The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  After they had gone another block, Baldo said, “So what about those marbles? That was fantastic.”

  “I said later. It’s not later yet.”

  By the time they entered the dump, they had grown suspicious of what lay ahead. They saw a lot of traffic that didn’t look like dump traffic. Approaching the animal shelter, they saw two television trucks parked in front, as well as the cars of journalists and curiosity seekers. State troopers and a number of Brewster cops were also visible.

  “It looks like they’re interviewing your snake,” said Baldo, as Hercel came to a stop and Baldo jumped off. “Awesome ride.”

  Hercel guessed he was making a joke about the snake being interviewed. He often felt he understood what his snake was thinking, but that was because he knew it. To other people it was just a snake.

  Hercel leaned his bike against a metal barrel and they walked toward the shelter, a one-story cinder-block structure flanked by rows of cages in which a bunch of dogs were barking their lungs out. Some leapt against the wire mesh, which made a clanging sound. Baldo couldn’t imagine how they’d get inside. Hercel’s plan was to walk purposefully forward. After all, it was his snake. The dump had a thick, furry smell, like congealed meat soup with slices of lemon.

  Hercel was about to push through the crowd when a woman saw him, looked once and then looked again. She ran to him and took his arm.

  “Hey, I can help you. Come over here.”

  Hercel and Baldo found her familiar. She was blond, youngish, athletic, and had a pug nose. Then Baldo recalled she had been a substitute teacher when they were in fourth grade, but he couldn’t remember her name. It had only been for a week or so. The woman was Jill Franklin, reporter for the Brewster Times & Advertiser, and she couldn’t believe her good luck.

  “You kids hungry? Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.” She introduced herself and reminded them she’d been their substitute teacher.

  “I don’t want breakfast,” said Hercel.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Jill, “you want your snake. But it’s not going to happen. All those people will stop you. And if you get through them, then those cops will stop you. Aren’t you supposed to be in school, or are you playing hooky?”

  “It’s my snake. I want to see how it’s doing.”

  “It’s doing just fine,” said Jill. Now she remembered Hercel from last year—a very literal-minded kid, but he hadn’t driven her crazy like some of the other kids. This Bonaldo kid, for instance, the chief’s son, had put some kind of fart machine under her chair and once it had started detonating she’d kissed class discipline good-bye. “Believe me, you’re not going to get in there. But I can help you. Now, let’s get out of here before those vultures spot you.”

  “I’ve got my bike.”

  “We can put it in the back of my Tercel, I think.”

  So they put the bike in the trunk, securing it with a piece of clothesline. Baldo got in back and Hercel got in front. Jill drove to the Dunkin’ Donuts at the edge of town. Even if they weren’t hungry, she was. She’d been going since daybreak ever since news came over the scanner about a body found in Great Swamp.

  She turned her head toward the chubby Bonaldo boy. “You still into farts?”

  “Pull my finger.”

  Jill laughed so hard she nearly ran up over the curb. “He play those tricks on you?” she asked Hercel.

  “He’d better not,” said Hercel, “if he knows what’s good for him.” There was no threat in his voice, which somehow made it more threatening.

  “And what would you do?” asked Jill conversationally.

  Hercel was silent for a moment. “I’d think him into nothingness.”

  There was a grunt from the backseat.

  “Well,” said Jill, “we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  A minute later she pulled into the parking lot at Dunkin’ Donuts. “By the way, what do you call that snake? What’s its name?”

  “It doesn’t have a name,” said Hercel. “It’s a snake.”

  “Don’t you have pets? What d’you call your pets?”

  “My mom has a dog and cat, but I only have the snake. Mr. Krause won’t let me have any other animals. Do you know the difference between a snake and a lizard?”

  “Sure,” said Jill, locking the car and joining the boys on the sidewalk. “One crawls and the other slithers. They’re both nasty, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Hercel ignored her remark. “Snakes don’t have eyelids and they don’t have ears on the outside.”

  “Snakes don’t have legs and lizards do,” said Baldo.

  “There’re a whole bunch of legless lizards,” said Hercel. He went on to describe them as they entered the restaurant.

