The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(48)

Twenty-Three



Sunset Rest was a one-stop shop for the dead. Wrought-iron fences curled along rolling lawns studded with monuments in marble and basalt, salt-and-pepper memorials to the fallen. Its sprawling chapel arch overlooked a tranquil pond. Tiled outcroppings and concealed pumps created perpetual miniature waterfalls that burbled in the dark. The polished granite walls of the mausoleum leaned in over the chapel’s shoulder, as if hungry for more bodies to stuff inside its endless niches.

Office hours ended at five, and the cemetery gates locked at sunset. Unless somebody was burning the midnight oil, I’d only have rent-a-cops to worry about. I parked the Altima on the street a block away and hopped the fence.

I moved low across the lawn, keeping it smooth and quiet. I didn’t expect a lot of resistance—professional grave robbing, as a career, was about a hundred years past its sell-by date—but I figured they’d have a few uniforms on the grounds keeping a lookout for kids and vandals.

The strobe of a distant flashlight caught my eye, and I got down fast, crouching in the grass behind a chiseled marble plinth. I peeked around the edge. Just one guy, strolling along and oblivious to the world, swinging his flashlight in time with the music pumping through his earbuds.

Private security could be tricky. A lot of these guys used to be on the job, and they still had cop instincts under the starched uniforms and cheap shoes. Any hired guard had an inherent weakness, though, and that was boredom. When you’re pulling a graveyard shift keeping watch over a place nobody in their right mind would want to break into, walking the same uneventful route for the fiftieth time that night, you become your own worst enemy pretty fast.

The guard strolled right past my hiding spot, singing under his breath. I gave him another ten feet and then darted past him behind his back. From there it was smooth sailing all the way to the chapel, where I skirted the edge of the burbling pond and let the tiny waterfalls cover the sound of my footsteps on the concrete walkway.

Finding the administrative office wasn’t hard. I just circled the building and peeped in windows as I went until I found a room with a tiny desk and enough filing cabinets to please the world’s most obsessive organizer. Getting in, that was the problem. The window was latched tight, and a telltale alarm cord ran from the base of the windowsill on the inside.

Another flashlight up ahead. This one sagged toward the ground. I got behind a tree and watched his movements, trying to work out his pattern. He headed for the chapel doors.

I crept along behind him, quieter this time. This guard was an older guy with a hangdog face and a comb-over, and he wasn’t wearing any headphones to block out the sound of my approach. I hovered at the edge of the chapel’s outside fluorescents, a shadow at the border of a blob of white light, and watched as he fumbled at his key ring and got the doors unlocked. He disappeared inside.

That was my way in, but it wasn’t a clean approach. There weren’t any windows up front. If he was standing in the foyer or anywhere within earshot of the front door, he’d spot me the second I came inside. I stayed still as a statue and silently counted down from fifteen. As soon as I hit zero I dashed across the lit walkway and up to the chapel door, turning the heavy brass handle and slipping through.

Faint safety lights painted the chapel gloom in shades of Christmas red. I kept my ears sharp and ducked behind a wooden pew, taking a few heartbeats to get my bearings. Clunky shoes slapped on ceramic tile on the left side of the chapel, on the far side of an open arch. I crouch-walked around the pews, keeping my head down.

A flashlight beam roved across the room, careful and slow. I froze.

The beam snapped away, and the shoes trudged toward the chapel doors. I didn’t move until I heard the door click shut and the sound of keys rattling, locking me in.

Just a wolf alone in the henhouse.

I clicked on a small desk lamp in the administrative office and aimed its green plastic hood toward the filing cabinets. I wished I’d brought a penlight to minimize the chance of anyone outside noticing the glow from the window. I’d just have to work fast.

I ignored the computer on the desk. Probably password protected, and any place that put their records on a hard drive didn’t need twelve overstuffed filing cabinets. I tossed the place as quickly as I could, moving from cabinet to cabinet, rolling out each drawer and running my fingertips along the labeled folders until I’d seen enough to move on. I found what I was looking for about halfway through: sales receipts.

Thanks to the obituary in the Oakland Tribune, I had a date for Bob Payton’s funeral service. That helped me narrow down the records as I pulled a pair of fat green accounting ledgers from the cabinet and laid them out on the desk. The ink scribbles had faded over the years, but that didn’t stop me from finding the person who had paid for Bob’s final resting place. His name was Erik Krause, he’d paid in cash, and his address was a boat slip at the Berkeley Marina.

Twenty years was a long time to stay in one place, especially for a hunted man. Still, it was the best lead I had to go on. It’d have to do.

I left the way I’d come in: crouched behind the pews in the dark, waiting like a spider for the guard to trudge through on his endless rounds. I could have let myself out, but then he’d have noticed the door was unlocked when he came back around. It was cleaner to wait until he passed me by, his clunky footsteps fading into the pews, and then dart out the chapel door leaving everything the way I’d found it. I jogged across the graveyard and clambered over the fence. I had one more stop before heading home.