Stone Angel

by Carol O’Connell

  “Where are you going?” Her tone rebuked him for the temerity of going away without being dismissed.

  Well, tough – another Malloryism. He had learned a lot of them over the years of abuse at her hands; the abuse mainly consisting of him loving her, and Mallory loving no one. “Charles? Where are – ”

  “I’m going to find out who killed Babe Laurie.”

  “Charles.” Her voice was faint in the growing distance between them.

  He was doing so well. He made his way along the dark road and didn’t look back. As he approached the artist’s cottage, it was dark. Mallory sitting on her telephone pole, tapping at her computer, turned on all the lamps in the house, all at once, to light his way.

  After a quiet hour of housebreaking, Mallory returned to the woods with a shovel from her mother’s garden shed. She wondered what the sheriff would make of her recent visit to his empty house, and what she had left behind. The tool case was slung on a shoulder strap and thumping against her side as she moved through the trees, guided by a narrow golden beam. The penlight exposed every root and rock lying in wait for her. When she brushed a fern away from her face, the penlight shone on one hand, and she froze.

  Her long red fingernails were torn and broken, and the polish was flaking away. The flesh showed scratches, raw red knuckles and blue bruises. She stared at this damage for a moment, incredulous, as though such things as chipped nails were inconceivable in her universe. And this was true.

  From the age of ten, she had been compulsively neat, never suffering any chips in her facade, nor one thing out of place in her environs. Her foster mother, the late Helen Markowitz, had prized a neat, clean house. Young Kathy had worshipped Helen and made this ethic part of her religion, which did not include God, but certainly every type of mop and brush, every solvent and powder known to God and professional cleaning women. Back in her New York condo was a pantry, where each can, each bottle and jar stood at attention in the perfect formation of little soldiers in the service of the obsessively tidy Mallory, who was marred only in the places where it didn’t show.

  Until now.

  She leaned the shovel against a tree and covered her face with the ruined hands. So tired, deflating now, as if the air had been let out of her lungs and the blood from her veins. If she could just sit down in the cool darkness and not get up again. This day had been years long, painful and difficult, but she had only come undone at the sight of chipped polish and broken fingernails.

  No – it was not quite that simple.

  Everything had been lost – all the family she had ever known, and she had also lost important memories. She had not been able to remember the name of the dog when he lay dying. And now she was alone again, in a state she had always believed preferable to the company of people who would eventually leave her, every one of them, by death, or on foot, as Charles had left her tonight.

  Mallory turned off the penlight and stood in the dark, taking deep breaths and quietly rebuilding herself. Had there been light enough to see by, there would have been no trace of pain or any other emotion when she picked up the shovel and moved on.

  She entered the clearing where she had left her dog. After pulling the loose branches away, she knelt down beside his body and pulled the black leather duffel from a rotted-out log.

  The penlight was trained on the hollow in the wood, where insects scrambled over one another to escape the sudden brightness. Behind the duffel, she had stored a canvas bag with a cache of electronic equipment. She pulled it out and opened it to stash her leather sling, the tool kit and her minicomputer safely inside the metallic lining.

  When everything was well hidden again, she picked up the shovel and began the sad work of digging a shallow grave. Later, she could come back and properly weight the animal’s body down. Now it was only important to her to see him into the ground. It would be harder to do this in the daylight, not for the danger, but for the look of him in age and death. In the dark, it was easier to picture her dog in his prime, when they had loved one another and gone everywhere together. Good dog.

  There was only time enough to drive the spade into the earth before the gunshot exploded behind her.

  She was hit, and the shovel was falling to the ground. Her gun had cleared the shoulder holster before she spun around to fire one shot into the tree. She had no target in sight. The leaves were a mass of blackness. Aim was guided by the intuition of a new creature in the world, all reflex and instinct, detecting form in utter darkness, just as game animals distilled sound from the hunter’s idea of silence.

