The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  The road narrowed and the snow was deeper. The headlights reflected off sheets of falling white; Woody couldn’t see more than fifteen yards ahead. If he went into a ditch, Bobby would die for sure. Woody’s windshield wipers slapped back and forth. He saw no other lights, nothing but trees. Bobby had stopped talking, and Woody looked to see if he was breathing. He didn’t know what he would do if Bobby died; he thought he’d go crazy. Stupid things occurred to him, like stuff he had wanted to say and never had. He would think something and then think, “That’s a cliché.” He’d think something else—like he should have told Bobby how much he liked him—and think that was a cliché as well. If Bobby died, Woody would quit for sure. He wouldn’t want to be a trooper anymore.

  Then Woody saw flashing lights up ahead—two, no, three police cruisers, maybe more, and behind them a rescue truck. They’d stopped. Woody began pumping the brakes. There’d been an accident. The Audi was sideways across the road. It had smashed into a police cruiser and both were twisted around. Woody slammed the gearshift into park even before he came to a stop. The truck slid forward, but Woody was already out the door.

  “Get a medic here now!” he shouted. “Bobby’s shot!”

  Men began running toward him. Two carried a stretcher. It was impossible to push a gurney through the snow. They lifted Bobby onto the stretcher.

  The cruiser had been blocking the road and Balfour had crashed into it a few minutes earlier. A trooper had been knocked around. Another cruiser had slid into the first. They were all rattled.

  The Audi was totaled, but Balfour had crawled out. He had fired at the cruiser, shattering the windshield, and had run into the woods. The troopers couldn’t see if he was hurt, but there was some blood on the snow. Woody grabbed his flashlight and followed the tracks. Two troopers were about fifty yards ahead of him and they waited for him to catch up. He kept falling.

  “It’s hard to follow the tracks through the bushes,” said one, “but he’s got to be up there somewhere.”

  They kept going. None were dressed for the snow. They would fall and get up again. They got tangled in the briars. Balfour was getting farther and farther away. After half an hour, Woody called it quits.

  “We need to organize a search and put a cordon around this place. The roads will be blocked tonight.”

  It was two miles through Arcadia to the nearest road.

  “He could be dead in there,” said a trooper.

  “I hope so,” said Woody.

  It was midnight. They turned and made their way back. The rescue truck was gone, but a tow truck had shown up, as had several cruisers. Captain Brotman was organizing a search party. He told Woody to go home. Others could take over now. Getting in his Tundra, Woody managed to get around the cruisers without slipping into the ditch. Then he headed toward Brewster.

  Once he had caught his breath and had a chance to think, he called Jill. He thought she was home; she was in Morgan Memorial with Margaret, who had been banged up in the accident. Not bad, but enough.

  “It’s done,” Woody said. “It’s over.”

  She started to explain something, but he couldn’t listen.

  “Bobby’s been shot. They’re bringing him in to the hospital. I’ve got to get over there. I don’t know if I’ll see you later. Anyway, it’s done.”

  He cut the connection. He was driving to the hospital. He didn’t know Jill would be there waiting. He was driving back to where it had begun.

  EPILOGUE

  TWO WEEKS LATER it was Indian summer; even some dandelions were coming up. That’s how it is in New England in both fall and spring, snowstorms followed by warm days and then snow again. The weather teases you like that. It was a Sunday, and leaf blowers and lawn mowers were out. People tidying up their yards before the snow came for good.

  The day was November 15, an important day in Brewster, because that was the day when some day hikers on their way to Mount Tom found Dr. Jonathan Balfour, or what was left of him. He had broken through the ice at the edge of a pond and had gotten stuck. Animals had been chewing on him, probably coyotes. It was hard to tell if the animals had killed him or if he had been chewed up afterward. Two pistols were on the ground beside him and they still had rounds. Maybe his coyotes had attacked him on their way home from Brewster. Some called it poetic justice. Some said, “What goes around comes around.”

  Jean Sawyer at the Brewster Brew was probably the first who said, “Just like Wrestling Brewster. The Devil got him.” Then lots of people said it. The comparison was the sort of historical irony that people liked. It grew to be a Brewster cliché.

