Protected from the drizzle by the canopy above the open grave, the minister addressed the umbrella-wielding mourners. ‘The family has requested that you join them back at the Endicott Hotel immediately after the service.’
There were murmurs and more tears as the minister said the final blessing, and people began to drift back to their cars. Dena lingered beside the shining coffin, strewn with single roses, saying a prayer and bidding her friend a silent farewell with her head down.
When she looked up, she saw Ron standing at the foot of the bier, staring at her. She wished she could hide from his tormented gaze, but there was no avoiding it. No avoiding what needed to be said. She walked haltingly to him. ‘Ron,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you must blame me for this. If I hadn’t come to stay with you …’
‘It might have happened anyway. We don’t know,’ he said.
‘I know what you think though,’ she said.
Ron did not reply. She understood what his silence meant.
‘I’m just praying that it’s not true,’ she said. ‘I’ll never stop feeling guilty.’
‘Jennifer wanted you there,’ he said firmly. ‘She was glad you came to us. That was the way she was. She never got over … what happened to her sister. Wishing she had done more …’ He had difficulty continuing.
Dena squeezed his hand. ‘You and I don’t know each other that well, but I know how much she loved you. How happy she was to be your wife.’
Ron lifted one of the roses from the coffin and cradled the flower in his palm. ‘The police seem to think I killed her,’ he said.
‘It’s …’ Dena shook her head, searching for a word. ‘It’s unspeakable … I’ve told them what I think about that theory.’
Ron began to weep again, and he squeezed the stem of the rose. ‘Why would I kill her? She was my whole life.’
Dena put an awkward arm around him and he seemed to sag against her. ‘I know it. This … this is just torture. They’re going to find out who did this horrible thing, sooner or later.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, raising a hand to wipe his eyes. A rivulet of blood ran down his palm and into the cuff of his white shirt from where he had impaled his fingers on a thorn. ‘They seem to have made up their minds.’
‘Well, no one else believes it,’ she said. ‘Remember that.’
Ron drew himself up and nodded. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Are you coming to the hotel? Do you need a ride?’
‘No, thanks. I have my car,’ said Dena. She gestured toward the curving road which wound through the graveyard. ‘I’ll see you over there.’
As she turned to go, he caught at the sleeve of her coat. ‘Dena,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. Sometimes, when Jennifer would go on about Brian, and … and what happened to her sister, I didn’t always believe her. I mean, part of me thought she was exaggerating … or the police would have done something about it. Right? I mean, they investigate these things. They don’t just let people get away with murder. But now … Dena, don’t ever go back. Promise me.’
‘Not a chance,’ she said. He reached out for her and they embraced briefly, and then each went on their way.
Due to the huge turnout, she had had to park her car a fair distance from the gravesite. Her dark green Camry, barely visible through the trees, was one of the few cars remaining now. Most of the mourners had hurried to disperse in the rain.
Dena followed the neatly kept path around to her car and unlocked the door of the Camry. She slid in with a sigh, noting that she could hardly fit behind the wheel anymore. She closed her eyes for a moment, to rest them from weeping. Sometimes it was hard to believe in a heaven, she thought. It seemed such a childishly optimistic hope in the face of tragedy and loss. But there had to be a heaven, Dena told herself, for where else would her parents and Jennifer be?
Time to go, Dena thought. But as she lifted her key to place it in the ignition, she noticed the car felt strangely unbalanced. ‘What is the matter with this thing?’ she said aloud. She got out and walked around to look. She could see that the car was listing, but it was not until she walked back to the curb that she saw the tire on the back passenger side that she realized why. It was completely flat, the hubcap virtually scraping the ground. Oh great, she thought.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to change a tire. But she certainly wasn’t going to be physically able to do it. Not in this condition. Through the trees she could see activity near Jennifer’s grave where a couple of cemetery workers were lowering the coffin and dismantling the canopy. She thought of going to ask them for help, but it seemed somehow wrong to interrupt them when they were tending to Jennifer’s remains. She closed her eyes. ‘Goddamit,’ she whispered.
Oh well, she thought. She reached in her purse for the phone and called AAA.
‘OK, where are you?’ the man at the garage asked gruffly.
‘I’m in Belleplain Cemetery,’ said Dena.
‘Well, where in the cemetery?’ he asked.
Dena, who was seated in the car, looked around her with a frown. It wasn’t as if there were street signs. Or landmarks, for that matter. All the graves looked pretty much the same. ‘I don’t know. I came here for a funeral. I followed the funeral cortege.’
‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I guess we’ll find you. Are you far from the entrance? Maybe you could walk up and meet my guy and lead him back to the car.’
