He drove slowly into the hills and found the place pretty easily, as if it had always been intended that he wind up here. It didn't take much to get you believing in fate, thinking your life was wrapped around someone else's who you hardly even knew. For years the thread connecting you would go unnoticed, and then one day it started to tug from the other end and you got reeled in.
He parked the 'Stang out front and made his way up the wide walkway to the front door. He hadn't rung the bell yet when Burke appeared. Like he'd been perched in the window for hours, waiting for Crease to come along.
Sam Burke recognized Crease immediately. His bland expression upgraded fast. It twisted and crept across his face inch by inch, emotions fluctuating as they went along. Sadness, puzzlement, even disdain showed vividly before returning to the carefully engraved contours of apathy. It was a little spooky that the guy would be so on top of him like that.
They both stood there, waiting for something to promote the moment. The dead girl was there with them. Crease felt Teddy's presence growing stronger. Crease's father's ghost wafted between them all, the man wanting redemption or maybe just another bottle of booze in hell.
Burke finally moved aside and Crease stepped in.
The house smelled of furniture polish, floor wax, potpourri, fresh paint, and stale air. It was the aroma of somebody desperately trying to clean away events that could never be undone. Crease knew the windows would be spotless but painted shut. These were people who had closed themselves in with their pain in order to keep it alive. Mary's room would look no different now than it had seventeen years ago. Her belongings would've been touched and caressed many thousands of times, and every fingerprint washed away again. Burke probably napped in his daughter's bed, but the intense dreaming would be too much for him. The thread between them tightened up with every step Crease took.
Burke was perfectly groomed, almost prim. He wore a very short, well-kept beard. Every button on his shirt was buttoned-right to the collar, the cuffs. The fold in his trousers was sharp enough to slice paper.
Burke evoked constraint. Inhibition, pressure, duress. Someone who killed two hours every morning in the bathroom, spent the day at work assembling and arranging and coordinating, and then faded the rest of his night sitting on the center cushion of the couch. Not touching anything, not moving.
The living room had been decorated by a woman but you could tell it no longer contained her living touch. Everything had been arranged where it was a long time ago and never been moved. Mrs. Burke was dead or gone. The place was immaculate as a museum. Crease didn't want to make any quick moves for fear of breaking the solemn air around him.
There were no photos anywhere. He could understand why. You couldn't put out any of your parents or your in-laws or your dog without having a few of Mary too. And to put her photos in your line of sight would just be a reminder that you couldn't protect your own kid, that your faith in the police and your friends and your neighbors was totally misplaced.
"You look very much like your father," Burke said.
The thought of it shook Crease for an instant. It got his back up, the heat rushing along his spine. Then he realized Burke meant the way his father had looked before the downfall, back when he was still doing his duty.
At least it's what Crease hoped the man meant. "I'd like to talk to you, if I could."
"I can guess why you're here. All of us reach a particular crossroads, an apex, and eventually return to where we began. You've got a lot of gray in your hair. You're young to be having a mid-life crisis, but rest assured I know something about that." Burke spoke with a clipped, rushed speech. Very tight but very carefully enunciated. "Still, let me ask, don't you think it's simply a waste of time?"
Crease didn't know how to answer. Burke didn't wait for one though, and merely stepped past him into the living room.
"No," Crease said to the man's back.
"Of course it is. You're just having some other crisis of life or faith, and you thought coming back here would be the way to resolve everything. You're on a grand search, a journey of conscience. Perhaps you've left a wife home wherever it is you now come from. Yes? Perhaps children. An irritated employer, a job half done. You've dug yourself a hole, you're walking a wire in high wind, would you say? And all these things will be set right if only you can solve the case that smashed your father's career and ruined his life. Do you really expect to clean the blood off his hands at this late date?"
The guy was sharp all right. You couldn't sell him short just because he had his collar buttoned and his windows stuck shut.
"Not everything will be straightened out," Crease said. "But it's a loose end that I want to try to tie up."
He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it was out of his mouth.
Burke sat on the center cushion of the couch, crossed his legs and said, "Well, how touching. Is that how you see it? What happened to my daughter? The greed that spurred your father?" Maybe the man was inoculated, safe behind his austere wall. "I don't consider her murder a 'loose end' at all. Nothing dangling there, you see. Quite the opposite. Her death severed all ties. That's what death does. There's no point in dredging that all up. Digging up the dead. It's been so long. You not only look like your father, you act like him as well. Are you a police officer?"
Christ, Burke was on the ball. All this time in the house alone, thinking, it really exercised his gray matter. "Yes."
"Are you a good one?"
"Depends on who you ask."
"I'm asking you."
He hadn't thought about it for a while and wondered how Burke had managed to take control of the conversation the way he had. Crease had come here to ask questions, and in about two minutes flat Burke had him pinned beneath glass. Maybe he owed the man an answer, maybe not, but something about the house, and Burke's controlled energy and direct way of speaking, the way he peeled Crease apart with his gaze, made Crease feel like he should give it a shot.
"I'm effective because I spend my time down in the mud with the guys I'm trying to stop. I'm good at my job but that just means I'm rotten at everything else. You understand that?"
"It sounds as if you're striving for nobility."
"If that's what you heard then you're mistaken." And he was. Burke was burned up with a fever of his own. "Perhaps," Burke said. "In any case, I think you should let the dead rest."
He was surprised to hear Burke speaking like that, no matter how far down the man had gone to get away from his pain. Crease felt his father's presence all the time, often very strongly, and thought Burke would never be able to let his murdered daughter go, not even if he wanted to. Especially when you lived in the same house where she'd lived, from where she'd been stolen.
"Is that what they're doing? Is Mary at rest?"
"Are you prodding me?"
"Would you want me to?"
Crease finally decided to sit in a chair opposite Burke. The cushion made a heavy rasping noise. No one had sat here for a hell of a long time. The sound took on a whole new meaning in the silent house.
"Mrs. Burke?" Crease asked.
"My wife no longer resides with me. To be truthful, I don't know where she is, it's been some years since I've seen her. Perhaps with her sister in Terrytown, Connecticut. Or… elsewhere. I have no idea."
It wasn't the kind of thing you could say you were sorry about, but there was no point. Crease looked around and couldn't help thinking about security. No burglar alarm. No lock on the front screen door. No deadbolt. A good second-story man could get up onto the roof, and the screens could easily be popped out of the window frames. Just like he used to do when climbing up to Reb's room.