He parked his van on the gravel lane that led through the cemetery and walked slowly over to the Fisher family plot. There was a headstone for Olivia, one for Beth, space for a third.
“Soon enough,” he said, setting a bouquet in front of each stone. He went down on one knee, positioning himself midway between the stones so he could address them both.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Walden said. “Sun’s shining. Everyone’s hoping we have nice weather for the Memorial Day weekend. Still a couple of weeks away. No sense listening to what the weathermen have to say. They can’t get what it’s going to be like tomorrow right, so who knows what the long weekend’s going to be like. I’m not going anywhere, of course. I’ll be right here.”
He paused, focused on the words “Elizabeth Fisher” carved into granite.
“The other day, I couldn’t stop thinking about that paprika chicken dish you always used to make. I went all through your box of recipe cards and through all those cooking books you saved, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. And then it hit me that you probably never even had the recipe written down anywhere, that it was all in your head, so I thought, I’m going to give it a try. Because I almost never really bother when it comes to dinner. Lots of frozen dinners, microwave stuff, the kind of food you’d never let into the house. So I thought, I’ll make something. How hard could it be, right? Some chicken, some paprika, you throw it in the oven. Right. So I got some chicken and gave it a try, and did you ever stop to notice how much paprika looks like cayenne?” He shook his head. “Darn near killed myself with the first bite. Went into a coughing fit. Had to drink a glass of water real fast. You would have laughed your head off. It was a sight to see, I’m telling you. So I had to throw the whole mess out, and went and got myself some KFC and brought it home.”
Walden went quiet for a moment. Then: “I miss you both so much. You were my whole world; that’s what you two were.”
He turned to OLIVIA FISHER. “You had your whole life ahead of you. Just finishing up school, ready to fly on your own. Whoever did this to you, he didn’t just take you away from me. He killed your mother, too. It just took longer where she was concerned. It was a broken heart that caused her cancer. I know it. And I guess, if a broken heart can kill ya, he’ll get me eventually, too. Of course, it wasn’t just him that broke my heart. There’s plenty of blame to go around. Truth is, I’m guessing it won’t be all that long before I’m joining you. Soon we’ll all be together again, and you know, it takes away the fear of dying. It really does. I’m almost to the point where I can get up in the morning and say, If it happens today, that’s okay. I’m ready.”
Walden Fisher put both hands on his raised knee, pushed himself back into a standing position.
“I’m gonna keep coming to visit,” he told them. “Long as I’m still breathin’, I’ll be up here.”
He put the tips of his fingers to his lips, then touched his wife’s headstone. Repeated the process for his daughter.
Walden turned and walked slowly back to his van.
FIFTY-ONE
SEEING no cars in the distance in either direction, and confident that there would be none for the next couple of minutes, Jack Sturgess and Bill Gaynor dragged Marshall Kemper’s body out of his van and into the forest. He weighed about two hundred pounds, but he felt like a lot more than that to the two men, who were, at this stage of their lives, unaccustomed to what amounted to manual labor.
“My hands are killing me,” Gaynor said. “I haven’t dug a hole since I was in my teens.”
“You should have brought gloves,” Sturgess said.
“I would have, if you’d told me before we left what it was you had planned for me to do.”
“Maybe when I asked you to bring a shovel, that should have been a clue.”
Once they had Kemper into the woods, and out of sight in case anyone drove by, they dropped him and caught their breath. The grave Gaynor had dug was another twenty yards in.
“I want to know who this son of a bitch is,” Sturgess said, and knelt down, careful not to touch the knees of his pants to the forest floor, and worked the dead man’s wallet out of his back pocket. “It said Kemper on the ownership. But if that isn’t his van, he could have been lying.”
He examined a driver’s license. “Okay, that’s good. Marshall Kemper. Address matches the ownership. You ever heard of this guy?”
“What was the first name again?”
“Marshall.”
Gaynor thought a moment. “I think I may have heard Sarita talk about him. To Rose. A boyfriend or something.”
For the third time since Sturgess had stuck the needle into the man’s neck, the dead man’s cell phone rang. Sturgess dug into his pocket, found the device, studied it.
“Stemple,” he said.
“What?” said Gaynor.
“That’s who’s trying to call him. Stemple.”