Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

Serena.

He felt a stabbing wave of guilt. Serena. She had been the center of his life for the past three years, and he had turned his back on her and cheated on her. Serena was no fool. She had always known how Maggie felt about him. If there was one thing she had feared in their relationship, it was that he would sleep with Maggie one day.

And now he had.

'Mags,' he said.

She swiveled her head to stare at him. He watched her face, which was patient and expectant. She assumed he was about to run like hell. She was waiting for him to say it. Mistake.

When he didn't say anything, Maggie rode to his rescue again.

'Look, do we have to make a big deal out of this?' she asked. 'You feel guilty as hell, but you shouldn't. I don't. We needed each other, and something happened. Serena never needs to know. You can go back to the way things were.'

'What about us?' he said.

She turned away without replying. He knew why. Even if he entertained the fiction that he and Serena could go on as they had before, he was certain that his relationship with Maggie had changed forever. They couldn't pretend otherwise.

'Let's go check out the apartment, OK?' she said, ducking his question. 'That's probably the manager over there.'

They climbed out of his truck and approached a short black man who paced in front of the apartment building. He greeted them with a firm handshake and introduced himself as Rufus Durand. Durand had steel-gray hair and was in his late fifties. He used his key to let them inside the street door.

'Mr Garaldo's apartment is on the top floor,' he said, handing them a master key with an old wooden spoon tied to the chain with a rubber band. 'It's number four hundred and five. I guess you guys want to do this by yourself, huh?'

Durand's tone made it clear he didn't want to go upstairs with them. If there was a body inside, he didn't want to see it. It probably wouldn't be the first time one of his tenants had gone out feet first.

'We'll bring the key back,' Maggie said.

'Yeah, take your time, I'll sit down here and do the crossword.' He withdrew a newspaper from under his arm and sat down in a card table chair on the wall opposite the elevator.

Stride and Maggie took the elevator upward. It was old and slow. Maggie shoved her hands in her jeans and danced impatiently on the balls of her feet.

'When was this guy last seen?' Stride asked.

'Saturday.'

'And nothing since then?'

'Nope. No calls on his cell, and he didn't show up at work. I called his parents in Des Moines. They haven't heard from him.'

They found Nick Garaldo's apartment and knocked. No one answered. Maggie twirled the key on the spoon and pushed it into the lock and let them inside. Garaldo's apartment had a single bedroom, an open space that doubled as living room and dining room, and a kitchenette. The furniture was sparse and had an estate sale smell. Stride headed for the bedroom, and he heard Maggie opening drawers in the kitchen. He found a twin bed, unmade. Garaldo had a nightstand next to the bed with a lamp and alarm clock and a dog-eared paperback book. It was a Minnesota private eye novel by David Housewright.

Stride snapped on gloves and opened the nightstand drawer. Garaldo hadn't accumulated much junk. The drawer included a half-empty box of condoms, Old Spice cologne, several other paperback mysteries, and debris ranging from paper clips to potato chip crumbs. He closed the drawer and got down on his knees to look under the bed, where he found several dusty pairs of athletic shoes. Next to one of the shoes he saw a black disk no bigger than a postage stamp, which he removed and held between his fingers. It was an XD picture card for a digital camera. He bagged it.

He checked the attached bathroom and found nothing unusual. No illegal drugs in the medicine cabinet. A prescription for allergy medication. Soap-crusted bottles of shampoo. He returned to the living room.

'Anything?' he asked Maggie.

She shook her head. 'He likes red pistachios. Big honking jar in the kitchen. Otherwise, nothing.'

He handed her the photo card. 'He's been taking pictures.'

'Did you find his camera?'

Stride shook his head. 'No.'

'That's interesting,' Maggie said.

A phone sat on an end table near the television, and they noticed the red light flashing to indicate that Garaldo had messages. She pushed the button to play them. There were seven messages in all, three from his girlfriend, two from his boss in the harbor, and two from his parents, who mentioned that the police were asking about him. They sounded concerned.

'I don't see a calendar or PDA,' Stride said. 'How about his mail?'

'Bills. He does a lot of shopping at REI. Must be a backpacker or camper.'

'So maybe he went hiking and had an accident,' he suggested.

'Maybe. I'll put out an alert with the park service.'

Stride surveyed the room again. Garaldo owned a television set propped on laminate shelves on one wall. There was a pair of iPod speakers on the shelf above the TV, but the iPod dock itself was empty. Beyond the shelves, he saw an oak desk with a Dell computer monitor.

'Did you find hiking boots in the closet or under the bed?' Maggie asked.

Stride shook his head.

'No way this guy doesn’t own boots,' Maggie said.

'What about his car?'

'He's got a Chevy Malibu registered in his name. I've got an ATL out on it. Nothing yet.'

'Let's check out his computer,' Stride said.

The green power light glowed on the monitor on the oak desk. Stride pulled out the keyboard drawer and moved the mouse around.

Nothing happened. He swung open the panel on the desk. Inside, he found a surge protector and a slot for a CPU tower.

The computer CPU was gone. Cables from the keyboard, monitor, and Ethernet connection hung uselessly inside. Beside him, Maggie whistled.

'Somebody took it,' she concluded. 'I'm starting to get a bad feeling, boss.'

He noticed the way she dropped into her old habit, calling him 'boss' the way she usually did.

'It could be a simple break-in,' he said, 'or maybe we're not talking about a hiking accident after all.'

'I'll get a forensics team out here.'

He heard Maggie's cell phone ringing. When she dug it out of her pocket, she shot him an uncomfortable look. 'It's Serena,' she said.

Stride's gut turned over.

'Hey,' Maggie said, answering the call with a casualness that sounded false to Stride. She listened and then said, 'Yeah, sure, fine. Yeah, he's with me, I'll tell him. We'll see you in a few hours.'

She hung up. Stride raised his eyebrows.

'Serena's in Duluth,' Maggie told him. 'She wants to grab a pizza at Sammy's later.'

Stride closed his eyes. 'Shit.'

'I'll bring Kasey along,' Maggie suggested. 'That might make things a little less awkward.'

Stride nodded.

'I'm not going to say anything,' she added. When he was silent, she tried to read his face. 'I'm giving you an out, you know that, right? A free pass. Just say it was a mistake.'

That was the easy thing to do. For both of them. Add it to the list of secret regrets you keep in your life.

'I can't say that,' he told her. 'I don't know if it was a mistake.'

Serena staked out a booth at Sammy's Pizza on Tuesday evening. She had her head down, reviewing emails about Callie, when Stride and Maggie arrived. She looked up as Maggie slid into the booth across from her, and when she saw Maggie's hair, she dropped her BlackBerry into the basket of garlic toast.

'Holy shit.'

Maggie winked. 'What, is something different?'

'Wow.'

'Good wow or bad wow?'

'Sexy wow,' Serena said.

Serena knew that Maggie was one of those women who bad-mouthed her own looks with sarcastic put-downs. But not tonight. Her streaky crimson hair made her look like a New York model. On any other day, Serena would have been happy for her, but she found herself resenting Maggie's transformation. She wasn't feeling particularly attractive herself, and the change in Maggie made her feel worse.