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Benighted

Page 40

by Kit Whitfield


  I am angry, I told the saint. I couldn’t think of any other words. I said it over and over again, until there was nothing in me but those words, I am angry, I am angry, I am angry.

  Creches. Separate schools. Moon nights, nights we think about more than the people they affect ever need to. Scars, teeth at your throat, blood soaking into the grass. DORLA, day after day until you’re too old to work, trapped in a gray building with people like you on the inside and words spray-painted on the outside. Bareback. Fucking skins. Every insult and wound and violation the world can throw at you, from the day you’re born wrong till the day you die used up and battered beyond repair.

  That elegant, highly trained man put his hands in me and offered to force on my child the same life sentence that fell on me.

  Supposing he made the same offer to Johnny, I ask St. Giles. What would Johnny have done then?

  Johnny had lyco children and he loved them. Their lives were better than his, or they were while he was alive taking care of them. He wouldn’t have wanted his baby imprisoned in bareback flesh.

  Would Johnny have exposed him? Threatened to? If it came out, Parkinson would lose his license, I’m sure of that, maybe even go to prison. Nobody’s allowed to damage babies at birth, and that’s what he offered. I take a breath, kneel back on my ankles, grip my hands together. It would look like prayer at a distance. The saint rests easy in his portrait, cradling a deer in his arms, calm and tender.

  Make me calm, God, I say. Make me calm, so I can think about this. I came back to the church to think, after I called Sue. The DORLA building closed around me till I could barely breathe, but here, I can stand it. Make me calm, God.

  Johnny didn’t expose him. Parkinson is still working away, so Johnny can’t have exposed him. But maybe he threatened to. It could be he needed money, after he lost his hand and got demoted and had to feed his children on a cripple’s pay; it could be he wanted money for silence. Guilt plucks at my insides as I think that, accusing a dead man. But maybe he was driven to it. Maybe not: Johnny played inside the rules. If he did, he would have been worried, miserable, wondering what to do. Where should he go, who should he tell?

  I remember the last time I saw him. It seemed like he wanted to tell me something. I wish hard enough to hurt that he’d told me, but it’s no good wishing now.

  Parkinson is mutilating babies. This I know. Parkinson was involved in Seligmann escaping, that I believe. Why would he do that?

  They can’t have been friends; I can’t imagine Parkinson as a prowler, not that kind of prowler. And Seligmann hates barebacks, Parkinson’s creating them; they can’t be on the same side.

  I feel my mind tangle like a drawerful of string, and I say again, make me calm, God. Supposing Seligmann and Parkinson didn’t know each other well, that Parkinson helped him escape not because they were friends, but because it benefited him somehow. It seems likelier. How would Parkinson benefit?

  “Excuse me, miss.” A voice comes from behind me and I startle, rise up on my knees. It’s a moment before I remember that “Excuse me, miss” is not the beginnings of a threat.

  A man in faded jeans stands behind me. “We need to do some work in here.” He indicates the shrine, the wax-crusted candle stand, the bank of flowers underneath the icon, the lilies shriveled at the edges, dripping petals and fragments down onto the floor below. “Would you mind moving for about half an hour? I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I say quickly, not thinking about it, and stand up, look around me for somewhere else to go. There’s another alcove on the other side of the church, a painting of the Virgin in it, a great swirl of blue cloth around a pale, teary-eyed, expressionless face. I head for it, wondering whether this was some kind of sign.

  Kneeling before the Virgin, I take another deep breath, trying to clear my mind. I play over another piece of music Paul made me listen to, Pergolesi, I think: stabat mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat filius. The mother of sorrows stands beside the cross of tears where her son hangs. I repeat the words in my head, steadying myself with the repetition, the precise Latinate vowels. Stabat mater dolorosa.

  The tearful eyes distract me. The perfect holy mother, weeping for the world.

  I close my eyes. How did Parkinson benefit? What happened, what was the result of letting Seligmann go?

  We went looking for him all over creation, we arrested innocent people and charged them with murder, the murders that Seligmann committed. Would Parkinson want a man he was helping to—

  There’s an assumption I’ve been making all along. It comes on me from nowhere, stands before me, quiet and certain. I said, the murders that Seligmann committed. Why should I assume he committed both of them?

