Read Cemetery Lake for Free Online Page B

her blue eyes in the picture are bright and alive. I read through the file. The conclusion was that she ran away, that she fought with her parents or her boyfriend and couldn’t take it any more.
    I look up the phonebook and find Rachel’s parents are still at the same address. I wonder if they’re still married and what kind of state they are in. I wonder how many nights they sit watching the door, waiting for her to stroll inside and tell them everything is going to be okay.
    I slip the ring into a small plastic bag and drop it into my
    pocket. Then I look again at the watch I took from the body
    in the lake. I compare the time to my own. It’s out by only a
    few minutes, but it could be the Tag that is accurate and my
    one isn’t. Its owner must have died in the same six-month period we’re in now, between October and March, because the watch is
    set for daylight saving time. The date is out by fourteen days.
    I grab a pen and start doing the addition. Every month an
    analogue watch goes to thirty-one days, regardless of what month it is, and the user has to adjust it manually in the other five months when there are fewer. I work out that those five months would
    add up to seven days a year that the watch would be out by if it wasn’t adjusted. That means this watch hasn’t been touched in
    two years. So. It is now nearing the end of February. The guy
    who owned this watch was put in the ground sometime after the
    beginning of December and before the end of February two years ago.
    I pick up the file with Henry Martins’ details on it. He died on the ninth of January. Could be his.
    I grab the phone. It takes half a minute for Detective Schroder to answer it.
    ‘Come on, Tate, you know I can’t answer any questions,’ he
    says when he hears my voice. ‘This has nothing to do with you.
    And soon it won’t have anything to do with me either. I’ve got too much on my plate to chase after this one too.’
    ‘You’re working the Carver case?’
    ‘Trying to. Unless I retire. Which I might.’
    ‘One question. The body that floated up without the legs. Is
    that the oldest one?’
    “I don’t know. Maybe. The ME said it’s hard to tell. Looks
    like two of them went into the water fairly close to each other.
     
    Why?’
    ‘Can you find out?’
    “I can find out.’
    ‘And let me know?’
    ‘No. Goodbye, Tate,’ he says, and hangs up.
    I look at the watch. It’s been on the wrist of a dead guy for two years, but not necessarily in the water for two years. It depends on how long he was in the ground before he went in the drink.
    Either way, it looks like two years is the outer perimeter of the timeline.
    I check the Missing Persons reports, but immediately the list
    of names coming up becomes too long, and there is no way to
    narrow it down until I know whether the killer had a type. Could be all the girls are similar ages, or similar descriptions. Or it could be the other coffins don’t have girls in them at all, but men.
    I grab my dry cellphone and the printout of Rachel Tyler, and
    head back down to my car.
    I’ve barely left the car park when I think better of my initial impulse. It’s the wrong time of the day to show up at somebody’s house to tell them their daughter is probably dead. Most people would think there never is a right time — but there is. It’s the sort of thing you want to do earlier on so they can call friends and family who can come over to console them. Anyway, it may be
    Rachel’s ring but it doesn’t mean it’s her corpse.
    I drive towards the edge of the city and park my car outside a florist that is open every week night until seven. I need to replace this darkness with some light, yet the first thing I think about is how flowers and death have been mixed together over time as
    much as flowers and love.
    ‘Hi ya, Theo.’ An extremely pretty girl with an easy manner
    smiles at me as I go in.
    ‘How’s it going, Michelle?’ I do my best to smile back.
    We make the