13 1/2

by Nevada Barr

  He opened the top drawer.

  An oval box, sterling silver with tortoiseshell inlay and spindly piano-shaped legs, nestled among the tie clips and collar stays. Crying out, Marshall gathered it up gently, as if it were a living thing, and carried it over to the bed.

  The box had belonged to their mother. She kept it on her dressing table. Since the police had dragged him from the house, it was the first and only relic Marshall had seen from his old life. He’d refused anything from the house. He kept no pictures, and he never asked what Danny did with the place or its furnishings. Danny had inherited a chunk of money, as well as the house, when their folks died. Marshall had never asked what the numbers were. Given he’d hacked them to death, it seemed cold to ask about the payoff.

  Marshall wanted nothing from his childhood; he was afraid of the memories that would be evoked. Sitting on Danny’s bed, he was stunned at how good it felt, cradling his mother’s jewelry box. There were memories in it, he knew, but his mother’s shade would not let them cut too deeply. Polly had taught him that; mothers forgave their children. Even the monsters.

  The silver box closed with a tiny catch on the left-he marveled that he remembered. He flicked the lock with a fingernail and opened it. On the brown velvet lining lay the simple gold cross his mother had worn every day of her life. She was wearing it the night she was killed. Marshall had seen it fall from her robe when she leaned down to kiss him goodnight.

  Beside it, much tinier, was another cross on a chain. It wasn’t real gold, and the chain was sturdier. To Lena, it had been perfect because it was just like Momma’s. Once it had been fastened around her neck, she refused to have it taken off. It had been a wonder she never lost or broke it. Marshall smiled at the memory of his little sister, then abruptly stopped, waiting for the memory of how she died to overlay it.

  The picture in his mind of a round-cheeked two-year-old, blonde hair in wispy curls, her precious gold cross pulled up on its chain and stuck in her mouth, wavered but held. “Hey, Lena,” he whispered. He’d never dared remember her, except fleetingly and as an addendum to something else.

  Marshall pinched up a copper disk the size of a nickel. On the back was engraved: “Ginger Raines. 1341 Epcott.”

  The cat’s tag. Ginger had a red leatherette collar, he recalled, with a tag on it. Not knowing what it was doing in his mother’s box, he put it back and lifted out their dad’s wedding ring. On the inside was inscribed, “Frank, my hero.” A private joke they hadn’t lived long enough to share with their children. Laying the ring in the center of his palm, Marshall looked at it in the unilateral light of Danny’s bed lamp. Their father had been proud of the scratches in the soft gold. “A wedding ring is for life,” he’d tell his sons. “No need to take it off. Like love, time only makes it more beautiful.” Marshall had forgotten that. He had forgotten much of his life. Eleven years. Like it was a book he read once and never thought of again.

  The last item in the jewelry box was a pair of silver-toned hockey sticks, a pin Dylan’s fourth-grade team had won. Between ages seven and ten, he’d had a passion for hockey. The Fighting Marmots-a name as inexplicable as it was hard to chant-had taken first at state. He was way too cool to wear the pin, but he’d liked to look at it when Rich wasn’t around to rag him.

  Never a sentimentalist-his life had not been the kind Hallmark wrote cards about-Marshall was taken aback at how much he wanted to hold on to these keepsakes.

  It was foolish to believe their owners lived on through them. Foolish to believe. To feel it was a different thing.

  Again he lifted out his mother’s cross, supporting it by the slender broken chain.

  It must have been taken from her body before the burial and given to Rich. Marshall thought about that, as he watched the golden cross turning hypnotically.

  Mr. Kroger, their dad’s partner, had made all the arrangements. Rich told him that the first time he’d visited him in Drummond. There was no funeral-Mr. Kroger had the bodies interred as soon as the autopsies were completed-but they were going to have a memorial service when the news people quit dogging everybody concerned.

  Marshall tried to picture their dad’s rough-voiced partner. He’d seemed like such a big man and so old, but he couldn’t have been more than forty-five. He’d liked Dylan, and used to growl at him, and act like he ate children. It would sound sinister to tell but it wasn’t. It was fun.

