The Burial Society

by Nina Sadowsky

  I pound across the cobblestones, my eyes frantically raking the snarled traffic for a free taxicab on the rue de Rivoli. I glance behind me to see Jake racing to keep up, one hand protectively clasped against his battered ribs. He’s wheezing. Red-faced. Confused.

  “What’s going on?” he heaves.

  “We need to get to your hotel.”

  There. An open cab. I wrench open the door and urge Jake inside. I settle into the cracked leather seat and give the address to the driver.

  Something is wrong. I feel it in my bones.

  She deserves to die.

  That much she knows with deep, abiding certainty. Spots swim against her closed eyelids, yellow and red, looping, trailing, rising, fading. Will they be the last things she ever sees?

  Natalie longs for Jake. If only she could see him one last time before she goes.

  Stupid freak. Do you think he’d still love you if he knew who you really are?

  Maybe it’s better this way. She’ll die and he’ll never have to know.

  She presses her palms into the bleeding wound in her belly. Warm, sticky liquid pools around her fingers.

  Natalie feels giddy and dizzy, unexpectedly lighthearted. Her body feels light too, as if the flesh, bones, blood, and organs that have been her enemies for so long are finally at peace, freeing her from their oppression.

  So this is death, she thinks. I’m ready.

  Jake is one step behind me as I hurry down the hotel hallway. We reach the Burrowses’ suite.

  “You have your key card?”

  Jake pulls his wallet from his pocket. Slips the key card into the slot.

  The hum of the air-conditioning is loud in the stillness, the room dark, the curtains drawn. I flick on a light as we enter. The dining table is littered with empty chip packets and old newspapers. An overripe banana fills the air with a cloying sweetness.

  “Natalie?” I call. “Frank?”

  The door to Natalie’s room is ajar. I push it all the way open.

  Empty, the bedsheets twisted. Jake crowds behind me, treads on my heel.

  “Sorry! Sorry.”

  I race to Frank’s room. This door is also half-open. I peer inside. Flick the light on.

  Blood. That’s the first thing I see. Too much blood.

  I slam the door closed. “Call an ambulance, Jake,” I command. “And stay here.”

  “Is it Natalie? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet. Just call!”

  I race back into the bedroom, locking the door behind me.

  Two bodies on the king-sized bed. Blood pools downward from Frank Burrows’s slit throat, an eerie, ugly parallel to my discovery of his brother mere weeks before. Frank’s open eyes stare blankly.

  Natalie lies curled next to him. A red, sticky puddle blooms through her abdomen and soaks her baggy sweats. But her chest rises and falls, a shallow promise. She’s alive.

  I check her pulse. Weak but steady. I apply pressure to the bubbling wound in her belly.

  In the hallway Jake cries out: “What’s happening? What’s happening?” He pounds on the door.

  “Stay there!” I shout. “Natalie needs an ambulance, but I think she’ll be okay.”

  I have no idea if she’ll be okay. But for fuck’s sake I need to keep Jake out of this carnage.

  Natalie’s cold hand clutches at mine. I look down to see her trying to speak.

  “Shhh. It’s okay,” I reassure. “We’ve called for help. You’ll be okay.”

  Natalie rasps something out, too low for me to hear. I lean in closer.

  “Is he dead? I think he’s dead,” she whispers. “But I had…no choice. He killed Daddy….He’s killed me too.”

  I study her beseeching eyes.

  “Protect Jake. Please.” Natalie falls back on her pillows.

  I reapply pressure to her wounded stomach with both hands.

  In the distance sirens wail.

  He’s been in the hospital waiting room for endless hours, Aimee Martinet unsympathetically slumped in a chair across the aisle. Jake can’t bear to even look at her. What a horror show: the ambulance, the police, the ER, Natalie rushed away into surgery.

  Jake tries not to think about his uncle. The blood. The corpse. The betrayal.

  Jake wraps his arms around himself. He’s trembling and doesn’t want Martinet to see. He’s still trying to sort out what happened. What exactly did Hannah Potter say Natalie had whispered? That Uncle Frank confessed to killing their father before trying to kill Natalie too?

