Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

“Then maybe you should think about that and tell me what you remembered.”

“Okay, okay, dude, but you gotta gimme the other halves of those notes, man.”

“I guarantee it. Now tell me.”

“I want them now.”

“No, the only thing you want now is to not piss me off.”

“Okay, okay. Look, David said something weird the other day. I mean, it might not mean anything, right, but this girl he was seeing. Like I said, he only just met her, right? So to me it seems a little odd he’d say that.”

“You haven’t told me what he said.”

“Oh, yeah, man, you’re right. Shit. My point is, who takes a person they’ve just met to a funeral? That’s what he said. He said he was taking her to a funeral on Sunday, but that’s weird, right? You don’t have funerals on Sunday. Anyway, that’s where he’s going to be tomorrow, though I don’t know what funeral.”

“It’s Sunday today.”

“It is? Oh, shit, man, that’s awesome! Do I still get my money?”

“No, because nobody gets buried on a Sunday.”

“Shit, man, that’s why it sounded so weird to me. But that’s what he said.”

“Then you’re wrong. Unless. .” I look up at Fiona Harding. “I gotta go,” I say, the message for both her and Studly.

I tuck the cell phone into my pocket and sprint to my car.

“Why can’t I get hold of Schroder?” I ask.

“He’s busy, Tate,” Landry says. “He’s got his own case he’s working on. I was about to call you anyway. Where are you?”

“He did it,” I say. “David Harding killed Henry Martins first. Then Rachel. Then the others.”

“What the hell? Are you drinking?”

“He did it, Landry. He absolutely did it. He found Henry Martins and confronted him about leaving, and when he learned the truth, when he learned from Martins that his real father was Father Julian, he used that university education of his and killed him, but first he got the list of names. Martins knew about Julian’s bank accounts. That’s how Martins found out Julian was having those affairs. It might even be why he started to suspect his own wife. He knew the list of names and he gave them to David before he died.”

“Where are you?”

“Listen to me, Landry. David Harding-”

“No, you listen to me. Where the hell are you?”

The city is dark now. The cloud cover is thick, but the occasional flash of sky comes through and shows a quarter moon or a few stars before shrouding back up. Sunday night is kicking in, and Christchurch is getting ready to watch primetime TV before falling asleep and starting the week all over again.

“Answer me, Tate. Where the hell are you?”

“I’m out and about.”

“I told you to stay the hell out of the way. Where’s Horwell?”

“What?”

“She just phoned her producer a few minutes ago. You’re in some deep shit.”

“What?”

“You need to come into the station.”

I pull the car over and cut the ignition. “What the hell is going on, Landry?”

“Horwell made the call. Somehow she got to her cell phone. She says you abducted her and you’re going to kill her. She said everything she suspected about you was true, and you found out. She said she had proof you killed Quentin James and Sidney Alderman, and also Father Julian. And she gave us a location.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Come down to the station,” he says.

“Have you found Deborah Lovatt?”

“Stop making things harder for yourself.”

“It’s David Harding. He’s doing all of this.”

“You’re wrong about Harding. I have a good bullshit meter, Tate, and Harding didn’t even make a blip on it.”

“That’s because the guy’s a sociopath,” I say. “It was an act. Come on, Landry, you need to trust me.”

I pull back out and start driving fast. I steer around a corner a little too quickly and my dad’s car fishtails. I drop the cell phone while I gain control of the car.

“What the hell?” Landry asks when I pick the phone back up. “Where are you going?”

“When is Father Julian getting buried?” I ask him.

“What? He got buried today.”

“Nobody gets buried on a Sunday.”

“Yeah, well, God or somebody made an exception. It was all part of the service. It was Julian’s church, so it made sense somehow to have the funeral today. Look, Tate, you need to calm down and think about what you’re doing. You hurt Horwell, and you’re-”

“I don’t have her, Landry. You’re being used, don’t you get that?”

“Used? Explain that to me?”

“Figure it out yourself. Look, I’m on my way to find Deborah Lovatt. I know where she is. She’s-”

“She’s at home, Tate. She spent the weekend with her boyfriend, and she left her cell phone behind. She’s home and we’ve spoken to her.”

“What?”

“Whatever is going on, Tate, is going on inside your head. Now listen to me, you need to. .”

But I’m not listening to him. Deborah is at home? It doesn’t make sense.

“. . some serious shit,” he says.

“What?”

“I said-”

“It doesn’t matter. I gotta go,” I say. I hang up. A moment later my phone starts ringing. I put it on mute and ignore it.

If Deborah Lovatt is fine, then who is David meeting today?

The cemetery is like a magnetic pull. It’s so strong that even if I drove all night in the other direction somehow I’d end up arriving back here. The entire graveyard is one huge shadow. My headlights fight back the darkness as I drive into it. There are no police cars parked anywhere and I figure that’s all part of David Harding’s plan. The night of the funeral of a murder victim, the police normally have the grave under surveillance. It’s standard procedure, because killers often like to come back. But not tonight. David Harding has led them all away in a different direction, probably about as far away as he can get them from the cemetery. He’s using Casey Horwell and me as bait, and it’s working.

The sky is overcast, no slivers of moonlight, and as I start to run to the church the rain begins again as if to cleanse the night. I think about how that conversation between David and Henry went, and decide it would have started badly and only got worse. I can only assume he was David’s first kill. I wonder what he thought, how he felt, and I wonder if in that we are similar. I felt nothing after killing Quentin James. I certainly felt no desire to do it again, even though I have done. I wonder if killing Henry Martins was like scratching an itch for David, or whether it was an experience that created an urge.

I reach the church. There is nobody around. No cars. No sign of life. But eight hours ago things were different. Eight hours ago all the crime scene tape was pulled away from the chapel and the pews were full of people. Father Julian came back to the church one final time for one final service. Friends and family and his parishioners prayed over him. They sang, they shed tears and told stories, and they put tokens and photos on his coffin. Some would have felt relief. None of them truly knew the man they were burying.

I make my way inside the same way I did the other night, and walk through the chapel and to the front of the church, my flashlight leading the way. The place still feels like it has a presence-maybe it’s Father Julian. I scan through the registry and find it’s already been updated with the Sunday funeral of the priest. I study the map of the grounds and figure out the location.

I carry the small Maglite with me as I walk among the dead, and the images of what happens in horror movies when people like me walk through places like this suddenly seem real. Hands digging up through the ground, the rotting dead back to some semblance of life with bony fingers as they claw their way from the dirt that has kept them captive. I shake the images away and they’re replaced with David Harding, a man far scarier and far more real.