The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (15 page)

“Because you didn't.” I stopped, peering around. “If you'd made it into the woods, they never would have caught up with you.”

“It was up here farther, I heard the truck.”

I began moving. “I'm not sure we'll be able to tell exactly where; the woods look so different this time of year.”

“Tell me how you know all this, Ruddy.”

“I had a dream several days ago. Except it felt more like a memory, more like waking up and remembering something that had really happened.”

“A dream.”

“Don't start getting skeptical on me, Alan. Not you, of all people.” I slowed down, panting with the exertion. “Here's where you heard the truck, right?” I began watching the side of the road. “So right along here somewhere…”

We saw it together, the place where he'd jumped the ditch and fled into the woods. “There,” we said in unison. Without hesitating, I stepped into the trees.

“Right along here. I'd just started running, I fell, and then just up here…”

“Yes. He must have had a rifle. Even then, a pretty good shot, caught you right in the leg.”

“I don't know that he was aiming for the leg,”
Alan argued, as if it made a difference.
“And he might have shot five times; I never heard the rifle.”

I turned around in a full circle. “I'm looking for a big old tree. An oak,” I stated.

The tree was there, but was no longer upright. Same large cavity in the huge trunk, but the massive oak had been toppled by nature, lying indignantly on its side.

It didn't go down without a fight, though—it clung to an enormous ball of earth with its gnarled roots, exposing a huge crater that had filled with brown meltwater. “Right here.”

“Yes.”

“This is where you died.”

“Yes.”

I stood there for what must have been five minutes, staring at the tree, thinking of the life ebbing out of me, of wanting to live and knowing I wasn't going to. Fixing my eyes on the sky and a tree and wishing I could have more time.

“You okay, Alan?”

“Yeah. I guess … I guess I'm probably buried right here somewhere. That's why I wanted to see the cemetery, see if I had a grave. I knew I wouldn't.”

I turned and looked, kicking away the thin layer of melting snow. There was no mound, and whatever signs of digging that might have once marred the earth had been erased by eight years of active forest cycle.

“What do we do now, Ruddy?”

I jammed my hands in my pockets. The day was ending. The sun, which had been hidden behind a thick skin of gray all day, was fading rapidly away. “So one thing that could be happening is that I've been here before, forgot about it, and now, after my dream, I have created a split personality that ‘remembers' a murder.”

“Back to the ‘I must be crazy because I have voices in my head' theory,”
Alan observed.

“Right. Repo Madness.”

“You don't believe that, though,”
he said evenly.

“No,” I admitted. “I don't. Because I know I've never been here before. I had a dream about it, but I would not have been able to find this place if you hadn't shown me.”

“So now what?”

“So now I have to follow this thing through,” I said grimly. “Because if you are a figment of my imagination, the fact that I believe your story means I really am crazy.”

We drove back to East Jordan with the light nearly gone from the sky. Some locals were already in the Rainbow Bar, not giving me much notice as I slid up and asked for a beer. I sat there looking friendly for a while, finally breaking into a conversation between two guys about what great times they had three years ago ice fishing. “I'm looking for a guy named Alan Lottner,” I told them.

They passed a doubtful look between them. I sipped my beer.

“Guy that ran off few years ago,” someone speculated from another table.

“I didn't ‘run off,'”
Alan objected.

There it was: confirmation that an Alan Lottner had really existed in East Jordan. Of course, I could have picked this up somehow, read his name off of a real estate sign, even met him at some point and just forgot.

Everyone was watching me curiously. I cleared my throat. “He ran off?”

“Oh, yeah,” one of the ice fishermen said, brightening. “What happened to him? He wasn't from around here.”

“Found him dead somewhere. I remember reading about it,” said the guy at the other table. “Funeral notice in the paper.”

“I still don't know who you're talking about,” the other ice fisherman groused.

“Dressed funny,” the guy at the other table recalled.

“Dressed funny?”
Alan squawked.

“So … he's buried here in East Jordan?”

The man with all the information squinted his weathered eyes, trying to remember. “Yeah, think so.”

“I tried to find the cemetery, but it's not where I remember it.”

The ice fishermen both snorted. “That's because they moved the darn thing. Just dug everybody up and moved 'em all, so they could build the PlasMerc factory.”

“New cemetery is up north toward Boyne City way. About four miles.”

Alan was still upset as we drove north.
“Where do they get that from? I didn't run off.”

“It was a long time ago, Alan. That's probably all they can remember.”

“And do you think they found my body in the woods, is that why I'm buried in the cemetery?”

“Let's just take it one step at a time, Alan.”

“Dressed funny. This from a man in a Detroit Pistons jacket, a John Deere baseball cap, and a T-shirt with a picture of a duck on it.”

Grinning, I swung my truck into the parking lot of the cemetery, my lights sweeping past a funeral home that looked no more than a few years old. A shadow appeared briefly at the window, probably someone checking to see who had just pulled in. “I see somebody in there; let's go ask him where we can find Alan Lottner's grave.”

Rock salt crunched under my feet as I mounted the cement steps. I pushed open a polished wooden door and stepped cautiously into the entryway of the funeral parlor. Tasteful carpet and dark paneling gave the place a solemn feel. I poked my head around the corner, looking into a large room with shiny wooden pews.

“Can I help you?” inquired a voice from behind me.

I turned and started in surprise.

He was heavier than I remembered, and his scalp was so bald it gleamed. But take a few years off his face and put a toupee on him and I would recognize him anywhere. In my dream he was standing next to a pickup truck in the woods, talking to a green-eyed guy with a shovel, gazing at me with an unreadable expression as I drove past.

We'd found one of Alan's killers.

