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Authors: David J Bell

Cemetery Girl (4 page)

BOOK: Cemetery Girl
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“Quite a church,” Buster said.

And it was. A former warehouse purchased by Christ’s Church eight years earlier and converted. It sat two thousand people and included a workout center and coffee bar in the back. Plans were in the works to buy a large video projection system so that Pastor Chris could be seen up close and personal by everyone. More than once, Abby mentioned donating money toward that cause.

“We should begin,” Pastor Chris said, looking at his watch and then the settling crowd. “Is that okay with all of you?”

Abby nodded silently, and so did I. She reached out and took my hand. The gesture surprised me. Her hand felt unfamiliar in mine, the hand of a stranger, but the good kind of strangeness that comes when two people have just met and are beginning to get to know each other. My heart sped up a little; I squeezed her hand in mine and she squeezed back. Like two scared children, we followed Pastor Chris down the aisle to the front of the church with Buster trailing behind.

 

 

Pastor Chris was like a celebrity on the altar. His straight white teeth gleamed, and despite his slightly thinning, slightly graying hair, he still looked youthful and vibrant. At forty-five, a couple of years older than Abby and me, he ran obsessively, even competed in the occasional marathon, and his body was trim and sleek under his perfectly fitted suit. He believed that God rewarded those who maintained their bodies and that exercise kept the spirit sharp, so it was no surprise that the addition of the workout facility to the church complex had been his idea.

Buster and I grew up Catholic, trundled off to Mass every Sunday morning by my overbearing stepfather, who believed that to miss one Sunday was a sin of the worst kind. While I no longer practiced or believed much of anything, I found it difficult to attend a new church, especially one that seemed so different from the religion I knew. Christ’s Community Church felt too touchy-feely, too positive for me. Pastor Chris offered nothing but encouragement to his congregation, as well as the sense that heaven could be attained through the application of a series of steps found in a self-help book. I expected my spiritual leaders to be removed and slightly dogmatic, wrapped in their colorful vestments and staring down at me, and I didn’t respond well when one of them wanted to be my friend. I also couldn’t fully understand the nature of Abby’s relationship with Pastor Chris. I understood the spiritual side of it—Abby was looking for guidance and community and found it in the church. But in recent months she’d grown even closer to Pastor Chris, going out to lunch with him on weekdays and referring to him as her “best friend.” Never in the eighteen years of our marriage had I suspected Abby of infidelity, but the “friendship” with Pastor Chris—as well as the perilous state of our own marriage—made me wonder.

Abby and I continued to hold hands through the beginning of the service as Pastor Chris led the congregation through a series of prayers and readings from scripture, including the one in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Buster sat to my right, holding his sunglasses in his left hand and bouncing them against his thigh. He seemed older. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes looked more permanent, the gray in his hair more visible. But he appeared to be paying attention, his eyes focused on the altar, and my initial instinct turned out to be wrong: I was glad to have him there. My brother. My closest blood relation.

Pastor Chris started his sermon—which I still thought of as a homily—by thanking all the friends and community members in attendance. But they were Abby’s friends and people from the church. Her family was a small one. Her father had died when Caitlin was little, and her mother had retired to Florida. She and Abby had not been close over the years, and while Abby had extended an invitation to the service, her mother had apparently chosen not to come. For my part, I didn’t invite any of my colleagues from the university to attend. It was a sabbatical year for me, one I’d reluctantly decided to take in an effort to complete another book, and I knew my colleagues would not mix well with the evangelical crowd.

Pastor Chris continued, his voice a little high and reedy, almost like an adolescent’s on the brink of changing. “While we’re here as the result of a tragedy, the loss of a young life, we are also here to support one another as well as to take comfort from Christ’s eternal pledge to us. And what is that pledge? The pledge is that those who die having been redeemed by Christ’s eternal love shall not die, but rather have eternal life in Christ’s glory.”

Voices through the church muttered, “Amen,” including Abby’s. I studied her face in profile. Somewhere in there, I told myself, a vestige of the person I fell in love with nearly twenty years ago still remained. It must. But it was increasingly difficult for me to find it, to see her, and as I watched her mutter, “Amens,” under her breath and stare at Pastor Chris like he himself incarnated the Second Coming, I wondered if what I knew of her, or thought I knew of her, was gone forever, just like Caitlin.

“I was blessed to speak with Tom and Abby last night.” At the sound of my name, I turned back to Pastor Chris. It took me a moment to process his words. He said he’d spoken to us—to
me
the night before—but he hadn’t. I hadn’t seen the man. “And while they are understandably devastated by the loss of their dear Caitlin, they both told me, Tom as well as Abby, that they took comfort from the fact that Caitlin is now in heaven, reunited with Christ and basking in his divine love.”

I looked at Abby again, but she still stared forward, muttering her “Amens.” Buster leaned in to me on the other side. His breath smelled like cough drops.

“You were really shoveling it last night.”

“I didn’t say that,” I whispered.

I removed my hand from Abby’s. She didn’t seem to notice.

 

 

After the last prayer and the final song, we filed out. Abby, Buster, and I went first with Pastor Chris; then we stood around at the back of the church while people headed to their cars. Abby and I stood side by side, still not touching.

“I’m going to ride with Buster,” I said.

“You don’t want to ride with us?” Abby asked.

“Buster doesn’t know his way.”

“It’s a procession,” she said. “He can ride with us.”

“I need to talk to him,” I said, breaking off eye contact with her. “It’s fine.”

“But you’re going to the cemetery, right, Tom? You’ll be there?”

I didn’t answer. I put my hand on Buster’s arm and guided him toward the parking lot.

