‘Come on, Tate, if he was guilty, then let us help you. I mean, hell, if it turns out he killed those girls, we’ll probably end up giving you a medal. Just tell us what happened. We’re all on the same team here.’
“I didn’t kill him,’ I say, but my team mates don’t believe me.
I want a drink.
‘Give us a few minutes alone,’ Schroder says, and Landry looks angry, but I know it’s an act. I know they’ve cued up their conversation before coming in here and this is the point where Schroder becomes my friend.
Landry walks out without saying anything else. It’s part of their game.
‘You have to give me something here, Tate, or I can’t help you.’
I figure it’s best if I play the game too. But before I do, I decide to give him something.
‘Father Julian knew who killed those girls.’
‘What?’
“He told me he knew. And Bruce Alderman, he buried them.
He told me that.’
‘What? Why the hell didn’t you tell us that?’
I explain to Schroder my conversations with the priest, detailing my pleas for Julian to tell me who had done it, even touching on the frustration I felt. I can see Schroder wondering how far he’d have pushed it if he’d known that Father Julian had been confessed to. I tell him about Bruce Alderman and what he said about dignity before elegantly blowing his brains out.
‘You should have told us,’ he says. ‘We could have convinced Julian.’
“I doubt that.’
‘We could have done something, Tate. Anything. But instead you let a whole damn month slide by and now it’s too late. That’s why you were outside his church, right? You weren’t following Father Julian. You were watching to see who came to see him.
T>u were waiting in case the killer showed up, only you didn’t know who the hell you were looking for.’
“I had to do something.’
‘You fucked up.’
‘I know’
‘And now Father Julian is dead. And you’re in a world full of
shit.’
‘It’s an abyss.’
‘What?’
‘Come on, Carl, you know me. You’ve known me for nearly
fifteen years.’
‘Which is why this is hard for me too. We found the hammer
in your garage.’
‘And that’s why you’re going to let me leave.’ It’s time to play the game.
‘What?’
‘You’ve got nothing to hold me here.’
He looks down at the hammer in such a way as to suggest maybe I’ve forgotten it’s there. But I haven’t.
‘You found it in my garage.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, well, first of all you don’t even know if it’s my hammer.’
‘That’s not the …’
‘Second,’ I say, and I hold up my hand and start counting off my points. ‘You’re going to print it and find my prints aren’t on it.
You’re going to think a guy who used to be a homicide detective was dumb enough to clean off his fingerprints but not the blood, was dumb enough to keep the weapon, was dumb enough to leave it in his garage for anybody to find.’
“Not dumb, but drunk,’ he says.
‘And that’s exactly my point.’
‘What?’
‘Three,’ I say, counting off another point with my fingers. ‘And this one is the kicker. This is the reason I’m about to get up and walk out of here.’
Schroder leans back. He knows what’s coming.
‘The timeline. See, we know the timeline, Carl, but the problem is the guy who planted the hammer there didn’t.’
Schroder says nothing. He knew I’d figure it out, but was hoping it wouldn’t be this quickly. Or he was hoping to rattle me enough that I’d give him something more, maybe tell him about Sidney Alderman.
‘You think he died around midnight,’ I say, not because he told me, but because that’s when I saw the person leaving the church, the person who I thought was the priest. The killer knew my car was there, but he didn’t see me because I was covered in ground fog. He probably figured I was passed out drunk in the front seat because that’s what I was used to doing. He stayed in the shadows where he thought he was out of sight.
‘But I didn’t make it home. Only the killer couldn’t have known that. He drove to my house and replaced the hammer he had stolen to kill the priest. He didn’t know I was following him. What he couldn’t know was that I would be involved in an accident. Your boys came and locked me up. My car was towed away, and after you found Julian was dead, you would have had it re-towed, this time as evidence in a murder investigation. You had it brought here and every inch of it has been gone over. No blood from Father Julian and, more importantly, no hammer, right? And it’s not like it got logged along with my wallet and cellphone. I didn’t have it on me. And you would have searched the area of the crash, would have searched the roads between the graveyard and accident. You found nothing. Until tonight. So how’d I put it there?’
‘You could have dumped the hammer, picked it back up tonight. Maybe that’s why you’re covered in dirt.’
‘Why would I dump the hammer? I couldn’t know I was going to crash. What would be the point of dumping it, just to come back tonight to retrieve it and hide it in my garage?’