  The forensic pathologist must have removed the wedding ring and the necklace. Marshall couldn’t picture Mr. Kroger prying his dad’s wedding ring off. No one would pry off a man’s wedding ring before burying him next to his wife. At least no man from Minnesota. The same went for the gold crosses. The undertaker, the pathologist, the preacher, Mr. Kroger, all would have sent them to God with their bearers.

  Closing his hand on the shards of his boyhood, Marshall felt the points of the cross and the hockey sticks pushing into the flesh of palm and fingers. This was all that remained of who he had been before he was Butcher Boy.

  The round smoothness of his father’s wedding ring clicked against the gold of Marshall ’s own wedding band, and he wondered why his mother’s ring hadn’t been in the jewelry box as well.

  With that thought, the warm and fuzzy memories blasted out of his mind.

  One ring had been taken and one left on its finger. Because Dylan had his mother’s cross for a souvenir and didn’t need anything else.

  Dylan had taken the jewelry from the corpses after he killed them, and Rich had kept it for him. Kept it from the cops, more likely.

  Who the fuck do you think you are, Psycho Boy? The Beaver? Dennis the Menace? Some cute little boy, prone to mischief? You fucking butchered everybody.

  “I was eleven years old, for God’s sake,” Marshall whispered. “I was a little boy.”

  The necklaces, Lena ’s and his mother’s, would have been drowned in their blood. Marshall was shaking his head, trying to see himself digging through matted hair and brains to steal away the last glitter of their lives.

  “No,” he cried out and opened his hand: the crosses, the ring, the hockey pin, the brass tag.

  There was nothing there of Rich’s. Dylan’s pin was there, in the box with the things taken from that night. Dylan. Mom. Dad. Lena. Even Ginger the cat.

  Rich wasn’t there. If Dylan took them, why would he keep a memento of himself and not of his brother, another of his intended victims?

  34

  The emergency gas can Danny carried up the narrow stairs didn’t have more than a gallon in it, and the fuel was several years old, but from what he’d seen of the rat’s nest upstairs, it should suffice.

  He was fairly sure Polly had no idea who’d attacked her, but she had to suspect it was Marshall. There was enough evidence Marsh could end up in prison-grown-up prison-for the rest of his life. Kicking the door open, he picked his way through the dark rooms using the flashlight he’d taken from the trunk when he’d retrieved the gasoline. The narrow beam played across the unmade bed, the littered floor, Vondra’s scrapbook.

  He wondered if Marshall was featured in it, if the trial or Rochester was mentioned. There was no time to look. He followed his light into the bathroom and directed the beam into the tub.

  “God, but you’re disgusting,” he said as he stared down at the plastic-and-blood-wrapped woman. “You ever see The Blob, Vondra? You could have played the title role.” Grabbing the shower curtain with both hands, he braced himself against the side of the old claw-foot tub and heaved. The plastic tore away, and the corpse flopped back the few inches he’d managed to raise it.

  Peeling away the curtain, he looked for something to grab onto that wouldn’t give. The creepy drape she wore was already half torn from the body. Holding his breath, he fished out a fat hand. Red acrylic nails clattered against the side of the tub, and he jumped.

  With a grunt, he pulled the body over the rim of the tub and staggered back as the wad of limbs and curtain slapped to the floor. Distorted like those of a drowned w
oman, Vondra’s dead eyes peered at him through a film of plastic.

  Debris was plowed aside as he dragged her to the bed and propped her against it. It would have to do; he wasn’t going to throw his back out trying to lift her onto the mattress. Sparingly, he sloshed gasoline on the bedding. There were enough cigarette packs and matches around for it to look like she’d fallen asleep with a lit cigarette.

  Maybe the investigators would look past the obvious; maybe they wouldn’t. Since Katrina, the building had had no insurance. There would be no monetary gain to the owner. New Orleans was filled with derelict buildings. There wasn’t a lot of interest in those the insurance companies didn’t have to fork out cash for. It was a risk he’d have to take.

  “A scrapbook!” he said as he struck a match from one of the thousands of matchbooks lying about. “Photos, newspaper articles. I think your killer is off the hook; I think you died of stupidity,” he said. He tossed the match, heard it fizzle out, and struck another.

