Dead Connection Read online

  Pearl decided to bust him while he was doing his thing with the graves. She would let him know he wasn’t fooling anybody, let him know she was the boss in this cemetery. She knew he was usually just down the hill in the late afternoon. Since her dad was still working, this was the perfect time.

  She left the cottage, being careful the screen door didn’t slam, walked quietly down the road and right up behind where he sat in front of a tombstone, and said, “They’re dead, you know!” He jumped about a foot, which wasn’t easy from a sitting position.

  He started stammering at her. Totally irritating. She told him to calm down or she’d make her dad tell him to leave. Then she got mad at herself. Here’s a ninth grader going to get her dad to come help her!

  “What are you doing talking to a headstone?”

  “I’m not talking to a headstone.” He was looking at her like she was the idiot.

  “You’re talking to yourself?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Well?” she said. She had her hands on her hips like a traffic cop.

  “It’s really none of your business,” he said, turning his back to her.

  “Everything that happens here is my business,” she told him. “My dad runs this place.”

  “You’re Janochek’s kid?” he blurted, surprising the heck out of her.

  “How do you know his name?”

  “What’s your name?” he asked, before she could get back on top of things.

  “Pearl.” Shoot! She wanted to go on the offensive. “I’ve seen you slinking around here, day after day”—shaking her head like he was beyond help—“You’re just a goofy grave sniffer!” There. That’s more like it.

  Murray gave up hoping she would just leave. He turned to face her. Pearl was standing right up close to him, looking belligerent.

  “Damn it! Don’t you have any manners?” He was losing patience.

  “Me? I’m not the one creeping around a cemetery like a body snatcher. It’s supposed to be quiet and dignified here.”

  Murray skidded back and forth between anger and amusement. He hated being talked to in that tone of voice, but on the other hand, she was kind of cute, trying to be so tough with her bad-guy pose, and at the same time leaking a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  “I am not bothering you. Go do whatever it is you do and leave me alone!”

  “No.”

  “No…?” He was getting tired of this game.

  “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “You’ll just keep hassling me.”

  “No, I won’t,” Pearl said, taking her hands off her hips and softening her expression. “I’m not really trying to hurt your feelings. I just kind of like messing with you.”

  “Can you see that I don’t like it?”

  “Yeah, but you’ll get used to it. I’m a lot of fun to be around.”

  Murray barked a laugh in spite of himself. “Who told you that?”

  “My dad.”

  “Jeez, he has to say stuff like that. You’re his kid.”

  “No, he means it.”

  Murray massaged his forehead. “You’ll just tell and I’ll get in trouble and everything will get screwed up.”

  Pearl looked him right in the eye. “Are you doing something bad?”

  “No. No! It’s nothing like that. You’d never understand in a million years.”

  Pearl took a half step toward him. “Hey. I’m sorry I scared you and acted, like, so tough. Tell me what you’re doing. Please.”

  Murray looked at her. She was probably thirteen or fourteen. She had a curly blond tangle of hair and she wore overalls with a colored T-shirt underneath a faded jean jacket. She wasn’t wearing makeup. Her brown walking shoes were scuffed. She had a decent face with straight teeth and a smudge of dirt near her chin. She smelled like woodsmoke from her dad’s workshop stove. Her face now held a sincere pleading look that begged to be trusted.

  “No,” he said. He saw the way her face fell and felt a quick pang. “No,” he repeated, more softly.

  Pearl turned and stomped away before he could say more.

  * * *

  Back up the hill, she stormed into the workshop and slammed the door. She didn’t respond to her father’s offer of ham sandwiches and coleslaw, didn’t say a word as she passed through the back door and walked into the small two-bedroom cottage the cemetery provided as housing. She went to her room and closed the door. She tore her jean jacket off and threw it at the wall by her bed, hitting the poster of Cheryl Miller coaching during a timeout in a WNBA game and the one beside it of Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. She loved his movie with Robert Duvall. The posters rattled with the jacket’s impact but neither fell.

  That wack … that stupid dick! She was too mad to sit. She’d fix that kid. Count on it!