  Because he escaped, because Nate died, because they both died from silver bullets. Who makes silver bullets? I can’t see Parkinson bothering to make one himself. Seligmann might, but it would be an awkward business. Who makes silver bullets?

  We do.

  Supposing Johnny went to meet Parkinson, to talk or accuse or threaten. He would have been wary, Johnny, he would have been meeting a man with power and an unknown will, a man with a terrible secret. Supposing he was nervous, that he didn’t feel safe. It’s a feeling I’ve been living with cheek to cheek for months. What did I do when I felt so afraid?

  I took a gun from the stores. It’s still in my bag; I’ve been carrying it so long I’d almost forgotten about it. I took a gun. It wasn’t even difficult. It wasn’t difficult for me, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Johnny. There would have been two silver bullets in it. And if he put it down, or if Parkinson took it away from him, there would have been no need to forge silver bullets. They would have been right there. No symbolism, no insult. They were in the weapon in his hand.

  And once he’d killed Johnny, he would have been stuck with it. A government-issue, controlled-supply silver gun, which, for all he knew, Johnny might have checked out like a library book with a serial number and a promise to return it tomorrow. If anyone found him with it, that was the end. But how to get rid of it?

  Parkinson is intelligent. He’s educated. Years of training to use his mind would send it into overdrive when he tried to plan, make him see the dangers and pitfalls of everything he did. But then, suddenly, into his hospital comes a man with injuries, a man with a grudge against DORLA, and a man who needed help to escape. A man who might dispose of the gun for him, if Parkinson distracted security for him. A perfect chance. Divine intervention.

  Only Seligmann had a grudge, and a gun, and suddenly he was free to do as he wished. A silver gun. The man I saw, the man I injured, could never have resisted the temptation.

  Parkinson let Seligmann go, and Seligmann killed Nate. A silver bullet. We decided that Seligmann killed Johnny, too. It gave us the perfect suspect. The perfect scapegoat, too, because we were never, ever going to give Seligmann a fair trial. We would have railroaded him to hell if we could have managed it.

  The scent of fresh lilies drifts across the church, heady and beautiful. There are still flowers in the world.

  This is my theory: Parkinson killed Johnny with a gun Johnny took from the stores. To take our minds off Johnny, he let Seligmann go and, whether to dispose of or to use, he gave Seligmann that gun, and Seligmann shot Nate. He didn’t help David, he let his arm rot untreated, but he gave Seligmann a gun.

  I haven’t the first fragment of evidence.

  There’s only one possibility left: that Parkinson is hiding Seligmann, that he’s in too deep to let him get caught. If he is, I can find him, and then we’ll know. If he just let him go, then the murders will not be solved, not by any means I can think of. But if that happens, I’m still bringing Parkinson down. I’ll go to Hugo, I’ll go to the police, the medical council, the newspapers, I’ll chain myself to his door if I have to, but I’m going to bring him down. I feel the fury rise in me again, and I know I can do all of this, I can and I will.

  Opening my eyes, I look again at the Virgin.
Despite the tears, her face is peaceful, uplifted, sanctified. I want justice, I tell her, not vengeance, I want justice. I know, though, that I’m wrought through with rage, that I’m murderous with fury, that I am not sanctified. I want goodness, I want the glory of God, but I’m angry enough to kill. Find room in your heart for a sinner, I say, and weep for my sins along with the rest. I’ll fly to your forgiveness, I want to be forgiven, but first I have to fight.

  FORTY-ONE

  Information is easy to get, if you want it badly enough. It takes an hour staring into the white screen of my computer, and that’s all. The basic hacking skills we learn as part of our unofficial training. I search for a while, I slip in through a few back doors, and I find the answer.

  Parkinson is a wealthy man. He’s wealthier than you’d expect even the best consultant doctor to be, if he was working within the system. His wealth is stored in many places. Some of it is realized in property.