  As they sat down, Jill said, “Perhaps we can name your snake. It would help me with my story. You want doughnuts, Cokes? Whatever you want, it’s on me.”

  So they talked. To Jill’s mind, if she got Hercel to name his corn snake, it would give her an advantage over the other reporters. It would be a journalistic coup. Hercel ordered a Coke and a plain doughnut. Baldo ordered a strawberry Coolatta and two doughnuts, both cream-filled. Jill had coffee and a breakfast sandwich.

  “I say we name it Satan,” she suggested.

  They discussed this. Hercel didn’t want to name the snake, but he was willing to go along if she really wanted to name it.

  “Why Satan?” asked Baldo.

  “It’s a catchy name; people will remember it. It makes good copy.” Then, to Hercel: “What color is the snake?”

  It had large orange shapes, sort of like the shapes of Spain and France, outlined in black with rivers of gold and tan in between. It was between five and six feet long.

  “Wow, it sounds satanic,” said Jill. “Don’t forget. When anyone asks, it’s Satan.”

  Then she went on to the standard questions. When did he last see the snake? Around nine o’clock Monday evening. Where was it kept? A cage in the basement. It used to be in Hercel’s room, but Mr. Krause got mad. When did he see it was gone? About six-thirty Thursday morning. Someone broke open the basement door. The lock was busted. Where did he get the snake? His dad gave it to him for his birthday when he was six. His mom was furious; she hated snakes. His birthday was the fifteenth of March.

  They talked for half an hour. Jill had known nothing of Carl Krause, but as Hercel talked she developed a sense of what life was like in the house—what she called the family dynamic. When Hercel told her about Mr. Krause threatening them with a shotgun and how Bobby had grabbed it from him, she began to take notes.

  When she finished, Baldo asked, “What’s your opinion about vampires?”

  Jill laughed. “You’ve quite a range of interests between farts and vampires. Actually, I’ve no opinion about vampires. Reality can be horrible enough without worrying about what doesn’t exist.” She was thinking about Ernest Hartmann’s murder and that somebody had scalped him, which the boys, as yet, knew nothing about.

  It was around this time, nine in the morning, that Woody Potter came into Dunkin’ Donuts looking for a friend of Alice Alessio’s who, he had been told, worked there. The nurse still hadn’t been found. Seeing Jill and the two boys, he guessed what was going on, and he felt his temper thrashing at its leash.

  “What the hell you doing?” he said as he approached the table.

  Other customers looked at Woody with alarm.

  “What business d’you have taking these kids out of school? The law says they gotta be in school and you kidnapped them. That’s a felony.”

  In the following pause, Hercel said calmly, “She didn’t take us out of school. We were already out. I tried to visit my snake, but too many people got in the way. I want the police to give it back. It’s wrong to punish it. It’s only a snake.”

  Woody’s anger faded. What he saw was a kid with a steady temperament, a small version of those people who go through life as if on railroad tracks, experiencing minimal doubt. Baldo, on the other hand, was on the verge of
tears.

  Woody scratched the back of his head. He had stayed up late talking to Dr. Fuller and had been woken early by the news of Hartmann’s murder. That was the trouble with these all-consuming investigations, you never got enough sleep. He sat down next to Baldo and glanced at the crumbs on his yellow sweater.

  “Okay,” he said to Jill, “you’ll catch a break this time, but things are hard enough without people muddying the waters. Come on, kids, I’ll take you to school.”

  Jill looked at him with a slight smile. He thought she was being smug. She thought he was a handsome guy. She said good-bye to Hercel and Baldo as Woody stopped at the counter to ask about the woman he’d been seeking. He was told she worked only afternoons and evenings.

  Getting Hercel’s bike from the trunk of Jill’s car, he wheeled it to his Tundra and put it in the back. (“Nice bike, kid. I like the green.”) Woody’s golden retriever was in the truck and tried to lick each kid a thousand times. “Hey, he’s licking my face. Don’t they have germs?” asked Baldo. But Hercel and Ajax got along just fine. Soon Hercel’s dark hoodie was covered with dog hair. The only trouble with having a dog in the truck was it made it hard to talk. But at least Woody learned the snake was named Satan.

