Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

The snow began to fall.

The flakes navigated the web of branches like silver balls in a Pachinko game, ultimately landing and melting on Stride's skin. The white bed on the forest ground was thin now, and bare in patches, but as the night stretched on, the blanket would deepen. After decades in Minnesota, he was still amazed that snow could be so insubstantial and yet gather into drifts that brought the entire world to a halt. The calendar said autumn, but November here meant winter.

The three of them stopped in the woods. They were only thirty yards from the slope of the cemetery, and he could see the lights of the police cars revolving on the dirt road beyond the graves. Stride shone his flashlight beam ahead of him and watched Migdalia Vega, who looked uneasy as her eyes studied the trees. The beam illuminated streams of snow. He directed the cone of light at the ground and swept it back and forth.

'Are we close?' he asked Micki.

'Everything looks alike,' she said.

'Five minutes ago, you said we were almost there.'

'I'm not sure now.'

Stride frowned. He thought she was stalling.

Beside them, Craig Hickey restrained his beagle, whose tongue lolled out of its mouth as it bit at the snowflakes. The squat handler wore heavy gloves and a red wool cap yanked down over his ears. The frigid wind raised a rosy glow on his face.

'Bitch of a night,' Hickey said, stamping his feet in the pine needles littering the ground. 'Don't know why we can't wait until daylight to do this.'

'It won't be any warmer in the morning,' Stride replied, 'and there'll be a foot of snow covering up everything.'

Hickey shivered. He chewed gum and worked his jaw like a teeter-totter. 'My Cujo don't care about snow. She'll sniff through it.'

Stride didn't ask why anyone would name a cadaver dog Cujo. He wanted to move the search forward quickly. Part of it was practical; he didn't want to be shoveling into a crime scene through deep snow. Part of it was human; he knew this was going to be the longest night of Valerie Glenn's life.

'Maybe he's right,' Micki said. 'It looks different in the dark. Maybe we should try again tomorrow.'

'The snow will erase all the landmarks by then.'

'Well, I don't know if I can find it again.'

Stride noticed the stubborn bulge of her lower lip as she pouted. He nodded his head at Craig Hickey. 'Give us a minute, OK?'

'Yeah, whatever.'

Hickey dragged Cujo back through the tangle of brush growing between the birch trees, leaving Stride and Micki alone.

'What's going on?' Stride asked her.

Micki kicked at the ground. 'Nothing. You try finding anything in these woods at night. I'm lost. I got turned around.'

'You saw Marcus Glenn back there,' Stride said. 'I think you're having second thoughts about helping us.'

She rubbed her runny nose with the back of her glove. 'I know how it works. You find something, you're going to arrest him.'

'Not necessarily.'

'Yeah, like I can trust anything you say. I'm fucking cold. Let's get out of here and try again in the morning. I don't know where I am.'

Stride shook his head. Snow sprayed off his damp hair. 'I saw your face a couple minutes ago, Micki. You know exactly where you are. You know every inch of these woods by heart. Are we close? Is that it?'

'I thought so, but now I'm not sure.'

He switched off his flashlight, and they stood in darkness. Over his shoulder, he could make out the lights of Micki's trailer not far away. 'You knew the significance of that toy horn as soon as you found it, didn't you? You knew what it meant. I think you studied the landmarks in the forest. Maybe you even left yourself a clue to find the place again. You knew we'd be here sooner or later.'

She said nothing.

'Tell me something,' Stride continued. 'Do you visit your own child?'

'Yes. Sure I do. All the time.'

'It's nice that you know where to find him,' he said, turning on his flashlight again and directing it ahead of them. 'Imagine not knowing.'

Micki cursed under her breath. 'If I tell you, then I go, OK?' 'OK.'

Micki's eyes followed the light, and she pointed into the trees. 'There's a cluster of four birches there. Twenty feet north, there's an old pine by itself with a thick trunk. I carved a cross in the trunk. I thought she deserved that, you know.'

'Where did you find the toy?'

'The pine's on the edge of a clearing. Not big. I found it right in the middle. Like someone put it there special, not by accident.'

Stride whistled for Craig Hickey, who returned with Cujo on the leash. 'Follow me,' he said.

He led the way forward with Hickey following in his footsteps. Micki stayed where she was, letting them go. The four birch trees ahead of them grew from a single trunk, bending in different directions, and he knew that north lay straight ahead, based on the location of the cemetery. He went slowly. With each step, he swept the ground with the flashlight. The soft pine bed didn't keep footprints. He saw a black pile of animal scat, dried pine cones, and a rusted coffee can.

The tree was exactly where Migdalia had said, standing lonely where it had grown for years. Thick, spiny bushes hugged the pine and made a wall. As he came closer, he squatted and studied the trunk and found a tiny cross, three inches by three inches, carved into the bark with a pocket knife.

'There,' he said, pointing into the brush.

Hickey let Cujo go. The dog shot into the bushes and disappeared. Stride heard the noise of its frantic paws.

'How will we know?' he asked.

'You'll know,' Hickey said.

Stride stood next to the pine, where he could see over the crown of the brush into a small, open patch of flat land. His light captured Cujo, nose to the ground, snuffling through the litter of pine needles. The dog looked busy and excited. It ran back and forth around the clearing in a blur of brown and white fur, always making its way back to the very center and pawing at the earth. Whatever smell was coming from under the soil, the dog buried its face down to get more of it.

'Wait for it,' Hickey said.

Cujo stopped all of his movements abruptly. He sat on his haunches in the middle of the clearing and sneezed. His snout pointed toward the sky. Then, as mournfully as a wolf baying for a lost pack, the dog began to howl.

Kasey packed a box in the basement, where the air was damp. She wore wool socks, but she could feel the chill of the concrete floor under her feet. As she pulled books off the metal shelves, she eyed a patch of black mold that had grown into the shape of a spider on the wall. She hadn't noticed it before, and she wondered in horror if spores had been floating through the ductwork all year, infesting their lungs. She stared at the giant patch as if she expected it to mutate in front of her eyes.

When her phone vibrated in her pocket, she jumped in surprise. She answered but heard only a long stretch of silence. Then, finally, a voice whispered to her.

'Hello, Kasey.'

Her hands tightened into fists. She knew the voice. It was him.

'Did you get my message?' he said.

Instinctively, her eyes darted around the basement, but she was alone. The only movement she saw was a mouse that scampered along the ledge of the foundation and vanished into a burrow-hole in the pink insulation. She shivered.

'What do you want?' she said.

He took a long time to reply. 'You're leaving.'

'That's right.'

'But our game isn't over, Kasey.'

'Yes, it is. I'm ending it. I'm not playing any more.'

The silence stretched out. She stared at the rust stains under the wash basin and prayed he had hung up.

'It's over when I say it's over, Kasey.'

'Fuck you,' she hissed, slapping the phone shut. She knew her bravery was hollow. Seconds later, the phone buzzed again in her palm, like the whine of an insect. She wanted to let it ring, but she couldn't.