by Harker Moore
“We will probably never know all that these children have suffered.” She paused dramatically to let that horror take. Then, “We do know that Jason and Damon have lost their mother, and were present at the death of the man who, though he may have been a monster, was their only caretaker for the nine days he held them captive.
“When we return from the break, we’ll be talking to renowned psychologist Dr. Sharon Maravich, who will offer some insight on what might be ahead for these two little boys, and on just what kind of forces may have driven the mysterious madman who killed eight women, including Margot Redmond, before his own strange death.”
The camera light winked out. Zoe sat back, thinking about the things she knew but couldn’t tell. Like those kids and the dead killer curled up nude together. It was past icky. And she did have her standards.
She smiled and greeted her guest as the doctor took a chair and was wired for the interview. The cameras went live again and they breezed through the segment to the end of the show, all speculation and psychobabble bullshit, which was all that was left to do till more of the reportable facts surrounding the case were released, or could be weaseled out. The official autopsy report on St. Cyr was yet to be issued, though the police had been quick enough to leak that the cause of death was some self-injected drug.
Back in her office she got ready to make more calls, trying to come up with some new angle on what, for a few more days at least, was still the hottest story in the pack. She’d be featured tonight on one of the prime-time Fox shows, repeating her exclusive on the whole fake forest bit. But tomorrow . . . ?
The real mystery she’d like to crack was St. Cyr himself. Who was he really? What hole had he crawled out of? Despite the scramble among the media—and the hunt was intense—no one had yet succeeded in breaking through the veneer of a life created out of carefully falsified documents and transcripts.
The person who’d called himself David St. Cyr had not seemed to exist before his appearance in college. But this much was real: He had graduated from Tulane. He was a licensed architect who had done a few residential projects in and around New Orleans before heading to New York, though certainly nothing as grand as the house he’d designed for the Attenboroughs, or the home that would have been completed for the Redmonds, if it hadn’t become more important to kill the wife on the way to stealing the kids.
When it came to the official line, Little Zoe smelled a rat. It wasn’t that the police were hiding something they knew, but rather that they were fudging to the media on just how much they didn’t know. All of them were in the same boat when it came to this psycho. She smiled for a moment, settling back in her chair, thinking there was one cop she didn’t mind sharing a boat, or a bed, with.
Willie sat with Jimmy on the small balcony that was one of the special features of the Jamili apartment. The evening was clear and cold, and a sudden gust of wind sent Willie in for a shawl. She threw another log on the fire, enjoying its warm crusty smell, the pop and crackle that intermittently filtered through the sounds of nighttime traffic.
“Another glass of wine?” she called from the bar.
“I’m okay.”
“Now that’s a moon,” she said, stepping back outside, a refill in her hand.
“Tsukimi.”
“Which is . . . ?” She flopped back down into a chair, stretching out her legs, hooking her ankles over the balcony railing.
“Moon-watching. In autumn, Japanese families gather to watch the harvest moon. As a boy, aki was my favorite season of the year.”
“I like thinking of you as a boy James Sakura.”
He smiled. “Akira was an awkward boy. Tall and thin.”
“Akira? Your Japanese name?”
He nodded. “Akira would climb the hillside with his hundred cousins, his pockets full of chestnuts, a ripe persimmon in each fist, and race the rising moon.”
“That’s a nice picture, James.”
“It was another time.”
“You miss Japan?”
“My memories serve me well. I’m afraid I would be out of place there now.”
“But you have Hanae.”
“Yes. Hanae is my Japan.”
“Someday I’m going to find someone who loves me like you love Hanae.”
He turned and looked at her.
“No, Michael is not that man.”
“I had hoped . . .”
“So did I.”
He leaned deeper into the chair that was too short for his long legs. “I am glad the boys are going to be all right.”
“I really don’t think St. Cyr meant to kill them.”
“It certainly doesn’t seem that way.”