‘I guess so,’ said Dena uncertainly.
‘OK, fifteen minutes,’ he said, and hung up.
Dena put the phone back in her bag and shook her head. Why did you do that? she thought. Why didn’t you just tell him you were pregnant, and you didn’t want to walk all that way? The habit of independence was a hard one to break. She considered calling him back, and then decided against it. The walk will do you good, she told herself. At least the drizzle has stopped, for now.
She locked up the car and, using her furled umbrella for a walking stick, began to walk back in the direction of the entrance. She congratulated herself for wearing flat shoes, not that she had much choice at this stage of things.
Cemeteries aren’t that scary, she thought, as she followed the sidewalk path along the rows of graves with their dark, overhanging trees. Just sad. Just so much sadness had occurred here. That moaning people thought they heard when the wind blew through cemeteries was not the sound of ghosts, she thought. It was probably the residue of all the mourners and their cries. Cries that fell on stones. Cries that would never be answered in this life.
A movement among the gravestones caught her eye and she turned to look, but saw nothing. Instantly, she thought, in spite of all reason, that she would see a ghost. Come to prove her wrong. She could not walk fast enough. There are no ghosts, she thought. There are no ghosts. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw it. A dark shape. Before she could look, an arm surrounded her, a hand was clapped over her mouth. She smelled sweat and alcohol.
‘Don’t scream,’ he said. ‘Please, just don’t scream.’
She tried to jerk her head away from his hand, but he gripped her tightly. It was difficult to breathe. Something inside her told her to stop, to be still, so he would take the hand away. She wanted to bite him or kick him. Instead, she froze.
Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth, although it hovered, right in front of her face, waiting for her response. She didn’t cry out. She knew he would slap it back on her in a minute. He was breathing hard behind her, his strong, muscled body pressed up against her back. She shuddered, thinking how much she had once enjoyed that sensation. The very thought of it made her feel sick. Her mouth was dry. Too dry to speak. He kept his other arm squeezed around her.
‘Don’t go crazy on me. I’m not trying to hurt you, Dena. I just want to talk to you.’
She licked her lips, but said nothing. Her fingers tightened around the umbrella handle, although her arms were pinned to her sides.
‘I knew you’d go to the funeral,’ he said. ‘I had to talk to you.’
Talk to me, she thought. This is how you talk to me.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ he shouted, and she jumped. He held her tighter.
‘I can’t breathe,’ she whispered.
He loosened his grip slightly. ‘There. I’m not trying to hurt you,’ he said. Her frantic gaze searched the trees, the graves. There was no one in sight.
His voice was urgent, his breath was ragged in her ear. ‘I’m trying to get through to you. And what do you do? You go and move in with your lover.’
‘How many times can I tell you? He’s not my lover.’
‘Liar, liar,’ he cried. ‘Why are you torturing me? Every time I picture you together. Why couldn’t you have just loved me? What is so hard about loving me?’
The words were pleading, but while he spoke them, he was restraining her with his grip, holding her as tightly as ever. This was no time to antagonize him. She thought about what to say, and how to say it. ‘Brian, I’m not doing this to make you suffer. I wish you could understand. Can’t we talk face to face …’
‘All right,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation, ‘but if I let you go, will you promise not to run away from me?’
The idea of being treated as his prisoner was loathsome, but she couldn’t get away from him unless he agreed to release her. She wasn’t strong enough. It was all she could do to nod her head.
He let go of her gently, like a parent freeing a toddler to try and walk. ‘There,’ he said. ‘How’s that?’
She drew in her breath and turned to face him. His face was pale, gaunt and darkly stubbled. His hair looked greasy and uncombed. His eyes were haunted.
‘Better,’ she said. She thought about the tow truck, coming for her car. Would they drive away if they didn’t see her at the entrance? Or would they come looking for her?
Brian began to ramble, his voice low. ‘If we started over, you would see that you’re wrong about me. I can be the man you want me to be. But I can’t take it when you treat me like this. Like you don’t need me. I believed in you. I believed in our baby. I wanted to have you with me always. Every word you said I thought was true but now I see. All along you were planning to leave me. You were planning to go with him. I can see it in your face. You look at me with those cold eyes, like you have no feelings …’
His words were not making any sense. She knew he’d been drinking, but it seemed to have set off a kind of fantasy about her that was almost like a hallucination. A part of her felt sorry for him. ‘Brian, I know how bad it’s been,’ she said, taking a small step back. ‘I’m not trying to make it worse for you. I hope you can believe that.’
Despite her noncommittal tone, he seemed encouraged. ‘I’ve done some things I shouldn’t have done,’ he rushed on. ‘I admit it. But, if you’ll just talk to me, baby …’
‘Maybe we could talk,’ she said.
