The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  Acting chief Bonaldo called Captain Brotman to tell him the good news. “They never knew what hit ’em,” he said. When Brotman praised his work, Bonaldo beamed liked a blushing bride.

  Within an hour all six were in a cell in police headquarters. Later on Wednesday they would be taken to the Department of Correction’s Adult Correctional Institutions, or ACI, a cluster of eight buildings in Cranston, where they would be jailed in the intake service center as pretrial detainees. Because of the nature of the charges—hate crimes and the rest—bail would be high, meaning they wouldn’t be back on the street anytime soon. ACI held four thousand men and women in minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security facilities, as well as in a glorified county lockup.

  “Like gangbusters,” acting chief Bonaldo told his wife, Laura.

  But they weren’t bad guys.

  • • •

  Around dinnertime on Wednesday, Peggy Summers, in her green jacket and lugging her backpack, was picked up by a patrol car as she walked along Taunton Avenue in East Providence, a lower-middle-class city across the river from Providence. It had a number of poor areas and a large immigrant population, mostly from the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. The cops in the patrol car didn’t think it was a safe place for a girl to be walking. They also had Peggy’s picture stuck to their dashboard.

  Two troopers brought her back to Brewster, and at seven o’clock she was in an office in the police station with Woody Potter and a female state police detective, Beth Lajoie. Peggy was scared, and Brewster was the last place she wanted to be.

  “If you think I want to end up like Nina, you’re fuckin’ nuts.” Peggy’s stringy blond hair needed washing, as did her sweatshirt. In fact, thought Woody, she could use a long plunge in a tub of sheep dip.

  Detective Lajoie was barrel-shaped, gray-haired, and had the benign look of a kindergarten teacher. She also had a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do. Woody thought she could probably take him out in three seconds. “There’s no way we can protect you,” she told Peggy, “unless we know what we’re protecting you from.”

  Peggy’s protests following this remark shrank to moderate whining and complaint as she came to see the wisdom of what Detective Lajoie had said.

  Peggy stuck a finger in her ear, wiggled it, and studied the results. “I saw him.”

  “Saw who, dear?” asked Detective Lajoie.

  “One of the guys out in the woods. Not the guy who fucked me, one of the others. He helped hold me down. First I saw him in the hospital, but he didn’t see me. Then I saw him in CVS. He threatened me.”

  “How?” asked Woody.

  Peggy drew one finger across her white throat. “Just like that,” she said.

  “Does he work at the hospital?” asked Woody.

  “Yeah, sure, he was wearing a white coat.”

  “A doctor?”

  “How the fuck should I know? It was a white coat, that’s all.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t know, just average. Not too fat, not too thin, not too tall. You know, regular. And he’s got brown hair. He’s not young, that’s for sure. Maybe your age. Oh, yeah, he’s got no ears. They’re stuck flat to his head.”

  Woody then called Dr. Fuller and asked her to get to the hospital as soon as possible. He needed to see the employee files.

  Woody, Detective Lajoie, and Peggy Summers met Dr. Fuller at her office at ten o’clock. She wasn’t pleased to be there but tried not to show it. With her was Paul Garcia, head of personnel. They went down to Garcia’s office to look through the employee files.

  “You know, this is highly irregular,” said Garcia.

  “Cry me a river,” said Detective Lajoie.

  Garcia concentrated on the files of white males between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. Several times Peggy picked up a file as if she had found the right one, only to put it down again.

  After half an hour, she picked up the file of Benjamin Clouston, a clinician in anatomical pathology.

  “That’s the one,” she said. “The prick.”

  FOURTEEN

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT Carl Krause knew something was wrong. He lay in his bed fully dressed in the second-floor bedroom and stared at the ceiling. Why had he thought the knotholes had been moving? He looked at them, shut his eyes, and looked at them again. Nothing. And the cat, what had gotten into him? It was like the blackouts he’d had when drinking. He’d wake up in the morning and wonder where he’d parked his car or, worse, who the girl sleeping next to him was. Like he couldn’t trust himself. He had been ready to punch Harriet in the face. And that job with Brantley, he had to tell him he couldn’t do it anymore. It was fucking with his head. And he had to call that shrink whose name he had got from Dr. Frank. He had to take charge. That was funny. He had to become boss, boss of himself.

