by Harker Moore
“I get that,” Delia said.
“I imagine you do.” The eyes were sympathetic. “I’m Maxie Tompkins.” She extended her hand. “My assistant said you wanted to speak to me about what happened to Mrs. Redmond.”
“Detective Adelia Johnson, NYPD.” She shook the woman’s hand. “I’d like to go over that last day Mrs. Redmond was here.”
“I’ve spoken with the local police, but if you think that it might help find those boys . . .”
“Won’t know till we try.”
Another smile. “Let’s go to my office.”
The room was tiny but organized. A small couch was squeezed against one wall. They sat on that.
“How well did you know Mrs. Redmond?” Delia asked.
“Margot was a good customer. She’d been coming to the gallery for a couple years, buying things for the townhouse. Lately she’d told me they were planing to build in Connecticut. She said she’d eventually be needing some large canvases. It was going to be that kind of house. I don’t guess it will ever be built now.”
“She was here that day to pick up a painting?”
Tompkins nodded. “A small canvas that we had reframed for her. I wonder if she might not be alive had that painting been larger.”
“How’s that?”
“I wanted to have someone help her take the package to her car, but she tucked it under her arm and said it was fine. She had a shoulder bag, and she showed me that she still had a hand for each of the boys. She was so good with them.”
The woman’s gaze had turned inward, remembering. “I wish I’d insisted.” She looked up. “But I did try to go after her. One of the boys had forgotten his toy.”
“You saw Mrs. Redmond after she left the store?”
“No, I missed her. I went out to the sidewalk and looked in both directions. But I couldn’t see her. She didn’t tell me that she’d parked in the little overflow garage. If I’d known . . .”
“If you’d followed her into that garage, you might not be sitting here now.” Delia said it more as a comfort than because she really believed it.
“I’m just so knocked back by this,” Maxie Tompkins was saying. “You never think that things like this will happen to you or to people you know. But I guess that’s what everyone says.”
It sure as shit was, but Delia didn’t confirm it. “Was there anyone who came into the gallery that day, or someone you’d seen hanging around, that seemed suspicious?”
“Not that I can remember,” Tompkins said. “We have a lot of repeat business. And tourists. I can’t think of anyone who struck me as odd.”
“What about vehicles in the area?”
“I know that you’re looking for a van, and I’m sure I saw plenty. There are a lot of deliveries for the stores here.” She made a little frown. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could be more help. I can’t stop thinking about those two little boys.” She had risen and walked to her desk. She came back with a small plastic truck in her hand. “Tell me, Detective Johnson, what do I do with this?”
The sun was setting, sucking warmth and daylight, as search operations ended for the day. Sakura, walking into freezing wind, headed for his car. He found Darius leaning against it, sheltering the cigarette that had again become habit. It was the first he had seen him today. Michael had been dodging him, evading the inevitable.
“You need a ride?”
Darius straightened. “I need information.” He threw the wasted butt on the ground.
“I wish I had some.” He stared at Michael, not avoiding his eyes. He sought for a word to describe the change. Hollow. His friend looked hollowed out. “Maybe no news is good news,” he said.
“You don’t believe that.”
Silence between them. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he spoke. “You’re on medical leave, Michael, effective immediately. It’s that or transfer to a rubber gun squad.”
“Don’t do this.”
“McCauley called first thing this morning. You know the policy.”
“I don’t want to hear regulations. Margot was my ex-wife.”
“They’re your sons.”
“I’ll go crazy. I can’t keep still on this.”
“There’s official and unofficial. You know I’ll keep you informed.”
Darius looked away, started to walk.
“Damn it, Michael,” he shouted against the wind. “Don’t you think I know this is my fault?”
Darius stopped moving. Turned back with dead eyes. “Your fault?”
“It was my idea to push this guy’s buttons.”
A sound escaped from Michael, a release of air that worked some animation in his face. The expression faded. “This isn’t about you.”