  Woody visited Barton and Bernie Wilcox at the farm that Sunday. Barton was confined to a Barcalounger in his study, but at least his new knee was just about heeled. These days the most excitement came from Barton bawling out his physical therapist.

  One of his dogs was recovering; the other had died. Bernie had taken a leave from her job. Hercel and Lucy were living with them until their father, Hercel McGarty Sr., could decide what to do. Bernie hoped the kids could stay. It’d be best for everybody all around.

  “So they were using Brewster as their private farm,” said Barton, “just like I’ve got a sheep farm.”

  “That’s about it,” said Woody. “We’ll probably never know how many dead people went through their hands. We’ve dug up ten caskets and found mannequin parts in six. I don’t know about the babies. Balfour was the father of all of them, as much as we can figure. That’s why the placenta disappeared. It had his DNA. There’re probably more babies we don’t know about. And we don’t know if they’re living or dead. Either way, they’d fetch a high price. Brantley says he doesn’t know anything about it, but mostly he won’t talk. He says he’s not interested. He says he’ll never get out of prison, so why bother. He’s in fuck-it mode. The FBI’s dealing with the companies that bought from him. The financial unit’s on it as well. Those places are in deep shit. That’s what the Massachusetts health inspector was investigating and what he’d spoken to Hartmann about. Hartmann had set up an appointment with Brantley for Thursday. That frightened them and they thought Hartmann knew more than he did. So they killed him and the scalping was meant to divert attention.”

  “So what did Hartmann know?” asked Barton.

  “Very little, I expect, but he told Brantley he wanted to see the paperwork on several cadavers that had been sent to a Massachusetts body broker. Brantley and Balfour were bringing their whole operation to a close. They meant to take on new identities and live off money they’d stashed in offshore accounts. At least that’s what the financial unit thinks. Anyway, they panicked. They were also too greedy and that made them take more chances and stay longer than was smart. As for Clouston, Balfour didn’t trust him. He’d lost a fortune in Texas Hold ’Em in the casinos and wanted more money.”

  “How’s Bobby?” Bernie wanted to know.

  “Doing better. He’ll stay home through Christmas. His lung collapsed, so I don’t know how long he’ll be laid up. I almost envy him the free time, except he nearly died.”

  • • •

  Four-thirty in the afternoon and the town’s dark, but people are still on the streets, walking their dogs, taking a stroll—it’s a big change from two weeks ago, when Brewster looked like a ghost town. Standing outside You-You, you can hear the thumps and grunts of an exercise class. The Brewster Brew’s open till six. Jean Sawyer has become unofficial town spokesperson, talking about the depredations, though she rarely gets it right. She gives it a romantic spin. “Ham Brantley did it for love,” she says. “Dr. Balfour was a sexual predator, taking advantage of all those girls. I’m glad he never tried anything on me!” She’s sorry she never met Benjamin Clouston, or not that she remembers. But she might have seen him on the street. “A gambling addiction,” she says. “It’s as bad as whiskey. They had to shut his mouth.” The police decided Larry killed him, but it might have been Balfour.

  People are cheering up; there’s a lot less dread. Some say it
wasn’t so bad after all, that stuff got exaggerated, but quite a few have restless nights. Startle responses have seen a serious uptick.

  Maud Lord also has stories to tell. She visits Bobby in the hospital and makes it part of her morning walk. She had known everything was going to go haywire from the moment she’d seen the hanged cat. All those nice old people hurried into their graves and worse—hadn’t she been the one to tell Bobby about it? And she’s positive if Dr. Balfour hadn’t been stopped, she would have been next on his list. Her body parts might have gone to twenty states.

  Of course, Margaret Hanna isn’t working at Ocean Breezes anymore. She hasn’t been charged, but she’s been told to remain in town until the grand jury decides what to do with her. So far her only punishment is a broken arm, which happened when Bonaldo slammed into Seymour’s SUV.

  These days two new guys are in the ambulance outside the hospital. They say they never met Seymour and Jimmy, though it’s hard to believe. They at least must have seen one another at Tony’s Bar. Seymour and Jimmy are over in the ACI. No way will they make bail. Jimmy says he was following orders. Seymour says, “Screw you!”

