The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  Soon Hercel had found himself running beside his bike, but he still went off the road. At last it seemed his only hope of getting to the farm was to ride. Even then he slipped off the pavement as the coyotes got closer. Then he had seen lights ahead through the trees, which enabled him to keep the bike going straight and to ride faster. The coyotes were right behind him, and he knew they’d try to cut him off. He swerved a little to block their advance as they snapped at him. Then he saw the stone wall and gate of Barton’s farm a short ways ahead and heard the barking of his dogs.

  “I pedaled as hard as I could. I’ve outrun big dogs before, but these were different. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop and jump over the wall, so I stood up on my pedals and ran into it. I flew right over your dogs. Then I hit the ground.”

  Bernie had run outside when she heard the dogs, taking a shotgun with her. The coyotes were yapping on the other side of the wall, and she fired into the air. “I didn’t hit any, but it scared them. Then I found you and carried you inside. You muttered the whole way.”

  “My head hurt,” said Hercel.

  “I should think your whole body hurt,” said Bernie. “It’s a good thing the ground’s not frozen yet, or maybe you fell into a nice pile of sheep manure.”

  There was more laughter, but it was nervous laughter. Tig said it couldn’t be manure, because Hercel didn’t smell. Barton said he was lucky he hadn’t broken his neck. Bernie didn’t say anything. It was hard to imagine that a boy or anyone would have ridden a bike straight at the wall.

  “The coyotes get meaner as their numbers increase,” said Barton. “Not long ago a man was attacked in Massachusetts, and a number of children have been attacked here in Rhode Island. People might as well kiss their pets good-bye if they leave them outside. A bunch of coyotes pulled down a Rottweiler last month. New England coyotes are bigger than the ones out west. They’ve got more wolf in them. You’re lucky you didn’t end up like Wrestling Brewster.”

  “How so?” asked Hercel.

  “He was killed by wolves when he went out hunting sometime in the 1760s. There weren’t many wolves left by then, but they got him just the same. You know, he got his name because he was supposed to be wrestling with the Devil and people said the Devil had got him, that the Devil had taken the shape of wolves.”

  “Barton, they don’t need to hear this,” said Bernie.

  “You’re right, you’re right. You think you can get around on that crutch okay, Hercel? Your bike must be on the other side of the wall, unless the coyotes ate it. I expect it’s pretty banged up. I’ll see if I can fix it.”

  • • •

  Twenty police officers and state troopers, as well as an FBI agent, filled a conference room in the Brewster police station at eight o’clock Saturday morning for a briefing chaired by Captain Tom Brotman, state police detective commander, with Phil Hilkavich, District B commander as vice-chair. Woody, Bobby Anderson, acting chief Bonaldo, a lieutenant and several detectives from South Kingstown, park police, a tribal policeman, and others were gathered around a rectangular table. Bonaldo supplied coffee and doughnuts. A secretary took notes; the tone was somber.

  Captain Brotman was a thirty-year veteran of the state police and held graduate degrees in public safety, criminology, and psychology. Like many in positions of authority, he understood that the higher he rose, the more he was watched—press, TV, colleagues, friends, enemies, everyone. The trick was to know it but to seem unaffected by it, and surely he had known people ruined by professional paranoia, people who’d maneuvered themselves into positions where it became impossible to act because every possible consequence became threatening. Tall, imposing, and with a strong baritone voice, Brotman saw a series of dangers that could cover him in mud. The barbaric nature of the crimes, the yet to be publicly mentioned subject of witches, the possibility of human sacrifice and black magic—these were a recipe for hysteria, and with hysteria would come the question “Why aren’t the authorities—and Tom Brotman, in particular—doing something?”

  Captain Brotman showed no sign of this concern. Maybe he drank more water then usual, licked his lips, shifted from foot to foot, touched his hands to his gray suit coat more than usual, and those who knew him well recognized it.

