Strawgirl

by Abigail Padgett

  In the pocket of her long khaki skirt Bo felt the grieving beads Hannah had given her, and allowed herself to remember her own sister. Her own hopelessness in the face of suicide. Hannah would have to face that, too, when she came to terms with her mother's death. A difficult reality to face. Pulling the strip of beads from her pocket she held them in clasped hands as Frank Goodman finished an appeal for the repose of both daughter and mother. In the front row the elderly Father Karolak succumbed to a sudden fit of coughing clearly designed to obscure Frank Goodman's words. Goodman could, Bo pondered, find himself in deep trouble for that prayer, assuming anybody heard it over Father Karolak's staged hacking. Deep trouble for including a suicide in his kindly intentions. The Roman Catholic church was not renowned for its sympathetic understanding of clinical depression's worst-case scenario. It was apparent that Father Frank Goodman didn't care.

  "The man has courage," Andrew LaMarche noted quietly as they stood. "And so do you, Bo. I'm sorry that I questioned your judgment. Your decision regarding Hannah was the right one." He glanced at Madge Aldenhoven, ramrod straight in a navy linen suit beside Estrella. "I admire what you've done."

  Frank Goodman, accompanied by pipe organ, was singing Gounod's Ave Maria in his fine, almost Irish, tenor. Bo fought down a resurgence of the confusion Andrew LaMarche seemed determined to promote. "Thanks, Andy," she whispered, and stuffed the grieving beads back into her pocket. When he took her hand briefly she felt ridiculous and comfortable simultaneously, but didn't pull away. Not until Solon Gentzler, in unfamiliar territory and checking the crowd for clues as to what to do next, turned to glance over his shoulder. His big smile faded to a flush of chagrin when he saw LaMarche leaning in what could only be described as a husbandly attitude against

  Bo. Bo jerked her right hand from the pediatrician's left one and looked at the church's beamed ceiling. It provided, as she had known it would, no exit.

  "Oh, boy ..." Estrella pronounced through a clenched smile.

  "Thank you all for coming," Frank Goodman concluded as the organist began to play an obscure but upbeat medieval gavotte. Rivulets of sweat gathered momentum and dribbled down her back as Bo stood gratefully to leave. The memorial service had possessed, she decided, all the better-known qualities of the Spanish Inquisition.

  Once outside she made a dash for the shade of a well-leafed liquid ambar tree at the edge of St. Theresa's property, ducked behind its trunk, and lit a cigarette. Madge Aldenhoven materialized within minutes.

  "I hope you're prepared for tomorrow's hearing," the supervisor reminded her. "You will represent the department and you will say that in your professional opinion Paul Massieu is the person responsible for Samantha's death. You will recommend, on behalf of the Department of Social Services, that he be held over for prosecution. You will note in your testimony that he represents a threat not only to Samantha's kidnapped sister, but to all children. I've prepared a statement outlining the department's position on this case. All you have to do is read it."

  Bo exhaled smoke at the envelope Madge was handing her, and stared at one of the tree's star-shaped leaves. "And if I don't?" she asked.

  "This is a directive from the department," Aldenhoven answered as if the words were a creed. "Failure to represent an official position is grounds for immediate dismissal."

  "Ah." Bo nodded, rolling the envelope into a tube and looking through it at the leaf. "I assume you have a copy of this statement against which to match my testimony."

  "Yes. But of course it doesn't need to be word-for-word."

  "Refreshing," Bo told the leaf. "So refreshing."

  "I'll see you tomorrow, Bo." Madge smiled without authenticity, and left.

  Bo stubbed out the cigarette and dropped the butt in her best purse, which would now reek of rancid filter. She never left cigarettes lying around, and also never remembered to retrieve the butts from purses and pockets. It seemed a minor problem compared to those lining up behind tomorrow's showdown. But she'd made her decision. Gentzler had it choreographed down to the last nuance. All she had to do was follow through.

  "Are you Bo Bradley?" the man with the broken nose inquired, making his way across St. Theresa's robust lawn.

  "Yes," Bo answered. "Why?" His attitude was businesslike, but tinged with a sort of planned determination.

  "I'm Rombo Perry," he explained. "I was the social worker for Mrs. Franer. I was there when she ... when she died."