CHAPTER
25
Willie knew Reese Redmond had done everything in his power to keep his wife’s funeral from becoming a public spectacle. He’d kept all arrangements secret, so that after the autopsy on Thursday night, Margot’s body had been transported in a private hearse to an undisclosed mortuary. No obituary had been published, and only Redmond and Margot’s parents had viewed the body. For the funeral, Redmond had decided in favor of Holy Trinity Chapel in the Village. Interment would take place in the cemetery of St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Chapel Point, Maryland, where Margot had grown up. Her parents would be taking her home one last time. Redmond had chosen to stay behind to do whatever he could to help find his sons.
Willie also knew that Sakura had warned Redmond of the probability of leaks and the likelihood of press intrusion, cautioning him to be prepared. And because Jimmy understood the harsher reality, he had arranged for police escorts and barricades around the chapel. What Sakura hadn’t told Redmond was that he had also set up surveillance cameras.
Willie entered the small triangular church alone. Dipping her fingers inside the bowl of holy water, she made the sign of the cross. The morning’s gray light filtered in sharp detail through the chapel’s stained glass windows. She knelt in the last pew on the left, and for a moment returned to the church of her youth. To a day in January, when the New Orleans skies seemed more disposed to give up snow than rain.
She had waited that day, in the seventeenth year of her life, in a pew just in front of the confessional booths at the rear of the church. Those claustrophobic stalls that were the focus of so much mystery and dread. She had waited, fidgeting and anxious, preparing to tell her sins to Father, to whisper through the grille her mea culpas. Yet she had not made her confession that day, but had run from the church like evil itself, carrying her sins with her. That was the last attempt she’d ever made at Reconciliation. And though she was now only vaguely conscious of the old guilt and fear, she knew it only lay sleeping, not dead. But she’d learned over the years to live with both her real and imagined sins, often cursing her weaknesses, and the Church that had so easily made her feel shame.
Michael brought her back to the present. He sat in front, was at the funeral only because Reese Redmond had asked him to come. He appeared strangely foreign inside the dark suit he’d pulled from somewhere in his closet. She thought he’d glanced over at Margot’s casket once, but that was an illusion because he stood like a man already dead inside his own flesh.
She searched until she found Jimmy and Hanae. They were sitting together near the middle of the chapel. Sakura, real and good and grounded. Hanae, luminous and pure, a light against the dark unleashed. Then her eyes strayed to the altar. To the priest fussing with his chalice. In a short time he would transform water and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The great mystery of transubstantiation. She forced herself to believe, so that she might pray for divine intervention. A prayer not for Margot, whose destiny rested beyond her petition, but for her sons, whose destinies remained so fragile and uncertain. And a prayer for Michael, that he would not abandon the best that lay inside of him. And selfishly, she prayed for herself. And for that seventeen-year-old girl she’d tried so hard to leave behind.
Bleached light filtered t
hrough the office’s single window, depositing a weak band across the desk, whitewashing stacks of folders and loose papers. Willie stretched out in a chair, massaging her feet, her shoes tossed aside. She glanced over and saw that Jimmy had hung up his overcoat. She had tossed hers over the back of a chair. Its hem was dragging the floor.
“You make me feel like a slob, Sakura.”
He turned.
“Look at me. I’ve pulled my blouse out my skirt, my shoes are off, and my coat is half-hanging off the chair. You’ve hung up your coat. Your tie’s perfect. Your suit jacket’s still on. But then, you always keep your jacket on.”
He smiled, pouring hot water through a strainer over tea.
“I’m sorry.”
He stared at her.
“I’m chatting away like everything’s right with the world.” She lay her head back, closing her eyes. “Don’t mind me. I don’t do well at funerals. . . . I barely made it to my own mother’s funeral.”
He walked over and placed a cup of tea in her hand.
She looked up at him. “Doesn’t it ever get to you, Jimmy?”
“You know the answer to that, Willie.”