  But why? This is insane.

  Jake suspects he’s in shock. Eventually it’ll make sense, won’t it? Whatever. Who cares? As long as Natalie survives.

  Please don’t die, Nat.

  Jake rises and pours himself a cup of decaf coffee from the freshly filled carafe on a side table. There’s a tray of madeleines too. Jake eyes them, their pleasing formal curves, but has no appetite. He sips his black coffee. Studies the other people who have found their day poisoned by tragedy.

  Six children cluster close to their white-faced mother, murmuring reassurances in both French and Hebrew: an orthodox Jewish family waiting for their patriarch to emerge from surgery. A sudden heart attack no one saw coming, followed by an emergency quadruple bypass.

  The parents of a toddler who’d mouthed a shard of broken glass clasp hands as the mother silently prays.

  A young French-Asian woman in bicycle shorts collapses into the arms of her sister. She’d been out biking with her boyfriend when a car hit him.

  Jake has no one to reassure him, he reflects, perversely pleased to be picking at his own misery. Both of his parents are dead, his uncle a murdering monster, his sister probably dying….He’s all alone in this world, except for that awful gimlet-eyed Aimee Martinet, keeping watch, judging him.

  A police officer Jake recognizes from the frenetic scene at the hotel draws Martinet over to one side of the waiting room. A hushed and hurried conversation ensues.

  Jake watches with wary interest. Martinet glances over at Jake with a flash of agitation before thanking her colleague and escorting him to the door.

  She comes over to the side table and pours herself a coffee. Stirs in a single packet of sugar. Leans against the wall and takes a sip with a studied casualness that puts Jake instantly on edge.

  “Jake, we need to talk about Hannah Potter. Do you know where she is?”

  “No, how should I? We got Natalie in an ambulance and she stayed behind to talk to your people.”

  “Is that what she told you she was doing? Staying behind?”

  “Giving her statement. Right. What’s this about?”

  “How well do you know Madame Potter?”

  “I told you. I only met her last night.”

  “But she knew your sister and your uncle?”

  “A little, I think. I don’t know that much about her, really.” Jake fights a rush of panic as he flashes on a hood, a hypodermic, bound wrists, the things he’d allowed himself to believe—no, convinced himself to believe—were a hallucination. “What the hell is going on? Why are you asking?”

  “Hannah Potter doesn’t exist.”

  “What? Don’t be stupid. I met her.”

  “I don’t know who you met, but whoever it was slipped away from the hotel while the paramedics were seeing to your sister. She didn’t identify herself to any of the officers on the scene. And it seems she’s vanished without a trace.”

  “I don’t understand.” And he doesn’t.

  There’s actually a glint of sympathy in Martinet’s eyes. “The only Hannah Potter we can come up with whose age and nationality even roughly match up with what you’ve told us? She died at the age of four, twenty-three years ago, in a town called Council Grove, Kansas.”

  I’d made a true home for myself here in this apartment in the Marais.

  I filled the comfortable rooms with eclectic items of furniture and quirky knickknacks I picked up on my many excursions to Les Puces. T
he rugs are soft underfoot. The closets are heaped with designer clothes and accessories. If one is going to live in Paris, one might as well be chic.

  My command center had been a work of great beauty too. Past tense. I’d wiped all digital traces clean before dousing my hardware with an acid bath. The apartment still reeks of its burn through metal and plastic and wire.

  Walking through the rooms for one last time, my eyes rake over this version of a life, pressing the memories into my mind like flowers into a scrapbook.

  I knew this day would arrive eventually. Although I’m sorry it’s come so soon.

  Jumah will sell most of what I’ve left, the rest he’ll trash.

  I’ll be traveling light.

  I pop on a dark brown wig with heavy bangs. A little kohl on my eyebrows and I’m virtually a different person. Actually, I am a different person. I’m Sydney Fletcher, from Indianapolis, Indiana, thank you very much; at least that’s what my passport and credit cards say.

  I take one last look around my sweet apartment. Drop my keys into their usual bowl by the door. Step through the doorway into the dimly lit hallway.

