I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  “I know they did, Sophie,” Jacob said. He listened for a little while and closed his eyes. “Yes, I know. They took everything. I know. But it’s gone now. You have to… make new things. There’s more. You’re going to be okay. Your mom and dad and your sister are still here and they love you.”

  It was the girl from Utah he had given his phone number to.

  Jacob pressed the fingers of his left hand to his forehead and rubbed. “He can’t. I promise you’re safe. We’d never let that happen… I know, but we will. And you don’t ever have to see him again.”

  Ezekiel sat on the bed beside him. Jacob smiled to reassure him that he was all right. On the phone it sounded like Sophie was crying.

  “Do you have a nightlight?” Jacob asked in response to something she said. “Okay. A lamp? Leave it on. Put a pillowcase over it and it won’t be so bright.”

  He talked to her a few minutes more and finally the girl told him she was tired and needed to lie down. Jacob put his phone aside and sat there with his head lowered, his elbows on his knees, staring at the dark grey carpet between his feet. Ezekiel rested a hand on his back and he tensed. Gradually, he relaxed as Ezekiel rubbed between his shoulders.

  “You okay?” Ezekiel asked.

  “I’m fine. She just couldn’t sleep,” Jacob said.

  From what Ezekiel had gathered about the girl, she wasn’t a child. She was fifteen or sixteen years old, but he also knew from experience that didn’t matter. Jacob still had nightmares. There were still nights he could not sleep. Sophie might get better, it depended on the extent of her trauma and it varied from person to person, but even if she did, she probably still had a lot of bad nights ahead of her. There would be times when, just when she started to think she was beyond it, it would come back to bite her.

  “What about her parents?” Ezekiel asked.

  Jacob shrugged. “They try and they’re good people, but it doesn’t matter. They can’t understand it. Nothing will ever make them really understand it. Then eventually, maybe in a month or two, maybe a year, they won’t be so patient anymore. They’ll want her to get over it, but she won’t be able to do that because this kind of shit is what defines us. She’ll learn how to fake it. She’ll have no choice. It won’t be better it’ll just look like it from the outside.”

  “I understand it, you know,” Ezekiel said.

  Jacob drew in a deep breath, blinked and his vision seemed to focus. He turned his head to look at Ezekiel. “I know,” he said. “She’s older than some of them. Stronger. She has a chance. Did I wake you up?”

  Jacob had been twelve, an age that rested toward the very end of what psychologists called the “magical age.” That period of childhood between nine and twelve when the psyche of children was most malleable, changeable, programmable because they lacked the physical and emotional ability to resist their caretakers or captors. Jacob had come out of his ordeal still essentially himself, with all of the personality traits and emotional attachments that made him Jacob Herod, but he hadn’t escaped unchanged.

  Sophie hadn’t either, but she was alive and home with her family. The same couldn’t be said for the other children who had been held with her. Because she had escaped and the man who had taken her had not caught her before authorities got involved there was an extremely high probability that the other kids were now dead. They were still hunting for him, but they weren’t doing it with the hope of rescuing those children.

  “No, you didn’t. I can’t sleep either,” Ezekiel said.

  Jacob moved back up the bed, climbed under the covers and threw the blankets back for Ezekiel to get in beside him. “Come lay down with me,” he said.

  Ezekiel stripped out of his day clothes, turned off the lamp and got in the bed with him. Jacob curled up against his side and he lay on his back staring up at the black infinity of the ceiling. Beside him, Jacob didn’t sleep either. Talking to Sophie had upset him. It had him thinking about other things. Other times and places, but also other children, many of whom had not escaped, had not gone home. He was remembering bloated bodies in the back of a cargo truck.

  “Let it go, Jakey,” Ezekiel said. “It’s hers. You can’t carry everyone’s shit for them.”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “Stay with me?”

  “Yeah. I’m here,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll stay.”

  He even dozed eventually, though it was intermittent. Jacob finally went back to sleep, but he was restless and plagued by dreams that made him tense and mutter and press his fingernails against Ezekiel’s skin. Ezekiel took his hand from his chest and held it and Jacob’s fingers slowly relaxed in his grip.