  But wouldn’t it be dangerous to take the pills? It was hard to notice shit when he was on them. He got that cotton-head feeling. He got too relaxed, too stupid. He’d be taking it easy and the bad guys would be out doing push-ups in the parking lot. They never relaxed. At times he could hear them, like when he heard them in the trees, or those times on the stairs. What if he hadn’t been paying attention? For shit’s sake, he knew exactly what would have happened. For one thing, he wouldn’t be here in his comfy bed; he wouldn’t be anyplace. He’d be a zero in a sky of zeros. And they sneak into people. Like they turn them into their personal robots. He’s seen it. That colored cop, for instance; he could see them in his face, in his white teeth. And if he hadn’t been paying attention, he would probably be in jail, or dead. He could even see them in Hercel. Hadn’t that little fuck let the cops into the basement? Talking about a snake; they weren’t looking for any fucking snake, they were looking for him, and he was lucky not to wind up in their jail. No, it wasn’t luck. He’d outsmarted them, at least for now.

  The bad guys didn’t care who they took over. They could take over a dog or a cat. Hadn’t he seen it? And he knew for a fact they could take over dead people. He’d seen them move; he’d seen them turn and look at him, like it was his fault, like he’d done it to them. That one dead guy he’d had to stab to make him quiet down, stuck a knife right in his heart. Oh, yes, they could take over people. Hadn’t he seen them outside his window at night, standing on the lawn, looking up at him?

  Carl heard a noise at the side window; he turned to look. Nothing. When he turned back, the knotholes began to move. He wasn’t positive at first. He looked at them, shut his eyes, and looked again. They were moving. Over his bed were nine on this side, nine on the other, and nine at the end. Three, three, three, three. Sometimes it would be twelve and twelve. Sometimes it would be six, six, six, six. Sometimes they were eyes; sometimes they were little doors, sometimes little nozzles pumping out gas. But they couldn’t do it if he kept an eye on them. He had to watch ’em like a fucking hawk. That’s why he couldn’t let himself go to sleep. They’d be pumping stuff down on top of him, like some kind of acid. It would make his skin flake off, like he could grab a piece of it and yank it away. They’d turn him into a puddle, into a piss spot.

  Carl began to growl.

  He could feel his fingers getting stiff, just the tips, like he was getting claws, like he was getting little slicers at his fingertips. When he growled, the knotholes slowed down. He knew their tricks. They were mean, but they were little. They were nasty, but he could manage them. That’s why they had to wait until he was sleeping, wait until they could sneak into his head thoughts, sneak into his dreams and make him cry again, cry like a brat.

  Again there was a noise at the side window, a bumping. He turned to see what it was. Nothing. But they were out there. He’d seen them on the lawn. He’d heard them on the stairs. Now they were at the window. The knotholes began to jitter. They knew what was happening. The jittering was like chuckling. Could he hear them? He could hear only the wind.

  He had to trick them. They were small; they were scared of him. One by one by one, they were scared of him.
Get them together and they’d sweep over him like a flood. They wanted to make him part of their awful whining—whining in the trees, whining under the door. He even heard them at Brantley’s. He had put his ear to the chest of a dead guy and heard the whining inside him. He stuck his hands into the guts of a dead guy and felt the vibration, the little motor of the dead.

  Again at the window. Bump, bump. Carl turned out the light; he got out of bed. He knew how to trick them; he knew how to sneak. In the top drawer of the bureau was a small flashlight. Sometimes he used it at the Burn Palace to look into the oven to see who was left.

  Bump, bump.

  Carl moved quietly. The side window was small, smaller than the front ones, about the size of a regular TV screen. Carl knelt by the window.

