We're going home, Teddy.
The fever scrambled over him again. The sweat flowed down his neck and back, his scalp prickled. Soon his hair was dripping and his face was wet, the taste of salt flowing into his mouth. If nothing else, it perked her up. Her tiny body began to churn in the chair. He did the math. Burke had said she was older than him by four years. That made her no more than maybe fifty on the outside.
She grinned at him and Crease grinned back. She drew her chin back and her wrinkled lips dropped back into place. She said, "You my new neighbor? You number thirteen?"
"No."
"They always say no. All the thirteens say no."
"I guess they were lying then. I'm not."
"What do you want from me? I don't have anything for you." She started slowly nodding, certain of something. "You're sweating. It's not hot in here. Why are you sweating like that?" Her feet began to swing, the bottom of the slippers slapping her heels with each pass. "None of the other thirteens sweated."
"I want to talk about Mary."
The name got to her.
Sarah Burke was gone but not as gone as she wanted everyone to think. Her eyes cleared and she tilted her chin at him. Her brow knotted, the bottom lip quivered and drooped. He saw a pink flash of jutting tongue. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, and the tendons stood out in her forearms as clear as polished marble.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Tell me what happened, Sarah," he said.
"No."
He walked to the window nearest her. The shade was drawn. He tugged on it and the shade inched up over the glass. A ray of moonlight stabbed into the room and she flailed in her chair.
"Don't do that, thirteen," she told him. "My eyes, I've got a condition."
"I bet I know what it is. Tell me what happened to Mary."
"I could yell, you know. I could scream."
"You've been screaming for seventeen years. How about if you just talk to me instead?"
The condition of her eyes grew worse as the memories began to burn through her mind. He saw it happening, one small flame igniting a patch of dry woodland. The fire spreading, leaping across treetops, spanning all the hidden acres marked off with barb wire. It was alive and inescapable.
The blaze ran rampant as if on a mission. Sarah Burke sat gaping and wide-eyed with only purified, burning sparks of remembrance left behind in her head.
It made her slump even further down in the chair. Her feet were now swinging so fast that both slippers had launched across the room. He tried to enforce his will over her, make her spit out the truth. She seemed to be slowing down, waking up. Crease wondered why she'd outlasted all the thirteens next door.
He walked over and sat on her bed. It was a basic psychological ploy. You made yourself at home, showed them that you were there to stay, that what was theirs was now yours. He shifted the pillows behind him and lit a cigarette.
Sarah Burke stared at him with a kind of grudging respect.
Surrendering she said, "Where do you want me to start?"
"You know where."
"I suppose I do."
He waited, and time drifted quaintly in the house. The screen door slammed and the other needy occupants took advantage of the state of New Hampshire's and Sinclair Mayridge's good graces and settled in for the night. Doors opened and shut around the home. Toilets flushed, a shower went on.
Finally he had to prod her by saying, "With the upset."
"I've had a few. Haven't you?"
"Yes. Talk about the first one that counted."
She let out a cackle. It went on and on as the bones in her small body grated against one another. He could vividly picture her throwing back her head and letting that noise go on for another half minute before leaping out of the chair and diving through the window. Crease got ready to tackle her if need be.
But instead the laughter ended as abruptly as if she'd been strangled. "Who are you?"
"Tell me about the broken love affair."
"I've had a few of those too."
"No," Crease said. "I don't think you have."
"You're right, I'm too ugly. Hardly any man would ever have me."
"Just tell about the one who mattered. The one that meant everything to you."
What was inside her began to move closer to the surface. He could almost see it there in the black depths, rising, fighting to break free.
"What was his name, Sarah?"
That's all it took. The legs stopped swinging. She untwisted a little, and groaned from somewhere in the center of her chest as if awakening from a long sleep. The unfolding of her body became the unfurling of her past.
She drew her fingers through her hair and brushed it back across her head, and the witchy lady became just another battered woman who looked twenty years older than she was. He had arrested her many times. Under Tucco's tutelage he had created many variations of her.