“The amount of Demerol administered was calculated to put them to sleep and nothing more. He must have drugged them right before you and Michael entered the warehouse.”
“Watching us on the surveillance camera helped with the timing.”
“But he wanted to kill himself. That injection of Demerol he gave himself was enough to kill two people.”
“Linsky said he was dying anyway.”
“Situs inversus with levocardia. An anomaly within an anomaly. All the organs are reversed, except the majority of the cardiac mass is in the left chest. Levoversion is an extremely rare pathophysiology, Jimmy, and always associated with congenital heart disease.”
“So how does that explain what he was doing to the women?”
“He was reversing all their organs, including the heart. Situs inversus totalis.”
“Which would ‘normalize’ his abnormality.”
“Correct. Sympathetic magic. The ritual effects real change. Fix the women and he fixes himself. People with situs inversus totalis, or ‘mirror image’ pathophysiology, typically have a normal life expectancy.”
“Why women?”
Willie stood, looked out over the darkening city. “I think Margot’s death answers that.” She turned. “At the most fundamental level, St. Cyr’s fantasy involved hatred of his mother. Killing women by ritually correcting his defect punishes the woman who played the central role in the creation of that defect.”
“And Margot was the culminating sacrifice.”
“Yes—all the other murders were ultimately leading up to Margot. When murder after murder failed to satisfy him, when they failed to ‘cure’ him, there was no other choice but to kill the cause of his pain and suffering. Killing Margot was finally killing his mother.”
“But why Margot specifically?”
“Why a serial chooses a particular victim is integral to the fantasy. In Margot’s case, it may have been as simple as St. Cyr’s mother had red hair.”
“And the twins?”
She sat back down. “That is a beautiful moon, Jimmy.”
He followed her eyes.
“When you found the boys, you said St. Cyr was curled around them. That they seemed to be nesting inside the curve of his body.”
“Yes, the three of them were naked inside that cave he’d built.”
“The examination of the boys showed no evidence of sexual molestation.”
“Correct.”
She nodded. “He wouldn’t abuse those boys. He loved them. In his twisted mind, the boys somehow represented him, an idealized version of David St. Cyr. Perfect in every way. So at the end, as he lay dying, he was giving birth to himself. That’s why I believe he never meant to harm the twins. Damon and Jason were the reborn David.”
Jimmy stood. “You’re right, it’s a hell of a moon, Wilhelmina French.”
“Why, James Sakura, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse.”
“You haven’t been listening.”
She laughed.
“You finished packing?”
“Yes, everything’s set. Dr. Rainier is taking my patients.”
“Need a lift to the airport?”
“A cab is easier.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
“Don’t go soft on me now, Sakura.”
He smiled. “Call us sometimes?”
“You know I will. Besides, I’m not going away forever. Just long enough to finish my book.”
“Eat some of those beignets for me.”
“First thing.” She reached out and wrapped her arms around him. “Why does life have to be so damn complicated, Sakura?”
“Buddha says it’s because of our egos.”
“Screw Buddha.”
Hanae had been able to open her hands against her heart. The nest’s fragile burden had been protected: The twins were free. Now was a time for healing. In meditation this afternoon, she had begun to feel peace stirring in her spirit. Her mind, contentment’s journey. But tonight there was the reawakening of her body.
She straddled Jimmy’s back, massaging the muscles along his shoulders.
“This is what I’ve waited for all day.” He lay flat, with his arms curled under a pillow.
“You are not supposed to talk.”
He turned over between her legs. “There are too many rules, Wife.”
“Rules are necessary.” She had begun to work on his chest.
“No rules at home.” He took her hands into his.
She could feel his growing arousal. “I can sense you have renewed energy.”
“You have worked your magic on me, Wife.”
“I must be more careful or neither of us will sleep this night.”
“We can sleep tomorrow. I will stay home from work and we will stay in bed the entire day.”
At this she laughed.
“You doubt me.”
