Apparently not.
“Hello?” he called.
What in God’s name am I doing? he thought. For all I know, Ilkovic is in there. He stepped quickly back into the sunlit air, only to jolt against someone.
He spun, startled.
It wasn’t Ilkovic. The dignified gray-haired man was tall and thin. He wore a somber suit and touched Coltrane’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Coltrane tried not to seem uneasy. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“I just stepped out of the office for a moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Yes, I’m looking for a grave site.”
The somber man nodded. “It’s always wise to plan ahead. Step into my office and I’ll explain our services.”
“Excuse me?” Coltrane suddenly realized that he had misunderstood, that the man was actually asking him if he had come here to buy a grave site. “No, what I meant was, a friend of mine is going to be buried here tomorrow.”
“Ah.” The man now realized that he had misunderstood.
“I can’t come to the burial,” Coltrane said, “but I thought, if I found out where his plot was, I could drop by later and pay my respects without having to ask someone from his family to come and show me where he is.”
“Of course,” the man said. “Please accept my condolences about your friend.”
“Thank you,” Coltrane said. “Believe me, it wasn’t his time.”
“If you’ll tell me what your friend’s name is…” The man started toward his office.
“Daniel Gibson.”
“Oh.” The man stopped.
“Is something the matter?”
“Not at all. But I don’t need to look up your friend’s name in my records. Earlier this morning, someone else asked me where his plot is. I distinctly remember the location.”
“Someone else?”
“Yes. A phone call. Like you, he said he was a friend who couldn’t attend the burial but wanted to know where the grave would be so he could pay his respects later.”
“I think I might know him. Did he happen to have an Eastern European accent? Slavic?”
The man thought a moment. “I really can’t remember. I was too busy concentrating on the deceased’s name and his plot number.”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll see him here later.”
“Possibly. One never knows. Your friend’s grave site is…” The long-legged man walked onto the lane and pointed toward the middle of the cemetery, toward activity beyond various gravestones, two lanes over. “Our maintenance staff is preparing it.”
Across the distance, Coltrane saw the descending claw of a yellow backhoe and heard the rumble of an engine.
“You might want to reconsider going over there. We discourage the bereaved from seeing this part of the procedure. It might seem unfeeling.”
“But it has to be done,” Coltrane said.
“Exactly.”
“I understand practicality,” Coltrane said. “Thanks for your concern.”
“If there’s anything else I can do for you…”
“I’ll definitely remember how helpful you were.”
As the man stepped into the cottagelike building and closed the door, Coltrane stared beyond the various grave markers toward the rumbling backhoe in the distance. He got in his car and tried not to glance around as he drove down the lane. His stomach churned. His palms sweated, making his grip slick on the steering wheel. Had it been Ilkovic who phoned, wanting to know the location of Daniel’s grave? Ilkovic would need that information. He would have to find out which section of the cemetery to watch. Around this time tomorrow, Daniel’s hearse would arrive. His mourners would walk along this lane and gather among the tombstones, directing their mournful gazes toward the coffin supported on braces above the open grave. Of course, the mourners wouldn’t actually see the open grave, Coltrane thought as he stopped his car near the clank and rumble of the backhoe. There would be a sash of some sort covering the pit; probably it would be colored green, just as imitation grass would cover the nearby pile of earth that now grew larger as the backhoe deposited another clawful.
Coltrane’s tear ducts ached as he got out of the car and locked it. Come on, Ilkovic, get a good look at me. I know you’re here. It’s two-thirty. It’s dress-rehearsal time. You want to find out where the best view is for tomorrow. I bet you’re surprised to see me here. You’re looking sharply around to find out if anybody else is with me – like the police. You’re ready to run at the first sign of trouble, but you’re hesitating – because you don’t see anybody who’s a threat and you can’t believe your luck that I showed up, and you wonder what I’m doing here. But in a minute, it’ll be obvious, and then you really won’t believe how lucky you are.
The workman on the backhoe glanced with puzzlement toward Coltrane as he maneuvered the machine’s controls and the claw dropped back into the grave-sized trench, digging up more earth. A bitter cloud of exhaust floated from the engine, irritating Coltrane’s throat. He had never felt so exposed and threatened, totally certain that Ilkovic was somewhere close watching him, but at the same time absolutely confident that for as long as he stood next to Daniel’s grave, he was safe. Ilkovic didn’t want to shoot him. He wanted to torture him. For that, Ilkovic needed privacy and leisure.
He certainly isn’t going to try to rush up, grab me, and drag me to his car, Coltrane thought. Not in plain sight. Not when I have a chance of fighting back. He’ll watch and follow. He’ll make his move when he has every advantage. But he’s still suspicious, wondering if he should run.
Coltrane folded his hands in prayer, so immersed in sorrow that it took him a moment to realize that his gesture was exactly what was required to make Ilkovic understand why he had supposedly come here. Ilkovic would conclude that Coltrane feared it would be too risky to show up at the cemetery the next day, that he felt compelled to come a day early to pay his respects and participate in his own private ceremony.
When he lowered his gaze from the sky, the backhoe’s claw slammed into the trench again, gouging up earth. Unnerved, Coltrane seemed to be back in his gravelike pit on the slope above the mass grave in Bosnia, staring through a telephoto lens at an identical yellow backhoe, except that it wasn’t gouging up earth, but skulls and teeth and rib cages and shattered leg bones. The overlapping of the past on the present was so powerful that he shuddered and feared for his sanity. He watched the backhoe drop its burden, a welter of bones onto…
A pile of earth. It was only a pile of earth. And the trench was apparently now deep enough, for the driver didn’t drop the claw back into the trench. Instead, he directed it into a neutral position and drove from the grave, rumbling along the lane. Later, Coltrane knew, someone would come around with a winch to lower a concrete sleeve into the grave, to shore up the sides and prevent earth from falling in. Eyes stinging, Coltrane stepped between other graves, plucked up a few blades of grass, and came back, dropping the blades into the grave, watching them flutter to the bottom.
I won’t forget you, Daniel.
When he stepped away, he made no attempt to look around as he returned to the car. Either Ilkovic was here or he wasn’t. Either Ilkovic would follow or he wouldn’t. Unlocking his car, he had the sense that events were controlling him, not the other way around. When he got in and started the car, he was surprised to see that the dashboard clock showed 3:06. He had been standing there, grieving, far longer than he had thought. I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let myself lose track of time like that. I have to pay attention to what I’m doing. But then, in a sense, that was exactly what had happened – he had been paying attention to his grief.