  He began by describing the two crimes while admitting that no clear evidence linked them. In the public’s mind, what linked them was a shared viciousness, but that might mean nothing. The one link was the bit of mud found on the floor of the hospital nursery that most likely—but not certainly—came from Great Swamp. Consequently, they had to work harder—no days off and no excuses. Then he passed out photographs of the nursery, which were mildly interesting. Next came photographs of the snake, including one of Chucky Stubbs, the sergeant at the animal shelter, raising it up to show its length. Chucky was about five-foot-seven; the snake was two to three inches longer.

  Next, Brotman passed out photographs of Ernest Hartmann dead in his Ford Focus; then lying on a stretcher, with front, back, and side views of the scalping; and then naked on a table at the medical examiner’s, which also revealed the knife wound in his chest. But for the men and women in the conference room, all they could see was the scalping. As Bobby said later, “I’m fuckin’ glad I saw it before lunch and not after lunch.” The scalping photographs underlined the gravity of their undertaking, not that they needed reminders. It wasn’t worse than a fatal shooting in a bar, but it was more horrible. So here was the victim and here was the horror, and the one stood beside the other like a man next to an elephant.

  Last were photographs of the smiley face, which was like a comic hat on the elephant; like putting bells, whistles on the elephant. It was as appalling as the scalping itself, though of a different category—the scalping was an act of barbarity, the smiley face an act of madness. Seemingly, it had been done by dipping a hand into the blood, but since no fingerprint was found, Brotman assumed that the artist—presumably the murderer—had worn latex gloves.

  Captain Brotman went on to describe what had been done so far. People living in the vicinity of the hospital had been questioned, but no one had seen anything unusual. One man reported hearing coyotes barking. An ambulance driver parked behind the hospital, Seymour Hodges, had also heard coyotes and claimed to have seen them running around the ambulance—something not witnessed by the tech, Jimmy Mooney. Residents on Liberty Lane, the road to the swamp, were questioned, but again nothing unusual was seen. One woman had noticed a small blue car driving past to the swamp on Thursday evening, somewhere between eight and nine, but then she had put the kids to bed and didn’t know whether it had returned.

  Steve Tovaldis had been questioned. A junior high school teacher in South Kingstown, he was married with three children between the ages of nine and fifteen; he was popular with his neighbors and eager to help whenever asked; he’d lived in the same house for fifteen years. He hadn’t been questioned about Wiccans, and Brotman asked the South Kingstown police to get busy with it.

  The medical examiner calculated that Hartmann had died sometime between eight and ten o’clock. For dinner he’d had three pieces of pizza—cheese and sausage—at Rudy’s Pizza in downtown Brewster. This had been washed down with a Diet Pepsi. He’d eaten by himself and paid his bill at six-twenty-three p.m.

  In Hartmann’s motel room had been found hair products from Anthony Logistics for Men: shampoo, conditioner, and hair cream, with fragrances of coconut oil, jojoba oil, chamomile, peppermint, and aloe. These were used to wash and groom a custom hair system, presumably Hartmann’s.

  A criminalist from the state crime lab, as well as a forensic scientist and doctor from the medical examiner’s office, had joined the crime scene unit. Casts were taken of the footprints of Hartmann’s killer, or prints they believed belonged to the killer—size 11D Timberland Pro Terrenes with slightly worn SafeGrip, slip-resistant rubber soles. Although other prints were found about the blue Ford Focus, these were the most recent. However, casts were taken of four other prints. The cri
me lab criminalist passed out a piece of paper detailing the five types of shoes, with the Pro Terrenes at the top. Also attached was a list of stores carrying the Pro Terrenes, though with Internet shopping this was probably a waste of time.

  There were also the prints of Tovaldis’s yellow Labs and the prints of three or four coyotes, drawn by the smell of blood.

  The driver’s-side window of the Focus had been fully opened. Hartmann had been killed by a long blade thrust upward into his heart’s right ventricle, which was then twisted to slice through the pulmonary valve, the right atrium, and the aorta. The same knife was probably used for the scalping, cutting a horizontal line through the skin at the top of Hartmann’s forehead.

  The crime scene unit in the hospital had identified half of the fingerprints lifted from the nursery. They had obtained Alice Alessio’s prints from her apartment, since she still hadn’t been found. Analysis of the soil and organic matter in the bit of mud found on the floor pointed to a freshwater wetland environment, while the organic matter’s mixture of Atlantic white cedar, black gum, and laurel suggested Great Swamp.

