Brittle paper, faded blue ink that had pooled in spots and was scratched dry in others. The prayers and daily log of the exorcism. When he bent to shuffle through the pages, blood pounded in his ears. Setting the pages on top of the mattress, he hoisted himself up and lay across the bed, breathing hard, the top page in his hand.
Philip had mocked this, but he hadn’t been able to let it go. All those questions, and then the letter . . . The boy was eager for darkness to claim him.
Francis read the Litany of the Saints aloud, moving through the archangels and disciples to St. Thaddeus, St. Matthias, St. Barnabas . . . A peace came over him, settling deep inside, and with it utter fatigue. When his voice trailed off, he kissed the page in apology. “From all evil deliver us, O Lord,” he whispered. “Fill your servants with courage to fight manfully against that reprobate dragon.”
Reprobate dragon? Even to him, the words sounded archaic. Had he really spoken them with perfect conviction all those years ago? Today’s young priests saw the rite as little more than incantations, superstition, magical thinking. They thought he was the crazy one.
He could still see the possessed boy’s mouth, so red it looked painted, screaming foul curses at them. He could smell the ripping farts and feel the warm string of spit as it hit his arm. Raised welts appeared before their eyes, spelling out words on the boy’s body.
He knew what he’d seen. And there was no other way to explain it.
*
Classes started late on Wednesdays. Snuggling under the covers, Sarah listened to the first showers and yells through the stone wall. Kat was coming out today to take photos. After reading the notes Sarah had sent, Rob had interviewed the kids and teachers she’d handpicked for him and asked them the questions she’d suggested, and now he was pushing for space for an 8,000-word feature.
At 10:45, Sarah went over to the school and found Kat by the door, packing up. “At least you’ve given Rob something real to do,” Kat observed, unhooking a silver reflector. “Last week he decided to be Studs Terkel, so he spent three days on a barge and filed a story musing about life on the river.”
“God.”
“When Carlson laid it out, he replaced every ‘I’ with a tiny icon of Rob’s photo and blew it up poster size. I saved it for you.”
“I’ll hang it. Did you get photos in Jimmy’s music class?”
“Yeah. The kids were great. I hope my boys are that polite when they hit their teens.”
Sarah smiled. “I bet Jimmy looked like he was conducting an early music ensemble at Eton. At SLU, he had a tan even in the dead of winter. He’d wear khakis and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and the girls would moan that all the good guys were going with God.”
Kat set down her bag and raised both hands skyward. “This is why we let our priests marry. It eases women’s bitterness.” She slung the bag over her shoulder. “Jimmy wasn’t there. This exquisitely beautiful woman took the class for him. Didn’t know a thing about music, but the boys figured it out. She said Jimmy’s grandfather was dying.”
Poor Jimmy. He didn’t need that now. Tragedies came in threes, Beth always said, and this made two. “You get a good shot?”
Kat nodded. “I came in tight on a boy trying to play this huge double bass, taller and wider than he is. There are other kids blurred behind him, and these great highlights bouncing off the brass instruments.”
“Good. That’ll work a lot better than a shot of kids interacting. If they were smiling, it could look callous.”
“And if they stood around looking sad, people would think they’d been scarred for life,” Kat agreed. “I keep thinking of my Alex. Granted, he’s only eleven. But I can’t even imagine how he’d deal with something like this. How are they reacting?”
“In very different ways. Ben keeps locking the back door to the dorms, and we have to keep unlocking it. Steven’s started talking, but not much. Max came by to walk Simon, and he knelt down to hug him and started to cry. I didn’t let on that I noticed, but it broke my heart.”
“Well, do what you can for them, and then come back to work, okay?” Kat said, collapsing her light pole. “The place is getting more macho by the hour.”
Sarah hugged her, careful not to squish the camera equipment. “No matter what happens here, I’m back next Monday.”
“Deal.”
*
Colin pulled Steven aside after his history class. “How are you doing? You went through a real shock.”