  Nurse Spandex moved away, and Dr. Fuller handed in her resignation. They’ll be replaced soon enough. Dr. Balfour, likewise. Whole-Hog Hopper’s not a cop anymore. When friends ask where he’s working, he says he’s considering his options, which means he can’t decide between Home Depot and Walmart.

  Acting chief Fred Bonaldo is still acting chief, but the search continues for a replacement. He made a big hit capturing Seymour Hodges single-handed, though he would be the first to admit it was a complete accident. To tell the truth, he’d like to get back to real estate. He thinks this cop stuff is overrated, though he hopes to be named an honorary cop or cop emeritus so he can march in parades.

  Some of the changes are very small. Ginger and Howard Phelps have given up gin rummy and now play Scrabble. Peggy Summers has signed up for classes at a beauty college. Maggie Kelly’s waiting to be extradited from New York.

  Sunday afternoon, after visiting Barton and Bernie at the farm, Woody drove over to Wakefield to see Jill Franklin. They spend a lot of time together. That’s one good thing to come out of this mess. Some nights he’s at her place and some nights she’s at his. Some nights they take a breather. He’s feeling better about himself, and at times it strikes him he hasn’t thought of Susie for quite a while. He sees those bad nine days as a long nightmare, but years later he sees them as the time he met Jill, so he can’t forget them completely.

  “I told you all that Satanism was bullshit,” he’ll say to Bobby. “Shape-shifting’s a load of crap. It’s like flying saucers and ghosts, they’re stories people tell to make their lives more interesting. I even have my doubts about hypnosis. And telepathy? That Chmielnicki guy wasn’t reading my mind. He was just looking at my face.”

  Bobby listens with a grin. He knows Woody is talking bullshit even if what he says is true. “You going to see Chmielnicki anytime soon?”

  Woody shakes his head. “I don’t want to push my luck.”

  Hercel was out of school for a week, but now he’s back. Although he’s living out at the farm, he still hangs out with Baldo. He likes him, but he can’t figure out why. Nothing about him makes sense. But one thing he knows for sure: if Baldo tries that fart-machine trick on him he’ll bust him in the head.

  Hercel rides Bernie’s old three-speed bike, but he hasn’t ridden it into town yet. It gets dark too early. Even so, there are fewer coyotes about. Balfour’s coyotes, or the two that were left, went back to his farm and settled into their kennels. Some guys from the DEM picked them up. There’s talk of sending them to a zoo.

  Woody had driven out to Vasa Korak’s farm in North Ashford. The UConn professor had told Bobby that there were stories of other people who had raised coyotes from pups and Woody wanted their names. Well, one had lived in Krumville, New York, and one had lived near Albany. Korak had forgotten their names or maybe he’d never known them.

  Then, after several frustrating dead ends, Woody learned that some years before Balfour had worked at Albany Medical Center in the emergency room. And from the hospital personnel office, he learned that Balfour had lived on a small farm a few miles east of the village of Petersburg, close to the borders of Massachusetts and Vermont.

  So Woody decided to take a drive. It was Indian summer; the air was crisp, the sky was blue. Of course, Woody wasn’t going to take the Tundra. It used too much gas. His next option was to visit Bobby who was now home. But the doctor had said he couldn’t drive and so Woody was depending on Bobby’s generosity. Still, Woody had to engage in a fair amount of wheedling before Bobby agreed to lend him the Z. After all, Woody had twice saved his life; though it could be said that Woody had also been the one to endanger him. Bobby’s only condition was that all cats and dogs had to stay out of the car, especially Ajax.

  Woody left on a Saturday morning and took Jill with him, driving north through Hartford and Springfield, and then turning west on the Massachusetts Turnpike. As if by silent agreement, they said nothing about the troubles in Brewster. Instead, they talked about skiing. Jill had been a ski instructor in Boulder and now she wanted to teach Woody, who had never been on a pair of skis and had no ambition to learn. On the other hand, Jill wanted it. These matters took a lot of serious talk.

  Twice, when traffic thinned out, Woody pushed the Z up to one-twenty. Neither time had he warned Jill and so she had been left gasping for breath.