She said, "Daniel. Daniel Purvis. He was a gambler."
"Ah."
"He couldn't help himself. It was a sickness. It had nothing to do with money, but with the excitement, the rush it gave him. He'd ride his truck on empty to see how much farther it would go. He'd pass a gas station and get a wild thrill that he'd made it that far, and then he'd still keep going, and pass another, and another. He always ended up stuck on the side of the road. Always. You ever meet anybody like that?"
Everybody had, whether they knew it or not. "Yes."
"Daniel was the only one who ever showed any interest. I was never pretty. Men made me feel ashamed. But not Daniel. He held me. He talked to me. He made me happy. Whispered my name. Can you understand that?"
"Yes."
She had a few psychological ploys of her own. Throwing it back in Crease's lap, so he sympathized. Maybe she'd picked it up off her psychiatrists on the mental wards.
"My family didn't approve. They tried to wedge themselves between us. My brother hated Daniel. He kept telling me to wait for someone better, a man who would truly love me. He always stressed the truth of love, but never understood what that meant. The truth of love is that you accept what's wrong and ugly and stupid and tainted in your lover. Sam is a very foolish and naive man. Ultimately, that's the reason why Vera left him." She glanced over at Crease and said, "May I have a cigarette?"
He got off the bed and offered her the pack. She stared at it in disgust. "Are those menthol?"
"All the store had left."
"Take it away."
He reseated himself and waited for her to get back into the rhythm of telling her story. It only took a minute.
"But Daniel couldn't control himself. His gambling grew worse. He couldn't stay away from the casinos. He played poker with strangers. No matter how much he had, he always owed more. He got into trouble. He was beaten once, not so badly. Then he was beaten again, much worse." She started speaking in speedy, clipped sentences devoid of any emotion, exactly as her brother had done. "Men were going to kill him. I begged my parents for money and they refused. Yes, they refused me. I knew my brother would deny me as well. Daniel couldn't hold off those brutes any longer. So you know what they did? I'll tell you. They tied him to the bumper of his pickup truck and drove it into a cement retaining wall. They crushed his right leg. The doctors had to amputate. He told the police nothing. I cared for him as best I could after that, while he recuperated, playing cards on his hospital bed. But all that mattered was money then. Every knock on the door, every phone call. Everything had become about money, no longer merely the thrill. There was nothing else."
He didn't want to tell her that it was that way for most people all of the time, so he just nodded.
"And still he owed the men who had taken his leg. That wasn't payment. I thought it would be enough payment in itself, the taking of his leg, but no, I was wrong. It didn't count, you see? It didn't cover a dime of debt, his blood and muscle and bone. His becoming a cripple. He still owed."
That was standard too. You didn't let the guy off after
you broke his arm, cut off his thumb, or burned his house down. That was just the interest, you still had to pay the principal.
"What was his game at the casino? Craps?"
"Blackjack and roulette."
Daniel Purvis really was a sucker.
"So let me guess," Crease said. "He was in a fifteen thousand dollar hole."
"Ten."
That surprised Crease. Ten g's usually wasn't enough to get the legbreakers out breaking legs. Then again, in Vermont, who knew. It was a spooky place compared to New York.
It also proved that Sarah Burke wasn't just trying to get the beau out of debt. She'd gotten greedy along the way. Another five grand to give them a head start someplace else, and her brother paying for it. Or maybe it was a show of love to Purvis, giving him the extra five g's as a gift. An extra pop to the addict, fill him full of bliss.
The rest of the house was silent now. Moonlight slashed into the room through the two inches of window pane Crease had uncovered when pulling up the shade. The slice of silver collapsed across the feeble, diseased yellow of the lamp. Shadows clung to the woman like cobwebs.
They sat there like that for a while, facing each other with their separate burdens which had somehow overlapped. Crease knew she was working up to it, to the act that had put her here as an escape from herself.
