The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  Half an hour later they were sitting at the kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs. Ajax had been brought in from the truck and was asleep on the floor. Woody was so tired it was like an out-of-body experience.

  “If you fall asleep, your head’s going to fall right onto your plate,” said Jill. “You can use my toothbrush if you like. I don’t think you need to worry about germs, all things considered.”

  Jill led him to the bathroom. Luke’s toys were lined up around the rim of the tub—Star Wars figures, little race cars, and a yellow rubber duck. Jill put toothpaste on the brush and handed it to him. “You’re going to have to do the rest yourself. Do you have to pee?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She led him to bed and he fell on top of it. She lay down beside him and pulled up the comforter. “I hope we stay together a long time.”

  Woody raised his head a few inches off the pillow. “I’d like that,” he said.

  • • •

  Acting chief Fred Bonaldo drove a hundred miles Thursday night and all of it in Brewster. Actually, Harry Morelli did the driving and Bonaldo did the worrying. It had taken dozens of interviews by twenty police officers to determine there had been only four incidents. The rest—including the spotting of ghosts, shadowy figures, and packs of coyotes, and hearing breaking glass, screams, coyote howls, and gunshots (apart from Whole-Hog’s moment of panic)—could be chalked up to collective craziness. Still, it had taken time. And every person he had talked to was full of complaints that Fred hadn’t solved the case already. Some yelled at him. Paulie Webster, who Fred had known since second grade, tried to punch him in the nose. Was this what being a police chief was all about?

  In a town where people had known one another all their lives and lived together with tranquil goodwill, it shocked Bonaldo to see how quickly that could be swept aside. Neighbors suspected neighbors. Deborah Dove, principal of Bailey Elementary, wanted to close the school. Tommy Cathcart wanted to stop delivering mail. Chucky Stubbs, for crying out loud, wanted to close the animal shelter. People left town. Even among the Masons, men distrusted one another.

  Brewster’s one gun shop did a booming business in rifles, shotguns, and pistols. One fellow bought a crossbow. Jerzy Kowalski, who owned the gun shop, said to Bonaldo, “Hey, Freddie, I’ll give you five percent of my sales if you can keep this up another two weeks. Then I’ll fucking retire.”

  Bonaldo hadn’t laughed. Tomorrow, because of these phony break-ins, even though no one’s house had been actually entered, there would be lines out Kowalski’s door and around the block. It was only a matter of time before one crazy citizen shot another crazy citizen. Wasn’t the fact that Whole-Hog had blasted the side of Charlie Mitzorelli’s house seven times with his Glock proof of this? Now Charlie meant to get a gun as well.

  “What if he shoots me?” Whole-Hog had asked.

  “It’d serve you right.” Bonaldo then apologized. Since Whole-Hog was Laura’s cousin, it was best to keep bad blood to a minimum.

  At about three-thirty a.m., the CIU informed Bonaldo that the footprints outside the forced windows of two of the four houses had been size 11D Timberland Pro Terrenes with slightly worn SafeGrip, slip-resistant rubber soles. The grass had been too long outside Whole-Hog’s window, and no tracks had been found.

  Bonaldo threw up his hands. Hadn’t he known this was going to happen?

  He called Woody’s cell. A woman answered, and Bonaldo identified himself. “I got to talk to Woody right away.”

  “I’m sorry, he’s not available. Would you care to leave a message?”

  This was a surprise. Who was this person? “Who’s this?” Bonaldo demanded.

  “This is Woody’s mother.”

  Bonaldo was stunned. He hadn’t known Woody even had a mother. He hardly knew what to say. “Yeah, well, have him call me as soon as possible. It’s about some eleven-D Timberland Pro Terrenes.”

  “Let me write that down,” the woman said.

  For the next hour this brief conversation played merry-go-round in Bonaldo’s head. Brewster’s going up in smoke and Woody’s visiting his mom?

  More people were talked to; more people complained that Fred wasn’t “doing anything.” Another old friend, Ricki Donovan, who he’d known since kindergarten, had shouted, “Freddie, you’re ruining the fuckin’ town. You gotta stop sitting on your ass and start doin’ something.”