  He has a house in Benedict by the river, where he lives. It’s lovely, that part of the city. He has another house between Queens and Sanctus, rented to a family; a house north of Five Wounds, divided into apartments. It’s all rented. There’s only one place in his name I can’t find a tenant for, a small basement apartment. It’s between Abbot’s and Five Wounds. It’s near St. Veronica’s. Possibly he keeps it as a pied-à-terre, somewhere to spend a night if he works late at the hospital. A man running away from St. Veronica’s wouldn’t have to run far.

  It’s near where the Marcos family lives.

  That isn’t evidence, it isn’t relevant to anything. I don’t know why it should make me so angry.

  I sit by a window watching the sky, and I wait for the night. I don’t feel vulnerable. I feel taut, perfected. I am vibrant with fury. The sun goes down, sinking to the bottom of the white sky, and then the light fades, and I know I’m ready.

  There’s no full moon.

  The streets are oddly distinct. Buildings rise around me, so solid I almost feel their shapes at the back of my eyes. My sneakers press and tense around my feet as I walk, the tap of the lace against the right shoe counters the rhythm of my steps. The gray paving stones in the yellow light dip and rise, uneven, as if I were walking over broken pack ice, the Arctic sea under my feet, but the ground is stable and still, it meets me squarely as I pace it. Every brick in every building is different, and I look around me at this unnaturally real world.

  I say his name in my mind, Seligmann, Seligmann.

  Sooner than I expect, I’m on the right street.

  The house has black iron stairs leading down to the basement unit. The building towers above, three stories, massive and weighty with a solemn green front door. There’s railings and a gate blocking the steps: a little push reveals that it’s locked. My bag makes no sound as I set it down on the other side, and then I wrap my coat around myself and climb over. The stair doesn’t creak as I descend; the wire mesh presses through my soles and I can see down, a great looming distance between me and the ground.

  A wooden door, glossy black, the numbers on it in old, half-tarnished bronze. A curtained window, dim light coming through it. No flickering: no one’s watching television. Not too bright: the room isn’t occupied, the light’s coming from a back room. A sense of freedom surrounds me, of being still uncommitted, able to walk away from this, as I try the window.

  It’s a sash window, and it gives a fraction before sticking. I peer through the glass in the half-light, and see a lock not fully in place. The wood is old, venerable. I reach into my bag, take out the chisel I bought today. The plastic handle is cool in the night air. Ally taught me how to do this, I remember without emotion, and I dig in through the wood.

  It’s strenuous, but I don’t make much noise. There’s a hissing sound overhead as I work, wind through the branches of the trees lining the street. Rowans, I think they are; clumps of red berries still hang from their wintry twigs. They’re supposed to be lucky trees; if you plant one at your door evil spirits can’t pass it. I must not be evil, then.

  The lock gives. It was new, well made—I could never have got past it if it had been properly in place. Seligmann hasn’t been afraid for his security like I’ve been.

  I slide up the window, slip through, land safely in a darkened room. Once inside I reach into my bag, take out my gun, put the bag back outside where I can find it if I have to run. The gun is cold, familiar, and the metal warms quickly in my fingers.

  There’s a sofa to get around, a rug on the floor, bookshelves. I can’t read the titles in the dark. The ceiling is low enough that I could almost reach up and touch it. The wood of the door frame is painted perfectly smooth. Light gleams on it as I pass through.

  I stand in a cream-colored, underground hallway. My gun sits warm in my hand.

  Into the hush I call out, “Hello?”

  A door opens, too near to me, I take three rapid steps back. Seligmann stands in front of me, expected, recognized, impossibly real.

  He says, “What—” and then I pull the trigger.

  The crash of the gun in this closed space is devastating, I flinch down like a rabbit at the sound of it, and when I look, Seligmann is on his back, blood already overrunning the soft white carpet where my bullet took him in the thigh.

  I stand over him, let him see the barrel of my gun. “I’ve got another bullet,” I say, and I was expecting him to answer, curse me, but he barely hears me, I barely hear myself. He curls around his wounded leg, making long, sickening sounds of pain, sobs so rough-edged I think I hear them cutting his throat as they drag out of him.