  JANOCHEK: KEEPER OF THE GROUNDS

  He had been watching those kids, Pearl and the Kiefer boy, and thought, God, how did any of us ever make it to adults? Pearl was acting tough, like a bouncer, and Kiefer looked like he just wanted to be left in peace. Fat chance, now that he was on her radar. Pearl made Canyon’s freshman girls’ basketball team because she was what the coach called aggressive, tenacious on defense. Once she started something, she didn’t let go easily. He loved to watch her fight the taller girls for rebounds.

  He thought Pearl had reason to be angry; mad that he had married her mom instead of someone stable, mad that her mom ignored her, mad that she was an only child living in a cemetery instead of a neighborhood with other kids.

  Janochek had tried to talk with her about some of these things, but since she’d been eleven, talking hadn’t gone so well. So he just tried to be polite and put food on the table. She didn’t want to ride bikes or go to movies with him on the weekends anymore. He wished that she got invited to sleepovers or had a group of girlfriends who called her.

  He knew she was embarrassed by his work. And he wondered if kids teased her about being a ghoul. He told her if anyone made fun of her or gave her trouble, he would come to school and bite them on the neck.

  He knew that the Kiefer kid hung around the cemetery nearly every night. Murray Kiefer. What a name to be saddled with. Kiefer’s mom reminded Janochek a little of Pearl’s mom. Vera Kiefer was a party girl, and she hooked up with different men who would keep her in food, liquor, and rent for a couple of weeks at a time. He could make a pretty cold comparison with his dead wife, Doreen. He thought he probably should have divorced her when Pearl was a toddler so she wouldn’t have had to watch her mom self-destruct, running off with other men for days at a time, until leukemia ended her life. Before it was over, Pearl wound up mothering her.

  Odd to think how maybe one of the safest places to be anymore was a cemetery. Murray was thin and gawky; hell, even his hair was thin and gawky. At first, Janochek thought the boy was smoking dope and tripping when he stuck around the cemetery, but by now, he knew Kiefer was just hanging out and talking to himself. And, really, what was the matter with that? Janochek did that some when he was a kid. Made up all kinds of fantasy games. He felt sorry for the kid. Thought him harmless.

  Janochek was curious what was going to happen if Pearl started pestering the boy. He didn’t want his daughter to run the boy out just for target practice. Pearl reminded him of a cat he had once who was really sleek and lovely, very clever, cuddly most of the time, but had a mean streak that was unpredictable, and every so often, Janochek would get mauled when he wasn’t paying attention.

  Murray better watch out. Janochek knew Pearl was steaming. Usually, it was just sports, homework, solitary games, and fiction books for her. No major moody drama unless he asked her to clean her room. But tonight she was seething and wouldn’t talk about it. During dinner, when he brought it up, she changed the subject rather cleverly, asking him a question about the history of cemeteries, which she knew from past experience was one of his favorite topics, one he could talk on and on about.

  “Tell me again, Dad, who invented cemeteries? I�
��m probably going to write a paper on it at school.” She was so transparent. But it worked. Or, he gave up and let it work.

  “Well, you know, honey, that when human beings started burying their dead, they usually marked the graves with a heavy stone or a stack of rocks, apparently believing the weight would keep the dead from rising.”

  He warmed to the topic. “Later on, words or pictures were added to the rocks or pieces of wood to commemorate the person’s life or to serve as a locator like today’s tombstones. As people became less nomadic, or maybe wealthier, the graves got fancier.”

  He reminded her of the pictures she had seen, big tombs like the Taj Mahal and the pyramids. He told her that the so-called modern cemeteries didn’t get started until after holy people’s bones and relics began to be kept in temples or churches, and that practice probably led to wealthy people paying to get buried in those places so they would be close at hand when the call to heaven came.

  She was keeping eye contact and he was encouraged by her attention. “The less wealthy religious people wanted to get buried as close to church as possible for the same reason and so they were put in the churchyards.” He emphasized that, as time passed, they had to be stacked pretty much on top of each other when space became scarce.