  Fumes. It was the fumes that lit, not the gasoline itself. Danny took a few steps back from the bed, waited a minute for the fumes to build up, then struck another match and tossed it onto the pyre. A thin, blue tongue licked out, liked what it tasted, and flowed rapidly over the cloth and paper.

  “Bingo,” he said and watched the rapidly growing fire for a second or two.

  He needed the place to ignite quickly and cleanly. He needed to call Polly and warn her before Marshall found her.

  The fire grew more voracious and began devouring the trash, half filling the bedroom. “Four million dollars in the bank, and I’m a cleaning lady,” he said. Trailing gasoline, he left the apartment.

  Away from the building, where responding fire or policemen wouldn’t see him and wonder what he was doing in a bad neighborhood so late, Danny got into his car, a swift and classic BMW convertible. For a moment he sat behind the wheel listening to the grinding of the gears in his head before he realized he was grinding his teeth. He stopped the scrape of metal thoughts and tooth enamel and took his cell phone from his pocket.

  For a moment, he toyed with the idea of calling Marsh, inviting him to the party.

  He deserved to be there. Had he not gotten so full of himself over this marriage and family thing, Vondra would still be alive, and Polly and her kids would be safe. Polly Deschamps, not Polly Marchand.

  There were only two Marchands, brothers.

  He and Dylan had found the names on a crypt in a cemetery in Metairie. They’d just arrived in New Orleans. It was early spring-the dead of winter in Minnesota. Azaleas were blazing, kept from spontaneous ignition only by the intense cool green of new grass. Aboveground burials, the stuff of movies and old black-and-white photographs, lured them in from the highway.

  The place was deserted but for a groundskeeper or two. Live oaks hushed the noise from I-10. They wandered in perfect harmony along the lanes, admiring the mausoleums. It was as close to peace as Richard had ever known. It was bliss. Just the two of them, safe in the city of the dead.

  A mausoleum, small but exquisite in detail and design, stood between two monoliths; beside them it looked like a dollhouse. There were only two names on the tiny door, infants who had died at birth: Marshall Dillon Marchand, born and died December 1, 1872, and Daniel Richard Marchand, born and died December 1, 1872.

  Identical twins.

  It had been a sign and they embraced it. From that day on, they had been the Marchand brothers of New Orleans, and they had prospered. When it was just the two of them, life worked.

  That Marsh had the occasional dalliance didn’t worry Danny overmuch. It was his brother’s tendency to obsess-an addiction to a cloying sort of relationship-that was dangerous.

  Elaine would never know it, but Danny had saved her life. Even her rat-sized dog had survived. The incident smashed Marsh’s notions of recreating the same sort of sick family situation they’d had as kids.

  Until Polly.

  Danny hoped to keep Polly, Gracie, and Emma alive, but Marsh was becoming volatile. The business with the axe should have been enough to wake him up, but he was resisting the inevitable with a tenacity he’d not shown with Elaine.

  He punched in his sister-in-law’s cell phone number.

  “Polly, it’s Danny,” he said when she answered. “Where are you?”

  She was at Fontainebleau and Broad.

  “Don’t go home,” he told her. “ Marshall ’s gone berserk. I’m afraid I’m going to have to call the police, but I want to talk with you first. Maybe between the two of us we can get him to calm down. Can you meet me… ” Danny rapidly scanned the map of the city that he carried in his head. The cemetery where he and Dylan had become identical twins-the Marchand brothers-would be a fitting place but it would be closed at this hour.

  Marsh said the kids were with Martha. If Danny remembered correctly, Dr. Martha Durham lived up near City Park somewhere. “Meet me in City Park,” he said. “There’s a big live oak in front of the Christian Boys’ School. Meet me there.”

  “My God, Danny… ” she said, then no more, her words trailing away like a forgotten dream.

  “Can you do it? We can meet someplace else if you’d like.”

  “No. It’s… City Park… I can do it.” She sounded exhausted and scared.

  No wonder, Danny thought. It was odd that she didn’t mention being assaulted.

