I start going through the tools. Gardening equipment, mostly, but some carpentry stuff as well. Could be that twenty years ago and in a different life, Alderman had a hobby. Maybe he and his son would hang out in the shed and make wooden stools or birdhouses, and they’d shoot the breeze with small talk about angles and mitre cuts and joints. There are power tools for every occasion too. I ignore them all and pick up a shovel.
I carry the shovel back to the grave rather than taking the digger. I rest beneath a tree that shelters me from the sun. I try not to think about the last twenty-four hours that have led me here, then I realise it’s actually the last two years that have done it. I wonder if the man I was back then would ever have thought of pulling the sort of crap he’s able to do now. I hope not, then I figure that if I was going to hope for anything it’d be that the last two years never happened.
That immediately leads me to start thinking about Quentin James. I have had two lives — the one before meeting James, and the one after — and I have been two separate people. I guess in a way that makes us similar. There was Sober Quentin and Drunk Quentin. There was probably a third Quentin too. One who recognised the change, but one who was kept quiet with beer and sports TV and mortgage payments. There is a third Tate — one who can’t say no to whatever the hell it is that I’m doing now. I felt so many things when Quentin told me he was sorry, but pity wasn’t one of them. I don’t feel it now either.
It takes Alderman thirty minutes. The sun is a little lower but no less hot. The beaten-up SUV comes along the road, the sun glinting off the windscreen, which is the only clean surface on the vehicle. The vehicle sways left and right as he struggles to control it.
I don’t move. He parks as close as he can get, and when the
door opens he steps out and pauses, looking around for what I can only guess is me. He doesn’t see me. He has to pass through the section of trees where I’m sitting but still he doesn’t see me.
He approaches the grave slowly, swaying slightly as he walks, as if the world is dropping away from beneath him with every footstep. Me, I’d have been running. He reaches it and he stands at the edge and he looks down and he does nothing. Just looks into the earth and sways, staring, just staring, until finally he climbs in.
I move towards him. The angle increases the closer I get, allowing me first to see the opposite edge of the grave, then Alderman’s head, and then the rest of him. He’s in there trying to pry up the edge of his wife’s coffin, but it’s difficult because all of his weight is on the lid. My shadow moves across the casket and he notices it. He looks up, having to twist his body to do it, which is a little awkward for him. He’s straddling the coffin like a horse, except he can’t get his legs over the sides. He’s looking up into the sun and has to hold a hand up to shade his eyes.
‘You fucker,’ he says.
‘Where is she?’
He gets to his feet, and has to reach out to steady himself against the dark walls. I show him the shovel.
‘You think I’m afraid of you?’ he asks. ‘You think I haven’t been waiting for something like this?’
I smack him in the side of the face with the shovel — not hard, but hard enough for him to fall back, his legs coming up and his head bouncing into the coffin.
‘Jesus,’ he says, touching his face. He leans to his side and spits out some blood, then wipes his hand across his mouth. ‘Fuck.’
‘Where did you put her?’
‘Fuck you,’ he says. ‘Is my wife in here? Is she, you piece of shit?’
‘She’s there, and unless you want to join her you’re going to tell me where you put my daughter.’
‘Your daughter? How about you tell me where my son is?
Or have you forgotten? He’s down at the fucking morgue!’ The words forced from his mouth are surrounded by booze and spittle. ‘Yeah, he’s getting cut to pieces with fucking bolt cutters and blades, and you know what? You want to know the fucking punch line? You put him there!’
There’s no point in arguing. No point in telling him over and over that I did not shoot his son. Casey Horwell has already convinced him otherwise.
‘My daughter. Where is she?’
‘You shot my boy.’
‘Tell me!’
‘You’ll never find her.’
‘Goddamn you,’ I say, and raise the shovel as if I’m about to hit him again. He flinches away, and I take a step back. ‘Goddamn it,’ I repeat, and I throw the shovel at him. I throw it hard. The shovel head hits him in the shoulder and bounces onto the coffin lid. Alderman falls back and braces himself against the wall. He starts massaging the impact point on his body.
I curl my hands into fists; I’m shaking, and I’m not really sure exactly where this anger is going to take me. The bottom of the abyss is waiting.
Alderman picks up the shovel and uses it to get to his feet.
He reaches for the edge of the grave. I figure he must be drunk, because he puts his hands over the edge as if he thinks he can pull himself out and not have anybody try to stop him. I squeeze my foot down on his fingers. He pulls them back, raking the skin off the back of his hand. He looks up at me as if he’s the victim here, as if he’s done nothing wrong. There is a patch of blood starting to spread on the shoulder of his shirt and now on his hand.