“I don’t know.” He took another gulp of coffee and another, spilling some on the table. The waitress came over and wiped up the spill as she topped off the cup, then hovered in the background.
“How did you get from the cemetery to here?” Coldmoon asked.
“I ran, I guess. I don’t really remember.”
“I see,” said Pendergast. “Now, let us go back to the cemetery. Start at the beginning. How did you get in?”
“We climbed over the gate.”
“Why were you there?”
“Just…for kicks, you know. To go around at night, look at the tombs.”
“To see anything in particular?”
“I wanted to see the Bird Girl.”
“Ah. The famous Bird Girl. So the graveyard we’re speaking of is Bonaventure Cemetery. I suppose you hadn’t heard the Bird Girl was removed from that site twenty-five years ago?”
“No.”
“And then what happened?”
Manning stared at his half-eaten toast. “We got sort of lost.”
Pendergast’s voice grew still gentler. “And?”
“And then…I felt this weird thing, this sort of hot wind, behind me. Like something…I can’t explain…” His voice began to rise. “And Brock…I heard the bottle of booze shatter and Brock disappeared and…I don’t know, I just ran.”
“So you were drinking?” Coldmoon asked.
Hearing this, the feisty waitress rolled her eyes.
“Yeah.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yeah…” He hesitated. “Am I in trouble?”
“Not yet. Finish your coffee, and then we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
“To the cemetery, where this incident occurred.”
Manning began to tremble. “Now?”
“Naturally.”
“No,” said Manning. “No way…Please…I won’t go…No way!”
Pendergast’s voice abruptly shed its friendly tone and took on an icy edge. “You will take us there right now. Or I can promise one thing: you will be in trouble, Mr. Manning.”
A moment later, Pendergast was out the door, the youth in tow. Coldmoon stood up, blinking in surprise at how quickly the impromptu questioning had ended. He began to follow them toward the door.
“Excuse me!”
He turned around to see the waitress staring at him. One hand was on her hip; the other was holding out a check.
“Oh.” Coldmoon looked at the total: $19.80. Mutely, he handed the woman a twenty, then turned and once again headed for the exit. This time, his hand got as far as the door handle before he remembered he hadn’t left any tip—except, that is, for twenty cents. But it was too late to salvage the situation: Pendergast was already halfway down the block, so Coldmoon slunk out of the café. But before the door closed behind him, the waitress got in the last word.
“It must have been tough on your mother, not having any children!” she brayed at his retreating back, shaking the twenty at him like a badge of shame.
35
MORNING LIGHT STREAMED THROUGH the cemetery, illuminating the last shreds of mist as the caretaker opened the gate for them. Coldmoon did not like cemeteries. The thought of all those dead slumbering in the dirt for eternity gave him a feeling of claustrophobia, even in a graveyard as huge as this: white graveled pathways extended in all directions past hundreds of tombs.
“Now, Mr. Manning,” said Pendergast. “Please take us to where the incident occurred.”
“We went this way, I think,” said Manning. But he didn’t take another step forward until Pendergast urged him on. Then he began shuffling down one of the pathways, moving as if his feet were iron weights.
Coldmoon had never seen tombs this elaborate before. Traditionally, the Lakota placed their dead in platforms perched in trees. At Pine Ridge, where he had grown up, that practice had been replaced by scattering a person’s ashes at some high point, like a mountaintop or butte, so they’d be closer to heaven. The idea of sticking the body deep in the earth when you wanted the soul to go up, not down, always seemed perverse to him. But this—these tombs were costly, large, even amazing. Did the dead think they’d find a better place in heaven by being buried in rich tombs like these? Or was it just another class thing, a way to put themselves above others, even after death?
The three continued down the lane for almost half a mile. Finally, Manning took a right, and then another right, into a far area of the cemetery, much overgrown, where the tombs were not nearly so elaborate and had in many cases fallen into disrepair. Here Manning got confused and they went down one path after another, looping back several times. It was obvious his struggle to remember was at war with his extreme unease at being back here.