  Fred Laurie’s body dropped from the tree – dead weight with a large bullet hole in his chest.

  She nodded, approving the shot. She had selected the.357 magnum over the police-issue.38 for its improved stopping power – a good choice. This was what went through her mind as she stared down at her kill and appraised the hole in the target that was once a human being.

  Mallory the Machine was back.

  When she holstered her gun, she felt the wet slick of her own blood on her left shoulder and found the exit wound. She looked down at the rifle lying near the man’s body. It was a.22.

  Well, that would certainly mess up a frog. He should have used a different gauge for hunting humans.

  Fool

  There was no pain from her wound yet, but it would come soon enough. She felt around the back of her shoulder. Exploring fingers found the wet entry wound. So there was no bullet to dig out. On the downside, there were two holes to lose her blood by. Still she could manage. When she was a little girl, Tom Jessop had once told her there were more than a dozen small animals running through these woods carrying bullet wounds from idiot Laurie brothers, and yet living to a ripe old age.

  She waited, listening for the first sound of footsteps coming to investigate the shot. She saw nothing, heard nothing, yet she was aware of a body twenty feet in front of her. Mallory bolted away from the dog and the duffel bag and the dead man.

  She had lost Mallory in the trees, but that was not a problem. Lilith was running past the point of fatigue. Racing in that comfort zone where she gave up the struggle, doors opened in her mind. She knew where Mallory was headed. They were connected, moving through space in tandem. Lilith paused at the rim of the cemetery. Cass Shelley’s angel towered over every other monument. It was magnificent, poised for flight. She walked around the unfurled wings to the back of the statue, and there she met the angel in the flesh. The statue was twinning. The stark white face of Mallory emerged from the stone folds of the flowing robe, and in the next instant she was gone, and blood dripped from the marble as though the stone had been wounded.

  The deputy streaked after her, running across the grass, skirting graves in her path. Mallory was disappearing into the woods beyond the cemetery, her gold hair shining through the leaves and then gone, blotted out by the dense foliage. Lilith screamed into the night, “If you keep running, you’ll lose what blood you got left.”

  And now she became unhinged as the sound of laughter came back to her. Lilith ran faster now. The gold hair was in sight again, and she was closing the distance between them. And then Mallory folded and sank to the ground. Lilith was drawing ragged breaths when she came to stand over the fallen body. She drew her gun and held it in a two-handed posture as she had been taught to do.

  Mallory groaned. She was bleeding from a wound in her back. Lilith knelt beside her, raising her gun barrel to the sky and freeing one hand to roll the body over. “Who did this to you?”

  She was startled by the sight of the gun in Mallory’s hand. In an unreal expansion of time, she watched the trigger finger pulling back in a slow squeeze.

  “Back off,” said Mallory, and Lilith did as she was told. But her gun barrel was lowering. “Careful, Rookie.”

  Lilith went rigid, her gun still aiming elsewhere. It was not quite a standoff. Mallory would have the edge – if it came to trading shots.

  “I wasn’t put on this planet to raise you from scratch,” said
Mallory, leaning on one arm. “When will you learn?”

  “It cost you a lot of blood to run like that. You’ll die before you clear these woods.”

  “What’s that to you, Rookie? It’s not as if you were a real cop.” Mallory was smiling now. “I know the feds recruited you from the state Police.”

  “You don’t know – ”

  “Don’t I?” Mallory was sitting up now. “Any idiot could’ve worked it out. The feds keep track of every cult in the country. Or they like to think they do.”

  “I don’t have any – ”

  “And you’re so green. You probably bought that old line about a bright future with the FBI. Am I right? Well, surprise, Rookie. They lied. They do that a lot.”

  Mallory was on her feet now, while Lilith remained in a frozen crouch. “The FBI will never take you, and you can’t go back to the state police, can you? They cut your orders. They know you’re cooperating with the feds behind the sheriff’s back. Why should they trust you? Your career is over, Rookie. Or maybe not. You could still salvage this.”