  Thanks, Ricki.

  Harry Morelli dropped Bonaldo off at his house at five o’clock. “Get some rest, Freddie. You got another long day tomorrow.”

  Bonaldo said good night. He didn’t like his men calling him Freddie; it seemed disrespectful. But tonight he didn’t care. Why should he expect respect when he didn’t respect himself? He walked up the front walk. The house was dark. Even the porch light was off. Maybe Laura was mad at him for some reason. Could she be pissed that those three kids were staying here? But she was too kindhearted for that. The kids had had an awful experience, and seeing poor Hercel had almost broken Fred’s heart. Hercel had been trying to be brave when he had every right to bawl like a baby.

  Bonaldo felt his way up the front steps with his hand on the railing. Then he pulled open the storm door. He searched in his pockets for his keys. Like it was a golden rule: if he reached in his right pocket, they were in the left; and if he reached in his left, they were in the right. The door was white, and as Bonaldo finally located his keys, he saw something stuck in the wood, maybe a knife or dagger. Light from the street reflected off the blade. Around the knife was a dark smudge. He reached out to touch it and immediately yanked his hand away. It was furry. Then he realized it had a dead-thing smell.

  He tried to unlock the door to turn on the light, but he kept missing the lock or holding the key the wrong way. The furry smudge got bigger the more he looked at it.

  At last he opened the door and flicked the light switch. The dark smudge was a mound of shimmering dark brown hair. Bonaldo knew exactly what it was: Ernest Hartmann’s scalp.

  Acting chief Fred Bonaldo pressed his hands to his mouth to keep from screaming. He couldn’t wake the kids. But Bonaldo couldn’t help himself; he yelled bloody murder.

  EIGHTEEN

  JILL FRANKLIN GAVE UP control of Woody’s cell phone at six o’clock Friday morning. In this she was helped by her son, Luke, who rushed through the bedroom door, leapt onto the bed, and bounced several times before realizing his mother had a guest.

  “Who zat? Is that the guy Ajax lives with?”

  It turned out that Ajax had spent the night in Luke’s bed.

  “His name’s Woody,” said Jill. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, like a tree.” Luke bounced a little more. He guessed Woody was okay if Ajax liked him.

  Woody’s cell phone rang, and Jill handed it to him. He had already opened his left eye and was considering opening the right. Maybe in total, over the past four days, he had had ten hours’ sleep. It was Bobby.

  “I’ve got some news for you.”

  Woody started to say he didn’t want to hear it, but Bobby hurried ahead.

  “Somebody spiked Ernest Hartmann’s scalp to Fred Bonaldo’s front door with an athame. Fred found it an hour ago. He’s really upset.”

  Woody sat up so quickly that Luke nearly fell to the floor; he caught the boy’s leg just in time. Jill heard what Bobby said and put a hand over her mouth. “A what?” asked Woody.

  “Athame. It’s a ceremonial dagger used by modern witches. This one’s got a triple moon on the handle and three runes on the blade. You know what they say?” Bobby’s voice sounded as tight as a plucked string—a robotlike voice.

  Woody felt so muddleheaded it was painful to join two thoughts together. Jill knelt before him on the bed, looking worried. Her robe was partly open and Woody could see down to her navel. He felt his priorities were absolutely fucked. He felt he should tell Bobby he was quitting his job. “What’re runes?” he asked.

  “Viking letters, Druid letters, how the fuck should I kn
ow? Old letters with magic powers. These runes mean Man, Snake, and Fire. Bingo showed the dagger to Sister Asherah fifteen minutes ago. She said it was an athame. Don’t you care about the scalp?”

  “Maybe I better come in,” said Woody.

  Ten minutes later, Woody and Ajax were in the truck. Jill had made him coffee, but he hadn’t time for anything else. He felt as though he was on system overload with a brain jammed with iffy synapses. He knew he should be analyzing what lay ahead, but instead his thoughts spun round as he recalled and tried to reexperience each moment he had spent with Jill. It had astonished him. He tried to conjure up what her skin felt like, what her eyes looked like; he tried to conjure up her smell and the touch of her hand, what her belly felt like pressed to his. He shook his head in wonder and felt he should turn around and head back to her house. To hell with Brewster. At least he could call her to be reassured that the previous five hours had actually happened. He was afraid she might change on him, that he would see her later only to discover she’d become another person, that what for him was earth-shattering was for her a one-night stand.