We stopped in Shaggy’s, a bar near campus. Students occupied most of the tables. Guys were trying hard to impress the girls, and the girls sat back, absorbing the boys’ attentions, encouraging more. We ordered sandwiches and then Buster asked for a pitcher of beer. When the waitress left, I asked him if he was drinking again.

“Just beer,” he said as nonchalantly as a man waiting for a bus. He’d been in rehab twice and then was arrested for drinking and driving. He’d also been arrested for indecent exposure, a fact that had caught the attention of the detectives investigating Caitlin’s disappearance. Buster claimed he’d been drunk and lost his clothes, but at some point he’d run past a group of children in a park and was initially charged with the more serious crime of child enticement and lewd and lascivious behavior. He’d spent two days in jail and served a thousand hours of community service. “You sure you don’t want to go to the boneyard? We can still make it.”

I shook my head. “Forget it.”

“Abby’s going to be pissed.”

I shrugged. He was right, of course. But when I heard Pastor Chris ascribing beliefs to me, actual words even, that clearly weren’t mine, something gave way. I tried to go along, to appease, but I’d reached my limit. Someone—maybe Pastor Chris, maybe Abby—decided to lie, to misrepresent my beliefs in public. I couldn’t stand being part of it, being lumped in with the flock of blind sheep.

The beer came and Buster poured it into the disposable plastic cups they provided. One of the drawbacks of living in a college town—restaurants and bars don’t invest in glassware. I took a sip and it felt good. And then another. That was all it took to start a buzz at the base of my skull.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text.

Need to see you. Four p.m.

“What’s that about?” Buster asked. “Abby?”

“No. Liann Stipes.”

“Who?”

“She’s a lawyer here in town. She handles the everyday stuff—mortgages, wills. Small-time criminal cases.”

“What does she want with you?” Buster asked. “You making a will?”

“Her daughter was murdered about ten years ago. She was just sixteen. They caught the guy and convicted him.”

“They fry him?” Buster asked.

“Life in prison. No parole. Are you sure you didn’t meet Liann right after Caitlin disappeared? She was at our house a lot.”

“I wasn’t around much then,” he said.

I studied his face for a moment. He took a long drink of his beer and ignored my interest. “Anyway,” I said, “she really tried to help us out. She’s become something of a crusader and an advocate on behalf of missing or murdered children and their families. She likes to see that the bad guys get punished. She doesn’t handle the prosecutions, of course, but she advises the families, sort of an informal legal counselor. That’s what she’s been doing for us. She tries her best to help victims’ families sort through all the mess of their cases. Dealing with the cops, dealing with the media. She tries to keep our spirits up. And she believes in justice.”

“A lawyer.” Buster made a gagging face.

“She’s not really a lawyer to me. She’s more of a friend. Like I said, an advocate.”

He kept making the face, so I ignored him. I wrote back and asked where she wanted to meet.

The Fantasy Club.

“Hmm.” I stared at the screen. “She wants to meet me in a strip joint.”

“Interesting place to meet a missing-children’s advocate.”

“Who knows? She meets a lot of interesting people in these cases. She gets to know the victims and their families pretty well. She seems to know everything and everybody. I just wish I knew what she wanted to tell me. She can be so fucking secretive sometimes, like she’s in the CIA. Jesus.”

“Drink up. It’ll help pass the time.” Buster drained half his cup on the first try, then polished off the rest and poured more. He nodded, encouraging me. “Tell me why we’re bailing on the graveside service.”

“I didn’t say any of that stuff at the church, that stuff about heaven. That idiot, Pastor Chris, made it up. Or Abby did. But it’s not just the stuff from church,” I said.

“Yeah?”

The beer tasted good. Real good. I felt myself reaching my limit. My stepfather—Buster’s father—drank. He drank and he raged at us and he usually passed out on the couch. I never acquired the habit, but Buster did.

“I knew Abby was going to buy the headstone,” I said. “Hell, I knew how much it cost. But she promised me it wouldn’t be up yet. She promised me. And it was there the other day when I went to the cemetery, the day I talked to you on the phone while I was walking Frosty.” Just saying his name caused a spasm of guilt in my chest. Where was Frosty? In an abusive home? Sitting in his own filth, waiting for the gas chamber? “The headstone has her name on it. My little girl. And it says she died four years ago. It’s a big fucking thing, too. You can’t miss it. Can you believe that?”

“Which part?”

“Any of it.”

Someone put coins in the jukebox, and a country song came on too loud. The steel guitar whined and someone else shouted in protest. The bartender bent down behind the bar and, mercifully, the volume dropped.

Buster put down his cup and steepled his fingers in front of his face. He looked thoughtful, sincere. “Have you ever thought—? And I’m only saying this because I do care about you. I really do. I mean, I know I can be a royal screwup. I know Abby can’t stand me and all that. Hell, maybe you can’t stand me either. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I can stand you. Most of the time.”

He smiled. “Thanks.”

“And I think I know where you’re going with this . . .”

“You know the odds,” Buster said. “But it’s probably true. There was never a ransom demand. She probably did die that day. There’s been no evidence to the contrary.”

I closed my eyes. Even in the noisy bar, I could imagine the screams. Caitlin’s voice. High. Cracking. Stretched to its limit.
Daddy!

“I don’t like to think we lost her that day,” I said.

“That’s fine. I understand. What are the cops saying?” He reached behind him, to an empty table, and grabbed a bowl of peanuts.

“Very little. When we do hear from them, it’s the same stuff. They have one detective on it. The feds have pulled out. They call it an active case, but what does that mean? I know they have other things. Newer cases.”

“They still think she ran away?”

“It makes it easier on them, right? If she ran away, there’s no crime. She’d be sixteen now . . .” I paused.

“We can drop it if you want,” Buster said.

I nodded.

BOOK: Cemetery Girl
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