  Adieu, Paris.

  I just have one or two stops before I go.

  Sound comes in first.

  Natalie’s eyelids are too heavy to lift. She stays sunk deep beneath their comforting black shroud. Her limbs seem disconnected from her body. And her mind.

  She couldn’t move them if she tried.

  She does try. Fails.

  But she can hear.

  Hisses and thumps and beeps.

  Muffled voices. In another room, she thinks.

  The distant squeal of rubber wheels on linoleum.

  Her mouth is dry.

  Hisses and thumps and beeps.

  She hurts in a lot of places. Her arms. Her belly. Her head is pounding.

  All this pain must mean she’s alive, right? Surely you don’t feel things when you’re dead.

  Natalie’s eyelids flutter open, but the sting of bright fluorescent light hits her dilated pupils and she promptly squints her eyes closed again.

  Hospital. She’s seen enough to know she’s in the hospital.

  Sound comes in: the swoosh of a door opening.

  Padding footsteps generated by sensible, rubber-soled shoes.

  Natalie forces herself to open her eyes. The face looking down at her is coal black, with huge dark eyes and a dawning, hopeful smile.

  “I see you’re awake! That is excellent. I will let the doctor know,” the woman says in French. The nurse’s smile grows wider. She repeats herself in English, adding “Here, ma chère, here is the button to push for the morphine. For the pain?” She wraps Natalie’s fingers around the pain pump before scurrying from the room.

  Natalie hesitates. The pain is excruciating. It’s so tempting to think she can relieve it at will.

  But doesn’t she deserve the pain? Shouldn’t she feel every place she was cut apart and every inch she was stitched back together again? Hasn’t that been the cycle of her life to date? Crime and punishment. Crime and punishment. All of it self-inflicted. Most of it, anyway.

  But maybe the fact that she lived through this ordeal is a sign.

  Natalie turns this notion over. Maybe, just maybe, she’s been punished enough? Perhaps she’s been forgiven for her sins? Has sacrificed enough? Maybe she can actually carry on with her life from this point forward with a clean slate.

  The more Natalie dwells on this idea, the more concretely it aligns beneath her, a sturdy plank; the first solid step in a new direction. It must be so. A fresh start. She deserves that more than anyone, doesn’t she?

  She has a larger purpose, she is certain of it. This is it: her chance to truly be grateful every day.

  The punishment can stop.

  The pain can stop.

  Natalie’s finger depresses the button on the morphine pump. Her savaged body floods with a euphoric cloud of blissful relief.

  I’ve reserved a room at one of my favorite hotels.

  To get there, I thread through a crowd, dodging families sweaty and sticky-sweet from cotton candy, shrieking teenagers and squealing kids, giddy young lovers with arms entwined. The Fête.

  The Fête springs up in the shadow of the Louvre every summer; this one is no exception. A Ferris wheel, its spokes picked out in white neon that glows against the night sky, anchors one end of the nonstop party. Food stalls line either side of the avenue. I’m tempted by the scents of grilling meats and frying dough. There are games of chance. Bumper cars. A King Kong ride. A pendulum swing that lifts its screaming riders high into the air for a breathless view of the city of lights.

  I love the pure, old-fashioned whimsy of the Fête and am glad to have a chance to walk through one last time. I have no idea when I’ll be back in Paris.

  Buoyed by the hoots and clamor of the crowd, I turn a corner and enter my destination, the Grand Hôtel du Palais Royal on rue de Valois.

  The hotel’s gracious reception area is designed to create an atmosphere of soothing luxury. Cream-colored walls offset chocolate-brown paneling. Muted Oriental rugs tastefully cover marble floors. Crystal vases overflow with pale green flowers that perfectly match the cushions on the nubby ecru sofas.

  I register as Sydney Fletcher, handing over my identification and a credit card, making small talk about the warm weather. The desk clerk slides over a folder with two key cards. I remove one and slide it back.

  “A gentleman will ask for me in about an hour. When he does, please give him the key and send him to my room.”