  Ezekiel drifted off to sleep as the sun was coming up and slept for a little over an hour. He woke in the bed alone. Jacob had already gone downstairs to start the coffee pot and make breakfast. The smells drifted up the stairs and filled the house.

  When Ezekiel entered the kitchen, everything seemed fine. Jacob hadn’t had a good night, but he seemed okay. He smiled at him, gave him a mug filled with freshly brewed coffee and told him he was making omelets. With cheese.

  Ezekiel wondered if it was a kind of apology for the fight they’d had and the blow to his face. Jacob wasn’t in the wrong about that, but he was like most people in that way; he felt bad about it anyway.

  “No bell pepper in mine, don’t forget,” Ezekiel said on his way back upstairs to shower.

  “How could I ever forget that?” Jacob said. “I put something special in your lunch today, by the way.”

  Yep. He was definitely feeling guilty.

  Ezekiel stood in front of the mirror when he got out of the shower and worked his jaw, feeling for a click of any kind that might mean trouble later. There was nothing. The bruise had turned that side of his face black and blue from his cheekbone all the way to his chin the night before, but it was completely gone now.

  They ate breakfast at the table then Ezekiel kissed Jacob goodbye and left for work. He paused before getting into his car to watch their neighbor across the street, Fred Williams turning over the stepping stones of the walkway that led from the sidewalk to his front door. Someone had dug them up and flipped them over. Probably bored, troublemaking kids.

  Ezekiel waved to Mr. Williams as he drove by. The man continued to frown, but he waved back.

  Ezekiel was about a mile from work when he realized things weren’t quite as normal as they had seemed all morning. His lunch bag was in the passenger seat beside him and while at a red light, backed up in typical morning commuter traffic, it moved. He glanced at it and watched it for a minute, thinking perhaps he was mistaken. He started to look away again when it just sat there, doing nothing, just being a paper sack. Then it moved again, rustled and shook.

  “Oh, no,” Ezekiel said with a groan. “Jacob, what did you do?”

  The bag rustled again and Ezekiel snatched it up before it could fall off the seat and spill its lively contents into the foot well. Traffic wasn’t moving, he was just sitting there, so he opened the bag.

  Inside, he found a stag beetle and a lizard. They looked like they were fighting, but they stopped when the bag was opened and a little light reached them. The lizard peered up at Ezekiel and while it was distracted, the beetle jabbed at it with its horn.

  Jacob had seemed so normal, Ezekiel thought as he dumped the bag out the car window. It was morning and the blacktop was still cool, but in a couple of hours, a beetle and a lizard on that highway would have fried on contact. He expected the critters to scurry away and the lizard tried to, but the beetle pursued it, charging it with its horns, trying to bite it. The lizard whipped around to face it again and tried ineffectually to bite the insect with its tiny teeth.

  “Godzilla verses Mothra,” Ezekiel muttered.

  The lizard again turned to leave and the beetle scuttled after it.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re going? Give me my money, bitch,” Ezekiel said under his breath, doing a deep voice for the beetle. He laughed. He did a whiny voice for the l
izard, “I ain’t got your money, motherfucker.”

  The lizard finally had enough and darted away from the beetle and out of sight. The beetle stood there for a few seconds before ambling on its way.

  The car behind him honked and Ezekiel looked up to see the traffic moving in front of him. It was creeping pretty slowly, but the impatient motorist behind him banged on the horn again. Ezekiel put his hand out the window and flipped them off before stepping on the gas.

  He took the next off-ramp so he could turn around and go back home. Jacob only put inedible stuff in his lunch when he was having a bad day and a bad day for Jacob in the last few years meant delusional. The delusions were often harmless, like a beetle and a lizard in Ezekiel’s lunch bag, but Jacob had lived a violent life, too. Sometimes they weren’t. He didn’t get violent as a rule, but he couldn’t be counted on to know what was going on, so there was always a risk that he might hurt himself or someone else. Either way, Ezekiel couldn’t leave him alone.

