The Burial Society

by Nina Sadowsky

  “He want monogram? Give me knife! I slice off for him!” Tears dampen the maroon silk wrapped over Elena’s eyes.

  Gillian’s face goes slack with alarm. I think her reserved British sensibilities may actually be more unsettled by Elena’s histrionics than the horrific story of the branding. But then again, Gillian’s survived her fair share of horror.

  A photograph is taken of the monogram. I send it off to the Russian via my usual onion routing. Elena’s signature blond tresses are cut and dyed a mousy brown, her blue eyes concealed by brown contacts, her new passport photos taken.

  Gillian heads back to Giuseppe with Elena’s new photos. My old friend Balint will take over from here, babysitting the model until her traveling papers are ready.

  Frank feels a heavy pressure on his chest. A tight, grasping pain, like steel claws. Maybe he’s having a heart attack. That would top things off perfectly, he thinks acidly.

  He needs to get out of here.

  He cautions Natalie and Jake to stay in the hotel suite. Tells them he is going out to get some snacks. Asks if there’s anything in particular they want. Natalie requests English-language magazines or newspapers. Jake, Doritos and Coke.

  Natalie starts to give Frank a little grief: If he can go out, why can’t she? She’s been locked in this stupid hotel for four days. Frank shuts her down sharply. Things are spiraling out of control. He has to pull it together. He doesn’t have the time or the energy for her crap right now.

  He slams out of the room, all jittery anger, and clatters down the stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator.

  Frank thunders down the avenue, rage about the conversation he’s just had with his ex-wife blinding him to the bustle and shine of Paris on a beautiful summer evening.

  Della is suing for full custody. She’s claiming abandonment because of Frank’s cancellation of his promised trip to Disney World with the twins. She’s arranged for an accelerated court date. Della’s found a new sugar daddy who’s agreed to bankroll an expensive attorney with a reputation as a shark, she informed him gleefully. That fucker has moved them all into his house. His girls? In another man’s house!

  She thinks she’s going to deny him his children? And the bitch is making these obscene plays while he’s here in Paris, dealing with his brother’s murder? If Della suddenly appeared in front of him, Brian wouldn’t be the only one dead.

  Frank stops and blinks against the waning sunlight, registers his surroundings. The streets are thronged. The cafés hum with diners and drinkers. A fresh wash of people emerge from a nearby metro stop, laughing and chattering. A man walking a pair of flat-faced pugs smokes a cigarette and yells into his cellphone in angry French.

  Frank ducks into the nearest café and orders a beer. The enormity of what he’s facing overwhelms. The upcoming battle with Della. The potential loss of the twins. Responsibility for his niece and nephew.

  He has to get them back stateside as soon as possible. He will go to the embassy first thing tomorrow, explain the circumstances. Of course they all want to find Brian’s murderer, but what can he and the kids really do? And surely they have rights as American citizens. It’s not like any of them are suspects here. They are victims!

  As he rehearses his speech in his head, he imagines cooperation and alacrity in arranging their return to the U.S. He will make the court date. He will annihilate Della on the stand as he exposes her callousness.

  He slugs down the remainder of his beer, orders another. He fills with steely resolve. He is not losing his children. He’s worked too hard and too long to keep everything together. He’s damned if he’s going to allow it all to fall apart now.

  I hail a taxi at CDG. As we near the city, I direct my driver to pass the hotel to which the Burrows family has moved. I realize I’m hoping for glimpses of Natalie and Jake, even as I’m unsure why I feel so compelled.

  Pulling up, I see news vans and reporters. Gendarmes keep them in line. I ask my driver to stop. Pay him. Exit the taxi. Circulate through the crowd listening for valuable nuggets among the babble.

  The link has been made between the murdered Brian Burrows and Mallory Burrows’s disappearance back in the States, unleashing the mob of press I am now navigating.

