Charles pointed to her. “Henry?”
“Augusta’s mother. She committed suicide. The church wouldn’t allow her to be buried in consecrated ground. That’s why she’s out there on the edge. Originally, there was only a slab of concrete. Jason Trebec wouldn’t pay for a tomb or headstone.”
“She seems more delicate than Augusta.”
“Nancy was a very gentle woman. Augusta is more like her father, ruthless and hideously single-minded.” He regarded the statue with loving eyes. “I entered that piece in a competition and won a scholarship to study in Rome for four years. It was a wonderful time to be young and alive. I think of Rome almost every day.”
“Why did you come back to Dayborn?”
“I was born in the rear bedroom of my house. The pull of home is very strong. Look at Trebec House. That place is Augusta’s raison d‘ètre.”
“But she lives for its destruction.”
“I was the beneficiary of some of that destruction. Did you see the broken tiles in the ballroom? Augusta ordered new marble for repairs. The bank trustee didn’t know the difference between a receipt for marble tiles and a solid block of stone. She gave me that block and my first commission – Nancy Trebec’s monument. I was only fifteen years old. Augusta changed my life.”
“But her own life was ruined by revenge.”
“Ruined? What gave you that idea? Augusta has had more than her fair portion of fine wines, good lovers and fresh horses. She always had a wonderfully greedy appetite.”
“But the house and all those beautiful, irreplaceable things.”
“You look at her house and you see the ruined ballroom floor. You don’t see a young girl riding her horse through the rooms, breaking the marble at a gallop. 1 was there.”
With his hands, Henry made Charles see Augusta as she was, half a century ago, her face flushed with heat, her blue eyes unnaturally bright. She made the horse dance on two legs, then on four, pounding, crashing across the marble tiles, cracks opening in the wake of hooves. The horse seemed to step in time. “And I believed that I heard music, I swear. But it was only Augusta laughing. I would not part with that memory for the whole earth. Augusta has nothing to regret.”
It was Charles that Henry Roth felt sorry for. This was not imagination; he could read that much in the artist’s face. This was the second time that Henry had suggested something might be passing Charles by, some portion of a life.
A gunshot was fired behind them, and then another shot and another. It seemed as though the leaves of the trees were being blown away, but it was only clouds of birds taking flight from every branch. A man bearing Laurie features was shooting the statue.
The sightseers ran along every path leading out and away from the cemetery. Deputy Lilith Beaudare rushed through the line of trees. She put the muzzle of her gun to the man’s mouth while she held a handful of his blond hair and made him scream until he dropped the rifle.
Where had she come from? Had she been watching -
“That makes eight,” said Henry, unfazed by the violence, as though he had been expecting it. He wrote the man’s name on a page of his notebook.
After the deputy had taken the handcuffed gunman away, Charles was about to rise, when Henry restrained him with one hand on his arm. The sculptor pointed to a figure on the path leading into the cemetery from the bridge road. It was Alma Furgueson, the woman with purple highlights in her black hair. A few days ago she had run from the square in tears, and now she was slow-stepping toward the angel, and her face was a study in horror. The woman fell to her knees and said. “I’m so sorry, so sorry.. sorry.”
And now a young man, clutching a cloth bag in his arms, entered the cemetery. He was gaping at the angel, moving closer, flapping his oversized clown shoes. His rolled up pantlegs were coming undone.
“Oh, Jimmy, she’s crying.” Alma extended a hand to this young man. “Come pray with me, Jimmy. We’ll ask her forgiveness.”
“I’ve seen that man before,” said Charles. “He was at the tent show. Do you know him?” He looked down at Henry’s notebook as the artist was adding the name Jimmy Simms to the list. Henry slipped the notebook back in his shirt pocket so his hands could speak.
“He’s a small-job man. Every town has one. He washes windows and sands floors. Most of the time, he just walks around the town, waiting for the day to end.”
“He’s homeless?”
“No, the sheriff arranged a room for him in the back of the library. I think he sweeps the floors for his keep.”
Jimmy Simms reminded Charles of Ira: both were young men walking on the edge of a life.
Once more, Alma begged the young man to join her in a quest for atonement. The man seemed more like a child in his oversized clothes and his shattered face – a child who had just been brutally slapped. And now he did what all children do when they are badly frightened – Jimmy ran away.
And Charles died a little.
Alma went after him on her knees for a bit, and then she stood up and came back to the angel. Her legs were unsteady, and now she fell.
What had he done? Charles was moving toward her when Henry blocked his way and shook his head.
“Now what’s that all about?” said a familiar voice behind them. Riker?
Charles whirled around to see his old friend standing there. The detective was staring at the prostrate woman, and he was not happy. “Charles, why do I think you’ve been picking up bad habits from Mallory?”
The three men watched in silence as the woman made an awkward stand and walked aimless through the city of tombs, careening toward the perimeter, arms outstretched, seeking balance, crying.
Now Riker reached up to tap Charles’s shoulder, and in his face was the question Why? He was probably alluding to the maiming of an unarmed woman.
Riker turned his face away from Henry Roth and spoke in low tones. “I told the sheriff I never heard of you or Mallory. Will the little guy play along with that?”
