Cemetery Girl (39 page)

“She’s in the car.”

“And she didn’t run out here?” Colter lowered his eyes to mine. “Did you lock her in there? You see, that’s the problem. You’re holding her back from what she wants.”

“Where would you go with her?” I asked. “What do you think is going to happen here?”

But Colter didn’t answer. Once again, his eyes looked behind me, back toward the road and the car where Caitlin was waiting.

I turned, expecting to see Caitlin coming, but then I saw what Colter saw.

Headlights, coming down the road. Another car approaching mine.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“They’re probably just turning around,” I said. But the car stopped right behind mine.

“Is that a cop? Did you screw me?” He started moving back into the dark.

Someone climbed out of the car and looked toward us. I recognized the figure before he said anything. I had run into him out in the cemetery before.

“It’s my brother,” I said. “It’s Buster.”

Chapter Fifty-five

I
walked over to the cars and approached Buster, leaving Colter behind in the dark. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Looking for you. I drove all over town looking. I figured you might end up here eventually.”

“You’re not needed—or wanted. Leave me alone.”

“Where is she? Where’s Caitlin?” He looked into the car, squinting in the dark. “Tom? What did you do? Did you hand her off to him already?”

“She’s in there, okay?”

Caitlin must have heard our voices. She leaned closer to the glass, allowing us to see her. But she didn’t make a move to come out.

Buster looked horrified. “Tom, just get in the car and take her home.”

“She’s my leverage. She’s safe in the car because I can’t have her running off before I get what I need.”

“That’s cold, Tom. Cold. Jesus—referring to your daughter as leverage.”

“Did you call the police like you called Abby?”

“We’re family, Tom. All of us. We protect each other. I did what I thought was right.”

“Family. Why did you do it, Buster? Why? You gave her away, like a piece of meat. Why? You went to that house. She was there. She heard your voice.”

He made a hurried shushing gesture by bringing his finger to his lips. He pointed at the car.

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Come on,” he said. “Over here.”

“No.”

“I want to explain.”

We stepped away from the cars, far enough so Caitlin couldn’t hear us.

“What did the police tell you?” Buster asked.

“Enough. That you owed a guy money for drugs. And he knew Colter. So—”

“I didn’t
give
Caitlin to anyone. I couldn’t. But I did . . . I was messed up. You remember. I owed him money.”

“Colter?”

“Brooks. He was all over me. I was scared. I thought I might just leave town, never come back.”

“You should have.”

He looked hurt, but he went on. “I talked about Caitlin. I talked about her all the time. She’s my niece. You have to understand—I felt like she was more than that. Like she was mine. My kid.” He threw his hands up a little. A hopeless shrug. “I’m never going to have any of my own. You can feel that way about a niece or nephew. Even if they’re not your own, you can feel like they belong to you in some way. There’s a bond there that goes beyond blood or family or who gave birth to who. Right?”

“I’ll have to take your word for that one.”

“Like me and you, Tom. Am I your brother or your half brother? Does it matter what it’s called? Look—okay, so you wanted me to admit that my old man used to get after us and beat us, and I wouldn’t before. I was a dick, I know. Well, I’ll admit it now, right here. He used to beat us and terrorize us when he drank. And he used to come down on you most of all, probably because you weren’t really his kid. You see—I said it, Tom. I said it. You were right about my dad and all of that.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s the truth. But something else is the truth, too. I used to protect you, Tom. I used to put my body over yours. I tried to get in between you and him. I know you remember that, too. See, that’s what I’m talking about. There’s a bond there, one that can’t be broken by some circumstances.”

“Go on,” I said. “What about Colter and Brooks?”

“When she disappeared, I thought of those guys. Maybe I had talked about her too much around them.”

“So you knew Colter?”

“I knew of him at the time. He didn’t know me. I thought of going to the police, but what did I know? Really? That I knew a guy who might know a guy who might have taken my niece?”