  Instead he called Morgan Memorial to find out about Barton Wilcox. He talked to Bernie, who was up in the ICU.

  “He’s alive; that’s the best that can be said. No prognosis as yet. It doesn’t look good. Oh, Woody, you should see him; he looks so awful. I’ve spent decades as a nurse, but I’m completely unable to help him. All I can do is hold his hand.”

  As Woody listened, he felt Jill receding to another part of his brain. Ridiculously, he wanted to tell Bernie that he had spent the night with a wonderful woman. He was appalled by the selfishness of the thought.

  “Hang in there, Bernie. I’ll stop by later if I can.” Then he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Bernie. It’s so awful I don’t know what to say. I feel terrible, and I realize it’s nothing compared to what you feel. I’d do anything to help, I just don’t know what I can do.”

  “Look after the children and catch that crazy fuck who shot my husband.”

  Woody found Bobby Anderson, Bingo Schwartz, and the Brewster detective Brendan Gazzola in a small office with a desk, three chairs, and a shoe box. The three detectives sat with expressions that led Woody to think of quiz-show losers trying to make the best of it. There was no smoking in police headquarters, and Gazzola was popping Nicorette like gumdrops. Bingo was humming to himself.

  Seeing Woody, Bobby shook his head. “This town is completely fucked.”

  Woody glanced at the shoe box. Whatever was inside resembled the sort of bed one makes for a robin rescued from a cat—a brownish straw to keep the bird warm. He realized it was Ernest Hartmann’s scalp and took a step back. “Yuck.”

  “Now, there’s a brilliantly expressed critical appraisal,” said Bobby, striking his forehead with the flat of his hand. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “A guy’s coming down from the medical examiner’s to pick it up. But the crime lab also wants to look at it, probably from morbid curiosity. What are they going to find, fingerprints? Personally, I think it should be rejoined to Hartmann as soon as possible before some wiseacre sells it to a circus.”

  As for acting chief Bonaldo, when he’d put his hand on Hartmann’s scalp, he had “completely lost it.” The three detectives were sympathetic; they couldn’t swear they wouldn’t have done the same. The downside was that Bonaldo’s yelling had woken his neighbors, who’d rushed outside—one with a rifle—to find the cause of all the noise. And of course they had told a bunch of others about “the dead guy’s scalp nailed to Freddie’s door with a Satanist dagger.”

  “If Baldy had kept his mouth shut,” said Bobby, “we’d be a lot better off. Half the town is demanding police protection. People are so scared they’re letting their dogs pee in the house.”

  “What about this knife, or whatever?” asked Woody.

  Bobby shrugged. “As far as I can see, it’s just your normal run-of-the-mill Satanist dagger.”

  “Montesano took it over to the crime lab,” said Bingo. “He didn’t think there were any prints. Sister Asherah said it was one of the magical tools of Wicca, along with wands and chalices. They use the athame to draw a magic circle. You stand in the circle and the demons stand on the other side. Or it’s used to create energy in some way. Sister Asherah would still be talking about it if I hadn’t gotten out of there. The main thing, maybe, is that it isn’t typically used for cutting anything. On the other hand, it was plenty sharp.”

  “So Hartmann could have been killed with it?”

  “That’s what the medical examiner hopes to find out.”

  “Any witches in opera?” asked Bobby.

  “Verdi’s got a bunch; other composers also,” said Bingo. “Used to be you could hardly have an opera without a witch, and maybe a gypsy.”

  “What about those letters?” asked Woody. Hartmann’s scalp looked like antique hair attached to brown-spotted parchment. It came from a world the very opposite of the world represented by Jill Franklin.