  “Remember,” he said, “the east side of the church was preferred, as close to the building as possible, so those folks would be the first to see the sunrise on Judgment Day. The north corner border was the least favored.”

  He shook his head. “Some even thought the Devil lurked there, and that’s where they usually put the strangers to the community, the stillborn, the suicides, if they let them in at all, and the illegitimate children—”

  “I’m not one of those, am I, Dad?” Pearl broke in.

  “No, honey,” he said, “not yet,” and they both smiled at his silliness.

  He plowed on. “Anyway, it wasn’t until the 1700s that churches in some European countries just plain and simple ran out of room.”

  He could see that her eyes were beginning to glaze over, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “In eighteenth-century Paris—”

  Pearl interrupted, “Thanks a lot, Dad. I’m finished eating and I’ve got to go write this stuff down before I forget it.” She whisked her glass and dish to the sink and was off to her room before he got his mouth closed.

  VERN BILLUP

  Billup didn’t like the kid lurking around the graveyard. He had wanted to get even with the little freak since that day he had interfered with Billup’s interrogation of his mother, Vera. He hadn’t known the kid was home. He was in the slut’s living room, slapping her around to get the name of her pimp or escort service. And then he figured she could buy her way out of the bust by giving him some satisfaction. He was just getting on her when the kid came out of the bedroom with a goddamn phone and threatened to call 911 unless Billup left. Standoff. So Billup split, but he knew that sooner or later, he’d get even. In spades. Billup hated to be embarrassed.

  As Public Affairs Officer, it was his business to protect the town’s moral fiber, to prevent trouble. He’d been keeping tabs on Kiefer for a month. He thought the kid looked like a pervert, but he couldn’t prove it. The geek didn’t have a juvie sheet. Billup had checked at the school: C grades, no suspensions. Still, Billup believed Kiefer was a sleaze, just like his mama. Acorns and oaks. He would make the little creep pay for obstructing justice. It might take a while, but he would pay. Billup would see to it.

  Graveyards. Give me a break. The kid was either pulling something or planning something, probably robbing crypts. When Billup talked to the caretaker, Janochek said the kid wasn’t digging anything up, wasn’t bothering anyone. When Billup rousted the kid on the street outside the cemetery a couple of weeks ago, the boy was clean—no pot odor on his clothes, no pipe or papers. Billup had expected the kid would smell like corpses or sinsemilla.

  He saw the boy with Janochek’s girl tonight. Nothing but trouble there. Billup remained surprised that Janochek didn’t eighty-six that kid and file a report. The man could probably get a restraining order to bar the kid just on weirdness alone. Made Billup glad he’d never had a child. His boy turned out like that, he’d put him in a sack and throw him in the river.

  Billup figured he ought to toss the kid’s mama again. Every job deserved a few perks.

  He brought another beer out of his cooler and listened to the Kings game out of Sacramento while he waited for Kiefer to double back and climb over the near cemetery wall. He would bust him for trespassing. Nip this little creep in the bud.

  ROBERT BARRY COMPTON: STREET WARRIOR

  Robert Barry Compton had routines. Days he didn’t work, he walked his circuit, about five miles round-trip from his residence hotel. Same time every evening, 5:00 to 7:00. It allowed him to feel okay, to hush the voices that had started a few years ago with crank and never quite stopped. He slept through the day, got up and smoked three (always three) cigarettes, ate a couple of Milky Ways for dinner, and then he’d head out. The same path every time. It was like his medicine. On non-workdays, if he didn’t walk, he couldn’t sleep.

  Once he got a good route, he stuck to it. Down Court to Eureka Way, west on Eureka to the high school, through the campus and over to the park, up to Market, a few more blocks and he was home.

  Three days a week, he worked fast food. On those days, he felt useful. Often, when he got off work at the new TacoBurger downtown, he would walk over to the Arcade Newsstand, look at some magazines, and then walk two blocks to Morgan’s Bargain Emporium, where he’d spend an hour and sometimes a dollar or two browsing through the bins. Or he would walk over to the Rite Aid by his residence hotel. Usually he didn’t see anyone he knew by name, and no one said anything to him.