  Profiles were compiled of the nurses, doctors, aides, hospital staff, patients, and visitors who either had recently visited or whose work might have taken them into the nursery. Profiles were also compiled of the people who worked in the swamp and resided along Liberty Lane.

  Woody described his talk with Sister Asherah MacDonald, and it was agreed there should be a concerted effort to talk to other Wiccans, as well as men and women employed by You-You. Woody described differences between the Wiccans, neopagans, Neo-Heathens, and Satanists, adding that these were just general categories. Wiccan and neopagan websites suggested there might be five hundred within the state. Most seemed nonviolent, well meaning, and idealistic. He added that he knew nothing about the Satanists. As police officers, it seemed their interest lay with the more extreme groups. “Actually,” said Woody, “they start pretty extreme and get extremer.”

  Captain Brotman pointed out that Wicca was recognized by the courts as a valid religion. It had been active in the United States for more than fifty years and had an estimated two hundred thousand members. Wicca was protected by the First Amendment, and there were Wiccan chaplains in the military. Consequently, they had to be careful not to be seen as persecuting or profiling. A few police officers responded to this with “now I’ve seen everything” expressions.

  Bobby described talking to Peggy Summers and her mother. “It appears she was pretty much raped by a guy wearing a skull mask. She thinks there were lots of people; all had been downing mushrooms and various illegal substances. She’s very vague about the whole event, but she thinks the others danced around her as she was being raped. It’s not that she was fighting or anything. The guy took advantage of her when she was stoned. She said she’d gone there because it was supposed to be a party. Either she won’t tell me or she doesn’t know who suggested it to her in the first place. She’d been told some people she knew were there, but she didn’t see them. Free food, free drugs—it sounded good to her, except on the way out she was blindfolded.”

  The matter of the missing placenta was discussed. Who had the opportunity to take it? Could it have been taken at the time when the baby had been abducted? Why was it taken? And, again, who knew that Hercel owned a corn snake? Well, everybody in the neighborhood did, as did a lot of kids at school, because Hercel had taken it to show to his class in September. Woody explained that the snake in fact had no name, and the name Satan had been invented by a local reporter.

  “We’ve got different issues here,” said Brotman, “and we shouldn’t confuse them. The abduction and murder may or may not be connected. Then, what’s the reason for the snake and the scalping? We assume they’re part of some ritual, but they might have been done to throw us off the track. What do we know about Hartmann?”

  A Boston cop and a Massachusetts state police detective again described that Hartmann had told an associate something about graves and Indian graves and Indians in general. However, the associate had hardly paid attention. A dozen of Hartmann’s friends and acquaintances had been questioned, as had his ex-wife in LA, but none had information as to why Hartmann had driven to Brewster, nor had they known he was gone. However, it seemed clear he’d brought a Browning Hi-Power and the coin with the Wiccan symbols. Brotman passed out a drawing of the coin made by Gabe Strauss at You-You.

  “It’s possible,” said Brotman, “that Hartmann didn’t have the weapon with him. But if he did, it’s now most likely in the hands of the killer.” He passed out photographs of an HP. “This is a single-action nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a thirteen-round magazine capacity with another round in the chamber. It has an effective range of one hundred fifty meters.”

  The Indian tribal policeman expressed concern that the scalping and mention of Indian graves had occurred to throw suspicion on the tribe. Brotman had spoken to the chief sachem and members of the tribal counsel as to how they should proceed, but he wanted to remind the officers that neither crime had occurred on tribal land nor directly implicated Native Americans. That being said, tribal officers had interviewed Native Americans who lived within a few miles of the Hartmann murder, and would interview more if necessary. But he wanted to point out that most scalping in the latter part of the nineteenth century had been done by white bounty hunters.

  He then gave a few facts about the Great Swamp Massacre of December 19, 1675. First, the Narragansetts were not at war with anyone at that time. Second, of the more than one thousand Native Americans who were killed, most were women, children, and the elderly. Those who escaped had retreated deeper into the swamp; those captured were sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

  “Since the time of the massacre,” he said, “a few people have said that the ghosts of dead warriors haunt the swamp. Now they’re saying the ghost of a warrior did the scalping. This is not only foolish, but it’s slander, and you can see how it might also affect the investigation.”