  I reach into my pocket, take out a phone and make a call. DORLA agents arrive before the ambulance.

  While we’re waiting for them to come, I sit down on a chair nearby. Seligmann coils himself up, his hands pressed down where my bullet smashed through his flesh. The pain absorbs him, imprisons his personality, makes him nothing more than a man in pain. There’s no sound but his hoarse, ragged keening. I sit quietly in my chair, watching him, keeping him company until the people come and get us.

  FORTY-TWO

  I tell them he mustn’t be taken to St. Veronica’s, and they take him the long way around to another hospital. For some reason, they expect me to ride in the ambulance, so I sit beside him while green-jacketed paramedics press white bandages to his bleeding thigh and talk about drugs with long names. He won’t lose his leg if they work well.

  They give me a blanket. I don’t know why. My coat was taken away by somebody in Forensics to look at the bloodstains, which are not bad; a dry cleaner could get them out if I took it there soon enough, they wouldn’t show on the dark wool. I don’t know whether they’ll give it back, and I don’t know how I could replace it, but I’m not cold. I want my coat back, it suddenly seems an important piece of my life, its cut and shape come into my memory with the force of a friendship. Instead, they’ve given me a tan-colored blanket, and I’m not cold, but I hold it around my shoulders, to please them.

  They wanted the gun, the Forensics people, I had to hand that over, too. I passed it over without a pang. It was never really mine.

  At the hospital, they shine a light into my eyes and ask me questions about my name and where I live. The light is dazzling after the dark outside, it rings pain in my eyes like the tongue in a bell. “I don’t have a concussion,” I say. I think I say it several times.

  Then there are police, and DORLA agents, all in the same room as the doctors. Hugo comes into the room, wrapped in a big brown coat. The fluorescent lights shine pallid on his skin. “Hugo,” I say, and then can’t think of what to say next. I look at my watch. I waited till after sunset to do this, but it’s still winter, the sun set before six. It’s only a little before seven o’clock now; he must have been still at work. Surprise wraps around me, at how early it is.

  The police want to ask me things. They don’t get very far before Nick comes in, Johnny’s old partner, police liaison. His hoarse voice sounds scratchier than ever in this sterile place, like a worn-ou
t record, and I think of suggesting he get his chest X-rayed while he’s here, then decide it would be a liberty. He takes the sergeant outside the room, and then the sergeant comes back in and takes his men and leaves. “Are you all right, Lola?” Nick asks me.

  I blink at him. “I feel a bit strange,” I say. “But I know what’s going on. The doctors thought I had a concussion, but I don’t, I didn’t hit my head.”

  “I think they think you might be in shock.” He sits down beside me.

  “I don’t think so,” I tell him carefully. “I don’t think I’ve got any excuses.”

  He reaches into his pocket for a cigarette, then remembers he’s in a hospital.

  “Forensics took away the gun I had,” I say. “And my coat. Do you think they’ll give it back when they’ve finished with it?”

  I hear the breath scrape in his throat as he inhales. “I don’t know. I’ll ask.” The gentleness in his voice irritates me; he sounds like he’s talking to a cripple.

  “I knew what I was doing,” I say. “I arrested Seligmann.”

  “I’d have come with you if you’d asked.”

  The blanket is still around my shoulders. I don’t know what to tell him.

  Hugo comes over to join us. “Do you feel up to coming back to the office?” he asks me. “I’d like to have a verbal report as soon as possible.”

  I stand up, obedient. He takes me out of the hospital. Nick follows us as far as the parking lot and then gets into his own vehicle before I think to say good-bye to him. Hugo drives me back to the DORLA building. We don’t speak on the journey. I’d like to lean my head against the window, but it strikes me that I might make a smudge, so I rest back in my seat and watch the red and white lights of cars passing us, back and forth.

  Hugo sits me in a chair and turns on a tape recorder. I don’t know where to begin. I slip and founder from sentence to sentence, and Hugo decides that I should just describe the arrest. I tell him I came to suspect that Seligmann was hiding in this building, I tell him I went in through the window, I tell Hugo I shot the man.

 

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