‘Don’t do anything stupid, Theo. Bruce Alderman, he was a good man. And Sidney — well, inside he is a good man too, and one who right now is attending to his son. Respect that. Let him mourn, and let the police deal with him.’
I walk to the door and Father Julian doesn’t get up. He doesn’t make any attempt to follow me.
“I can’t do that,’ I say.
He shakes his head, but doesn’t offer any more words of wisdom. I leave him in his office and I walk back past the pictures of Jesus and his buddies. I wonder what they would think of the priest’s decision to keep the secrets shared with him to himself, whether they’d agree with his convictions or whether they’d tell him he was a fool. I wonder if right now Father Julian is praying for guidance.
At the front of the church is an alcove in which a registry — thick and divided up into sections, the covers leather with gold script across them — rests on a pedestal. It’s sorted alphabetically, and those sections are broken down chronologically. I go through the pages, looking for more connections between the girls and the times they went missing. I can’t find anything. There’s also a large reference map pinned on the wall; it has the cemetery divided up into numbered sections like a street map. It’s all I need to find my next two locations.
The first one is a grave. It’s close to the back of the houses further up the street, about as far away from the church and the lake to the east as it can get while still being within the boundaries of the cemetery. I drive as close as I can before getting out and walking. There is a pathway that leads through some more trees, and suddenly I’m in an area of the cemetery that feels isolated.
I figure Alderman won’t be back anytime soon, so he’s not about to drive past my car and see that I’m here. I figure he’s sitting in a bar somewhere getting drunk, or he’s driving around, trying to work out where exactly to put my daughter. Or he’s parked up on the side of the road, coming to his senses, wondering what in the hell he’s doing. Maybe getting ready to bite down on a bullet. Like father like son. Only that’s not a real possibility. Ten years ago, maybe, Alderman might have been the kind of guy to question his actions. But not now.
The day’s getting brighter. Getting warmer. But I still feel cold inside. I walk around the gravestones, each one a story, each one a memory. Some good, some bad. These people all influenced other people’s lives. They made differences. They met other people and paired up and made little people while they made futures together. Some died of old age. Others of disease. The messages on the gravestones are all similar. They’re sentiments, they’re statements, they’re final messages left to the world in the hope they will never be forgotten.
The one I want is tidy — no weeds, no long grass — but there are no flowers there either. I stand in front of it for about a minute before heading back to my car.
The second location is a large shed at the far northeast corner of the cemetery. It’s separated from the cemetery first by a wooden fence, then by a line of poplars. It’s about the same size as my house, but there are no inner walls or partitions to hold up the roof. It’s full of garden tools and sacks of grass seed and plant seed. There’s a tractor and a ride-on lawn mower and a digger.
The tools that were needed yesterday to exhume Henry Martins were here all along, parked in a row. Instead contractors came and used their own equipment, and I wonder how different things would be now if they hadn’t. I take a look at the place, but nothing stands out — there are so many possible murder weapons in here, if we take a week to examine each of them. This shed could be a crime scene.
There is a stack of cinderblocks beneath one of the benches.
Hanging up on a nail near the window is a coil of green rope.
I reach up and roll it between my fingers. It’s made up of hundreds of individual strands of what looks like hemp. It’s the same stuff that was connected to the bodies, and would have swelled when it got wet. Thousands of people in this city probably use it.
I walk over to the digger. There is fresh dirt on the teeth of the scoop. Sidney Alderman used it to bring my little girl up into the light. He probably laid her in the giant claw and drove her back here in it. I look around for Emily, but she isn’t here.
The shed could easily be the place where four young women met their deaths. I stand in the centre and slowly turn around, covering each angle with my eyes. Two wheelbarrows. Pieces of plywood. Buckets. Boot prints with chunks of dirt; bits and pieces of wood, tarps, ropes, workbenches. A horrible place to die. The air is musty, and I can smell oil and grass clippings.