  Traffic was easier going the other way, so he made it back home in about twenty minutes. He called Crewes as he was parking the car in the driveway and told her that for personal reasons he was needed at home for the day and would be working from there. Everything could be emailed or sent to his phone and if something came up, call him.

  Then he got out of the car and went inside. He didn’t see Jacob right away and he called for him, but didn’t get an answer. Ezekiel went to check the back yard and found the muddy clothes and shoes Jacob had worn that morning to hunt down the beetle and lizard. It hadn’t been kids in Mr. William’s yard after all.

  In the bathroom, he found a stick that Jacob had apparently used to clean his teeth with that morning on the counter beside his dry, unused toothbrush, but no Jacob.

  He found Jacob upstairs in their bedroom. He was standing in front of the dresser holding a T-shirt and staring at the wall with a faraway look on his face. He had tried to get dressed at some point after Ezekiel left the house and a semi-catatonic state had come over him. Ezekiel had seen it before.

  “Jacob?” he said.

  Jacob didn’t react. Ezekiel went over to him and gently took the shirt from his hand. His eyes focused for a moment. “Zeke? I thought you left.”

  “No, I was just downstairs,” Ezekiel said. He noticed Jacob’s shoes; they were on the wrong feet. “Come on, I’ll give you your pills.”

  “I think I took them already,” Jacob said, but he went with Ezekiel over to the bed and sat down. He continued staring into space when Ezekiel wasn’t right in front of him.

  Ezekiel untied his shoes and took them off. “Nope. These are your afternoon pills, Jakey. I’ll get them for you and you can take a nice long nap, okay?”

  Jacob frowned. “I just got up,” he said.

  “No, you didn’t. You haven’t been to bed all night. You were just saying how tired you are, don’t you remember?”

  “I guess so. I am kind of sleepy.”

  He was incredibly impressionable when he was like this. He would start to feel tired pretty soon and by the time the tranquilizers were in him, he would be.

  Ezekiel left Jacob sitting there long enough to go get the medication. Jacob took the pills when he put them in his hand and allowed himself to be coaxed under the covers.

  “Thank you, Zeke,” he said. He yawned. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I swear I just woke up.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll be right downstairs if you need me,” Ezekiel said.

  He sat with Jacob until he fell asleep. Then he went downstairs, turned on his computer and started a fresh pot of coffee.

  Jacob wasn’t showing any signs of serious delusion at the moment and he hadn’t been agitated when Ezekiel found him, but he was checked out and there was no telling what he would be like when he woke up. Sometimes all it took was a little unscheduled downtime and Jacob would wake up fine, like he was a robot that had been reset to normal while he slept. Like all the badness had flushed away. Other times, he woke up the same or worse.

  Ezekiel dumped Jacob’s dirty clothes in the washer before he sat down to work. He spent the day doing mostly the same thing he would have done if he had gone in to work. The kitchen became his office, the table his desk and it wasn’t all that different. He talked with his team on the phone instead of in person. They met in the conference room about the newest cases and he listened to them, gave his opinion and gave them their assignments.

  He checked on Jacob every couple of hours, but Jacob didn’t stir much.

  That evening a little after seven Ezekiel was in the shower when the curtain was suddenly yanked open and Jacob clambered into the tub with him. He was still dressed in the soft pants Ezekiel had helped him into for sleeping. He became immediately soaked as he grabbed Ezekiel, pulled at him and tried to get behind him.

  “Whoa, Jacob—Jake, stop it. What are you doing?” Ezekiel said.

  “You have to stop them,” Jacob told him. His eyes were wide and frightened. “They’re going to get me. They’re looking, but I’m hiding, but they can track me here and they’ll find me and take me back and I can’t go back. I can’t do it anymore. Ezekiel, don’t let them take me.”

  Ezekiel didn’t know exactly who “they” were, but considering Jacob’s history, he had a pretty good idea. “They” were hundreds of miles and over a hundred years away. “They” were dead and gone; he had made damn sure of it. But in Jacob’s mind, they would never be dead enough, never far enough away and they would always come back.