  Mallory tilted her head to one side. She had to be in pain, but she seemed not to notice the holes in her body and the streaming blood. Her voice was less sarcastic now. “The last thing you want is the sheriff bringing me in. Even you can see that.”

  But all Lilith could see was the blood from the shoulder wound. Mallory paid it no attention, and that was maddening. How much blood could she lose before she -

  “Feeling a little sick, Deputy? Maybe you’re thinking about that moment when you get caught, when you have to face the sheriff while he spits on you.” She leaned her body into the conversation, standing easy, with nothing in her face to agree with the bullet wounds in her body, no sign of feeling. So cold.

  “Deputy, I’m going to get you out of this mess. When you know what I know, the dirt on the feds, they’ll have to take you in and move you along. I inherited my dossier from a master of dirt collection. Do you want my help or not?”

  The deputy gripped her gun tighter as she nodded, rising to a slow stand.

  Mallory altered suddenly, every muscle tensing to fire a bullet point-blank into Lilith’s head. The deputy allowed the aim of her gun to drift farther afield, and Mallory eased back to a more relaxed stance.

  This woman could kill her; she was sure of that much. The only thing Lilith doubted was herself. Her television image of a cop had died in the first few days at the police academy. The fantasy and the facts of life had warred. Doubt had won. It had moved into her consciousness and followed her everywhere. It was with her now, standing off to one side like a haunt. Could you kill Mallory? it whispered. Could you kill anyone?

  No – maybe. She had wanted to be a cop all her life. That was all she was certain of. Now it was all falling apart. And yes, she did feel sick. If it came to trading shots -

  “Point the gun toward the ground while we talk,” said Mallory. “It’ll give me less reason to blow your face off.” And now she smiled to say, Nothing personal in that – no hard feelings, okay? “I’m going to put your life back together.” Mallory leveled the gun at her eyes. “Point the gun down.”

  Lilith slowly turned the gun barrel toward the ground. It was not fear that made her do it, but logic. Mallory would not play the waiting game, not while she was losing blood. Lilith looked down at the gun in her hand. She would not give it up, no matter what.

  She was raising her eyes just as Mallory fired the shot. Lilith believed the world had banged to a close and she was dying. Every muscle in her body was loosening, knees buckling, arms flailing, and before her eyes was the afterimage of a bright flash of powder. She felt the breath of the bullet, the rush of it speeding by her flesh. She had felt the heat of it. But the bullet had missed her. All these deductions were made in only a moment – just a single flying second.

  When the ball of fire imprinted on her retina had faded and no longer obscured her view, she was staring at her own Colt revolver in Mallory’s hand – for the second time in one day.

  Shit.

  Doubt, that old familiar haunt, was standing behind her, laughing at her. So you want to be a cop, Lilith?

  “You keep losing this,” said Mallory, holding up the Colt.

  Don’t look so tragic, Rookie. You just learned one more valuable lesson – don’t believe anything a suspect tells you.“

  “You were never gonna give me the dirt on the feds.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So if the sheriff does get you, you’re gonna tell him about the FBI.”

  “No, Rookie, I lied about that, too. It’s better if he hears it from you.”

  Lilith was coming to grips with the odd and backward ethics of Mallory. There was a code here, but damned if -

  “Take the speedloader off your belt and throw it down.”

  Lilith unhooked the heavy weight from her belt and dropped it. It rolled to a stop at Mallory’s feet. The woman holstered her own gun and trained the Colt on Lilith as she picked up the speedloader. “You’ll never need this, and it slows you down. Now take off the silly nightstick. And the rest of that garbage, the radio and the flashlight. That’s more dead weight.”

  The truncheon was unhooked and fell to the ground at Lilith’s feet, followed by the rest of her gear.