The mattress was soft and smelled faintly of some kind of citrus detergent, reminding him of Reb's bed.
"It was Daniel's idea," Sarah Burke said. "And of course I didn't argue. I didn't mind, not really. I hated my brother too much by then. I didn't put up any kind of resistance. The suggestion made sense, and even if it hadn't, I wouldn't have cared. I'd have done anything for him. That's the truth of love." She shifted in her seat and her bones rubbed against each other inside her like dry kindling. Crease had seen crack addicts under piles of garbage who looked healthier. He wondered how much longer she could possibly live. "How did it go down?"
"As easy as warm apple pie. I gathered Mary up in my arms, and Daniel called my brother Sam and demanded the ransom. Fifteen thousand dollars. I knew he had it on hand, in the bank if not in his store safe. I never thought he would call the police and endanger her that way. I thought he would follow our simple set of rules. In fact, at the time, I believed he'd know right off that it was me, and finally realize how much Daniel meant to me. You see, I thought he would give me the money out of understanding and kindness. That he would finally acknowledge how much I loved Daniel. That he would give it to us as a favor. A wedding gift. Mary hardly entered the matter at all. I cared deeply for her, or thought I did, up until that point, you see?"
Crease didn't. He couldn't. He had never loved anyone the way Sarah Burke had loved the one-legged gambler Purvis. Maybe his father. He'd been willing to give up a lot of his life to his father, but only because he hadn't known what else he could possibly do.
"And then?" he urged.
Sarah began to coil again. Her fingers tightened on the arms of the chair, the tiny legs started swinging once more. They were getting down to it now, to the real venom. He knew that in a very real way he was finishing her off.
"And then?" he repeated.
"And then came the part you're most eager to hear about, thirteen," she said. "Daniel and I wanted to trade her back for the money up at the old sawmill. It was the perfect setting, no one could possibly sneak up on us there. They were morons to try. My tightwad brother cared more for his money than his daughter, and far more than me. He called the sheriff. He sent that drunk, stumbling thief of a sheriff after us and we were all doomed after that. All of us."
Crease said, "It was your fault it went down the way it did. Purvis didn't call your brother soon enough after the snatch. They didn't know it was a snatch at first. They thought she might've just wandered away. That's why Sam called the sheriff. He was there when Purvis finally phoned. Your brother couldn't play it any other way, he had to work with the police. You botched it from the go."
Another pregnant pause in the room of the needy. Maybe he should check in next door for a while, catch up on his cool, be the thirteen. Nobody even came around to make sure the loonies were tucked into bed.
Sarah Burke's mouth opened and her tongue slid out like a leech. She had spent seventeen years trying to soothe her guilt with the idea that her crime of passion had made it worthwhile. There was enough blame to go around. The bent sheriff, her spiteful brother. She didn't like hearing that Purvis had screwed the pooch from the start. Six-year-old Mary Burke had never stood a chance.
"How do you know so much?" she asked.
"A Ouija board told me. You and Purvis took Mary to the mill together?"
"Yes, we were there, the three of us. We thought—I thought—that my brother would arrive and drop off the money and I would push Mary out to him. He would look in my face and see my love for Daniel and he would leave the ransom behind and go home. I would leave with Daniel and never see either of them again. That's why I kept telling Mary that I loved her and she should always hold in her heart, forever and ever, that Aunt Sarah loved her. I told her that even when she was much older she could always rely on it, you see? That Aunt Sarah was thinking of her, that she would always love her Mary."
Crease reached down and grabbed the side of the box spring, and his grip tightened until the material began to rip and the springs inside squealed. Sarah looked at him and said, "Are you sick?"
"Yes, I'm sick."
"Me too, thirteen. I have some pills here. Would you like some?"
"No," Crease said.
"Good, they're poison. For me anyway. They're killing me. I'm allergic but they keep giving them to me and I keep taking them. It will make things easier in the end for everyone."
