a pillow.

I crouch down next to him. “David.”

“Go away,” he says.

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“I don’t care.”

There are clothes scattered across the floor, pages from work assignments and textbooks piled on the desk and chair. Food wrappers and crumbs cover the carpet. I open the curtains and let in some light. He groans a little. I roll him over, and for the first time he takes a look at me. His hair is sticking straight up around the back and the left-hand side from where the pillow has crushed it. There’s gunk in the corners of his eyes. His skin is pale, suggesting he doesn’t get out much. There is something that looks familiar about him, and I put it down to the possibility I might have seen his picture in the papers when Rachel disappeared. He looks lost, the kind of lost only somebody in their twenties looks when they’re still at university racking up the degrees with no idea of what they really want to do in life.