Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

Glenn shrugged. 'I have no idea. It was a stupid ten-cent toy.'

'What color was it?' Serena asked.

'Do you think I paid any attention? It could have been purple, pink, red, blue, who knows.'

Glenn's patience was wearing thin after hours with the police. They had spent the afternoon and early evening at Regan Conrad's house in the north farmlands. Just as Serena had been about to cut Glenn loose, she'd received the call from Stride about Micki Vega's discovery and the impending search in Sago. So they had driven here, accompanied by a Duluth Police car on the lonely stretch of Highway 2. Glenn didn't like it.

'I don't know why you've brought me here,' he added. 'There's nothing I can tell you.'

'I'm trying to figure out how this toy made its way from your wife's hospital room to the woods outside your family cemetery,' Serena said.

'Oh, please. How many millions of those toys pour out of Chinese factories every year? You can't possibly believe that there's any connection at all between something that Micki allegedly found in the woods and a keepsake my wife had when she gave birth to Callie.'

'Did your wife blow into the horn?' Serena asked.

'What?'

'Did she use it at the hospital that night?'

'I don't remember. Everyone was using the annoying things.'

'Then she may have left DNA inside the plastic mouthpiece. We'll test it.'

'Wonderful. You do that. If you find any DNA, I'm sure it will belong to someone else.'

'Why are you so sure about that?' Serena asked.

Glenn thumped the dashboard in exasperation. 'Because I threw it away! Do you think someone went burrowing through my trash in order to plant that ridiculous thing in the woods eleven months later?'

Serena watched the surgeon fidget. His long legs were uncomfortable in the sedan, even with the seat pushed back. 'Coincidences keep piling up around you, Dr Glenn,' she told him.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, say you're right. This isn't the toy that Valerie had in the hospital. Doesn't it seem strange that Micki Vega would find a toy just like that next to the cemetery you visit every month? That she'd find it two days after your daughter disappeared? That she'd find it in the exact place where her mother saw someone in the woods on the very night your daughter disappeared? That the toy left there would be exactly like the one Valerie asked you to keep as a memory of your daughter's birth?'

Glenn stared through the windshield at the police officers gathered in clusters around the grassy field. His long, graceful fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel as if he were steering a race car.

'I agree with you,' he said. His voice was calm and scientific.

'You do?'

'Yes, you're right. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.' 'Then how do you explain it?' Serena asked.

Glenn twisted to face her. 'I can think of three explanations. First, it really is a coincidence, and that's just my bad luck. Strange things like that do happen.'

'And the others?'

'The second possibility is that Micki is lying. She may not have found the toy in the woods, or she may not have found it when she said she did. But personally, I think Micki is telling the truth.'

'You do?'

Glenn nodded. 'I don't believe she would deliberately try to do me harm.'

'Except if you were sleeping with her, if you fathered her baby and her baby died, it can play with a girl's head.'

'I never slept with Micki,' Glenn insisted. 'I wasn't the father of her child. If you want to dig up her baby to prove it, you can get a court order and do so. But you'll just look like heartless fools. Ms Dial, I freely confess to being a hard case in every aspect of my life except my medical profession. I helped Micki because I'm a physician and she needed someone. That's all.'

'You said you could think of three explanations,' Serena said. 'What's the third?'

'The third is that someone is deliberately trying to make it appear as if I was involved in Callie's disappearance. Which I wasn't.'

'You mean someone planted the toy?'

'Yes.'

Serena knew the next obvious question, but she wasn't ready to go there yet. It hung unasked between them. She wondered if Glenn wanted to hear her say it. What are we going to find in the woods? Instead, she went another way.

'How did you feel about your wife cheating on you?' she asked.

'I haven't been a model of fidelity myself, so I can't really complain.'

'Maybe so, but most men have a double standard. It's OK for me to cheat, because it's just about sex. But my wife? She better not look at another man.'

Glenn shrugged. 'I'm not saying I feel good about it.'

'When did you find out that she was sleeping with Tom?' Serena asked.

He took a long time to answer. 'I found out the same time that you did,' he told her finally. 'When Blair Rowe blabbed the news to the world.'

'And not before?' 'No.'

'You took your time deciding what to say. Were you trying to figure out if there's any way we could prove that you knew about Valerie's affair?'

Glenn didn't reply.

'I hope you didn't tell anyone,' Serena continued, 'or hire an investigator to follow her. It'll come out if you did.'

'I trusted my wife,' he replied.

'Did you have any reason to doubt that Callie was your baby?'

'Of course not.'

'What about now?'

'Now I can't help but wonder,' he admitted.

'Didn't you wonder before? It was three years. You must have thought it was odd that Valerie couldn't get pregnant for so long, and then she suddenly did.'

'It's not odd at all. I'm a doctor. People think conception is predictable, but it's not. It can happen with one sexual encounter, or it can take six months or six years, or it can never happen at all, even when both partners are perfectly healthy. Don't try to outguess God, Ms Dial.'

'I thought most surgeons believed they were God.'

'Confidence and ego make you a better doctor, but you also have to be smart enough to know when you don't have all the answers.'

'You certainly seem like you have all the answers,' Serena told him.

'I wish I did.'

'Tell me something. Why did you cheat on Valerie? She's beautiful. She's smart. She loves you. Wasn't that enough?'

'It has nothing to do with Valerie,' he said. 'It doesn’t mean I don't love her.'

'She nearly killed herself because of your neglect.'

She regretted saying it, but he didn't react with anger. Instead, there was resignation in his voice. 'Do you really believe that her suicide attempt was my fault? Valerie has suffered from depression for most of her life. It's a medical condition.'

'Are you saying you bear no responsibility for her state of mind?'

'I'm saying I didn't make her who she is. I may not wear my heart on my sleeve, but Valerie knew that from the beginning. I keep her clothed and fed and give her all the money she could ever use. A lot of women would welcome a marriage like that.'

She didn't want to debate him. His warped view of love and marriage didn't matter. It was time to get back to what she really needed to say.

'What are we going to find in the woods?' she asked.

He didn't answer.

'Did you hear me? They're starting the search. What are we going to find?'

'I have no idea.'

Serena pointed through the window. Across the dirt road, away from the cemetery, a short, balding man held tight to a beagle that strained at its leash. Its ears flapped, and its nose was buried in the long grass. The dog was hungry to run. Smell. Hunt.

'See that dog?' she said. 'It's trained to recognize the gases of decomposing human flesh.'

Glenn stared at the beagle. 'It's an awful skill to give an animal, isn't it?'

'What is she going to find?'

'I can only speculate. I don't know.'