Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

'Totally.'

Maggie finished her drink and climbed out of the chair. Outside the window, the sky grew blacker as dusk approached. Serena came and stood next to her, and they watched the lights come on around the harbor below them. An ore boat muscled through the canal underneath the city's steel lift bridge. Beyond the bridge was the strip of land called the Point, where Stride and Serena lived.

'This nurse you're seeing, where exactly on the north side does she live?' Maggie asked, is it in the city or in the farmlands?'

'Up in the farmlands. Lismore Road near McQuade.' Serena added, 'And no, you don't have to remind me.'

Maggie nodded, but she reminded her anyway. 'That's not a very safe place to be these days.'

'You're telling me that Trisha is dead,' Troy Grange said.

Maggie winced. Troy didn't waste time with pretty ways to share bad news. 'We don't know that for sure,' she told him. 'I don't think we can automatically assume the worst. One woman is dead. That's all we know for certain.'

'Liar,' Troy snapped.

He wasn't being hostile, just honest. Maggie knew he was right, but she couldn't say so. She couldn't say that to any victim's spouse and certainly not to a friend.

Troy Grange was the senior Health and Safety Manager at the Duluth Port. They had worked together for five years on immigrant smuggling, outbreaks of communicable disease, and crimes in the harbor ranging from arson to rape. Through it all, she had never known Troy to hide behind his lawyers or his budget. Anything that went wrong in the port was on his watch. He was solid.

Troy ran his hands over his bald head. He was forty years old, not tall, but built like a circus strongman. His face was big: lumpy nose, broad chin, and puffy cheekbones like a squirrel with a mouthful of acorns. He wore a form-fitting red undershirt and baggy black sweatpants.

'You know what I keep thinking about?' he said. 'I used to work on the ore boats, but Trisha made me give it up. She said it was too dangerous, and she didn't want to be left alone with the kids. And now I lose her from inside our own house.'

'I'm so sorry, Mr Grange,' Kasey Kennedy murmured.

Kasey sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Maggie, her knees pressed together. She looked uncomfortable, her eyes darting between Maggie and Troy. Maggie felt bad about bringing Kasey into the middle of this scene, but she wanted Kasey to understand that investigative work wasn't glamorous. Too often, it was filled with suffering.

'You saw him, didn't you?' Troy asked Kasey. 'You saw this bastard?'

'Not his face, but yes.'

Troy got up from his chair and folded his arms over his barrel chest. The floor timbers shivered as he paced in front of the fireplace.

'Tell me what you think,' he said. 'You saw what he did to this other woman. Is he just a fucking murderer? Is there any way my wife could be alive?'

'I don't know what to tell you, Mr Grange,' Kasey stuttered. 'I sure hope she's alive.'

Maggie wanted to say: If Trisha's alive, she's better off dead. But she didn't.

'How are the girls, Troy?' Maggie asked.

He sat down again and wiped his nose on his bare, thick forearm. 'I took them to visit Trisha's parents in Chicago on Friday, and I left Emma there. I've got to go back to work on Monday, and I can't take care of a baby right now. Plus, it will be good for her parents to have something else to focus on.'

'What about Debbie?'

'Debbie doesn’t understand what's going on.' He twisted his silver wedding ring around his finger and added, 'I shouldn't have gone to that goddamn Halloween party. Not with that other woman disappearing in October.'

'You had no way of knowing,' Maggie told him. 'We didn't know we were dealing with a pattern crime.'

'Yeah, but security's what I do. I knew there was a risk. Hell, I upgraded our security system three days after I heard about that woman going missing. A lot of good that did us.'

'Don't blame yourself.'

Troy shrugged. 'I do.'

'We're going to be blanketing the north highways with cops every night,' Maggie said. 'If this guy tries again, we'll get him.'

'That's a lot of ground to cover,' he said, shaking his head. 'I don't want to sound skeptical, but you're going to be spread pretty thin across a few hundred square miles.'

'We've got extra manpower. Volunteers. Nobody's sleeping, Troy.'

'I know. I appreciate it.' He looked at Kasey. 'Will you be out there too?'

'Um, yeah, I'm sure I will,' Kasey murmured.

'You be careful.'

Kasey nodded and stared at her hands.

'Daddy?'

All three of them looked up. Debbie Grange, six years old, stood in the doorway of the living room. She wore polka-dot pajamas and carried a stuffed Pooh bear under her arm. Troy Grange sprang up immediately.

'What is it, sweetheart?'

'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' Debbie murmured.

Maggie felt her heart breaking. She saw Kasey look away and bite her lip. Troy wrapped his bear arms around his little girl.

'I'll tuck you in, baby,' he said.

'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' the girl repeated.

'Oh, honey, I know, but Mommy's not here. Remember? She had to go away.'

Fat tears dripped down the girl's face. 'Where is she?'

'I told you, sweetheart, she had to take a trip, OK? I'll tuck you in. I'll stay right there with you.'

'No. I want Mommy.'

Troy cradled his daughter as the girl cried into his shoulder. He sang to her under his breath, and Maggie found she could barely watch. She gestured to Kasey, and they both stood up. Maggie met Troy's eyes and pointed at the front door. He nodded.

'Thanks for everything,' he called to her softly. 'You too, Kasey. Please keep me posted.'

They left without saying anything more. Outside, on the front porch, Kasey leaned heavily against the railing and looked sick. 'God,' she said.

'Yeah, this is the worst part of the job,' Maggie told her.

'Do you ever get used to it?'

'Nope. I hope I never do.'

Both women climbed inside Maggie's yellow Avalanche. Maggie normally drove fast, even at night, and she punched the truck to seventy-five miles an hour on the highway. Beside her, Kasey clutched the handhold on the door. The headlights lit up the dark stretch of road through the lonely farmlands.

'Do you still want to work on the investigation?' Maggie asked.

Kasey leaned her cheek against the cold glass and stared at the fields whipping by outside the window. 'I don't know. I don't even know if I want to be a cop anymore.'

Maggie glanced sideways at Kasey's face. 'You had a rough experience that night,' she told her. 'Some people never get over it. Even tough cops.'

As she said it, Maggie thought about Stride. He was a tough cop, but she knew that he took all of his stress and grief and sucked it inside himself, where very little of it ever escaped. She remembered how lonely he had been in the months after his wife died, when his wound was greatest. She had tried to fight her way inside to rescue him, but he had pushed her away, just as he was doing to Serena now. She wondered if he knew how to ask for help.

'I keep thinking about that woman's eyes,' Kasey said.

'You can't change what happened. It's over.'

'Yeah, but I feel so guilty.'

'You have to put it behind you.'

'That's the thing. I just want to get out. I want to forget all about it.' She turned and stared at Maggie. 'Do you think I'm wrong if I quit? Would you feel like I was running away?'

'That's not my call, Kasey,' Maggie said.

'I don't know what to do,' Kasey told her. 'I can't get that guy out of my head, you know? I feel like he's haunting me. Like he's still out there.'

Under the night sky, he was barely visible, just a silhouette marching quickly through the field in the north farmlands.