She took her hands from his and moved them over his face. “You are a beautiful man, James Sakura.”
“Your hands have failed you. I am an ugly man.”
Again she laughed. “My hands never lie. But it was your heart of which I spoke.”
“We are lucky, Hanae. To have each other.”
“You think of Kenjin?”
“And the others. Reese. The twins. The families of all those women. So many over the years.”
She nodded. “And you carry their sorrow.”
“Always it is with me.”
“It is your chosen path, James. You have made room for it.” Then she smiled, bringing his hand to her. “Feel my heart. It sings your name.”
EPILOGUE
There was a coolness in the ruins, as if heat itself had been consumed in the fire that had raged here. Of the big house, little remained but a section of the side gallery. One defiant column lifted to the sun, which seemed reluctant to penetrate beyond it.
Odin Dupre walked down crumbling steps into a cancerous garden where the weak and exotic had died to feed the wild metastasis of plainer but hardier species. The azaleas in the stranglehold of silver-lace. The prized beds of roses gone straggling, dried sticks with thorns.
Sleeping Beauty’s castle came to mind. But nothing was going to wake here.
A breeze stirred, setting the mossed oaks sighing like a murmur of grieving. But beyond the destruction, the day was bright and hard, too warm for the season. He stopped to prick his finger on a thorn, enjoying the appearance of blood. Remembering how much Mother hated this kind of weather for the holidays.
He could imagine it now the way it had been. Bessie in the kitchen cranking out cookies and cakes. The air conditioner cranking out too, a false cold to match the climate in Mother’s visions of what Christmas should be. Cedar boughs everywhere, gathered from the property to “deck the halls.” He could smell it, the rich tarry resin that stained and raised rashes on Didon Petit’s hands.
And the Christmas tree, in the place of honor in the high-ceilinged parlor. No homegrown cedar, but a giant flocked spruce trucked in all the way from New Orleans every year. Mother, like so many ladies of the Deep South, dreamed perpetually of a white Christmas that never came. And, of course, there was always Oliver about, to spoil whatever nature left untouched. Oliver at war with the holidays. At war with Mother, and her notions of perfection.
She had given birth in the big house. A fashion of that frivolous decade, to employ a midwife. And Mother was such a romantic. No ultrasound. Everything natural. Her brain giddy with possibility. A girl to dress, a twenty-year plan for a debut and wedding. Or a boy to seal her worth. The real surprise was that there were two.
Poor Mother, giving birth to the Kingdom of One. Rival to her domain. Odin and Oliver. Mirror twins, the doctors said when the sickly things were rushed in for inspection. Replicate DNA spun on its axis. The reversal complete, from cowlicks to organs. The sole exception, one stubborn heart that failed to make its turn.
At least that was all that was noticed in the first days, when the boys lay in incubators like some mad scientist’s experiment gone terribly wrong. Wrinkled and red, little old men, with distended chests and concave abdomens. Eyes like newborn kittens, anemic and pale. Milky membranes hiding what others only later were teased to discover as the other exception. This one external. Two sets of bicolored eyes. Blue, green. Green, blue.
His first memory was of the Kingdom . . . and the other differences. Differences between him and Oliver that developed as arms and legs developed. As lungs and livers. Penises and scrotums. As height and width and depth developed. His left became Oliver’s right; his right, Oliver’s left. It seemed they were two sides of a single brain. And he relished the dichotomy, as he loved their sameness. Polar opposites, they attracted each other. Two perfect halves of one whole. It was, after all, a single zygote that had divided in Mother’s womb, a cleft in the protoplasm, producing two princes for the Kingdom where only one had been anticipated. He imagined that bloody sea, swimming face-to-face with his mirror image, anchored by umbilical ropes that twice would be severed to gain freedom’s magic.
