Shallow Graves
It is a hard thing to dig a grave when the ground is frozen, but it is harder still when the man you are burying keeps offering you advice on how to do it.
“Put your weight on the shoulder of the shovel, Julian,” Gentry said, flicking the ash from a cigarette that wasn’t there. “You’re scraping the dirt like you’re frosting a cake. You want to be done before the state troopers do their four-o’clock sweep of the old highway, don’t you?”
Julian did not look up. He drove the blade of the spade into the stubborn, icy clay of Blackwood Ridge. The impact sent a jar of pure, teeth-rattling pain up his forearms. The air smelled of wet pine needles, exhaust fumes from his idling sedan, and the sharp, metallic tang of copper. It was two in the morning, and the world was reduced to the yellow beam of his flashlight propped in the fork of a dead birch tree.
Gentry was sitting on a fallen cedar trunk three feet away. He wore the same charcoal suit he had died in, though the front of his white shirt was ruined, stained with a dark, wide bloom of blood that looked black under the flashlight. He looked entirely comfortable, despite the hole in his chest and the fact that his physical body was currently wrapped in a blue plastic tarp in the trunk of Julian’s sedan twenty yards down the trail.
“Why a shovel, anyway?” Gentry asked, tilting his head back to watch the freezing rain fall through the pines. “In the movies, they always have those folding military spades. Entrenching tools. Seems like it would fit better in a detective’s trunk.”
“Shut up, Thomas,” Julian muttered. His breath rose in thick, ragged plumes that dissolved in the rain.
“I’m just saying. If you’re going to cross the line from a decorated police detective to a midnight landscaper, you might as well invest in the proper equipment. It is about professionalism, Julian. If you don’t respect the process, the process won’t respect you.”
Julian stopped, leaning his forehead against the damp wooden handle of the shovel. His palms were already blistered, the skin raw and weeping beneath his leather gloves. He looked at Gentry—or rather, the projection of Gentry that his mind had constructed to fill the suffocating silence of the forest. The real Gentry was cold, stiffening in the dark. This Gentry looked as lively as he had at the harbor diner three hours ago, right before the conversation had turned to the ledger, and the ledger had turned to a threat, and the threat had ended with a single, deafening pop from Julian’s off-duty revolver.
“You brought this on yourself,” Julian said, his voice cracking in the cold.
“Oh, absolutely,” Gentry agreed, checking his fingernails. “No argument here. I pushed too hard. I underestimated the desperation of a clean cop with a sick kid and a mortgage he couldn’t afford. I thought the badge would keep you civil. But that doesn’t change the physics of the soil, Julian. You’re still only six inches deep. If you leave me like this, the coyotes will have me uncovered by Tuesday. Then what? A forensic sweep, tire tracks matching your vehicle, and a very awkward conversation with the precinct.”
Julian didn’t answer. He drove the shovel back into the dirt. Every stroke was an act of penance, a slow, grueling effort to bury the mistake that would define the rest of his life. He had spent fifteen years putting men in cages, believing in the clean lines of the law. Now, the line was a muddy trench in the middle of nowhere, and he was on the wrong side of it.
“Tell me about the ledger,” Julian said, trying to anchor himself to the reality of the case. “Where is the duplicate?”
Gentry laughed, a dry, coughing sound that made the pine branches overhead seem to shiver. “You think I’d tell you that now? I’m dead, Julian. The ledger is my insurance policy. If I don’t check in with my associate by noon tomorrow, the local papers get a very interesting package. You didn’t solve your problem; you just accelerated the clock.”
Julian paused, the shovel hovering over the dark pit. The rain was picking up, turning the loose dirt into a thick, heavy muck. “You’re lying. You didn’t have an associate. You were a lone wolf, Thomas. You always were.”
“Maybe,” Gentry said, his image flickering slightly as the flashlight’s batteries began to fail. “Or maybe I knew exactly what kind of man you were. You’ve got that look in your eyes, Julian. The look of a man who thinks he can clean up his own mess. But some stains don’t come out. They just spread.”
Julian dug faster, his muscles screaming in protest. The hole was slowly taking shape, a dark rectangle of empty space carved out of the forest floor. The deeper he went, the colder the earth became. He could feel the weight of the city just beyond the trees, its millions of lives moving in predictable patterns, completely unaware of the grave being dug in the dark.
“You know,” Gentry said, standing up and walking to the edge of the pit, “there’s a certain irony here. You’re digging a grave for me, but you’re the one who’s going to have to live in it. Every time you close your eyes, you’ll smell this wet pine. Every time the phone rings, you’ll think it’s the precinct calling you in to identify a body. You didn’t bury me, Julian. You just moved me inside your head.”
Julian stopped. He climbed out of the pit, his boots slipping on the muddy edge. He walked down the narrow path toward his car, the freezing rain stinging his face. He opened the trunk. The blue tarp was there, silent and heavy. He reached down to lift it, his hands trembling.
When he looked up, the phantom Gentry was standing by the bumper, watching him with a look that was almost pitying.
“Last chance, detective,” Gentry said. “You could call it in. Claim self-defense. You’ve got the bruises to show for it. It would destroy your career, sure, but you’d keep your soul.”
Julian looked at the silent shape in the trunk, then back toward the dark woods where the shallow grave waited. He thought of his daughter, of the hospital bills, of the clean, warm house he had left behind. He thought of the badge in his pocket, which felt heavier than the lead in Gentry’s chest.
“No,” Julian whispered.
He lifted the body and began the long, slow walk back into the trees.
Explore more mystery and noir from Novel-Verse: The Silence of the Valley, Red Ink, and Cold Case on 5th Street.