  But it gets worse. The lives of the Burrowses have been threatened, first by Internet trolls and then an ugly crowd at the hotel accusing them of bringing a serial killer to Paris. One religious group has offered them exorcisms. Others offered prayer vigils on their behalf. Publishers and news outlets are throwing money at the family for interviews; the kids and their uncle have remained barricaded in their hotel.

  I need to help them.

  I make my way around to the service entrance of the hotel. I’m in luck. The shift is just changing. A bevy of maids exits the building.

  I focus on one woman in particular, bony, fair skin, mousy brown hair. She of all the exiting workers is not chatting with a friend or calling out cheerful farewells. She has the hangdog look of someone who has known real hunger and is desperately afraid deprivation is around every curve. Eastern European would be my guess.

  It takes me only sixty euros to get the scoop about the Burrows family and the drama they have brought to the hotel. The management wants them out, but the police insist they stay. Other guests are fleeing, of course, who would stay in a hotel that has turned into such a circus? And, she confides in me, they can hear the Burrows family arguing all the way out in the halls. Yelling, yelling, yelling all the time. And the teenage girl? Weeping. What a mess.

  I ask more questions. Shift changes? Hotel layout? Staff lockers? Room numbers? For another twenty euros she tells me everything. I elicit her name: Nyura. She’s Ukrainian. I scribble the number of one of my burner cells on a piece of paper and press it into her hand.

  “My name is Hannah Potter,” I tell her, using a dead-double alias I’ve not had occasion to employ for a while. “I think we will be of value to each other.”

  At least now the outside world views Natalie the way she views herself: as a pariah.

  It’s a relief in a way. She doesn’t have to pretend to be brave or stoic or normal. The shattered remains of her family have been shut away in this hotel suite to wallow in solitude. A family touched twice by pure evil. At least they all know what they are. Tainted.

  There are two cops stationed outside their door and more on the street outside the hotel to deal with the hungry press and the (enraged or solicitous) loons. Natalie knows she should be scared of all the frenzy, but she seethes with impatience and regret.

  Right after she spoke with Lilja she should have gone directly to Dad’s job site and quizzed the other people there. Instead, nervous about how long she had been gone, she came back to the hotel to find Uncle Frank frantic, furious at Jake for letting her slip out, equally angry and relieved to see Natalie return safely.

  She’d apologized. Tried to explain how stifled she felt in the hotel. Swore she would never sneak out again. Tried to shift the blame away from Jake.

  Natalie kept secret the information she’d gleaned from Lilja. She wanted to puzzle it through on her own first. Who could Daddy have been afraid of?

  Gradually Uncle Frank cooled. But Natalie didn’t dare sneak out again too soon and then the press descended. It’s been a freak show ever since.

  Despite the watchful eyes of her brother and her uncle, Natalie spends a little time each day locked in the bathroom, slicing minute incisions into her skin with a razor blade she’s secreted by taping it under the lid of the toilet tank. The ritual provides a much-needed release, first the feel of tantalizing pressure, blade to skin, then the glorious cut, the welling blood, the sweet relief the pain provides.

  Char. Scar. Trich. Bit. Charring, scarring, pulling, biting. The rotation serves Natalie well. Some of the other girls in treatment were purists, proud in a perverse way that trichotillomania, say, was their sole methodology, derisive of Natalie for her range. Natalie is less judgmental.

  If only her tension didn’t
build up again so quickly. The three of them are fighting all the time now. About the stupidest stuff.

  Natalie grabs the ice bucket and heads out to the hallway. She’s worked hard to earn the sympathy of the uniformed cops guarding them. They let her disappear down past the ice machine and into the stairwell for a few minutes of peace. How could they refuse her, this skinny young girl with the big eyes and tragic life? The cops can hear the fighting booming from inside the suite; they know how hard she has it right now.

  Natalie slips into the stairwell and sits on the landing, tucking the empty ice bucket next to her. She winds a strand of hair around her index finger. Tugs. Is filled with a pleasing pop of painful euphoria as the hair comes away.

  The woman’s voice is soft, American. “Natalie? Natalie Burrows?”