  Probably she didn’t want to accuse her beloved Mr. Marchand.

  “I may be a few minutes,” he said. “Lock your car doors and wait for me. If you see Marsh’s truck, get out of there. Quickly. It’ll be okay,” he promised. “We’ll get through this.”

  Danny hit “end” on the cell phone, punched in 411, and asked for the number of Martha Durham.

  Then he asked for the address.

  35

  Danny kept the blinds closed regardless of the time of day. Marshall had gone to great pains to make the old sash windows functional, as he did with every building he restored, but he needn’t have bothered with Danny’s unit. His brother believed the out-of-doors should be kept out of doors.

  For reasons he was unsure of-except that darkness covered more sins-he switched the lights off before he sat on Danny’s bed. He no longer wanted to see the relics of the lives in his hand but held them tightly; they gave him courage. For the first time in his life he tried, consciously and wholeheartedly, to remember the night of the killings. The night he became Butcher Boy and, along with his family, his childhood was slaughtered.

  Mack the Giant had ripped him from sleep-or the dead sleep of unconsciousness. He’d been groggy from the concussion and the medicine his mom had given him. His head felt as if would break open and spill his brains out if he moved. The cop had jerked him hard. Marshall remembered the pain and the fear. He’d thought they were all going to be murdered.

  The guy, the huge cop, had dragged him down the hall and forced him to look at Lena. Then he knew they were all going to be killed, that the carnage had already started. He remembered fighting hard as he could, to get away from the man in the policeman’s costume. Dylan thought it was a costume. Real police didn’t come and kill people for no reason.

  Marshall tried to go beyond what he could remember, to see the time before the police had come: himself alone, crazy, a boy, pulling the gold chain from around his baby sister’s neck.

  There wouldn’t have been any pulling. Her neck was severed lengthwise, a blow that had split her nearly in two from her crown to below her tiny bird-boned shoulders. The chain would have been cut. He tried to picture himself, that boy, Dylan, setting the axe down and fishing the gold cross out of the gore.

  The only boy he could see was the terrified child fighting to get away from the man he thought had killed his sister. He couldn’t remember being Butcher Boy.

  “Psycho fuck.” Mack had called him that.

  Traumatic amnesia. Psychotic break.

  When he’d seen little Lena, Marshall remembered Mack’s hand closing harder on the back of his ne
ck. In the darkness of Danny’s room, he felt it happening again. The cop stepped over Lena, jerking him along behind. Terrified his feet would touch his sister’s blood, he’d grabbed the cop’s leg. Mack backhanded him.

  Later, at the trial, the cop said he thought Dylan was going for his gun.

  His mother had fallen in the doorway of the master bedroom. She was face down, her long brown hair thrown forward. The amount of blood and its bright, comic book color shocked him.

  To get the cross from around her neck he would have had to fumble though the sopping mess, dig out the chain, and yank until it broke.

  Trying to picture Dylan-himself-doing that, all he saw were the butterflies, how beautiful they’d been above Kowalski’s office, how they’d died.

  The kiss, the last good memory.

  Dylan hadn’t seen his father. At least not that Marshall remembered. So much of his life had been haunted by that phrase, “not that he remembered.” He’d come to accept that the origins of Butcher Boy were the only thing worth remembering and worth forgetting. The rest of the memories of his young life had been locked behind that paradox.

  Once the monster had been laid over that little kid, Dylan, nobody ever thought about him again. Marshall hadn’t thought of him again. Butcher Boy in Drummond had not thought of him. In every way that mattered, Dylan had been murdered that night as surely as his mom, dad, and Lena were.

  “God, I miss you.” Marshall heard himself cry the words. “I loved you.” Saying the words felt strange. He didn’t know if what he tasted in the back of his throat was the foulest form of hypocrisy or freedom. Before Drummond, maybe as early as the trial, he had forbidden himself to feel love for his family, to feel anything. The jewelry had brought it all back.

  “I loved you,” he said again. Forty years of accumulated emotion hit him, and he began to dissolve, ice breaking away, glacial silences turning to liquid and pouring through the barren scoured places.

  “Momma and Daddy, I loved you. Your boy Dylan loved you.”