‘Fuck you. I’m not saying another word until you let me out

of here.’

I back away from the grave.

‘Where the fuck are you going?’ Alderman calls out.

I don’t answer him. I walk over to his SUV It’s dusty and

there are several rusting stone chips across the front of it. The driver’s door is open and there is a ‘ding, ding’ sound coming from the dashboard — his keys are still in it. I pop open the back door. My daughter is sprawled out in the back beneath a dark

blue tarp, her hair all matted and limp, her favourite dress in better condition than her body. Her little body has been ravaged by decomposition. I lean against the SUV and I keep my eyes

downcast, fighting the nausea, not wanting to look at her face because much of it has gone. It has rotted away, leaving a mask of such horror that all I want to do is scream. She should be in school right now. Should be two years older. Should be looking forward to going home and getting her homework out of the way

so she can spend time having tea-parties with teddy bears. Jesus, this world is so fucked up that it’s starting to make me think what Bruce Alderman did last night isn’t such a bad option.

I close the door. I walk back to the grave. Alderman is still

making his way out of it. He’s struggling because the dynamics are difficult for him. He’s drunk, his body can’t perform as well as a younger man’s could, his shoulder hurts and his fingers hurt, and he’s having difficulty getting up over the edge. He needs to be taller or stronger or younger or sober, or he needs a ladder. He looks up at me.

‘You son of a bitch,’ I say.

‘So I was wrong. So you did find her.’

‘It’s time you gave me some answers,’ I say, and I reach down

and grab a handful of his hair in one hand and the front of his shirt in the other. I pull him up hard, wanting it to hurt, and he grunts as his body is dragged over the edge of the grave.

‘Ah, fuck, slow down, damn it,’ he says, but I have no intention of slowing down.

“I didn’t kill your son,’ I say, and I keep pulling him upwards.

He braces both his hands over my hands to relieve the pain

that must be flooding through the top of his head. I can hear

scalp and hair beginning to tear.

When he’s out far enough, he gets his knees on the ground

and stops trying to hold onto my arms. Instead he twists his head, pulls down on my hand and clamps his teeth over my thumb.

‘Shit,’ I say, and I pull back my hand, but it’s no good. He’s biting hard, trying to sever the thumb.

I can’t crash my knee into his chin because it’ll push his teeth all the way through. Instead I let go of him and hit him. His head moves, making his teeth rip at my thumb like a great white shark sawing through its prey by shaking its head. So I push forward.

We both stumble, and a moment later we’re falling through the

air.

And back into the grave.

chapter twenty-three

Mostly I land on Sidney Alderman. My elbow crashes into the

coffin and my thumb is jarred from his mouth. My knee hits

the wall, but the rest of me lands against the old man so the impact is cushioned. Alderman isn’t so lucky. He doesn’t have anybody to land on. Just his wife, except that her years of offering any support are over. So he lands hard up against the wood with the shovel beneath him — harder, I imagine, than if he were falling in there by himself. Because I’m falling with him, there’s my weight and there’s momentum and the laws of physics, and they all add up very badly for Sidney Alderman. His head bounces into the

edge of the coffin.

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