  Natalie starts, instantly guarded. “I can’t talk to the press,” she says automatically.

  “No, no, I’m not press. I’m a friend of, well, I was a friend of your father’s.”

  Natalie examines the woman. In her early thirties, maybe? Light brown hair falling in soft waves to her shoulders. Comfortable in her own skin is the powerful first impression. Fashionable, understated clothing is the second. Vaguely familiar is the third, although Natalie can’t place her.

  “Really? From where?” Natalie can hear the snide suspicion in her question.

  The woman introduces herself as Hannah Potter, an American living in Paris working for an interior design firm. She goes on to explain that she and Brian met at a violent-crime survivor’s counseling group.

  If Dad was going to a support group in Paris, it’s news to me. How did this woman get into the hotel? What the hell does she want? Natalie’s eyes narrow.

  With a smile Hannah continues. “I know you must think I’m nuts; I actually bribed a maid to get in here! It’s just that you and your brother were all your dad talked about at our meetings. He was missing you something fierce while you were away. Where was it? Amsterdam?”

  Hearing Hannah speak of her father with this unexpected intimacy brings a rush of tears to Natalie’s eyes. She’s flooded with the urge to cut or pull or pinch or burn. She clasps her knees together tightly. Wraps her arms around them.

  Hannah sits next to her. “My husband and my son, Ben. That’s who I lost. They were shot and killed in a gas station robbery last year. Back home in San Diego. That’s why I took this job in Paris. Supposed to be a fresh start.” Hannah pauses. “My boy was only six.”

  Someone else who knows what it’s like to have everything suck. Natalie murmurs a genuine “I’m sorry.” She knows from experience there’s little use in saying anything more.

  “Thank you, Natalie. I’m sorry for your loss as well. Losses. Your dad talked about your mom a lot too.”

  Natalie shoots her a quick, appraising glance.

  Hannah shrugs eloquent shoulders. “It’s just different, isn’t it, when it’s violent crime? When the natural order of things is disturbed by a gun or knife?”

  Or by a body that seemingly evaporated. Natalie still thinks about it all the time: where the remains of her mother could be.

  “Anyway,” Hannah continues, “I just wanted to reach out. Let you know that when I last saw your dad, all he could talk about was how much he loved you. How proud he was. I thought it might be helpful for you to hear that.”

  Hannah wipes her palms on her thighs and stands. “I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “Wait!”

  Hannah looks down at her with surprise. Natalie hesitates. This woman is a complete stranger; Natalie has no reason to trust her. She should have run the minute she saw her.

  But Natalie has been cooped up with Uncle Frank and Jake for days. Neither of them will talk about Dad’s murder. Natalie is sick as fuck of being told to sit down and shut up. She wants to fix this.

  “Do you know if my dad…Was he afraid of someone?”

  Hannah looks quizzical. “Why do you ask that?”

  “I saw the project manager over at his building site. She told me that he was scared of something.”

  “Did he tell her who or what?”

  “No. But I’ve been dying to talk to the other people he worked with. Someone else might know more. Lilja, that’s the project manager, she said the cops blew her off when she told them, so maybe there’s more they dismissed. They’re convinced it was a robbery for his stupid laptop! Won’t look at anything else. And my uncle! He was furious when I just left the hotel for a walk. He doesn’t want me to investigate and he won’t either. Particularly because of what’s happening out there…” Natalie indicates the pious, the angry, and the rapacious with a gesture to the outside world.

  Hannah sinks back down next to her on the stairs. “What would you do if you could get out?”

  “I’d go to Dad’s job site. Talk to everyone. Find out what was going on with him. He must have said something to someone if Lilja’s right.”

  “I could go around…ask some questions for you.”

  “Why would you do that?” Natalie’s tone is sharper than she intended.

  “It’s up to you,” Hannah offers, hands raised. “I won’t do anything at all unless you want me to.”

  Again, Natalie hesitates. Uncle Frank and Jake will go ballistic if they find out. She doesn’t know this woman from Adam. On the other hand, maybe this Hannah Potter can find out something useful.

