Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

“It was awful.” Patricia Tyler’s tears start to come now. For a few moments she does nothing to try to stop them, just lets them roll down her face as if she hasn’t noticed them. Then she raises a handkerchief and tries to dab them away, but they keep on coming. “Can you imagine that? Our daughter is missing, possibly dead-or, as it turns out, she was. Or is.”

“Both, actually,” her husband interjects, and he looks close to tears too, and he shrugs a little, as if unsure why he made the comment. I know the moment I leave they will fall into an embrace neither of them will ever want to break.

“And those heartless thugs at the bank register us with a debt collection agency,” Patricia says, “and we had to pay it. Can you believe that?”

“Do you have that last credit card statement?”

“We have everything,” she says.

“Can I see it?”

“Why?” she asks.

“It might tell me where Rachel was that day, or in the days before.”

“The police already have a copy of it,” she says. “It didn’t lead them anywhere.”

“But it might lead me somewhere.”

She doesn’t argue the point. She just walks out of the room, leaving me and her husband alone in uncomfortable silence until she returns with the bill, which takes her two minutes. I keep waiting to hear the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. If Landry catches me here, he’s going to be truly pissed off. She hands me the bank statement. I scroll down. Clothes, CDs, more clothes. Gas.

“These are all standard places she went?” I ask.

“They’re on all of her bills,” Patricia says.

“Where was her car found?”

“At the university,” Michael says. “It was where she always parked it.”

“And the florist?” I ask, stopping my finger next to the purchase she made a week before she disappeared.

“She bought flowers for her grandmother,” Patricia says.

“Anything else here stand out?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says.

“Okay. Can I take this with me?”

“Don’t lose it,” she says.

She walks me to the door. Michael Tyler stands up, seems about to join us, but sits back down. The hallway is warm and there seem to be more pictures of Rachel hanging up than there were when I was here last night, as if the Tylers thought they could use them to keep the bad news at bay.

“The man last night. The reporter said his name was Bruce Alderman. You haven’t said it, but you think he’s innocent, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

I think of the look in Bruce’s eyes before he pulled the trigger. I think of the key in his pocket with my name on the envelope. “I don’t think he did it,” I admit.

“Will you find who did?”

“I’ll try. I promise.”

I’m halfway down the walkway when it strikes me. I turn back around and Patricia is still standing there watching me, watching the person who two years after her daughter went missing came along and told them all was lost. “The flowers for her grandmother. Was there an occasion?”

“My mother died a week before Rachel disappeared. It was one of the reasons the police thought she’d run away. Rachel and my mom were close. For the first few years my mother helped raise Rachel. The police assumed she was depressed and needed to get away. She bought flowers to take out to the cemetery for the funeral.”

“Which cemetery?”

“Woodland Estates.”

Woodland Estates. The cemetery with the lake. The cemetery with my daughter.

The cemetery where Rachel Tyler was found.

It’s a connection that was there two years ago, but nobody was looking for it. Nobody even knew to look for it. Why would they? No way could they have known Rachel Tyler was going to be found one day buried in a cemetery. No way could they have known that going to her grandmother’s funeral would send her into the scope of her killer. Is that what happened?

My cell phone rings, which is good news for me, since it means it’s up and running. I look at the display, but don’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“What are you doing fucking with my investigation?”

“Who is this?” I ask, even though I already know.

“Who the hell do you think? You visited the Tylers.”

“Look, Landry, I was. .” But I don’t know how to finish.

“Jesus, Tate, what the hell are you playing at here? You’re going to seriously mess things up for us.”

“I know what I’m doing,” I tell him.

“If you knew what you were doing you’d still be carrying a badge. You’re going to mess things up, and if it wasn’t Bruce Alderman who killed those girls, that means we’ve still got a serious investigation on our hands. Which means there’s going to be a trial once we catch the guy, and suddenly we’re going to have to explain your actions at the trial. How’s that going to make you look? Or us? You think any defense lawyer worth more than ten cents isn’t going to be able to shred our case apart because you’ve fucked up all our evidence? Sidney Alderman is sure you killed his son. Come on, Tate, you gotta be more careful. You can’t let this bullshit happen.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I know that. We all know it,” he says. “But not Alderman. He’s sure you pulled the trigger. You might want to watch your back.”

“It was an empty threat,” I say, not believing it.

“Maybe. I’d still watch it anyway. He’s building up some Dutch courage.”

“What do you mean?”

“He went straight from the morgue to a bar,” he says. “He’s drinking himself into a state, and I don’t know whether it’s a better or a worse one.”

“Let me guess. You gave him a lift?”

“That’s a shitty question, Tate. I’m trying to help you out here.”

“Okay. Okay, I get the point.”

“I don’t think you do,” he says, “because somehow you got her ring.”

“What?”

“Rachel Tyler. You got her ring. You showed it to her parents.”

“Bruce gave it to me.”

“Bullshit. You had it yesterday afternoon. How’d you get it? You steal it out of the coffin? Where are you right now?”

I was outside the cemetery about thirty seconds ago, but now that I know Sidney Alderman isn’t home, I’ll give his house a visit instead. “I’m at home.”

“No you’re not. I’m at your house and you’re not here.”

“Good one, Landry. I’m standing in my driveway and you’re nowhere around.”

I’m pretty sure we both know the other one is bluffing.

“Stay out of my case, Tate. Your name comes up one more time, and I’m going to take some action. Got that? You could do time here, man. You’re compromising things. You stole evidence, which, by the way, I want back.”

“Okay, I’ll. .”

But he’s already hung up. I step out of my car and look up and down the street, suddenly worried that Landry might be watching me after all. There’s no sign of anybody. He was right about one thing, though. My name is about to come back up in about twenty minutes when he goes and talks to David. Things, like he said, are fucked up.

I knock on the door and nobody answers. So I move from window to window, peering inside, but since even sunlight can’t seem to penetrate the grime there isn’t much chance I can see anything. A guy like Sidney Alderman would come out and tell me to go to hell if he knew I was looking through his windows. That means he definitely isn’t here. I try the back door. It’s locked. So is the front. I get out the key Bruce left for me and try both doors, but it doesn’t fit. It’s not even close to fitting.

There are still plenty of ways to get inside, and I opt for the less subtle approach of kicking in the back door. It opens easily enough, bouncing back off the wall and almost closing again, stopped only by the busted-up jamb. The cops will know who did it. But if I’m right about things, it won’t matter. They’ll be glad I did it.