Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

Valerie didn't know what to say. She rubbed the counter until it was dry, making sure the coffee didn't leave a stain.

'I have to ask you something,' Denise told her. 'As a cop and as a wife. I have to know.'

'What?'

'Is Tom the father?'

Valerie's eyes widened in shock.

'Don't play games, Val,' Denise continued. 'I need to know. Is Callie Tom's baby?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I am.'

'Tom's not sure,' Denise said. 'He told me so last night.'

'He's not Callie's father.'

'How do you know?'

'I just know. I can see Marcus in her.'

'Did you have her tested?'

'Of course not. I couldn't do that.'

'So you're just guessing,' Denise said. 'I asked Tom. He said the two of you had sex not long before you got pregnant.'

Valerie shook her head. 'Marcus and I had sex, too. He was the last one.'

'That doesn’t make any difference.'

'My husband is the father of my daughter,' Valerie insisted.

'Do you believe that, or are you just trying to convince yourself?'

'It's true.'

'You tried for three years, and you didn't get pregnant. Then you started sleeping with Tom. Wake up, Valerie. Believe me, I know exactly how fertile Tom's swimmers are.'

'Callie is Marcus's baby. I know it.'

'What about Marcus? Does he know it?'

Valerie's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, did Marcus know you were having an affair?'

Valerie heard Marcus shouting at her from the landing. You're not exactly innocent, are you?

'He didn't know,' she murmured.

'Are you sure? Grand Rapids is a small town. It's hard to keep secrets. Obviously someone saw the two of you together. Blair Rowe found out, so why couldn't Marcus?'

'There's no way he could have known,' Valerie repeated.

Denise shook her head. 'You know what it means if Marcus knew about your affair, don't you? He may have suspected that Callie wasn't his child. Didn't you ever wonder why he was so cold with her? What would he have done if he realized the little girl who was screwing up his perfect life wasn't really his?'

'I don't want to hear this.' Valerie put her hands over her ears, but Denise reached across the island and yanked her arms away.

'You can't run away from this. It gives him a motive. Did he know?'

In her head, Valerie heard Regan Conrad taunting her outside the church after midnight. I don't have to tell you why, do I? She thought about the hospital envelope, hidden unopened in her dresser upstairs. The envelope that Regan had given her.

I can't believe you didn't know .

'No,' Valerie told her sister. 'Marcus didn't know about the affair. He never had any reason to think Callie wasn't his. And she is. She's his daughter. He loves her.'

Maggie watched the contents of the photo disk that Stride had found in Nick Garaldo's apartment sprinkle in thumbnails across her computer monitor. She leaned closer and chewed on her lower lip. The photos were dark and difficult to distinguish. She clicked on one of the thumbnails and enlarged the image on her screen. The photo showed an industrial locale, with a concrete floor and dusty pipes suspended from a bare ceiling. When she clicked on the next image, she saw a pair of giant boilers caked over with rust in front of a windowless wall. As she scrolled through the photographs, she found more images from the same underground site.

One thumbnail — but only one — showed a picture of a person. Maggie saw a short, wiry man wearing jeans, rubber boots, a navy neoprene jacket, and a black wool cap. When she compared the picture to the driver's license photo in her file, she recognized Nick Garaldo.

'Where the hell are you, Nick?' she murmured.

Guppo poked his head around the corner of the office. He stood under a hot air vent, which fluttered his comb-over like a runaway hose. 'We're getting some network interference out here,' he told her.

Maggie twisted around in her chair. 'Oh?'

'Yeah, we think it's your hair.'

He chuckled, and Maggie growled at him. 'Don't poke the bear, Max. I'm not in the mood. Come check this out.'

'Whatcha got?'

He joined her behind the desk and squinted at the monitor. He breathed heavily, and his forehead was dewy with sweat.

'Stride found this photo card in Nick Garaldo's apartment,' Maggie told him. 'It looks like this guy was inside some kind of factory.'

'It doesn’t look operational. The place is a mess.' He worked her mouse with a beefy hand. 'That looks like some kind of coal burner. He must be in a sub-basement somewhere.'

'But why?'

Guppo straightened up with a groan. 'Maybe this guy is one of those nutjobs who break into old buildings.'

Maggie probed her memory. 'Didn't we have an intruder report at the old Armory a couple of months ago?'

Guppo nodded. 'Yeah, somebody triggered the interior alarms. We sent a car over there, but we didn't find anyone.'

'Pull the report for me, will you?'

'Sure.'

Guppo waddled out of the office. Maggie set the images into a slide show and leaned dangerously far back in her chair with her boots propped on Stride's desk. After the first few pictures, she drifted off, staring through the window at the mottled gray sky. She became aware of a hollow, guilty pit in her stomach as she thought about her and Stride together. It was one thing to wish for something for ten years of your life and something else altogether to have it happen when you least expected it.

She didn't think he'd meant what he said. In the end, he'd want to go back to the way things were. When he woke up — in a day, a week, or a month — he would curse himself for letting his relationship with Serena slip through his fingers. The only question was whether he would be alone in bed when it happened, or whether Maggie would be with him. If that was how it was going to end, she didn't want to be there.

She also knew that her friendship with Serena was doomed. Stride would tell Serena the truth. She didn't know if Serena would forgive Stride, but she would never forgive her. That was fair. Their relationship had always been a high-wire act. Behind every barb, Serena had sent Maggie a message loud and clear. Hands off — he's with me, not you. And every time Maggie talked about the past, she sent a reply. I knew him first.

Sooner or later, one of them was bound to fall.

'You OK?'

She looked up. Guppo was back.

'Yeah, I'm fine,' she replied. 'Did you get the report on the Armory?'

'I did.'

'Let me have it.'

He placed it in her hands, and she flipped through the handful of pages. He lingered, waiting for her to say something, but she waved her hand toward the door without another word. He left and closed the door behind him. She knew he was annoyed. She wasn't normally gruff with Guppo, and he didn't deserve it, but she didn't care. Let him tell the others that she was on the rag.

The officers who responded to the call at the Duluth Armory had taken interior photos near the downstairs access doors, and it was obvious to Maggie that the photos matched the images on Nick Garaldo's disk. If that wasn't sufficient confirmation, she also spotted a notation in the police report that they had found red pistachio shells scattered throughout the Armory rooms. She remembered the mason jar of pistachios in Garaldo's apartment. He had been inside the old building.

She had no idea why Garaldo would invade the abandoned Armory — which contained nothing worth stealing, only detritus from years of disuse — but she knew that urban explorers were like Scuba divers or mountain climbers. They did it because it was there. She also thought it was a safe guess that Garaldo had been engaged in another break-in when he disappeared on Saturday. But where? Urban ruins were unstable and dangerous, and if something had happened to Garaldo, it might be years before they found him. If ever.