  He hated his name. Too boring. He wanted people to call him “Bear” like a nickname for Barry, but they never did. Since they wouldn’t, he tried to make everyone call him by his whole name, Robert Barry Compton. Mister. Mister Robert Barry Compton.

  He was twenty-two years old and skinny, with lank blond hair that he kept chopped off at ear level. He dressed in a faded black ski jacket, a grayish white T-shirt, no-brand jeans, and heavy black stomper boots.

  His ears were red and pockmarked from several piercings, but he had lost his studs when he was picked up for disturbing the peace in Chico. The police took them before they put him in the holding tank. By the time they took him to the hospital, he’d forgotten all about them. He meant to get more. He just forgot.

  In Rite Aid, he would look at the candy aisle first and then check out the magazines. Just killing time. He would walk around, waiting for something to catch his eye.

  That day, he found himself in front of a stationery table looking at Christmas cards: Nativity scenes, snowmen with red wool scarves and top hats, dark blue skies illuminated by huge silver-white stars. Wasn’t it too early for Christmas cards? Had there even been Thanksgiving yet? He wasn’t sure.

  He thought about writing a Christmas card. He was stumped. He couldn’t think of a single person to write to. He could probably send one to the hospital back in Chico, but he hated most of the staff and their monotonous speeches about taking medication. Besides, all his friends would be discharged by now. He realized that he didn’t know anybody’s address, except his mother’s, and he was probably going to see her on Christmas Day anyway.

  He wouldn’t give a card to anybody in his hotel, that’s for sure. A bunch of ’tards and mummies. He didn’t even talk to them. There was nobody near his age.

  And he didn’t really need to get his mom anything. He had already gotten her something. For her birthday. But her birthday had slipped past a while ago and he had missed it. Okay, so she’d get it for Christmas. He couldn’t remember what he’d bought her, now that he thought about it. Scarf … perfume.… Nope, it wouldn’t come to him. And Mr. Robert Barry Compton began to feel just a little bit mad. Forgetting things made him feel stupid, and he just couldn’t stand that.

&n
bsp; There was something else Robert really needed to remember. It happened a while ago and it was just on the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t call it up. It was important. He remembered that much. He had made a vow to do something. What? Damn it! He could feel his face getting warmer. Weirdo! Crazy bastard! Good-for-nothing! Some guys had called him that in high school and he could still hear them saying it.

  He noticed he was stuffing a Christmas card down the front of his pants. He was going to steal it, just like he had taken those sex magazines yesterday at the newsstand. He slowly glanced from side to side to see if he was being observed. Nobody was paying him any attention. He pushed the card down below his belt line and felt himself stiffen a little down there. It always felt really good to steal. Maybe he’d go down to the newsstand after he left this store.

  He wondered which card he had chosen. He told himself to go to a couple of other counters to throw off suspicion before leaving. He browsed some paperbacks and some teen magazines before walking out. No buzzers went off.

  Outside, the air was chilled, and he felt his muscles tighten with the cold. He felt strong, even a little tough. He decided to go out back behind the stores in the mall and look through the boxes and Dumpsters. Like a street warrior. Like somebody who lived on his own because he chose to. Took what he wanted. Lived off stupid rich people’s discards.

  He was opening a Dumpster lid when a stock clerk came out of a back door to toss some cardboard boxes. The clerk hesitated when he saw Robert holding the lid and gave him the eye. Robert pulled a board from a broken packing crate. The clerk went back inside, closed the door, and locked it. Robert threw his board at the door. Jeez, he’d never done that before. It felt great. That must be why kids shoot people at schools, he thought. Because it feels so good.

  He dropped the lid and walked quickly out the back lot, heading toward a gas station. I should steal a car, he thought. But he went into the bathroom on the side of the building instead, opened the stall door and sat on the toilet. The crunch the Christmas card made inside his pants surprised him. Just as well, he thought, tearing it into strips and dropping it in the bowl. For the second time that day, he wondered if he should shave his head.