  Mallory scrutinized her. “Now you look like a cop instead of a damn amateur.” She dropped the speedloader into the pocket of her blazer, and now she held two revolvers again. “I’m going to do you one more favor – so you won’t have to explain how you lost the gun.” Mallory tossed the.38 Colt into the thick foliage. It was a surprisingly long throw, and Lilith lost track of the flight of gunmetal against the dark trees.

  “That should keep you busy for a while.” Mallory pointed to the deputy’s flashlight lying on the ground. “I’m sure you’ve got fresh batteries in that thing.” She smiled. “You check them every morning, don’t you?” Unspoken was the word fool.

  Lilith’s hands balled into fists as she stared at the break in the trees where her gun had disappeared. Every other emotion was displaced by anger, and it was in her voice as she said, “So, Mallory, maybe I’ll chase you down again – real soon.”

  When she turned back to the place where Mallory had been standing, there was no one there.

  “Yeah, right,” said a voice in the dark.

  Near the edge of Finger Bayou, Mallory waded through the waist-deep water and the morass of floating plants. She grabbed at exposed roots and saplings along the bank to drag herself forward. It was slippery work, a real fight to keep her balance. Her feet had no traction in the slime. The blood ran freely from her wounds. It trickled down her body and mingled with the black bayou water, leaving no track to follow.

  Shock was working on her, slowing her steps as she weakened with the loss of blood. She had no warning that her legs would fail her. She fell to her knees, not feeling the cracked branch on the bottom of the bayou cutting into one leg of her blue jeans and her flesh. She reached out for a sapling and missed, falling back into the water. Now she was out of reach of the shore. She tried to make a stand, but her feet were sliding undirected with the loss of handholds. She floundered in eerie silence, making no splashing noises, but gliding this way and that, tiring more, losing more blood, and finally – exhausted. Her eyes were closing as she fell forward and lay face down in the water.

  When her eyes opened again, she lay on solid ground. Rough hands were pressing on her back, and water streamed from her open mouth. Her eyes closed again. She was only vaguely aware that her heels were making ruts in the grass as she was dragged along the ground.

  For an hour, the woods were lit with stalks of electric-yellow flashlight beams waving through the trees. Finally the quest was abandoned for the night. Malcolm and Ray Laurie had given up on finding Fred. They cursed their brother for a bastard as they made their way back home, preparing a story for Fred’s wife, something to keep her from jumping to the conclusion that he was shacked up with a peep-show bimbo, which th
ey figured he was.

  The woods were quiet again, but for the owls and smaller creatures. On toward morning, another pair of men broke the silence, walking the gravel path of the cemetery, spooking the field mice and the night birds who hunted them. With great stealth, the men approached the stone angel. They bound her wings with ropes and pulled her to the ground. Then she was also dragged away in the dark.

  CHAPTER 14

  Charles Butler had lost his tie and gone native. The soft denim shirt was a bit tight at the shoulders, but otherwise wonderfully comfortable, as were the blue jeans and the hiking boots. The owner of Dayborn’s dry goods store had been thrilled to unload all the giant-size clothing, for there was a dearth of giants in St. Jude Parish. The storekeeper had despaired of ever selling this stock until yesterday, when Charles had walked into the shop, the top of his head just grazing the eighteenth-century doorframe.

  Today, Charles sat on a wooden bench and stared up at the skylight in the chapel studio, watching all the stars that were left in the early morning sky and sipping fresh coffee.

  “It’s an obscene hour” said Henry Roth. “But this kind of work is best done in the dark. I appreciate the help.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Charles followed the sculptor and his rolling pallet to the ramp at the back of the studio. A single bare light bulb hung over a group of white-shrouded figures, all in a circle on the platform which had once been an altar. Charles counted eleven draped pieces in staggered sizes. “Is there some reason why they’re covered?”

  “It’s my private collection.”

  Henry began to pull the sheets away. A procession of tall statuary emerged from half the circle, their backs turned on Charles. The tallest angel must be at least nine feet high. And then the coverings were pulled from the smaller statues facing him.