  A breeze and the morning sun put some life into the last leaves. A flock of geese crossed overhead toward a salt pond. It was Friday, October 23. In two weeks it would be Susie’s birthday. Well, at least I don’t have to get her a present, thought Woody. That’ll be a saving. He tried to smile, but it felt like a knife in his gut.

  Woody led the boys to the principal’s office to make sure they wouldn’t get in trouble for being late. The principal was a stout woman of about fifty. Her name was Deborah Dove, and she thought herself as hard as nails.

  “It’s absolutely terrifying what’s been happening.” She had just heard about Ernest Hartmann. “Are you sure we’re safe? I certainly don’t feel safe.”

  Woody recalled Bobby Anderson’s joke about the CIA sending a crack tactical unit to Brewster. He started to mention it, then didn’t. “We’re making sure you stay safe, ma’am.” He said good-bye to the boys. As he left the office, he heard Baldo say, “When are you going to tell me?” Hercel hissed, “Later!”

  Woody drove into town to Water Street. He wanted to talk to the guy at You-You who gave Hartmann a massage, which he heard about from Jean Sawyer at the Brewster Brew. She said Hartmann had hurt his back because terrible anxiety kept him tossing and turning all night. She said misery was written across Hartmann’s face like a picture on a billboard.

  Although the investigation was in its early stages, Woody knew certain details already. For instance, the baby’s placenta, which had been placed in a freezer to wait for the hazardous waste pickup, was also missing. Nobody could explain it. Acting chief Bonaldo suggested it might have been stolen, which seemed ridiculous. Who would steal a placenta? Yet Woody recalled that somebody had spoken of the possibility of DNA testing. He tried to remember where the conversation had taken place and realized it had been with the Brewster reporter in the hospital cafeteria. The mother had said her baby was like the creature in Rosemary’s Baby, and Jill had suggested that DNA could help identify the father. Woody had thought Jill was making a joke.

  Searching Hartmann’s apartment, Watertown police had discovered, along with the address of Hartmann’s daughters and ex-wife in LA, a permit for a Browning Hi-Power. The pistol wasn’t in Hartmann’s apartment or in his office in Boston, nor was it in his room at the Brewster Inn, nor was it on his person or in his car. Unfortunately, a fifty-round box of Winchester nine-millimeter cartridges had been found in the motel room with fourteen rounds missing.

  Along with telling Woody that she had sent Hartmann to You-You for his back trouble, Jean Sawyer described her talk with Hartmann about Wrestling Brewster and wrestling with the Devil. Woody supposed the Brewster reporter had learned this, which is why she had named the snake Satan. He expected that soon the news media would have Devils all over the place.

  It took Woody only several minutes to find Gabe. The fellow at the reception desk said that Gabe was with a client but would be free in a half-hour if he’d like to wait.

  “I either see him right now,” said Woody, “or I take him to the cop house. You choose.” Cop house was a term Woody had never used, but he thought it would get the ball rolling, which it did.

  Gabe stood before him two minutes later. “Pushy, pushy,” he said. He wore a dark purple cotton turtleneck. The red medallion showing the snake with the tail in its mouth gleamed in the overhead light. Woody couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  He took Gabe into an empty office and shut the door. “You gave a massage to an Ernest Hartmann yesterday morning. What do you remember about him?”

  “Did he complain? It was a perfectly normal Swedish massage.”

  “No complaints. What do you remember about him?”

  “He had beautiful hair—thick and brown.”

  Not anymore, thought Woody. “He was murdered this morning.”

  Gabe pressed a hand to his mouth. “He was such a nice man. How? Where did it happen?”

  “I’m the one with the questions.” Then he shrugged. “Out in Great Swamp. Somebody stuck a knife in him. We don’t know who.”

  Again Gabe put his hand to his mouth. “I’ve always said that was a dreadful place. Full of mosquitoes and who knows what else. Did he suffer?”

  “I doubt it. What’s that thing hanging around your neck?”