  "It was nice of you to come," Bo said, puzzled. Rombo Perry's handsome, unusual face seemed haggard. The look was inconsistent with the man's remarkable fitness. She would not have been surprised if he'd attempted to sell her a health club membership.

  "I've been a little upset since it happened . . ." he explained.

  "A little?" his companion in the Armani jacket interrupted, approaching from the sidewalk with obvious concern for possible damage to the grass. "It's been a dark night of the soul, let me tell you. I'm Martin St. John, by the way. We've been following the case in the papers, of course. And we're concerned about you."

  Bo was relieved that St. John did not pronounce his surname "Sinjin" in the British way. The lack of affectation boded well for whatever it was they wanted to say. "Yes?" she prodded. The sky was beginning to glower in a way that whispered of early tropical storms. Bo tried to remember if one were predicted.

  "I don't think Mrs. Franer's boyfriend, the one they've got in jail, hurt the little girl," Rombo Perry continued hurriedly. "It just doesn't make any sense. I think the guy that killed the child is the same guy that trashed the mission and killed that obnoxious psychologist last night."

  "This Satanic nonsense is a smokescreen behind which somebody's getting away with murder," St. John added, frowning at the sky. "Is it supposed to rain?"

  Bo pondered the intense interest with which people in arid regions regard precipitation, and waited for a point to be made. Any point.

  "This may sound a little dramatic," Rombo Perry went on, "but have you considered the possibility that this guy may come after you next? I mean, he may have a list ..."

  It occurred to Bo that the two men standing before her were total strangers. Rombo Perry might not be a social worker at all. And what kind of name was Rombo? Jamming her hands in her skirt pockets, she strolled toward Dar Reinert, conferring with a reporter near the curb. The two followed. "I've thought of it," she admitted. "But what has it got to do with you?"

  "I see you've met Mr. Perry and Mr. St. John," Reinert boomed after Bo shot him a concerned look. "I've already checked 'em out, Bo. They're who they say they are. In fact, everybody here is who they say they are. The mystery man, if there is one, didn't show."

  "But he will show," Rombo Perry insisted. "He can't just get away with what he's done."

  "We don't even know who he is," Reinert sighed, swinging his arms as if the activity would make something happen. "Massieu may have raped the little girl, and some other fruitcake may have vandalized the mission, and yet another nut may have taken Ganage out. This Satan crap has every loony in town sharpening knives and jumping at shadows. My take on the whole mess is, we'll never solve this case."

  Bo was confident that she'd never heard so many casually inaccurate terms used at the same time. "But what if your nut/fruitcake is Samantha's killer and he isn't loony at all?" she asked. "What if he decides to kill again?"

  "If he does," Rombo Perry took a deep breath, "doesn't Ms. Bradley seem the most likely victim? Of the three people whose names have been publicly linked to the Franer case—you, Detective Reinert, Cynthia Ganage, and Ms. Bradley—she is the remaining woman."

  "What's being a woman got to do with it?" Reinert asked.

  "He won't go after a man, a cop," St. John interjected as Bo felt a chill unrelated to the darkening sky. "He'll only go for somebody weaker than he is. If you don't have enough extra patrolmen to give Ms. Bradley a guard, at least at night, Rombo and I have decided to volunteer. Would that be all right with you?"

  The question wa
s directed to Bo.

  "Uh, no, really, I'll be fine. I'm staying at a friend's tonight. But thanks," she replied. The offer was disturbing.

  Martin St. John extracted a business card from his jacket and handed it to Bo. "St. John Catering" was embossed in script above a quirky pen-and-ink drawing of a place setting featuring seven forks, the last of which seemed to be falling off the side of the card.

  "Just call us if you need help," Rombo added. "I'm serious."

  Nodding, Bo left to find Estrella and make arrangements to spend the night in safety.

  "You're finally showing some sense," Estrella agreed. "We'll expect you for dinner."

  The black-clad demonstrators were gone as Bo eased her car from the curb, but something of their spirit hung over the windswept street. A sense of judgment, of irrational and relentless retribution.