“You tell them anything you know.”

“Like you told them about me after last night? I know they came to you asking about me. Did you cover for me? Did you protect me?”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Did you tell them about the girl we saw here in the cemetery? That little girl.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this?”

“I had a record. They busted me for being naked by a school. And the drugs. What were they going to do with me?” He shrugged again and walked in a small circle.

I looked over to the cemetery and saw Colter’s figure in the dark. Listening. Waiting.

Buster came back to me and stood even closer. “I decided to check it out myself. I asked Brooks about it, if he knew about Colter and the little girls. He said Colter was a creep and a pervert, but he didn’t think he had anyone in the house. He’d been in there a few times. He hadn’t seen anything, or so he said.”

“Caitlin says she heard your voice in Colter’s house.”

Buster shook his head. “No, no. Never. I didn’t know where he lived. Brooks put me off. He said he dealt with unpleasant people, but he didn’t know anything about Caitlin. Tom, if I had gone there, if I had been in that house, I would have turned it upside down. I wouldn’t have left without Caitlin. Never.”

His words rang true to me. Despite Colter’s story, I believed my brother. I believed him.

“Why didn’t you tell the police I’m meeting Colter here tonight? You could have stopped all of this.”

“The cops are looking for me now because of what Brooks’s girlfriend told them. I can’t make contact with them. They want to lock me up. And I wanted to come find you. And help you. After last night, with the fight and everything, I wanted to be the one to help you see this from a different angle. You’re not seeing it clearly yet, okay? But you still can. You can just get back in the car and drive her home. That’s all you have to do.”

“It’s that easy?”

“It really is.”

“What about the rest of our lives?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You see, something happened in that house, in that basement room. Something happened that transformed my daughter and transformed my life. I need to know what it was. If it was able to so profoundly, so completely turn me off the course of my life, I need to know about it. All about it.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . it’s gone. And you weren’t there. And whatever it is or was . . . it’s not really relevant to your life now. It’s not going to change the past.”

“What will?” I asked.

And I meant it. What would wipe the past away, clean the slate?

Buster pointed to the car.

“You know what to do.”

I moved to the back of the car and took out my keys.

Chapter Fifty-six

B
efore I could reach the car, the driver’s door came open. Caitlin looked scared, disoriented, in the faint glow from the dome light. She must have slid back over the seat into the front and opened the lock. She came out into the night, looking back and forth between Buster and me.

“Where’s John?” she said. “Is he here?”

I nodded toward the cemetery. “He’s here,” I said, but I put my hand on Caitlin’s arm.

“Let me go.”

“We’re leaving, Caitlin.”

I held on to her and released the door locks with my fob. I maneuvered her toward the backseat of the car again.

“You promised,” she said.

I pulled the back door open and had her halfway in when Colter came running up.

“Hey!” he said.

“John! John!”

I kept my body between the two of them, felt myself wedged and pressed between their grasping forms. Caitlin cried out for him, a plaintive wailing, and I felt Colter’s hot breath on the back of my neck, smelled the onions he had eaten for his dinner.

Then the pressure against my back eased. Colter fell to the ground and Buster stood over him. Then Buster dropped to his knees by Colter’s side, his fist going up and down like a piston while Colter squirmed beneath the blows.

“Enough,” I said. “Enough.”

I let go of Caitlin long enough to grab Buster’s arm, to stop his pummeling of Colter. When I had him pulled back and under control, I looked down.

Colter was still there, his face bloodied. Caitlin slipped past me and went to the ground, cradling his face in her hands.

“Oh, John,” she said. “John, did he hurt you?”

But Colter didn’t take his eyes off mine. He even smiled a little, his teeth stained with blood.

“Satisfied?” he said. “Is it over now?”

Caitlin’s eyes were full of tears, and she sniffled in the dark, her hand now resting on Colter’s arm.

I bent down a little, wrapped my hand around her wrist, and pulled her up.