  Bump, bump. Carl turned on the flashlight. Then he toppled backward. He crawled backward, never taking his eyes off the window. It was Ronnie McBride. His nose bumped the glass; his forehead bumped the glass. His eyes were stupid and gray. He turned this way and that, as if looking for him. Bump, bump. Ronnie wanted to whine at him. In the flashlight’s beam, the inside of Ronnie’s mouth was gray as plaster dust; his tongue was as gray as one of Carl’s gray socks. He wanted Ronnie to leave him alone. He wasn’t the bad guy. Carl shouted and crawled back to the wall. It was Ronnie’s head, just the head by itself and a bit of the neck ending in a clean cut. Ronnie’s mouth bumped the glass as if he wanted a kiss, as if he wanted to press his lips against Carl’s, as if he wanted to stick his gray tongue into Carl’s mouth, stick his tongue deep into Carl’s throat and suck the life out of him, like sucking the last bit of Coke through a straw, but it would be Carl sliding down Ronnie’s gray throat into the nothingness of his sliced neck.

  Carl scrambled to his feet. He had to yank Ronnie’s head out of the tree and stamp it into the sidewalk, beat it until it became gray mush, turn its tongue to burger. Carl fell against the wall, but he kept the light pointed at Ronnie’s head bumping the window with little kisses, turning this way and that. Carl threw open the door and rushed down the stairs, stumbling and grabbing the banister, smashing into the wall at the bottom so a picture fell and broke.

  A light burned by the chair next to the fireplace, but the room was empty. Carl stumbled toward the front door. He heard a noise and turned.

  “Carl.”

  It was the bitch.

  “Carl, where are you going? It’s past midnight.” She moved into the living room, tentatively, in her nightgown. He could hear his step-brats rustling.

  “We need to talk,” said Harriet, coming toward him. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  Carl knew she meant to make him weak; she would make him see the doctor, try to lock him up. She reached out a hand to him.

  “Carl, what’s . . .”

  Carl lunged at her. With one hand he grabbed her throat and squeezed; with his other hand he grabbed a fistful of her nightgown. Carl shoved her back and lifted her. Harriet’s eyes grew fat and white. He heard a screaming from the hallway. Carl lifted Harriet off the floor so her bare feet kicked against his jeans. Her hands fluttered at him. He lifted her high and threw her toward the stone fireplace. She hit the chimney; her head hit the mantelpiece. She fell against the iron tool set and crashed to the floor. Carl turned toward the hall. He saw his stepkids. He lurched toward them. He would be a wolf; he’d eat them.

  • • •

  Bernie Wilcox had had a busy night. The emergency room was generally quiet on a Wednesday night, except in summer, but tonight there had been an accident right at the corner of Water Street and Route 1 by the convenience store. There had long been talk of upgrading the existing blinker to a regular light. Now maybe they’d do it. Nobody had been killed, thank goodness, but a car from Brewster had pulled out without looking. Stupid kids. No seat belts, of course. Now five people were in the hospital. The pickup coming from Charlestown managed to swerve so it didn’t hit the kids broadside, but it took off the front of their car, probably their dad’s car: a Passat. The ambulance tech said the front end had been sliced like it’d been cut with a knife—two people in the truck and three in the Passat, a lot of blood and broken bones, squashed bones was more like it. Anyway, the ER had been busy. The ambulances had started bringing them in at eight-thirty, and Bernie worked four hours straight. Now they were in the ICU.

  At some point she heard that Barton had called, but she’d been too busy to talk to him. Maybe he would get up when she got home and they would have a few words, maybe he’d have a glass of warm milk and honey, which he liked. Anyway, she would be glad to get back to the farm and take off her shoes, glad to get out of Brewster. Those poor women, Sister Asherah, Sister Isis, and Helen Greene. She knew them all; not well, but enough to exchange a few words at the Stop & Shop. And Nina, she could barely think of it. She’d be glad to get back to the farm and civilization.

  Bernie retrieved her VW Bug from the lot and drove down Cottage Street. It was when she turned onto Water Street that she saw them—two children dashing from between two buildings, the bigger dragging the small one by the hand. What were they doing out so late? Didn’t they have parents? Then she got a closer look. The boy was Hercel McGarty; the girl must be his sister. What was her name? Lucy. Her little shoes had little lights in the heels and sparked red when she ran.

  Bernie stopped and lowered the window. “Hercel! What’re you doing out at this hour?”

  Hercel began shouting when he was twenty feet from the car. “He’s coming, he’s coming!”