‘It might lead to something,’ he murmured, advancing on her, making up the tiny distance she had put between them. ‘Come on. I’ve got my truck over there. Come with me.’
She shook her head warily. ‘I can’t right now. I … I have to go. Jennifer’s funeral. They’re having a … something at the hotel.’
‘You can’t go in your car …’ he said. ‘Let me just take you …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The tire,’ he said.
‘What do you know about the tire?’ she asked.
‘Whatever it is,’ he said dismissively.
It took a minute for his words to register. And then, she knew. Of course. Why hadn’t she known it right away? ‘You did it, didn’t you?’
Brian shook his head. ‘Did what?’
Suddenly, she was overcome with the magnitude of it. He had crippled her car, held her captive. She was dancing around the truth, trying not to set him off. It was unbearable. ‘You punctured the tire, didn’t you? Brian, you’re out of your mind.’ She looked around wildly but there was no escape. Nowhere to hide.
Brian lunged forward and grabbed her. ‘If I am, it’s because you’re driving me to it,’ he shouted. ‘You’re just shutting me out.’
Without thinking she lifted her umbrella and cracked him in the side of the head with the wooden handle. She heard the splintering of the shaft, and then Brian let go of her and clutched at his eye where it had struck him.
‘You bitch,’ he said.
Dena began to run, holding her belly, her breath coming in gasps. She could hear him shouting behind her. She couldn’t go much farther. She was going to fall down.
What if she hurt the baby? All of a sudden she heard the rumble of a dump truck. She looked around wildly. Two cemetery workers were driving in her direction. She ran out into the middle of the winding road, flagging them. The truck slowed, and then stopped in front of her. She ran up to the cab. ‘Please …! Need help,’ she said.
The driver looked impassively from the pregnant woman to the man stumbling up the road, holding his eye. Then he turned to his co-worker beside him. ‘Help the lady in,’ he said.
Dena sagged against the grimy door in relief.
With Ken McCarthy jiggling nervously at his elbow, Tyrell rang the bell at the front door of the run-down one-story bungalow on Cherry Street. He could hear the TV blaring inside the house, but no one came immediately to the door. Instead, there was much scuffling and the sound of muffled voices inside the house. Tyrell rang the bell again. ‘Police,’ he said. ‘Open up.’
Tyrell noted that the pane in the lower-left quadrant was gone, and several layers of plastic were taped in its place. Someone had broken the window, no doubt, in an effort to reach in and open the lock so they could rob the place. Tyrell thought of Dena Russell’s window, knocked out for an entirely different reason. A frustrated lover had tried to get to her, and another man – her new man, perhaps? – had hurried to fix it. It hadn’t taken her long, Tyrell thought irritably, to find herself a replacement.
Tyrell rapped on the door again, thinking, no one would rush to fix this window. What was the point? It was a sad truth that the poorer you were, the more likely you were to get burgled. The crackheads preyed on their neighbors, breaking in to a house where no one would think it was odd to see them standing on the porch, trying the doorknob.
They grabbed something they could turn over quick, for a couple of dollars. Half the time, the burgled neighbors wouldn’t even call the cops. They accepted it, hopelessly, as the price they paid for being poor.
After a lengthy pause, the curtain was pulled back an inch from the window and then it dropped again. There was a sound of locks being turned, and then the door opened a few inches. ‘What?’ said a girl’s voice sullenly.
‘Open the door, Keisha. We’re looking for Warrick.’
The door opened and a heavy-set teenage girl in a red, zipper-front Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt, and huge gold hoop earrings looked ruefully out at Tyrell. ‘He’s not here,’ she said.
‘May we come in?’ Tyrell asked politely.
The girl bit her lip and looked behind her.
‘Now,’ said Tyrell.
The girl shrugged, and opened the door, admitting the two police officers.
‘Mind if we look around?’
‘Maybe he’s out back,’ she said peevishly.
Tyrell turned to Ken. ‘Take a look,’ he said.
Ken grimaced, but did as he was told, crossing the dimly lit, sparsely furnished living room, with its stained shag carpet and loud, flickering TV, and knocking on the closed doors in the unlit hallway as he went.
Tyrell glanced around the shabby room, and then back at the teenager who was regarding him warily. ‘How ya doin’ Keisha?’ he asked.
‘I’m doin’ OK. How come you’re looking for Warrick? He didn’t do nothin’. He’s working hard these days.’
Warrick was Keisha’s stepbrother. He lived in this house on and off. He’d been busted half a dozen times for various petty crimes, since he was a juvenile. ‘Just want to talk to him,’ said Tyrell.