And now Charles realized that Riker had been watching them long enough to see Henry use sign language, and he had assumed the man was deaf as well as mute. Charles didn’t correct this impression when Riker turned his back on Henry to hold a more private conversation.
“Henry is an old friend of Mallory’s,” said Charles. “He wouldn’t do anything to – ”
“Good.” Riker put one hand on Charles’s arm and guided him over to the angel. There were chips in the marble. One ear was gone and the tip of a wing had been blown away by the recent gunfire.
“What a travesty.” Charles looked down at Henry. “It was a beautiful piece of work.”
“Oh, I especially like the tears,” said Riker, staring up at the angel’s moist eyes. “I know a guy in SoHo who specializes in weeping icons. Only two bills a miracle. So what did you use – calcium chloride?”
“No, nothing that sophisticated. My secret ingredient is beef fat. In a proper mixture, it liquefies in the first hour of sunlight.”
“So you timed it for the tour group?” Riker turned to see Alma at the edge of the cemetery. She fell down again and did not get up this time, but crawled down the path on her hands and knees. “Very effective, but a bullet would have been quicker and cleaner.”
Charles jammed his hands into his pockets, and lowered his tell-all face to hide his thoughts from Riker. He stared at the ground, as though he might find salvation there.
“I understand,” said Riker, sounding almost genuine in his consolation. “It’s not your fault. The devil made you do it, right? And just where is our little Princess of Darkness?”
“The truth, Riker? I don’t know. I don’t think she’d trust me with that information.” And now he let Riker see his face as naked proof.
“But you can get a message to her, right?” Now Riker smiled, gleaning an affirmation from Charles’s silence and averted eyes. “I have to talk to her, and real soon. The kid must have been in a hurry to pull information out of government files. She got sloppy. The feds found
her little footprints in a highly classified computer. That’s a federal rap, but they’re willing to cut a deal.”
“But you know she’s compulsively neat. So, our government said Mallory was sloppy, and you believed that?”
“Nice try, Charles. Tell Mallory to get in touch while I can still run interference for her, okay?”
“I don’t think she’d appreciate interference just now. Perhaps if you – ”
“How many people do you figure that kid has on her hate list, Charles? Twenty? Maybe thirty people? That’s bad, real bad, because Mallory wouldn’t waste time hating anyone she couldn’t destroy.”
Charles didn’t consider the import of these words beyond wondering if Riker knew he was mangling a quotation of Goethe’s. He had always suspected Riker of being much more than he let on. Beneath that incredibly awful suit, the badly spotted tie, the slovenly, crude, unshaven veneer, was a -
“I’ve known her longer than you have,” said Riker. “I watched her grow up. You know how much I love that kid, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then believe me when I tell you, for the last time, Charles – Mallory is a freaking sociopath. I know at least one of your degrees is in psychology, so why do you still have so much trouble with that? And don’t give me any of that ‘little lost soul’ crap. She doesn’t have a soul.”
“She does.”
“Doesn’t! She lost her soul before Lou Markowitz found her. Lou’s wife tried to knit her a new one, but the kid wouldn’t wear it.”
Charles was casting around for some defense of Mallory, and failing in this, he offered, “But did you know that she could play the piano when she was only six years old?”
Riker looked up at the sky for a moment. And then he shrugged in surrender and inclined his head as a bow to the absurd. Without another word, he turned around and walked away.
Now Henry was standing by Charles’s side, words flying off his fingers asking why this man said all these things about Kathy. “I’ve only known her to tell one lie. She said she was seven years old while she was still six.”
“She told a similar lie to a friend of mine,” said Charles. “When he was filling out papers for her foster care, she told him she was twelve when she was only ten. They compromised at eleven.”
However, that had not been her best piece of work. Louis Markowitz had brought the child home one night, after arresting her for theft. It was to be a one-night arrangement for his own convenience, or so he said. But he was a very warm and decent man, so that part of his story had always been suspect.
By Louis’s account, when young Kathy appeared at the breakfast table the following morning, her glittering eyes were cold, and she wore a very unnerving smile. His wife had stood behind Kathy’s chair and explained to Louis that he would not be taking the little girl off to Juvenile Hall, or anywhere else – not ever. Kathy was here to stay, Helen told him flatly, and that was that. And then poor Louis realized that the baby thief had casually pocketed his wife and one mortgaged wood-frame house in Brooklyn.
Until the day Louis died, he never underestimated Kathy Mallory again. Or so he said.
When Tom Jessop came home to visit his bed for the first time in thirty-six hours, he walked in the back door and found a package was sitting on his kitchen table.
How did it get there? The cleaning woman was not due back for days, and the evidence of her absence was the load of dishes in the sink, the hamper filled to overflowing and dirty socks trailing out the door of the bathroom.