“Yes.” Steven held his books closer to his chest. “I liked Philip.”
“I liked him too,” Colin said, and as he realised how true that was, his heart literally ached. Leading Steven into an empty classroom, he pulled two chairs close. “I wanted to ask about what you were doing when you . . . found Philip. I know you’ve talked to the police about it.”
“I downloaded some video-editing software for him. I went over to install it on his laptop.” This was familiar ground, and Steven’s tone was matter-of-fact.
“I knew he was making a movie. You two were close?”
“He was really nice to me. He tried to explain . . . people. How they act, what they mean.” Steven licked chapped lips, tugged at a bit of dead skin. “Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Me, either.”
Steven looked up, startled.
Colin smiled. “It gets better.” You didn’t forget the early bafflement, though. Casual teasing that could have been fond or cruel, and you were never sure which. Girls who lost interest because you called when you said you would. That cat’s cradle of social manoeuvres, cues that bore no relation to logic, rules with no internal consistency. All he’d ever been able to do was memorise the basics and guess.
Steven was nodding. “That’s what my therapist said.”
“You were nice to Philip too,” Colin pointed out. “You helped him with the video-editing. Anything else?”
“I rigged up a voice-activated digital recorder for him, the kind I use to do my homework assignments. He said it could be very useful. He . . .” Steven went over to his laptop and pulled up a game. He didn’t start it, just sat there pressing keys.
“He what, Steven?”
“Philip did a lot of high-risk behaviours,” he said in a rush. “Once he wanted me to help him stick a mineral under his skin so he would be a cyborg. He had this elevator tool to hold open the cut, and he found dissolving sutures. But I didn’t do it.”
Colin shoved his hands deep in his jacket pockets, clenching them out of Steven’s sight. “Good for you,” he said, fighting to kept the horror off his face.
Steven relaxed visibly. “I told him that wouldn’t make him a cyborg anyway. It’s just magnetic. He might feel the electromagnetic field from a microwave, or power lines. But what you really want is a robotic chip, with somebody else controlling it.” He babbled on about cyborgs and androids and wetware, until Colin’s shock wore off and his mind drifted to the solace of Ancient Greek, and the different kinds of knowledge he and Steven had chosen to steady themselves. Rising to leave, he asked, as casually as he could manage, “By the way, where did you put Philip’s digital recorder?”
“He wanted it near the bed,” the boy blurted. “For when he had sexual intercourse.”
“With whom?”
“I don’t know. But he wanted to record it.”
*
Driving to her parents’ house for dinner, Sarah daydreamed about the foundation job. Where would they send her? Zimbabwe, maybe. Belarus? Pakistan? The foundation stayed out of the no-fly zones, Stu said. But you still had to know the lay of the land, be able to speak a few words of the native language and, in her case, keep yourself covered from head to toe.
The I-270 clover leaf broke her reverie. Taking the curve faster than the old Miata liked, she told Simon not to worry and Siri to call O’Rourke.
He recognised her cell. “Markham?”
“Two questions. One, i
f somebody stole an antique Chinese map with historic significance, where would they try to sell it?”
“Locally, nationally, or internationally?”
“Consider that part of my question.”
“Depends on how experienced they are. They wouldn’t know how to go national or international if they were amateurs.”
Traffic clogged without warning, and Sarah downshifted to avoid rear-ending a BMW. “Okay, let’s assume they’re amateurs. A teenager looking for drug money or just wanting to break the rules.”
“There’s only a few guys in St. Louis smart enough to want it and shady enough to make the buy. Unless your kid can come up with some extremely plausible bullshit about why it’s in his possession.”
“Would you be willing to ask around?”
“The cops will do that.”
“Like I said.”