The back door of the bungalow opened and a young man in a black Stormzy T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap strutted into the room, looking belligerent. ‘Yo Keisha, never mind about this cop. I’ll deal with him.’
‘Hey, Warrick,’ said Tyrell.
‘What do you want, man? My boss already called me. He says you’re asking questions about me.’
‘There was a murder at one of the houses where you helped out on a job.’
‘That white bitch? He didn’t kill no white bitch,’ Keisha cried. ‘He never …’
Tyrell tried to ignore the girl’s shrill cry. ‘Your boss said you and Lester had the van out that day.’
Warrick looked at the sergeant with narrowed eyes. ‘You kill me, man. You all over my ass when I was hangin’ on the corner all the time. Now I got me a good job as a ’lectrician’s assistant and you’re still all over my ass.’
‘Just tell me where you had the van that afternoon.’
‘Ask Lester.’
‘Can’t find Lester. I’m asking you.’
‘We did the work we were s’posed to …’
Tyrell looked down at his notes. ‘I got two hours unaccounted for.’
Warrick crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. ‘Shit.’
‘Where were you?’
‘We went over to Lester’s and smoked some weed, all right?’
‘And …?’
‘And we fixed Lester’s water heater on the company time, with the company parts. Now I’m gonna lose my job – you satisfied?’
‘Excuse me, ma’ am …’ Ken pleaded from the hallway. ‘Very sorry to disturb you.’
Keisha looked at Tyrell, wide-eyed. ‘Now you done it,’ she said. ‘You woke up Mama. I told you he wasn’t down there.’
Ken scurried out into the living room, followed by a large, black woman in a magenta-pink bathrobe and scuffs. She was securing the robe around her with a belt, and she was muttering and glowering as she did it. When she reached the area of the coffee table, she planted her feet and put her hands on her ample hips, glaring at Tyrell.
‘Tyrell Watkins, what the hell is goin’ on here?’ she demanded. ‘I worked all night, and then I came home and picked this place up and put somethin’ on the stove and now I’m tryin’ to get a little rest before I have to go back and start all over again.’
‘I’m sorry, Miz Allen. I was talkin’ to Warrick.’
The woman was immediately wary. ‘What’s he done, now?’ she said.
Warrick snorted. ‘He wanted to know if I killed that white chick, Mama.’
‘Are you crazy?’ said Lucinda Allen, throwing her large, handsome head back. ‘Is that what this is all about?’
Tyrell looked calmly back at the woman in the bathrobe, and silently cursed Heath Van Brunt, who had insisted on this waste-of-time call. ‘Just wanted to ask Warrick a few questions. We got everything straightened out now.’
‘Tyrell Watkins, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is all about that white girl that got beat to death?’
Tyrell’s expression was impassive. ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you, ma’am.’
Lucinda Allen removed one hand from her hip and shook a finger at Tyrell. ‘You know they got you doin’ their dirty work, don’t you? Right away, they’re saying it’s a black man that did it. Of course, it has to be a black man. And they trot you over here like some obedient little mutt and you go barkin’ and snarlin’ at all your friends and neighbors. You should be ashamed of yourself.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Don’t you have any pride, Tyrell? I’ve got a good mind to march over to your grandmother’s house and tell her what I think of you.’
A muscle worked in Tyrell’s jaw but otherwise his face did not betray any emotion. ‘We’re trying to find a killer. We’re talking to a lot of people.’
The woman did an exaggerated double-take, as if she could not believe her ears. ‘A killer. Warrick ain’t no killer and you know it. Boy’s finally got himself an honest job. He’s trying to learn a trade so he can make a living. Once they hear about this over at Ranger, they’ll fire his ass.’
Tyrell turned to Warrick. ‘They won’t hear about any of this from me. You and Lester have still got time to get a story together and get it straight.’
Warrick snorted again, but there was relief in his face.
‘Sorry to trouble you, Miz Allen,’ Tyrell said.
The woman followed them to the door and yelled after them as they went down the steps. ‘You troubled me, all right. I’m troubled to see the kind of man you’ve become,’ she cried out after him.
Ken and Tyrell returned to their patrol car without speaking. As they slid back into their seats, Ken said, ‘Whew.’
Tyrell glared at him. ‘What’s that for?’ he demanded.
Ken looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just that she was kinda tough.’
Tyrell turned the key impatiently and the engine roared. ‘She’s worried about her child,’ he said shortly.
Ken did not reply. Sergeant Watkins was just too touchy right now.
They started to pull away from the curb and the radio squawked. Ken reached for it in relief. He listened to the garbled message. ‘Some trouble out at the cemetery,’ he said to Tyrell. Tyrell had already understood.