  Gabe looked down as if surprised by its presence. “You know, Ouroboros? The snake with its tail in its mouth? It symbolizes the Eternal Return. Ernest was interested, so we talked about it. Then we talked about the snake in the Garden of Eden. Like, the Devil? I didn’t know anything then about the snakes in the hospital, or the missing baby. Horrible, absolutely horrible. But you know what they say, there’s no such thing as coincidence. Our talking about snakes, I mean.”

  The two men stood facing each other. “So why do you wear it?”

  “Well, for me, it’s a symbol of our destiny. Not just our death but also the rebirth that awaits us all. That’s what’s meant by the Eternal Return. We go round and round. Like this conversation, we’ve already had it in other lives, other emanations, though the words might be a little different.”

  Woody studied Gabe’s earnest expression. “So what about Hartmann?”

  “Oh, he’ll be back. I don’t know how, but he’ll be back.”

  A flake, thought Woody. Still, he’d run a check on him. There was no reason a flake couldn’t be a murderer. “Anything else to say about him?”

  Gabe put a finger to his lips and looked thoughtful. “Oh, yes, how could I forget? He had this awesome coin. Or peculiar, you know what I mean? It fell out of his pocket when he was getting dressed and I picked it up: a brass coin about the size of a silver dollar. Let me see, on one side was a five-pointed star with a circle around it and some mysterious writing and on the other side was a horned goat standing on its hind legs. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Tell me.”

  Gabe put his hands on his hips. “Satan! Isn’t that a coincidence? The horned god. Of course, it’s also Pan, and we talked about that. Did you know that panic comes from Pan? It’s what happens when Pan screams. People panic. Can you blame them? It seems we have a lot of panic in Brewster right now. Pandemonium, that’s the same thing. People are very upset. Anyway, witches use the coin to identify one another. A secret talisman. Isn’t that peculiar? I heard that, and a chill ran up my spine, like a goose had just walked across my grave.”

  Gabe’s talk was exhausting. No way could Woody last through a massage without running from the room. “Who told you about the coin?”

  “A man I know.”

  “Does he work here?”

  “I’d like to talk to him first. If he wants to talk, I’ll give you his name.”

  Woody felt anger rising in his throat. “Either I get his name or I throw you in the drunk tan
k.” Did Brewster have a drunk tank? Woody didn’t know.

  “You’re not at all as nice as I first thought you were, d’you know that?”

  “I can live with it. Now tell me.”

  After further huffing and puffing Gabe gave him the name of a yoga instructor at You-You. “I’m not saying he’s a witch, mind you. He’s very smart.”

  Woody wrote down the name. “One other thing: don’t go out of town.”

  Gabe was appalled. “Am I a suspect? I was home all night; I’ve got witnesses.”

  “Just don’t leave town.”

  Before Woody went to this next interview, he called the units who’d searched Hartmann’s car and motel room to ask if they’d found a coin or medallion with a star on one side and a goat on its hind legs on the other. They hadn’t. He asked them to search again. One of the troopers from the crime scene unit, Lou Rossetti, said, “Hey Woody, that guy who found the body had two big Labs that were running around the car. But we found other prints there, too. We first thought they were dogs, but they were probably coyotes. A whole bunch of coyotes were running around the car during the night.”

  The man Woody went to see was Todd Chmielnicki. Woody found him in his office on the third floor—a white room with a white desk and bookcase, a white floor, and a red rug. The walls were bare; one window high up on the wall, too high to see out of. Chmielnicki stood up to shake hands. He was a tall man of about forty, taller than Woody, and very fit—not a pound too many, not a pound too few. He had short black hair, an angular face with high cheekbones, and wore a black T-shirt and black jeans. The effect of room and man was dramatic—too much so, to Woody’s taste—as if Chmielnicki, like an actor, had seized a persona rather than earning one. His bright blue eyes reminded Woody of a Siberian husky.

  Chmielnicki had a foreign accent that Woody couldn’t place and spoke in a calm whisper. He invited Woody to sit down. The choices were a couch set against the wall or a chair by the desk. Woody took the chair. Already, he felt distrustful—the way Chmielnicki carried himself, the control of his body language, those eyes, his physical strength, and the quiet voice Woody had to strain to hear all made him uneasy.