He shut his eyes and released the mattress, took a few deep breaths until the fever began to pass. "You were waiting at the mill. You saw the sheriff pull up."
"Of course. He parked over the ridge but he was heavy-footed. He couldn't hear himself, how loud he was."
No, Crease thought, because the first thing that goes when you're drunk is the hearing.
"What did you and Purvis do then?"
"We left," she said.
"What?"
Her gaze locked with Crease's and she nodded. "That's right, I pushed Mary forward and told her to go see the nice policeman. Daniel said he spotted someone else in the woods, and we left. There are logger trails criss-crossing the entire hill. We drove away on one of them."
"Without the money? You couldn't have walked away from it that easily."
"But we did," Sarah Burke said. "I didn't want my niece to be hurt, and I couldn't afford to lose Daniel, not under any circumstances. As I said, this wasn't a kidnapping. I didn't want ransom. I wanted a gift. A gift from my brother. When I realized I was to be denied, we left."
"Where did you set her free in the mill? The far side? The north side?"
"Yes, that's right."
Way on the opposite end of the factory. His father should've seen a little girl walking up on him, at that point. But he was there for at least five hours before he noticed she was there, and when he did, he shot her.
Crease tried to see it from different angles. Maybe Mary fell asleep and only awoke at sunset, when Edwards started his move on the mill. But no, it made no sense. Could she have tried to follow after Sarah and Purvis after they left? Wandered around in the woods, lost for hours, before she found herself back at the mill? Just in time to snuff it. Too big a coincidence. It didn't really play.
He eyed Sarah Burke. She wasn't lying.
"Daniel drove me into town. He let me off in front of my brother's store, and then he just kept driving. I never saw him again. Perhaps he was only using me to get money. Or to have someone to care for him, at least for a while. Maybe he had grown tired of me. I realized that was possible from the start. Perhaps he did it to protect me from the men who would soon be coming for him. But it—"
"It didn't matter," Crease said. "You didn't care."
"
I didn't care, it didn't matter. Nothing did. Surely you see that."
He shook his head, kind of sadly, the way he did when he saw somebody about to do something stupid during a deal. Some idiot reaching for a gun, Tucco moving, Crease raising his .38, shaking his head.
"Not even the consequences," Sarah Burke said. "I understood what they would be. Even if we'd gotten the money and run away together, sooner or later he would've abandoned me. I'd have nowhere to go but home again to my brother's house. And then I'd go to jail."
"The police never questioned you?"
"Of course they did," she told him, "but Sam covered for me. You see, he knows I did it. He's always known, although he can't admit it to himself. That's why Vera left him. That's why he's so mincing and clean and proper. He can't relax. He can't let go. If he does, even for an instant, in any way, he'll vanish. That's what he says."
"Yes."
"That's what he's most afraid of—disappearing, the same way Mary did. The truth would destroy him. It may still." She let out a rictus smile that was no lip and all teeth. "As I've vanished. I suppose in my heart I always knew I'd wind up here or a place like it. There's no bars on the windows but I'm trapped. I dwindle. Where can I go? Where could I ever possibly go? I live in expectation. Every morning, every night, I fully expect him to walk through that door and kill me. I dream of it. I hope for it, you see. He thinks vanishing is a torture. For me, it would be a blessing. A godsend. Is that why you're here, thirteen? Did God send you after me?"
"No."
"Are you sure you won't share my poisonous pills?" she asked.
"No," he said, and started for the door, "you keep them all."
Chapter Twelve
The rearview drew his eyes. The sense that someone was following him, or worse, hiding in the back seat, was overwhelming. Was it his old man, sitting there with a pint in his hand, vomit crusted on his shirt front? His father sobbing, wishing he had another chance to do things right, or maybe just to steal a little more. Crease couldn't tell.
Over the miles, the presence became much stronger. Maybe Mary, trying to tell him what a waste it had all been? He knew who'd killed her. He knew why it had happened. All that was left was finding the cash, and a dead girl wouldn't care about that.
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