Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

“For now,” I tell him.

“The ME said it’s hard to tell who went in first, but he’ll figure it out. He said it looked like the two of them went into the water fairly close to each other. Why?”

“Can you let me know when he’s told you?”

“No. Good-bye, Tate,” he says, and hangs up.

I look at the watch. It’s been on the wrist of a dead guy for two years, but not necessarily in the water for two years. It depends on how long he was in the ground before he went in the drink. Either way, it looks like two years is the outer perimeter of the time line.

I check the missing persons reports, but immediately the list of names coming up becomes too long, and there is no way to narrow it down until I know whether the killer had a type. Could be all the girls are similar ages, or have similar descriptions. Or it could be the other coffins don’t have girls in them at all, but men.

I grab my dry cell phone and the printout of Rachel Tyler, and head back down to my car.

I’ve barely left the parking lot when I think better of my initial impulse. It’s the wrong time of the day to show up at somebody’s house to tell them their daughter is probably dead. Most people would think there never is a right time-but there is. It’s the sort of thing you want to do earlier on so they can call friends and family who can come over to console them. Anyway, it may be Rachel’s ring, but it doesn’t mean it’s her corpse.

I drive toward the edge of the city and park my car outside a florist that is open every weeknight until seven. I need to replace this darkness with some light, yet the first thing I think about is how flowers and death have been mixed together over time as much as flowers and love.

“Hi ya, Theo.” An extremely pretty girl with an easy manner smiles at me as I go in.

“How’s it going, Michelle?” I do my best to smile back.

We make the usual chitchat, then she asks me if I’m after the usual. I tell her I am.

“Your wife must really love flowers,” Michelle tells me, and I slowly nod.

Michelle picks out a bunch she thinks Bridget will like, wraps some cellophane around the stems, and hands them over. She writes down the amount in a small book behind the counter. At the end of the month, like every other month, she will send me a bill.

“Say hi to Bridget for me,” she says, and her smile is infectious. Sometimes I think I could just watch this woman smile for ages.

I head back to my car and rest the flowers in the passenger seat, careful not to crush them. I glance at my watch. Bridget won’t be in any hurry to see me, so I change my mind and decide maybe I can pay a visit to Rachel Tyler’s family after all. I do a U-turn and drive back in the opposite direction, taking with me a bunch of already dying flowers and a whole lot of bad news.

Averageville. That’s where the Tylers live. All the houses on the street are well kept, but there is nothing special, as if any one resident was too scared to make their house stand out above another. No huge homes with giant windows, no expensive cars parked outside, no Porsches or BMWs suggesting a world of big money and high debt. No beat-up cars sitting on blocks, no car parts scattered across dying lawns. Doctors and lawyers and drug dealers live elsewhere. This is typical living in suburbia, where robberies are high, but homicides are low. It’s a pleasant place to live. Sure as hell beats some of the alternatives.

I slow down and glance at the mailboxes, getting an early idea how much further I have to drive. This wasn’t my case when the bodies floated up. It wasn’t my case when the caretaker took off. But it became my case the moment the coffin opened and Rachel Tyler’s body made a suggestion that there are others out there who could still be alive if not for my mistake. I glance at the geranium cocktail next to me, and for a few seconds I think about my wife. I like to think that I know what she would want me to do, but I can’t be sure. It’s been a long time since she gave me any advice.

I step out into the light rain in front of a single-story house that was mass-produced back at the start of the townhouse era. Things are tidy, but a little run down. The garden has a few weeds; the lawn is a little long; the entire house looks a little tired.

The door is opened by a woman in her late forties, early fifties. She looks like she has been on edge for the last two years, expecting news at any moment. She is like the house-tidy, neat, but tired.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Tyler?”

“Yes. .”

I can tell she isn’t sure whether I’m here to sell her encyclopedias or God, or whether I’m here to bolster or destroy her hopes for her missing daughter. Slowly I reach into my pocket and take out a business card. Her eyes widen and her mouth drops slightly as I hand it across, and when she reads it her mouth firms back up. She doesn’t seem sure what to say. Doesn’t seem to know whether to be happy or scared that I’m on her doorstep.

“My name is Theodore Tate,” I say, “and I’m a private investigator.”

“That’s what the card says,” she offers, without any sarcasm.

“Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Do you know where she is?” she asks, already sure of the reason for my visit.

“This is about Rachel,” I say, “but not directly. Please, if we can step inside, I can tell you more.”

She fights with the beginnings of a sentence; perhaps the struggle is with the hundreds of questions trying to come out at once, a hundred different ways in which to ask if her daughter is still alive. I bet she’s rehearsed this moment time and time again, but the reality is crushing her, confusing her. She steps back and I move inside.

The hallway is warm and homey. There are dozens of photographs of Rachel on the walls, ranging over the nineteen years she spent in this world. There are pictures of her as a baby, her mother holding her tightly. The years have taken their toll on Mrs. Tyler. There are shots of Rachel next to a tricycle, in a sandbox, going down a slide. There is a man in some of them, holding Rachel’s hand, or swinging her at the park, or helping her blow out a cake with eight candles on it. Rachel gets older. So do her parents. Fashions change and the three grow older, but the smiles are always there, keeping the parents young. One of these photos should have been with her missing persons report, but probably Mrs. Tyler couldn’t part with any of them. I’m sure Rachel’s bedroom will be just as she left it, the same posters on the walls, her favorite stuffed toys waiting for her on her bed, maybe even a stockpile of Christmas and birthday presents from missed occasions. It’ll be like a time capsule.

Patricia Tyler leads me through to the lounge.

“Is your husband home?” I ask, praying she isn’t going to tell me they are separated or, worse, that her husband has died from the pain of losing his daughter to a mystery, that he has spent the last six or eight or ten months in the ground.

“He’s at work. He sometimes works late,” she says, sounding sad about it. I can’t imagine she ever sounds any other way. “Mostly, actually, these days. I should phone him, I guess. Should I?”

“If you’d like.”

“What. . what am I going to tell him?” she asks.

“Perhaps we should sit down for a few minutes first.”

“Sure, okay, sure, I don’t know where my manners are. Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?” She starts to stand back up. “Anything, just name it.” She’s halfway out of the lounge when she pulls up short; then, fidgeting her hands, she slowly turns back to look at me. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says, and starts to cry.

She’s not the only one who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t come. I feel the urge to hold her while she cries and an equally strong urge to turn and run back down the hallway and get the hell out of this street. I end up standing still.