  Ezekiel pulled the shower curtain closed to keep the spray of water from becoming puddles on the floor and lowered his voice for Jacob. “Okay, we’ll be quiet then,” he said. He turned his back to the spray to wash the shampoo out of his hair and block the water from Jacob. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Jacob whispered back. “Don’t let them get me.”

  “I won’t,” Ezekiel promised.

  He turned the water off and they got out of the shower. The bathroom door was open, so he closed it and Jacob got out and stood on a towel shivering. Ezekiel dried off and pulled his pants on then told Jacob to stay there and be quiet and he’d take care of it.

  “Kill them,” Jacob whispered urgently. “Kill them all.”

  Ezekiel paused on his way out the door. It was the exact same thing Jacob had said to him all those years ago, and Ezekiel had killed them all. Every man, woman and child. He had ripped infants from their wailing mothers’ arms and crushed their skulls with his feline teeth. He had ripped men open from groin to sternum and spilled their guts out in the dirt. He had done it all for Jacob because he had asked and he did not regret it, but when he was in his right mind, Jacob sometimes did.

  “I will,” Ezekiel promised. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  He got Jacob another sedative, but not one that would necessarily put him to sleep. He didn’t really need to sleep any more and Ezekiel didn’t like the idea of keeping him unconscious until he wasn’t a bother. He also got a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard where they kept their liquor and a dry pair of pants.

  When he returned to the bathroom, Jacob was sitting on the lowered toilet seat, shivering, looking lost and frightened. Ezekiel gave him the pill. “Take this and have a drink,” he said.

  Jacob eyed the bottle in his hand with faint amusement. “Pills and booze,” he mused. “That’s such a great idea.”

  He sounded almost normal and it made Ezekiel smile. “Yeah, but it’s a little pill. It’s okay.”

  Jacob tossed the pill back and took a drink. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “We can order something,” Ezekiel said.

  Jacob stripped out of the wet pants and Ezekiel threw them over the shower curtain bar to drip dry. “I guess,” he said.

  “Or maybe soup and sandwiches,” Ezekiel said.

  Jacob was a little more lucid, if also slightly dazed and out of touch. He went with Ezekiel downstairs and sat on the sofa when he gently pushed him toward it. Ezekiel war
med up a can of mushroom soup and made them grilled cheese sandwiches then put a movie in for Jacob. It was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, another of Jacob’s lowbrow comedy favorites.

  “Keanu Reeves is the most adorable dumbass,” Jacob said at one point. He blew on his soup and sipped it.

  Ezekiel grinned. “Yes, he is. Feeling better?”

  Jacob shrugged. “For now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Ezekiel put a hand on his back between his shoulders and lightly rubbed. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  “I’m a mess, Zeke.”

  “I know. It’s okay. I love you anyway, fucknut.”

  Jacob elbowed him. “Dick.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me,” Ezekiel said.

  Chapter 30

  Rainer got used to not seeing Ezekiel every day. The really weird part was that he had gotten so used to him being around in the first place. His stalking had been pretty consistent there for a while, but there were times when he didn’t see the man for days. No sign of shiny black car or glimpse of finely tailored suit anywhere. He didn’t believe the man had given up, but something had changed. It hadn’t started when he agreed to come inside Rainer’s apartment and then stayed to watch TV with him, it had already been happening before that, but after that he didn’t see him again for the rest of the week.

  Perhaps kissing him had been a bad idea, he mused. He hadn’t believed Ezekiel was that easy to scare off, but he supposed it was possible.

  Sunday afternoon Rainer was grading papers and was disturbed by shouting in the next apartment. He sighed and threw down his red pen. It was Lance again, of course. He had stayed away for a couple of days, but Saturday night he had showed up again, drunk and belligerent as hell.

  “I have told you and told you, you disrespectful little fucker. Don’t you come in my house and talk to me like that!” Lance bellowed.

  The door slammed and Caleb walked down the walkway right in front of Rainer’s place, heading for the stairs with every intention of leaving. Lance went after him. “Get your ass back inside right now! I ain’t finished with you!”