  “How?” asked a South Kingstown cop.

  “You can’t handcuff a ghost and stick him in prison. You blame it on ghosts and everyone else goes free.”

  Bobby described the behavior of Carl Krause, while Bonaldo said he had a call in to the police chief in Oswego, something he hadn’t done as yet. Bobby said he also meant to talk to Hamilton Brantley, owner of Brantley’s Funeral Home, who employed Krause part-time as a handyman.

  Additional troopers and policemen were assigned to help Woody track down Alice Alessio. Her description had been sent to other police departments, hospitals, and the medical examiner’s office.

  There was more; there is always more. The FBI agent discussed possible reasons for abduction, including human sacrifice. This didn’t sit well with the police officers, who tend to be a conservative lot. Snakes, baby theft, witchcraft, scalpings, and the ghosts of Indian warriors stripped back the covers to a world they had always worried might exist. All had seen terrible things; now they were promised things even more terrible, or such was their thought.

  “Be careful,” said Captain Brotman in closing, “that you don’t talk to reporters. If news gets out about witches and the rest of it, our workload will triple and the town will fill up with sightseers.”

  As Woody and Bobby left the building, Bobby said, “An absolute cluster-fuck.”

  “You’ve been a little cynical recently, don’t you think?”

  “I get that way when shotguns are pointed in my direction. It’s a personal thing. I end up considering my mortality, which is a subject I like to avoid. I should move to Tahiti and grow breadfruit trees.”

  “You wouldn’t like Tahiti,” said Woody. “It’s full of tourists. Try Pitcairn Island. It’s got under fifty people. You could expand the gene pool.”

  “Do they like black folk?”

  “What choice would they have?”

  They walked out to the parking lot. It was a bright fall day; a stiff wind was shaking the trees. It was shortly after elev
en, and morning light brightened the nineteenth-century church steeples. A crow voiced its monosyllabic opinion, and nobody answered to prove it wrong. Leaf blowers were active and somewhere a chain saw.

  “You think there’re a lot of coyotes around here?” asked Bobby.

  “As compared to what?”

  “Well, when I was a kid, there weren’t any. Then some people said they saw them and others said they were wrong. Then everybody said they saw them, and now they’re saying they’ve seen a lot of them.”

  “You know there’re two thousand coyotes in the city of Chicago?” said Woody.

  “Man, I don’t care about Chicago, I care about here. We got a shitload.”

  Each thought he saw fear in the other man’s eyes and each hoped it didn’t show in his own.

  • • •

  After the meeting, acting chief Fred Bonaldo walked to his office down the hall. He walked slowly, in case anyone wanted to talk to him. He was making it easy for them to catch up. But nobody wanted to talk to him; they wanted to talk to one another. He could hear them laughing and talking energetically. They were part of a select fraternity, and he wasn’t a member. He was only acting chief. And even if he was named chief—which felt ever more unlikely—he still doubted he’d be admitted to their fraternity. He told himself he had no good reason for thinking this; it was just a bad feeling.

  It wasn’t that Fred didn’t have friends, but most of his friends were Masons. He admired them, he even loved them, but they weren’t policemen. Fred was friends with his doctor, his dentist, and his lawyer; he was good friends with Tony Caprio, owner of Caprio’s Toyota. He was good friends with Father Pete at St. John’s; there was nothing he wouldn’t tell him. He was even friends with the husbands of his wife’s friends, which were a pretty mixed crew. But none were cops.

  This was partly why he hadn’t called the Oswego police chief. Even if Fred didn’t identify himself as acting chief, he was sure the man or woman would hear it in his voice, would hear he was more of a Realtor than a cop. Fred imagined how the Oswego chief’s voice would grow cool. He just didn’t need that in his life right now, he really didn’t. People knocking down his door, clamoring to speak to him, and then letting him know in just so many words that he was a lightweight. No, he didn’t need that from an Oswego cop, who didn’t even have the ocean to turn to when he was feeling low.