  The clerk doesn’t bat an eye.

  My room is exquisite. White furniture. A frothy bunch of hydrangeas in a vase on the glass-topped coffee table. The space is dominated by the bed at its center: crisp white sheets and a lush mauve blanket. The pair of windows overlook a perfect Parisian rooftop landscape of water towers and fire escapes.

  I settle down into the mauve armchair tucked into one corner of the room.

  Right on time, the hotel room door swings open. Victor Wyatt enters, his smooth, handsome features contorting in surprise when he sees “Sydney Fletcher” is a woman. It’s why I chose “Sydney” in the first place. He recovers quickly as I invite him in.

  He gets right down to business, confirming I know his hourly rate, surreptitiously popping a little blue pill that I assume is Viagra. He shouldn’t have bothered.

  Handing over convincing press credentials for the international edition of The New York Times, I tell him I’m covering Brian Burrows’s murder. That I know he’s connected. Wyatt tugs at his streaky blond hair. Glances at the door as if he just might run.

  “I shouldn’t talk to you…I don’t really know anything anyway.”

  I remind Wyatt that the police will be talking to him soon enough; I know for a fact they have his photograph and name. That they know he was stalking Brian Burrows in the days before he was killed.

  I hand Wyatt a wad of euros, four times his hourly rate. There’s hesitation in his eyes but the lure of the money is too great for him to resist. He pockets the cash. Perches on the edge of the bed.

  “Like I said, I don’t know much….”

  “It doesn’t look so good for you, Victor. Following a man just before he was murdered. But I’m offering you an opportunity here. You can get your story out in the media ahead of the game. Before you’re brought in for questioning.”

  Wyatt starts whining then. There’s no other word for it. Kind of disgusting coming from a full-grown man. He had nothing to do with Brian Burrows’s murder! He was hired to follow the guy for a few days and report back. That was it!

  “Report what?”

  “What his schedule was like. What time he got back to his apartment from work each day. His routine. Stuff like that.”

  “And who were you reporting to?”

  “I don’t know.” He’s a bad liar. “I just was given an email address.”

  “Bullshit. Look, Wyatt, you have a choice here. I can position this story
so it’s clear you were an innocent dupe manipulated by a killer. I can generate sympathy for you, get your name and your face out there as a brave citizen who came forward to help solve a heinous crime. That’s a narrative you can make work for you. Outside of the investigation too, if you’re smart about it. But only if you’re straight with me.”

  The opportunity for reinvention flowers in Wyatt’s hungry eyes.

  I learn Wyatt was hired and paid by someone called Larry Finley. When pressed, Wyatt insists he hadn’t even heard of Frank Burrows until he was killed and he saw the news, learned he was Brian’s brother.

  He swears up and down that he was told he was following Brian to help arrange a birthday prank. It was easy money for an easy service; he never imagined anything like this would happen.

  Fear, cowardice, and avarice render Wyatt’s handsome face quite ugly.

  “You’ll help, right? Like you said? I didn’t do anything illegal. I didn’t know.”

  I offer Wyatt my assurances. Tell him I’ll be back in touch before my article runs in order to “fact check.” I like that detail; it gives my lies the ring of authenticity.

  I tell Wyatt to stay on in this room as long as he likes. It’s paid for until checkout the next morning. I leave him there, slumped on the bed, tugging at his hair, hopeful Sydney Fletcher will be his redemption. I can only imagine his disappointment when this story never runs.

  But who the hell is Larry Finley?

  The pieces don’t all add up yet. I can’t stop asking questions until they do.

  Natalie’s propped in her hospital bed, frail and wan, pierced by IVs, but alive, breathing, finally talking. Jake’s consumed with relief. And a newfound respect for his little sister.

  “You’re tougher than anyone I know, Nat.” He grins at her and she smiles back.

  If only I hadn’t left Natalie alone with Frank. It’s a miracle she’s alive. And how could I not have suspected him? Not known he was a killer? Am I too self-absorbed? Too stupid?

  Jake knows this self-excoriation is pointless, but he’s compelled to do it just the same.