She nodded, blew at the steam coming out of the cup. “Who do you miss most, Sakura?”
“My grandmother . . . but her spirit manages to get my attention at least once a day.”
“I miss my mother.”
He nodded. “Pay attention.”
“What?”
He smiled.
She shook her head. “Too much noise in my head lately. . . . Speaking of noise, what does McCauley have to say?”
“He’s not happy. Seven dead women. Now Margot Redmond. The kidnapping is an additional complication.”
“Such a sensitive bastard.”
He moved back to his desk. “I have to wonder if the press conference . . .”
“Don’t even go there, Sakura. This man sets his own agenda.”
“And just what agenda is that, Willie?”
“God, I wish I knew.”
“Those hesitation marks must mean he considered cutting Margot, opening her chest and reversing the organs.”
“Instead he chews off her nipples. And takes her children.”
“He did revert to his original pattern of wrapping the body in Visqueen before dumping it. Within blocks from where Siebrig was found.”
“Why take those boys?”
He poured himself another cup of tea. “We’re still searching Westchester County.”
She nodded, took a long swill of tea. “I think they’re alive, Jimmy.” She looked up at him. “I don’t know why, except that those twins are an important piece of whatever insanity is driving him.”
“So his real target was the boys, not Margot?”
She shook her head. “Margot was part of what he wanted. Using his mouth to violate her breasts, instead of incising her chest with a scalpel. That was an intensely intimate and focused action, coming from a place where it had incubated a long time.”
“With whom is he so angry?”
She met his gaze. “His mother.”
“And Jason and Damon?”
She stood, putting on her shoes, tucking in her blouse. “If he is identifying Margot with his mother, then . . .”
“. . . he’s identifying himself with the twins.”
“It’s as good a theory as any, but I don’t know where to go with it yet.”
“Want another cup?” He was walking back to the hot plate.
“No, I’m done here.”
He turned, the cup held in his hand like a relic. “The dead are dead.”
“But the boys might be alive.”
He nodded. “This shifts everything.”
“So we focus on the boys, and everything else falls into place.”
He set the cup down. “Wilhelmina?”
“Don’t ask, Jimmy.” She was tired and frustrated, and suddenly she was crying.
He walked over, handed her his handkerchief.
After a few minutes she took a staccatoed breath. Blew her nose. “Sorry . . .” she managed to get out. “I . . . I wish I were crying for her.” She looked up. “Crying for Margot. But I’m not. I’m not even crying for those poor little boys.” Her eyes fell, so that the crumpled handkerchief became the focus of her attention. “I’m crying for myself, James Sakura. The selfish bitch I am. I’m crying for myself.” The last words brought on another fit of tears. “I hate myself. And I hate Michael.” She looked up. “For what he’s doing. For what he’s going to do.”
She fumbled with the handkerchief. “I didn’t see him at all this weekend. I suppose he was out in Westchester with the searchers. Where he stayed, I have no idea. What I do know is I’m going to lose him. Because Margot dead is a lot harder to compete with than Margot alive. And even if by some miracle the boys are found safe, it still won’t matter. God, two innocent children are missing, and all I can think of . . .” She was tearing up again.
He took her hand. “I’m your friend, Willie. Nothing will ever change that.”
The apartment felt cold. The lamp near the sofa cut a hazy circle in grayness. Willie stood at the console and poured herself a drink, then walked to the light to sit down. Her purse and her shoes were on the floor where she’d left them minutes ago. She curled in the cushions, making a nest of abandonment.
She had sensed that Michael was in the apartment as soon as she’d come in. She’d tiptoed shoeless down the hall until she could see his back. He was sitting in the drafting chair in his workroom, staring at his unfinished model, a skeletal beginning of the cathedral of Rouen. She had waited, hardly breathing, but Michael never moved. And she let herself take comfort in believing that he had no idea she was there.