  Bernie shivered, scared by whatever they were scared of, scared because this was the first time she had seen Hercel anything but calm. She jumped out as fast as she could, given her size, and pushed the seat forward so they could get in back.

  Hercel shoved Lucy into the backseat. “Go, go! I see him!”

  As Bernie accelerated, she looked in the rearview mirror. She saw a shadow back by the two buildings where she had first seen Hercel and Lucy. It was something on all fours, maybe a coyote, but it was way too big for a coyote.

  • • •

  The telephone on Fred Bonaldo’s bedside table started ringing at one o’clock. Fred didn’t hear it. Nothing could get to him once he was sleeping. But Laura heard it, and there was just so long she’d let it ring. She rolled over and jabbed her husband in the ribs.

  “Fred, get the phone.”

  It was Harvey Lopes at the police station. “Something’s gone wrong at Carl Krause’s house.” He explained that Bernie Wilcox had just called with a story about Carl beating up his wife, of picking her up and throwing her. Then he had gone after the kids. The boy had got into his bedroom with his sister and blocked the door. Then they climbed out the window. Carl had run outside and chased them until Bernie saw them on Water Street. Now she was taking them to the farm.

  “She said Carl was running around on all fours,” said Harvey. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  Bonaldo almost dropped the phone. On all fours? He really didn’t want to know. He wanted to go back to sleep. But he’d told everyone in the police station, every cop in Brewster, to call him if anything strange or criminal took place. So Fred had only himself to blame. Briefly, he considered telling Harvey to call someone else, but then who else was there? After all, wasn’t he chief—or, rather, acting chief?

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “D’you really have to go out?” mumbled Laura from the other side of the bed.

  Bonaldo pulled on his pants. “It’s my job.”

  “I thought being chief meant telling other people to do things.”

  He wanted to say that wasn’t true of an acting chief. Instead, he said, “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “You poor thing,” said Laura, snuggling into her pillow. “You work too hard.”

  When Bonaldo arrived at the bungalow on the corner of Newport and Hope, he knew he had made the right decision. Drawn up at the curb were two Brewster patrol cars and Bobby Anderson’s 370Z. A pussy wagon
, Brewster cops called it. Bonaldo couldn’t see how Bobby had got there before him, considering he lived ten miles away. A Brewster cop smoking by his car waved his cigarette at him, making a red S in the air.

  Bonaldo hurried up the front steps, and Bobby met him at the door. “It’s pretty messy. The CSI truck’s on its way; so’s the medical examiner.”

  “Where’s the ambulance?” Bonaldo had assumed Harriet was alive and couldn’t see why there wasn’t an ambulance.

  Bobby nodded toward the fireplace. “She’s dead, been dead almost an hour.”

  Bonaldo felt as if Bobby had slapped him. He took a breath and entered the living room. Two Brewster cops, Harry Morelli and Whole-Hog Hopper, stood by the stairs with their hands in their pockets. From somewhere came a high yapping.

  “Had to lock the little dog in the bedroom,” said Whole-Hog. “Nearly took my arm off.”

  Then Bonaldo saw Harriet on the floor by the fireplace. Blood surrounded her head like a halo. He walked toward her. She stared back with dull eyes. No, she didn’t need an ambulance. He felt his stomach turn over, took a deep breath, and turned away. “Where’s Carl?”

  “Gone,” said Bobby. “Bernie said the kids told her Carl’d done it.”

  “Shouldn’t the kids be here? We got to talk to them.”

  Bobby’s eyes got harder. “They just saw their mother killed by their stepfather. Carl was clawing at Hercel’s bedroom door, growling like an animal. Hercel and Lucy are hysterical. You really want to bring them to police headquarters? They’re better off with Bernie.”

  Bonaldo saw his point. “So what’s being done about Carl?”

  “You’re the chief. You gotta tell your men what to do. Detective Gazzola is out with a couple of cars. I called Lieutenant Hammond and he called Alton and Exeter barracks for backup. An APB on Carl’s been sent out. There was a wedding picture here on the table. I told one of your guys to make copies and fax it all over the place. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, of course not.” Bonaldo didn’t like Bobby’s tone, didn’t like Bobby doing his job for him, though he would probably do it ten times better. “Anything else?”