  The farm was just west of the Green Mountains on a hillside—fifty acres of fields surrounded by trees. The owner’s name was Jamison and he was a painter. “Not house,” he said. “I couldn’t paint a house if my life depended on it. Ladders terrify me.” Jamison lived with his wife, two daughters, and a couple of barking black Labs. He was maybe forty, and his graying hair was in a ponytail that fell halfway down his back. He remembered Balfour well enough, but he remembered the coyotes more.

  “They were big things. He opened the kennel and they raced around. I had to keep the girls in the truck, my wife, too. They would charge me and then veer off when Balfour whistled. Scared the shit outta me and I could see that Balfour liked that. He liked that I was scared. I told him he could put the fucking animals back in the kennel or the sale was off. Then he whistled twice and they ran back, just like that. When they started yapping he whistled again and they shut up. I’ve never seen anything like it. He had complete control.”

  “Were he and the coyotes friendly together?” asked Woody. “You know, affectionate?”

  “No way. They were scared of him and did what he said. He was alpha dog.”

  • • •

  All this time Baldo has continued to nag Hercel about his trick. It gets Hercel irritated, but he won’t talk about it. He doesn’t see it’s any of Baldo’s business.

  Monday at lunchtime Baldo looks for Hercel in the lunchroom. Baldo has just gotten a ballpoint pen that looks like a long brown turd with a pen tip at one end, very realistic. He can’t wait for someone to ask him, “Do you have a spare pencil?” But anybody who knows Baldo would never ask for anything. It might be covered with itch powder or fart at them.

  When Hercel gets his tray, Baldo follows him. “How’d you do on the spelling quiz? You want to stay over at my place tonight? You want to hang out? You want to see something cool?” Baldo’s conversational strategy is to ask a lot of questions in the hope one might be answered.

  Hercel doesn’t like to talk on the move, nor does he like questions. He’s an anti–pressure group sort of kid. He sees Tig and heads for her table, even though it can lead to teasing, that Tig’s his girlfriend and dumb stuff like that.

  Baldo sees where he’s heading. “You’re going to sit with a girl?” Baldo likes Tig, but no way will he advertise it in public. Hercel doesn’t answer. Baldo says, “Okay, I’ll get my tray and sit with you. Just to protect you!”

  “What’s he mean?” asks Tig, as Hercel sits down.

  “He�
�s going to protect me from you.”

  This strikes them as funny. She’s in a different fifth-grade class than them, but she’s known Baldo since second grade. Even then he was trouble. During the week at Baldo’s house, she decided he maybe wasn’t as doofy as she’d thought. Even so, last week he’d slipped a rubber worm into her spaghetti.

  One day during the bad times she had asked Hercel if Baldo was his friend.

  “A sort of friend,” Hercel had answered. Then he corrected himself. “No, he’s a friend.” If he had had the words, he would have said that sometimes you don’t get to pick your friends, but Hercel loathed complicated conversations.

  When Baldo settles himself at Hercel and Tig’s table, he shows them his new turd pen, which suitably grosses them out. Neither can imagine wanting to own such a thing. Baldo, on the other hand, can’t imagine not wanting to own it.

  Hercel and Tig are talking about dogs. Barton has said he means to buy two new sheepdogs and has his eye on a pair of Great Pyrenees that he hopes to pick up during the week. Baldo dislikes being left out of the conversation, so after a minute he says, “Did you ever tell Tig about your trick?”

  “No.” Hercel shoots Baldo an unfriendly look.

  “What trick?” asks Tig.

  “Just some dumb thing.” And then to Baldo: “I rode no-hands this morning, maybe for thirty yards, almost.”

  Baldo realizes this reflects Hercel’s strategy of subject avoidance. They’ve had lots of discussions about riding no-hands, so doing it this morning was a small triumph. Baldo isn’t much of a bike rider himself.

  Hercel describes going out on the road beyond the farm gate where he’s been practicing. Each day he has gone a little farther riding no-hands. Baldo is glad for him, but he doesn’t find the subject interesting. Maybe it’s worth a comment, that’s all.

  So Baldo interrupts him. “What about the trick?”

  Hercel ignores him.

  “What’s he talking about?” asks Tig. “Is there really a trick?”