“She’s coming with me.”

Caitlin gasped a little, but she didn’t resist as much as I’d thought she would.

“We had a deal,” Colter said. “A fucking deal.”

I pulled Caitlin toward the car, not looking back. I knew Buster was behind me, watching the rear, not letting Colter up off the ground.

“Let me go!” she said, pulling against me. But I kept my grip—loose enough not to hurt, tight enough that she couldn’t get away. I never should have brought her, I thought. I never should have exposed her to Colter again. It was over. We were going home.

“No,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”

The wailing began again, but this time it was more distant, more sustained.

I looked out to the main road. The blue and red lights strobed, approached the cemetery, and turned in. I looked at Buster, and he shrugged.

“Abby?” I said. “She called them?”

He shrugged again.

Colter pushed himself to his feet. The police cars were coming toward us, blocking the way for our vehicles. There was only one way out, and he took it. He didn’t even look back. He turned and ran into the cemetery, into the darkness, past Caitlin’s headstone and into the darkening night.

“John!” she shouted.

Caitlin tugged against me, but I held on.

I wasn’t going to let go.

Epilogue

W
eeks later, I return to the park with Caitlin.

It’s early December. The leaves are all stripped from the trees, and the first frost has already come and gone.

It was Abby who’d called the police that night.

It took her a while to think of it, but she, like Buster, knew me well enough to know the spot I’d pick for a meeting with Colter.

The police arrested John Colter in the cemetery as soon as they arrived. He’d had nowhere to run, and they found him crouched behind a mausoleum. He had slipped in the wet grass and twisted his ankle, making his escape all but impossible. As Ryan had promised, new indictments were handed down against Colter, charging him with the kidnapping and sexual assault of Caitlin. In the wake of his intention to flee the area, his bail was revoked and he remains in custody at the county jail awaiting a trial in the spring.

Whenever I ask Ryan about the possibility of a conviction, he hedges his bets and reminds me that sometimes plea deals have to be struck, especially when eyewitness and forensic evidence remains slim. Caitlin refuses to testify or admit anything, and I try my best to believe that John Colter no longer exists.

The murder of Tracy Fairlawn remains unsolved, although it is widely suspected she was killed by John Colter. Murder charges may still be forthcoming against him.

Jasmine, the cemetery girl, has never been found. Ryan suspects she’s a runaway, and it seems little effort is being expended on tracking her down.

For a while after Colter’s arrest, I found myself in trouble with the prosecutor’s office. They were displeased with my actions on those nights, and they contemplated pressing charges against me. Obstruction. Witness tampering. Assault. In the end, they did nothing but scare me. When news of the arrest reached the public, popular sentiment turned my way, and the prosecutor’s office, facing an election year, decided against continuing their pursuit of the father of a kidnapped and confused child.

My family was not so forgiving. It took less than forty-eight hours for Abby to move out—taking Caitlin with her. They made temporary quarters in dormitory-style housing at Pastor Chris’s church. Abby has filed for divorce, which I have no plans to contest, but I see Caitlin just about whenever I want, especially on weekends.

Caitlin is not allowed to have any contact with John Colter while he is in jail. No letters, e-mail, or phone calls. To do so might lengthen his sentence, and as far as we can tell, neither he nor Caitlin has violated those terms. She continues with her therapy—both with Dr. Rosenbaum and with Susan Goff—and no doubt receives plenty of unsolicited help from Pastor Chris when she’s at the church.

I’ve brought the situation up only once with her, just a week after John Colter’s arrest.

“He ran away in the cemetery,” I said. “He didn’t try to help you.”

“He was scared. The police were after him.”

I should have let it go, but I had to know one more thing.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked.

She didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to wait for him.”

Buster and I have spoken to each other only once since that night. He, too, faced more heat at the hands of the prosecutor’s office in light of his connection to Loren Brooks. But after careful examination and investigation, it was determined that Buster had broken no laws.