  “Do it,” Natalie decides. “Please. And then come back here and tell me everything you find out.”

  I wasn’t surprised by the ease with which I’d bribed my way into the hotel. Nor about how simple it was to learn of Natalie’s “secret” forays to the stairwell. Nyura was eagerly pliant for the money.

  I feel for Natalie, this frail woman-child at the center of a tragedy. God only knows what she’s been seeing online about herself and her family, how she’s withstanding the enormity of her loss. But while I had calculated my angle of approach with the girl, I still question how easily I gained her trust.

  Perhaps Natalie leapt to trust me because of her frustration about being on the hunt and then suddenly finding herself locked up in the hotel by her uncle?

  Or could it be that she is attempting to manipulate me in some way? Does Natalie believe she’s using the poor, grieving widow “Hannah” for her own ends? I need to be careful with this girl. I have the sense there is something I’m not yet seeing. I fear for my objectivity, given my guilt.

  My antennae are up. What does her willingness to trust a stranger tell me about her psychological and emotional state? What can I use to my advantage in our next encounter?

  If my manipulations make you squeamish, remember my goals are worthy.

  I shake off my misgivings. Natalie had shared useful information, which was also unexpected. Brian Burrows was afraid before he died. This presents me with a trail of sorts, a start. I need to talk to Brian’s co-workers right away.

  There are so many stories.

  This is only one.

  Tales transform in the telling, are both shined and scuffed with time.

  But still. Let’s go back in time just a little bit.

  Frank folded the last of the laundry and tucked the neat piles into a basket to be carried upstairs. He missed his girls, but he was also glad they’d gone home. This house was no place for them.

  Brian barely slept and slipped out of the house for a long walk at sunrise each morning. He said he needed to be alone, to work the tension from his body, to think.

  As the outside world came awake, Brian returned, made coffee, settled at the kitchen counter, and then drank cup after black cup, meticulously consuming a hard copy of The New York Times, which was delivered daily.

  He checked in with the detectives in charge of the case every morning at nine. Spent the rest of the day scouring the Internet. He looked for stories of missing women, turning over the shards of the cases as if they might shine a light on his wife’s disappearance. He dove headlong into reports of sick obsession. For a brief while, h
e became fixated on the news about a place called “the Farm,” some kind of a cult for renegade fathers and their abducted children that the FBI shot up.

  Brian did not call his office. The Barcelona commission had been postponed in light of the circumstances.

  Jake came and went. The boy still had a couple of close friends in the neighborhood, or so he said. Whether Jake was seeing them or not Frank had no real way of knowing. Jake was eighteen, he had his driver’s license, they couldn’t keep him locked in the house. And with the tension between Jake and Brian so very palpable, Frank figured it was probably a good idea for the boy to get out, work the tension from his body, have his time alone, his time to think.

  Natalie told Frank she was sleeping a lot, and that might have been true. Or she might have been just hiding. An upper-middle-class suburban teenager, she had a bedroom equipped with satellite TV and an Internet-based sound system. She had an iPhone and a laptop and a bathroom en suite.

  Now she was asking to have her meals in her bedroom too and Frank was on the fence. Should he refuse to let her? Insist she join them downstairs?

  Brian had stared at him blankly when he’d asked his opinion; Frank was on his own.

  Frank had taken compassionate leave and was prepared to stay as long as necessary, adding to Della’s list of complaints. But here he had a purpose. It was beyond the drudgery of maintaining the household; he was needed, depended upon in a way that Della, who seemed to view him purely as a cash machine, never allowed.

  He’d kept them functioning, Brian, Jake, and Natalie. Kept them upright.

  Frank had even successfully suggested that Natalie use her art to process her feelings. Yesterday after Della and the twins had left, he’d lured Natalie out of the house with the promise of a new sketchbook. He’d bought her several, plus charcoals, pastels, pencils, and watercolors, overspending in a compulsive, compensatory rush and considering the excursion a great success.