From the first they spoke their own language. Communicating in smiles and gestures. Then giggles and goos. Later in a vocabulary of words of their own making. Gotoruma was the signal to flee the watchful eyes of the adult world, or more important Mattie, who could see more than any fifty white folks. And they sneaked and skulked until their bedroom they had gained, for there lay the seat of the Kingdom. Where secrets brewed. And plans were laid. Where oaths were sworn and pacts made. Where the universe uncoiled from the stuff of books, and test tubes, and birds, and crickets, and frogs. Where secret touches were given beneath starched sheets, as each stared into one eye blue, and one eye green, and wished for the day that they alone ruled the Kingdom.
He was Mother’s favorite from the first, as though Oliver, with his sickly heart, had poisoned the well. It was Odin this and Odin that. Odin, who respected the servants. Odin, who charmed the society ladies. Odin, who learned to hunt with a gun, and had killed his first deer at seven. And there was cause for Mother’s preference. For Oliver constantly reminded the help to keep their place. Used the N-word when he didn’t get his way with Bessie or Mattie. Exposed himself to one of the society lady’s daughters. Hated guns, and killed with his hands.
Odin smiled, where Oliver frowned. He compromised, where Oliver pouted. He was a boy of light, Oliver a boy of the dark. Like night and day, it could be said. But it was most fundamentally a lie.
So that when Oliver first brought a kill to their room, a possum with babies still alive, crawling like ants over their mother’s stiffening carcass, he had gotten an erection as long and hard as Oliver’s. And when Oliver had forced one of the little dark girls, his erection had followed his brother’s lead. And though he was frightened of his own passion, he had felt shivers of excitement over Oliver’s first human kill, and the second and third, bodies buried deep in thick dark soil.
But he had been cautious, fearing their getting caught. And he had trembled and stood guard as Oliver trapped and tortured and killed. Planned and harnessed the victims of their ravening boyhood. But Oliver had never led him where he had not wished to go. Never once had his conscience stood in outrage as he enjoyed the spoils of the war Oliver waged against the world. Never once had morality intruded. Never once had he feared the flames of Hell
, or Monsignor Bordelon’s confessional. What he feared was Mother.
And he stood witness too, Odin the good twin, as Oliver was reviled and punished. And he hated himself for not letting his evil show more clearly, for not revealing that it was his brother who was the braver, the more honest. So that in the night, as they held each other and kissed openmouthed, he begged forgiveness for hiding from the consequences his brother’s dark shadow cast. But Oliver would have none of it, extolling his virtues. His intelligence and cleverness. His charm and wit. And most of all his strength. For was it not he, Odin, who ventured into the world of light, who played at the good games, when it was ever and always easier to do the bad. And Oliver would curl against him, crying because of his deformed heart, crying out against his own weaknesses, against the mother who had left her mark on him like Cain.
And then there was the day Mother sent Didon Petit to find the source of the foul smell in their bedroom, and the caretaker discovered Oliver’s booty under the floorboards. That finished it. Oliver was corrupting Odin. Oliver must be sent away. Father put up a feeble struggle. Saying it was not natural that the twins be separated. But Mother ranted and raved, and got her way as always. It was going to be the Christian Brothers on the Gulf Coast with their righteousness and rules who would save Oliver. But he, Odin, could not allow it. Cut off his arm. His leg. Blind one eye. He could not allow Oliver to be sent away alone. He finally settled it by convincing Mother that Oliver needed him if he were to be set upon the path of good. In truth, it was he who needed Oliver.
The good Christian Brothers, however, did nothing but feed Oliver’s defiance, and when a succession of misdeeds, and ultimately the rape of another student, sent Oliver home, Odin was foolishly happy, believing the Kingdom would be at last restored. But as the days stretched into months, and Oliver’s presence a bête noire upon Mother’s life, she revealed other plans. Oliver was to be committed to an asylum. Sent away, no longer in the interest of rehabilitation, but incarceration. So that Mother’s world could proceed without further disruptions. So that she could go on as if no fissure had taken hold in her fertilized ovum. So she could once and for all forget one had become two.