Still in her work clothes, she’d retreated to the living room, not wanting . . . no, not daring to intrude. It had been stupid to think that her relocation to the small bedroom could be even a temporary solution. Occupying the bedroom that opened onto Michael’s workroom was hardly giving him space. And perhaps she had not really wanted to.
Hang in there was the latest advice she had given herself, but it was impossible to follow when the oppression and blackness in this place were like hands pushing at her back. She shuddered and finished her drink. It was not in her nature to avoid confrontation. And she wasn’t going to cry again.
She went back down the hall, returning to stand in the threshold, as if she were expecting an earthquake and had secured the safest spot. There was no physical indication that Michael as yet even guessed she was in the apartment. Certainly he hadn’t moved at all. But this time she refused to believe that he was unaware of her.
“What do you want from me, Michael? I’m willing to give it, whatever it is.” Her tone dared him to continue not looking at her.
He turned in the chair, the swivel pivoting as if of its own will. He didn’t speak, and it was hard to describe his expression. But at least he didn’t look through her, as he had in these last few days.
“You want me to go.” She spoke the words which apparently he could not. Out of pity perhaps, or some crazy notion of politeness. “Say it, Michael.”
She hadn’t wanted to sound angry. God knew she didn’t want to be a source of pain to him. What she wanted was the opposite, to be his help and his comfort. That he wouldn’t let her, that he didn’t want her, hurt worse than anything had in her life.
“You want me to go,” she repeated. “You’re going to have to say it.”
His eyes shifted to blankness. But his voice was clear enough. “Go.” It echoed at her back.
Kits alive. Alive in yaps ringing like bells. Alive in openmouthed, air-sucking, boy-legged sprints. Home free.
He smiled, savoring the image. Kits home free. No more sour-matted den. No too swift paw against folly. No leaking teat, or milk-crusted fur. No waiting for secondhand flesh kept in caches. Kits-into-dogs together on the run.
The primal wood lay within. Rabbit-stalking streaks. Bird-snapping, feather-fu
ll stomachs. Gekking and snirking in woodland romps. Leaps and nips at furry hinds. Fleet, sweet-scented paws. Berry-rouged snouts, needle-piercing teeth. Ear-pricked, nose-sniffing races. Vulpes vulpes. Kits alive.
One collapsed onto the back of the other, a squealing stack-of-boy.
Conjoined forever. He tasted the words, rich on his tongue.
“Mommy coming?” Jason stopped, turning to catch his eyes.
He frowned at the question, asked again.
“You are not happy in the forest?”
Jason nodded. Damon glancing at his brother, then mirror-nodding.
Like a visiting Dutch uncle, he reached with splayed fingers, tousling their hair. Feeling the precious blood-red thickness of it. Anointing. New princes in the Kingdom.
Then he knelt and took their hands into his, bringing a thumb from each into his mouth, and sucked. Suckled their sweet boy-honey flesh. Holy, holy Eucharist.
“Mommy coming?” Damon took up the refrain, like a bone now in his mouth.
And he, self-proclaimed, a new Father of Lies, lied.
“Sailing in the clouds.” Hell . . . sailing to Hell.
For a moment they seemed confused.
Then Jason, “Mommy’s in an airplane?”
Hard fooling a fox.
He made a whooshing sound, his fingers peaked to mimic a high-flying plane.
They giggled, and whooshed and swooped, with him in the lead, around the forest he had made. A merry formation zooming in the winking strings of the white Christmas lights, a spider’s web pulled across the potted trees. Dipping now into the dark of a molded cave. Then out again, under the electric-globe moon. Shadow-making. An adventure in manufactured magic, in the hollow of secret concrete-constructed space. He stopped short, under the imagined sky, and gazed into their upturned faces. The primeval forest danced.
Tell them Mother Fox is dead, he whispered inside himself. Tell them the vixen bitch is dead and be done with it. Tell them they are free. Tell them they have at last won the keys to the Kingdom.