David Morrell - Black Evening

He'd chosen cremation for his wife and ten-year-old son, partly because they'd already been burned – in a fiery car crash with a drunken driver – but more because he couldn't bear the thought of his cherished wife and child decomposing in a coffin in a niche in the mausoleum or, worse, outside in the cemetery, beneath the ground, where rain or the deep cold of winter would make him cringe because of their discomfort, even though the remaining rational part of Grady's mind acknowledged that it didn't matter to his fiercely missed family, who now felt nothing because they were dead.

But it mattered to him , just as it mattered that each Monday afternoon he made a ritual of driving out here to the mausoleum, of sitting on a padded bench across from the wall of glassed-in urns, and of talking to Helen and John about what had happened to him since the previous Monday, about how he prayed that they were happy, and most of all, about how much he missed them.

They'd been dead for a year now, and a year was supposed to be a long time, but he couldn't believe the speed with which it had gone. His pain remained as great as the day he'd been told they were dead, his emptiness as extreme. Friends at first had been understanding, but after three months, and especially after six, most of those friends had begun to show polite impatience, making well-intentioned speeches about the need for Grady to put the past behind him, to adjust to his loss, to rebuild his life. So Grady had hidden his emotions and pretended to take their advice, his burden made greater by social necessity. The fact was, he came to realize, that no one who hadn't suffered what he had could possibly understand that three months or six months or a year meant nothing.

Grady's weekly visits to the mausoleum became a secret, their half-hour concealed within his Monday routine. Sometimes he brought his wife and son flowers and sometimes an emblem of the season: a pumpkin at Halloween, a Styrofoam snowball in winter, or a fresh maple leaf in the spring. But on this occasion, just after the Fourth of July weekend, he'd brought a miniature flag, and unable to control the strangled sound of his voice, he explained to Helen and John about the splendor of the fireworks that he'd witnessed and that they'd used to enjoy while eating hot dogs at the city's annual picnic in the sloped, wooded park near the river on Independence Day.

"If only you could have seen the skyrockets," Grady murmured. "I don't know how to describe… Their colors were so…"

The beep from the pager on his gunbelt interrupted his halting monologue. He frowned.

The pager was one of many innovations that he'd introduced to the police force he commanded. After all, his officers frequently had to leave their squad cars, responding to an assignment or merely sitting in a restaurant on a coffee break, but while away from their radios, they needed to know whether headquarters was desperate to contact them.

Its persistent beep made Grady stiffen. He wiped his tears, braced his shoulders, said goodbye to his wife and son, and stood with effort, reluctantly leaving the mausoleum, locking its door behind him. That was important. Helen and John, their remains, needed to be protected, and the cemetery's caretaker had been as inventive as Grady had been about the pager, arranging for every mourner to have a key, so that only those who had a right could enter.

Outside, the July afternoon was bright, hot, humid, and horribly reminiscent of the sultry afternoon a year ago when Grady had come here, accompanied by friends and a priest, to inter the precious urns.

He shook his head to clear his mind and stifle his tortured emotions, then approached the black-and-white cruiser, where he leaned inside to grab the two-way radio microphone.

"Grady here, Dinah. What's the problem?" He released the transmit button on the microphone.

Dinah's staccato response surprised him. "Public-service dispatch."

Grady frowned. "On my way. Five minutes."

Uneasy, he drove from the cemetery. "Public-service dispatch" meant that whatever Dinah needed to tell him was so sensitive that she didn't want a civilian with a police-band radio to overhear the conversation. Grady would have to use a telephone to get in touch with her. After parking at a gas station across from the cemetery, he entered a booth beside an ice machine, thrust coins in the telephone's slot, and jabbed numbers.

"Bosworth police," Dinah said.

"Dinah, it's me. What's so important that – "

"You're not going to like this," the deep-voiced female dispatcher said.

"It's never good news when you page me. Public-service dispatch? Why ?"

"We've got a combination one-eighty-seven and ten-fifty-six."

Grady winced. Those numbers meant a murder-suicide. "You're right." His voice dropped. "I don't like it."

"It gets worse. It's not in our jurisdiction. The state police are handling it, but they want you on the scene."

"I don't understand. Why would that be worse if it isn't in our jurisdiction?"

"Chief, I…"

"Say it."

"I don't want to."

"Say it, Dinah."

"… You know the victims."

For a moment, Grady had trouble breathing. He clutched the phone harder. "Who?"

"Brian and Betsy Roth."

Shit, Grady thought. Shit. Shit. Shit. Brian and Betsy had been the friends he'd depended upon after all his other friends had distanced themselves when his grief persisted.

Now one of them had killed the other?

And after that, the executioner had committed suicide ?

Grady's pulse sped, making his mind swirl. "Who did what to…"

The husky-throated female dispatcher said, "Brian did. A forty-five semiautomatic."

Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ, Grady thought.

The puzzling directions Grady received took him not to Brian and Betsy's home, where he'd assumed the killings would have occurred, but instead through and past the outskirts of Bosworth into the mountains west of town. Pennsylvania mountains: low, thickly wooded, rounded at their peaks. Between them, primitive roads led into hidden hollows. In a turmoil, confused, Grady wouldn't have known which lane to take if it hadn't been for the state-police car blocking one entrance. A square-jawed trooper dropped his cigarette, crushed it into the gravel with his shoe, and narrowed his eyes when Grady stopped his cruiser.

"I'm looking for Lieutenant Clauson," Grady said.

When the trooper heard Grady's name, he straightened. "And the lieutenant's waiting for you ." With remarkable efficiency for so large a man, the trooper backed his car from the entrance to the lane, allowing Grady to drive his own car up the narrow draw.

Leaves brushed against Grady's side window. Just before the first sharp curve, Grady glanced toward his rearview mirror and saw the state-police car again block the entrance. At once, he jerked the steering wheel, veering left. Then, behind as well as ahead, he saw only forest.

The lane tilted ever more upward. It kept forcing Grady to zigzag and increased his anxiety as branches scraped the top of his car in addition to his windows. The dense shadows of the forest made him feel trapped.

Brian shot Betsy?

And then shot himself ?

No!

Why?

I needed them.

I depended on…

I loved them!

What on earth had made them come out here? Why had they been in the woods?

The lane became level, straightened, and suddenly brought Grady from the forest to a sun-bathed plateau between two mountains, where an open gate in a chainlink fence revealed a spacious compound: several cinderblock buildings of various sizes on the left, a barbecue pit adjacent to them, and a swimming pool on the right.

Grady parked behind three state-police cars, an ambulance, a blue station wagon marked MEDICAL EXAMINER, and a red Jeep Cherokee that Grady recognized as belonging to Brian and Betsy. Several state troopers, along with two ambulance attendants and an overweight man in a gray suit, formed a cluster at the near rim of the swimming pool, their backs to Grady. But as Grady opened his door, one of the troopers turned, studied him, glanced back toward the rim of the pool, again studied Grady, and with a somber expression, approached him.