I push myself up, bracing my hands against the dirt walls and the coffin. Blood is pouring from my thumb. The edges of the
bite have peeled upwards, revealing bright pink flesh. I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief and wrap it tightly around the wound. It doesn’t hurt, but I figure in about twenty seconds it’s going to be killing me. I get to my knees and shake Alderman a little. There is no response, so I shake him harder. When he doesn’t stir, I take the next step and search for what I’m beginning to fear, putting my fingers against his neck. Blood starts to leak onto the coffin. The lid is curved slightly, so the blood doesn’t pool; it runs down the sides and gets caught in a thin cosmetic groove running around the edge of the lid. Drop after drop and it starts building up; it climbs up over the groove and soaks into the dirt.
There is no pulse.
I start to roll Alderman over, but stop halfway when I see the damage. The tip of the shovel is buried into his neck, its angle making it point towards his brain. His head sags as I move him, and the handle of the shovel rotates. His eyes are open but they’re not seeing a thing. I let him go, and he slumps back against the coffin. My hands are covered in his blood. I stare at them for a few seconds, then wipe them on the walls of the grave, then stare at them some more, before shifting my body as far away as I can from Alderman, which isn’t far. I wipe my hands across the wet earth once more and clean them off on my shirt. All the time I keep staring at Alderman as if he’s going to sit up and tell me not to worry, that these things happen, that it could’ve happened to anybody.
Jesus.
I climb out of the grave. It’s a lot easier for me than it was for Alderman because I’m working with a whole different set of dynamics. I lie on the lawn, staring up at the sky that is just as blue as it was when I was sitting in the digger, digging up the grave.
Jesus.
I get up and start staring at Sidney Alderman from different
angles that don’t improve the situation. I try thinking about Emily, looking over at the SUV which is hidden by the trees,
knowing she’s in the back, hoping her presence will make things seem better than they are. Hoping to justify Alderman’s death by thinking he deserved it. I try this, but it doesn’t work. It should do. But it doesn’t. He deserved the chance to tell me everything he knew about the dead girls, and those dead girls deserved that too. I think about Casey Horwell and I wonder how she’d react if I called her and told her where her story had led. I figure she’d be thrilled — it’d give her the airtime she is desperate to get.
I walk over to the trees so I can see both the grave and the
SUV I look from one to the other. Is there a next step? I figure there is. There always is. I have, in fact, two first steps to choose from — the problem is each one heads in a different direction.
The first one requires me to reach into my pocket for my
cellphone and call the police. Only I don’t. They’ll say I wanted this to happen. They’ll say Alderman pushed me too far, and that I reacted. Only they’ll say I had time to calm down, because there were several hours in between Alderman taking Emily out of the ground and me putting him in it. Hours in which I dug up his wife’s grave, spoke to the priest and continued the investigation.
So they’ll say I didn’t snap. They’ll say it had to be premeditated, because I had plenty of opportunities to go to the police but I didn’t. They’ll say I knew what was happening, that I looked into the abyss and dived right in.
I go with the other direction.
I climb back into the grave and roll Sidney Alderman over.
His blood is now pooling on each side of the coffin. I tug at the shovel, but at first it doesn’t move. It’s caught on something inside his body. I shift it from side to side, loosening it like removing a tooth, and it comes away with the squelching sound of pulling your foot out of mud. I toss it out onto the grass and climb back out.
I walk to the other side of the trees and scan the graveyard.
There isn’t a soul in sight. I walk back and start to scoop dirt on top of Alderman. It hits him heavily: some pieces stay where they hit, others roll down his side and into the blood. The sound can’t be mistaken for anything other than dirt against flesh. I drop the shovel. There are black crumbs of soil stuck on the end of it, glued there by Sidney Alderman’s blood. I make my way back to the shed and return with the digger. I can only take the road so far before I have to drive over and around other graves and around trees to reach the plot, and when I get there it doesn’t take as long to fill the grave as it took to empty it. When I’m done I drive the digger back and I stand in the shed, trying to keep my feet under me as the world sways. Another Tate has just been added to my collection of personalities. Each one more fucked up than the other. Leading me where?