  “Runes,” said Bobby. “The fact that they mean Man, Snake, and Fire seems to tie them to the whole business. And the medical examiner’s office is still trying to deal with the fact that some of the bones found in the fire pit on the island are human bones.”

  Bingo scratched at a gray spot on the lapel of his brown suit. “Sister Asherah said bonfire was originally bone-fire. On Halloween the old Celts burned bones to keep away evil spirits. She gave me the name of the festival, but I didn’t catch it.”

  “Samhain,” said Woody. “It’s tomorrow night.”

  “That could be a problem,” said Bobby.

  Detective Gazzola started coughing, a long series of phlegm-packed, liquid coughs that gave color to his face. “I feel out of my league. I don’t know any of this shit, and I don’t know where to start. I’m rushing around picking up the pieces and I don’t even know what they mean.” He began to cough again.

  The others were silent. They all felt pretty much the same way.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Bobby. “Montesano said they didn’t find any of Carl’s blood on the sand. They haven’t finished, and maybe it’ll turn up, but we got to start thinking what it means if it wasn’t Carl who left the car at the beach.”

  Again the men were silent. Each tried not to look at the scalp, then looked at it and looked away. It was impossible not to look at it.

  “Okay, Gazzola,” said Woody, “I got a job for you.” He told the detective to get a photo of Hamilton Brantley and then get photos from the hospital of people who admitted knowing Clouston. “Get some guys and show the pictures to Clouston’s neighbors. Maybe we can find a connection.”

  Bingo meant to continue his search for Ronnie McBride. Bobby planned to drive to Great Swamp to talk to Gail Valetti, the coyote specialist.

  “That bitch?” said Woody. “I thought she was going to take my head off.”

  Bobby looked beatific. “We had a lovely chat on the phone. She said she’d be glad to see me as long as I didn’t bring my pushy friend, meaning you.”

  Woody rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you quit this cop shit and run for office? With that glossy grin of yours, you could be the state’s first black senator.”

  There was more banter. Woody realized there had been a change in mood like a change in weather. It indicated a trace of optimism in the midst of their frustration. As Gazzola said, there were lots of pieces, but Woody sensed they were coming together, like a smashed vase becoming whole again.

  “I’m going over to Brantley’s,” he said.

  “How come?” asked Bobby.

  “You remember Bonaldo’s remark about Clouston and Brantley, the one we thought was stupid?”

  “Yeah,” said Gazzola. “He said they’d dead bodies in common.”

  “I think it’s worth a trip,” said Woody. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  “When shall we four meet again,” said Bingo, “in thunder, lightning, or in rain
?”

  Gazzola grunted. “Carl Krause isn’t the only wack-job around here.”

  Five minutes later, when Woody drove his truck into the funeral home driveway, he saw Seymour Hodges replacing the glass in the back door’s window. He parked by the carriage house and walked over to Seymour, who either hadn’t seen him or was ignoring him. It was a brisk fall day, with the sky as blue as Mayan tiles. Fat clouds drifted eastward. A blue jay in a maple jeered at invisible threats.

  “What happened to the window?” asked Woody.

  Seymour glanced at him and then returned to chipping the broken glass out of the frame. “Got broke.”

  “Yeah, I figured that. How’d it happen?”

  “Kids, maybe.” Seymour was stocky and red-haired, with eyes the same color as the sky. His nose had a squashed look, but whether he was born with it or someone had broken it for him, Woody didn’t know. He wore work boots, jeans, and a dark sweatshirt spotted with white paint.

  “Did Brantley report it?”

  “Digger said the cops was too busy.”

  “Was someone trying to break in?”

  “Beats me. It got broke, that’s all.”

  Woody felt himself heating up. Seymour wanted to be left alone, which only made Woody want to keep at him. “I didn’t know you worked for Brantley. When did you start?”

  “A while back.”

  “Like when?”

  “Like this week.”

  “So you’re Carl’s replacement?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “You seen Carl recently?”

  “Nope, not for a week or so.”

  “You going to work out at the crematorium like Carl?”

  “You’ll have to ask Digger about that.”

  Seymour kept working with his back to Woody; once or twice he glanced over his shoulder.