He laughed. They both knew the fastest way to get something on to his to-do list was to reference official stupidity. “I’ll make some calls. I checked every kid at the school, by the way. Called in a favour at the juvenile office. Only three had paper. Luke Azaria had a possession charge − just weed. A drug dog found it in his locker in middle school. Stan Ruzicka got arrested for assaulting a bodyguard at an abortion clinic. Philip had speeding tickets, a DUI after a rave, and a disturbing the peace charge. Threw a party and forgot to tell the neighbours a couple hundred cars would be parking on their lawns.”
“Nice. Thanks for checking.”
“What’s your other question?”
“Hang on.” She shot over to the slow lane, waving her thanks at the driver she’d cut off. “I’m trying to figure out how to read these people. There’s not a single one who strikes me as capable of a deliberate, ritualised murder.”
“Start with the least likely person and assume the worst. That always came in handy in spycraft. You don’t want to seem too innocent when you go undercover, because innocent’s too obvious.”
“That makes sense. Except they all seem innocent.” Webster Groves was the next exit, so she started to say goodbye, but a question struck her. “Why did you stop the intelligence work? You were just doing domestic stuff when I met you.”
He sighed. “Yeah. My last gig was in Croatia. I had to get over there fast, and I didn’t have time to bone up. I took a cab from the airport and tried to pay with U.S. dollars. When the cabbie says, ‘You have no dinera?’ I’m thinking it’s sweet of him to be concerned. ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I ate on the train.’ I’d gotten so cocky, I was in country and didn’t even know the currency. That’s when I knew it was time to quit.”
Sarah hung up laughing. Then she sobered. If she got the foundation job, would she have the presence of mind to handle it? One boy’s death overwhelmed her − what would she do when there were thousands?
Braking at a stoplight, she kept the Miata in first gear, left foot poised on the clutch, and shot ahead as soon as the light changed. She refused to live fragile, like her father. She’d handle it.
*
The colonial columns flanking the Markhams’ front door still looked like candy canes, wrapped with shiny red ribbon. Beth could never stand for the holidays to end.
She waited on the step, a puppy in her arms. “Hi, sweetheart!” she called as Sarah got out of the Miata. “Lord, it’s good to see you alive. Cholera and murder in a single month are a bit much, don’t you think?”
Sarah kissed the soft top of the pup’s head and her mother’s even softer cheek. Square-built and athletic, Beth had only a few streaks of silver in her short brown hair. She always complained about her ageing skin – ‘It feels like I’m wearing somebody else’s face’ – but, to Sarah, it felt like kissing cool silk.
Below their embrace Simon bounced in place, his front paws lifting higher each time. As soon as Beth said his name, he wove between them and around her legs, pressing close, his tail a blur. After she’d fussed over him for a minute, she led Sarah on to the glassed-in veranda, its Spanish tile covered with shorn poodle hair. “Sit by the space heater and talk to me while I finish.” She ran a clipper along the puppy’s haunches, shearing off a swath of apricot curls. “Why are you still out there? Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Remember when Dad was in the hospital for eight weeks? Colin wrote all my term papers for me. He’s not always an easy friend, but he’s a good one.” She grinned. “Besides, this is my chance to practise your skills. I’m still trying to figure out if young Graham is a sociopath.”
“Try yawning at him,” Beth suggested. “Yawning becomes contagious only as a child develops empathy. Kids with severe autism, you can yawn at them all day long. Their brains don’t have room for that kind of empathic response. The circuits are too overloaded.”
“Summoning a yawn won’t be a problem. I’m gonna have to pull a few all-nighters to get this Haiti piece done.”
Frowning in concentration, Beth glided the razor down the dog’s foreleg. Then she dropped his paw and sat back on her heels.
“Sary, baby, you are 36 years old and single, and as much as I like Colin, he’s already made his choice. You’re wasting precious time helping that man out of his crises.”
“I’m not wasting anything. He’s a friend.” Sarah swept up the curls a little too vigorously, sending them floating ahead of her broom. This place was a wormhole. She could feel herself slipping back in time, turning into a sulky teenager again. “When you were young, just about anything between a man and woman was romantic, because you were all starved for sex and scared of being single,” she pointed out. “It’s not like that anymore.”