 

 

11

Where the Bodies Are Buried

 

“My name is Nathan Burby,” he told me, holding out what turned out to be a professionally soft, dry, funeral-director hand. I stared at him, astounded.

He was several inches shorter than I, with a rounded chin and dark, warm eyes. His suit was charcoal gray wool, his facial features bland. His smile was cautious—welcoming, but careful not to come off as too jovial in case I was here to discuss putting Aunt Mildred in the ground. Absurdly, it struck me that he looked like a really nice guy.

“Oh my God,”
Alan breathed, barely recovering from his own shock.
“Do you know who this is?”

“I'm Ruddy McCann,” I finally answered Burby, releasing his hand.

He gestured as if he had a staff of workers gathered around him. “How can I help you tonight, Mr. McCann?”

“I was looking for the cemetery,” I replied faintly.

“Well, you've come to the right place, then.” He smiled pleasantly.

“It's him! The one with the toupee! That day in the woods! He's one of the killers,”
Alan was babbling shrilly. I closed my eyes once, hard, trying to get him to shut up. Burby was watching me curiously.

“I meant the other one, wasn't the cemetery, I mean, didn't it used to be somewhere else?”

“That's right. We moved here about seven years ago.”

“He must own the place,”
Alan speculated, calming down a little.

“Was that so they could build that new factory I noticed? PlasMerc?”

Something like discomfort flitted across Burby's face, but, smoothly practiced in suppressing his own feelings in order to allow his clients to indulge in theirs, he kept whatever it was under tight control. “Yes, that's correct.”

“How could you do that, though? I mean, weren't the bodies buried and everything?”

“We moved everyone,” he explained simply. “Everyone with a family member interred at the old cemetery was compensated, or at least those we could contact. For those with untraceable roots, we've established a trust fund, and we have hopes that eventually they'll come forward.”

“What about you, though? Did you get compensated?”

Burby's eyes lost some of their softness. “What's this about, Mr. McCann?”

“I had a family member buried in the old cemetery,” I lied.

“Oh? Who?”

“How much were the families compensated?” I parried.

He regarded me for several long seconds. “In the thousand-dollar range,” he finally stated quietly. “May I inquire who it was you were related to?”

“Alan Lottner.”

No amount of practice could have prevented the wild look from passing through his eyes then. “That's … impossible,” he whispered.

I took a step forward and was rewarded when Burby took a fearful step back, tilting his head up to stare at me. “Why do you say that, Nathan? Why's that impossible?”

“I know the family,” he stuttered. “No one has ever mentioned…” He gestured toward me.

“I had a whole group of cousins in Wisconsin,”
Alan advised me.

“I'm from Wisconsin,” I explained. “Alan had a whole group of us cousins up there. All good runners.”

“Runners?” Burby repeated helplessly.

“So is Alan Lottner buried here? Did you move his body from the old cemetery?”

That one took a while for him to process, but when Burby spoke next he had rediscovered his gift for imperturbability. “Actually, no. I don't know what you've been told, but your cousin left town without a word. After several years, he was declared dead, and his ex-wife and daughter had a service for him here. We placed a memorial headstone on the grounds in a very nice area, if you would like to see it.”

“What does he mean, ex-wife?”
Alan demanded indignantly.
“We weren't divorced!”

“I'm confused about something. You said ‘ex-wife.' I don't remember Alan being divorced.”

“Ah, well, after he disappeared, his wife…” Burby spread his hands, hating to deliver unpleasant news. “It was a simple case of abandonment.”

“What about Kathy? Does she still live here?”
Alan asked.

“Does the family still live here?” I pressed.

“Yes,” Burby answered reluctantly. “They are both living in East Jordan.”

“Where? Ask him where!”
Alan implored.

I was more interested in a different subject. “So you sold the cemetery to the factory. That must have made you a lot of money.”

“Actually, no, that's not right. Burby's operated under a nonexclusive lease to the city of East Jordan. The city sold the land. Burby's surrendered lease rights in exchange for the deed to the property here.”

There was something about that last statement that rang false for me, but I wasn't sure what it was. I pushed in a slightly different direction. “Well that must have saved you a bundle, not having to make those lease payments to the city.”

Burby chuckled, but there was no humor in his eyes. “Hardly. Our lease formerly cost us a dollar a year. This new arrangement subjects us to property taxes.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”
Alan asked churlishly.

“May I ask why you are so interested in these matters?” Burby inquired, essentially asking the same thing.
Maybe I should just shut up and let the two of them talk to each other.

“I'm just trying to understand. So the factory is on land formerly owned by the city?”

“Yes. Well no, not entirely,” Burby admitted reluctantly. “Most of the parcel was a ranch belonging to a local family. The city land was less than a quarter of the total.”

Far more interesting than his answer was his uneasy expression. In better lighting, I might have seen sweat on his shiny, toupeeless head. “What was the name of that family?”

“I really don't recall,” he replied uncomfortably. “Mr. McCann, does any of this matter? Shall I show you where Alan Lottner's memorial is placed?”

“So you got paid to move every body? That must have amounted to a lot of money,” I speculated.

Burby had had it with me. “I don't see how that's any of your business.”

“Oh, just wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to open a cemetery in Minneapolis,” I joked.

“Wisconsin!”
Alan corrected.

“Wisconsin. The funeral business pay pretty well?”

“I'd like you to leave, Mr. McCann.” He made as if to nudge me forward, but someone Burby's size can't budge a bar bouncer without help, and I didn't move. We were now standing almost intimately close, like dancers, and I leaned down to murmur in his ear, the way Alan's voice sounded to me. “Man doing well like you, must own a second place, maybe on the lake?”