Distrustfully, carefully, he untied the string and opened the brown paper wrapper. Now he looked down at the gun he had lost to his erstwhile prisoner. A sheet of paper was rolled around the barrel. He spread the curling paper flat on the table. He was so tired, his eyes were closing to slits as he read her letter:
You wanted to know what my mother said to me when she was dying. She wrote a lot of numbers on the back of my hand and told me to run to the public telephone on the highway and dial that number. She said a woman would come for me. Most of the phone number was smudged, so I never did get through to anyone. I just kept running. I wanted to run to you, but she said, ‘No, don’t go near the sheriff’s office, you’ll get hurt.’ So I always figured you were part of it. Until tonight, I didn’t know the deputy was in the mob that stoned her. That must have been why she wanted me to stay clear of your office. She was afraid Travis would hurt me before I could get to you. If I could get to you now, I would – because I want my pocket watch back.
He slipped the gold watch from his shirt pocket, opened the case and speculated on the name engraved above hers. Was this the man who had raised her? She must have loved him, she prized his watch so much. So it was Louis Markowitz who had been there for her when she needed help. It might have been himself, if only he had stayed in town that day. But Cass had known that he wouldn’t be back before dark – not in time to save her daughter.
A cascade of images overwhelmed him: the blood on the floor of Kathy’s bedroom, the small red handprints inside the closet, Cass’s flesh on the rocks in the yard. And now he saw Kathy as a badly frightened child, all alone on the road and grieving for her mother.
He walked around the house in the slow shuffle of a much older man, closing all the curtains. It wouldn’t do for any passerby to glance in a window and see the sheriff crying.
CHAPTER 17
Few creatures began life in November; it was largely a killing season. But in the hour before dawn, owls and bats were folding up their wings. Insects and small animals enjoyed a respite from the carnage before the balance of power shifted and the daylight predators opened their eyes.
The cemetery was at peace, but one of its angels was missing.
The chilly air of a sudden cold front had mixed up a low-lying fog, and the sheriff’s feet disappeared in the mist as he stood before the bare stone pedestal and read the dates of Cass Shelley’s life and death. Seventeen years ago, he had meant to add a line to this engraving, a bit of poetry perhaps, but the right words had always eluded him. All these years later, he was still thinking about this unfinished business.
He turned to his deputy, who blended so well with the dark. Lilith’s ghost-white father had been the most superstitious man Tom Jessop had ever known. If old Guy Beaudare had been here yesterday and seen that angel weep, he would have been down on one knee in a heartbeat, rattling rosary beads and chanting prayers like a madman. Apparently, Guy’s daughter was more at home in the solid world and not a big believer in miracles.
“So you figure they’re coming right back?”
“It’ll be a while,” she said. “They have to lay boards in front of the pallet to move the statue over the ground. It’s slow work.”
“But real quiet and no tracks or ruts. So Mr. Butler never left town. Good job, Lilith. I guess you earned your pay this week.”
“You’re not going to fire me?”
“Never occurred to me. I knew I could depend on Guy to raise his daughter right.”
“You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“From the first day. But it’s good you told me.” Though he had only set eyes on Lilith three times in her life, it would have been awkward to fire the girl. He had so many years invested in drinking with her father, and an ocean of beer was a damn strong bond.
“I’m gonna tell the FBI to go to hell.”
“I like the sentiment, Lilith, but you might want to rethink that. Twenty years ago, they came to me with the same deal.”
“My father said you told them where to get off.”
“But after that, there were times I could’ve used their help. You can learn a lot from my mistakes.”
“So why did you turn them down?”
“They made my skin crawl with their little dossiers on the New Church crowd. Granted, Malcolm’s pulled off some shady deals, but the feds didn’t know anything about that. They just wanted to collect information on another church. They’re a lot like insects, collecting things w
ithout a brain to tell them why, collecting for its own sake. I wasn’t about to help them. So they asked my deputy if he’d like to make a little extra cash.”
“Travis worked for the feds?
“Not Travis – that worthless idiot. No, they used the real deputy, Eliot Dobbs. He’s long gone now. Got a better job up north. What with the other towns going broke and folding left and right, I didn’t really need another deputy, so I never replaced him. But I did miss the connection to the feds.”
He walked down the gravel path, inspecting tombs and looking for a likely place to hide. At his back, Lilith was asking, “How did you find out Eliot was working for them?”
“He asked if I would mind having a spy on the payroll. Said he had a baby on the way and needed the extra money. Hell, I used to help him spin lies for his reports. And then when I needed help, the feds came through for Eliot. A boy from Dayborn had run off. Jimmy was just a little kid then – way too young to be on the road. The feds helped us trace him to New York City, and I brought him back home.”
And New York was where Kathy had run to. He was sure of that now. Did every damn road in the world lead to that hellhole? The cop at the Missing Persons Bureau had told him there wasn’t a state in the union that had not contributed a child to the streets of New York. When Jimmy Simms came home again, he had probably flooded the whole school with tales of the city, hiding out and foraging for food. But Jimmy was a good five years older than Kathy when he made his run.
“I guess Eliot was gone when Kathy disappeared,” said Lilith.
“That he was. But it didn’t matter. The FBI wouldn’t have spent any time looking for her. We all figured she was dead. There was so much blood.”
He picked out a monument decked with cherubs. It offered good cover and a view of the empty pedestal. “This is as good a spot as any.”
The deputy put one finger to her lips and pointed east.
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