“True,” her mother said dryly. “Everyone’s so available, it’s become rather boring.”
“Well, Colin’s not available, and I’m not in love with him.” Sarah left to dump the dustpan and returned with her tote bag of presents. “The best of the street merchants’ wares,” she said, holding out a stone dog so carefully carved you could see the fine-grained roughness of his lolling tongue. “And, for Dad, I got these.” She waved a pair of papier mâché maracas. “To cheer him up. How’s he doing?”
“You know how I kept bugging him to find a hobby? He banged around in the garage and cussed and got splinters and made me a gorgeous silver-maple book stand. But last Sunday, he woke up and I knew right away it was back.”
David Markham suffered from what Winston Churchill called ‘the black dog’. Beth said that wasn’t fair to dogs. When the depression hit, all she could do was stifle her own basic cheerfulness and wait it out. “It’s like he weighs an extra fifty pounds,” she said. “Everything slows down, even his voice. There’s just no energy in him.”
At fourteen Sarah had made it a crusade to point out the up side of every sorrow or annoyance that crossed her father’s path. After a few weeks of this he gave her an apologetic hug and told her it was ‘like being force-fed cotton candy, honey. Just give me some time to mope, okay?’ She went to her room and blasted jazz: Blue Train. Blue Monk. Black Codes From the Underground. Birth of the Cool.
I was so scared of being sad like him, she thought. Scared it was in my genes. Maybe that’s why I married an exquisitely insensitive asshole and went to work at a shallow, smartass alt newsweekly, so I wouldn’t have to feel too much. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my writing − I’ve never let myself feel enough.
Beth went out to the kitchen and pulled two Cokes from the freezer. “We’ve got a while until the pot roast finishes,” she said, tossing Sarah a Payday. “Tell me more about this young man you’re supposed to be interviewing. You’re sure he didn’t kill that poor boy? Because if − whoops! Watch out!” The foam in Sarah’s Coke was rising around its frozen centre.
Sarah slurped and watched the beige foam settle, then rise toward the lip again. When she’d drunk enough to avert a spill, she settled back on the chaise longue. “What’s weird about Graham is, he’s not depressed. His parents think he’s a murderer, as far as I can tell he’s got no real frie
nds, he’s suspected of murder − and he’s almost buoyant. It’s like he feeds on the adrenaline.”
“A lot of people do these days,” Beth said, her fingers flying over the square brush, pulling out dog hair and making a fluffy little pile of it as she talked. “The whole country’s got attention deficit. And adrenaline focuses the mind.”
“He doesn’t seem like a kid with ADHD, though,” Sarah said slowly. “He’s not scattered in the least. He’s eerily self-possessed.” She took another long sip of Coke, tilting her head back and letting the slush roll into her mouth.
“Keep talking to him,” Beth advised. “And, if he blocks the questions, go quiet. When a pup’s wary, you have to make yourself very still inside and wait for him come to you.” Kneeling to gather her combs and razors, she winced and put her hand to the top of her hip.
“Mom, don’t you think you’re getting a little old to crawl around the floor grooming poodles?”
“And don’t you think you’re a little old to lie to your parents about where you’re travelling?”
Sarah grinned. “Haiti is an island off the coast of Florida. And you had enough to worry about with Dad. If you’d been obsessing over all the news about riots and cholera, you wouldn’t have slept a wink.”
Beth just shook her head. “Your world’s never been big enough for you, has it, honey? What’s next, Darfur?”
Maybe, Sarah thought guiltily. She’ll kill me when she finds out about this job. “Didn’t you ever want to have a guy just as a friend?” she asked, switching the subject. “It’s a relief that it’s not romantic. I can speak my mind without worrying. And I don’t have to adjust my moods to Colin’s.”
Sitting on the chaise, Beth hugged a giant sunflower throw pillow. “Is that what you think I’ve done with your father?” Her tone was casual, but Sarah could hear hurt underneath.
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