  Chapter 24

  The streets had become a lavender web of jacaranda blossoms as the wind blew them in storms from curbside trees. Bo watched the purple carpet ripple and tear where the BMW's tires disturbed it, and then settle again when she had passed. The little flowers created a fairy-tale atmosphere in which thoughts of bloody murder seemed merely unpleasant. The leaves of a silver-dollar gum tree bristled in the wind and turned from gray-green to silver in a tremulous wave.

  "Rattling silver, rattling sorrow," her grandmother's voice murmured the Irish warning out of nowhere.

  "The referent there is money, not leaves, Grandma Bridget," Bo said aloud and then frowned at her own reflection in the car's side mirror.

  Uh-oh. The proverbs are back. Better get some rest.

  At first the residential neighborhoods she traversed en route to the freeway appeared to be making a statement about what Sunday afternoons were meant to be. Green ivy. Nice fences. A white dog and teenage boy, playing Frisbee. Then an elderly woman in a red muumuu and cat's-eye sunglasses throwing soapy water on a rose bush. Strange. Followed by two potbellied men, one black and the other white, trying to wrestle what looked like a wire sculpture of a giant amoeba off the bed of an old pickup truck with Oklahoma plates. Stranger. A cluster of children staring murderously at a utility meter...

  Oh, right. Check it out, Bradley. Whether you like it or not, you're edging into the Twilight Zone. Quit pretending that anything's normal. Go to Estrella's and get some sleep.

  Norman Rockwell had given way to David Mamet. Just as well, Bo decided. Rockwell painted a fantasy of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as it was before Alice's Restaurant. Mamet would be more comfortable with freeze-frames of southern California collapsing on a Sunday afternoon into naked scraps of inexplicable human behavior. Weird vignettes that might be terrible and might be meaningless. Grainy snapshots lacking the narrative that would impose on them an illusion of sense. Bo turned a corner and nearly hit a longhorn chicken drifting from between two parked Nissan Pathfinders, both blue and immaculately clean. The longhorn turned out to be a wadded newspaper, caught in the wind. Or else it really was a chicken, blown in from a Depression-era newsreel, lost in time. Bo pulled the car to a stop in front of a mustard yellow bungalow with brown trim, and tried not to see the plaster elf peeking over the porch railing. An elf with pitiless, painted eyes.

  This could happen sometimes, without the lithium. As if a veil of imposed coherence, of mundane ordinariness were lifted away and the raw truth made visible. The raw truth that things were stranger than they seemed to be. The first hint had been on Wednesday, when the veil began to unravel. That was to be expected, just the usual manic-depressive drift. Bo was used to it. It might happen, Lois Bittner said, when Bo was under stress. Or when she was premenstrual, or postmenstrual, or when she had the flu. It might happen with a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure, or with a poignant memory, or with indigestion. Nobody knew when it might happen, in other words. But it was happening now. Bo closed her eyes and listened to the engine's idle.

  "I'm scared," she said aloud and lit a cigarette.

  "So?" Lois Bittner's voice echoed in her head. "What is it that's scaring you?"

  "Somebody might try to kill me, for one," Bo exhaled. "But that's not really it. It's what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm terrified."

  "This thing you're going to do tomorrow scares you more than somebody trying to kill you?" the familiar voice asked.

  "A lot more," Bo answered, shivering. "Should I go through with it?"

  There was no answer, only the sound of wind rustling the fronds of a palm tree in the bungalow's yard. In her mind Bo could see a picture of Lois Bittner, the wise old eyes bright and fond. The Frye boots, the long skirts, the Indian jewelry. Clothes from another era. Pastrami lunches in St. Louis restaurants that probably weren't even there anymore. The shrink's warm office in a building now leveled for a mall parking garage. The truth, unvarnished.

  Bo had stayed in St. Louis for over a year after her collapse at the Holiday Inn, just to work with Lois Bittner against the shifting chemistry in her skull. They'd perused the medical literature, tried varying medications, read the famous mood-disordered writers—Keats, Poe, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton—until Bo knew their lives and symbols, their depressions and manias, better than they had. Bittner discouraged Bo's interest in van Gogh and the other affected painters, suggesting that Bo's similar talent might forge too great an identity. In defiance Bo had freelanced an article on "Van Gogh's Use of Black" for an art journal and dyed half her wardrobe to match the artist's indigo irises. A job as volunteer coordinator for a Jewish community center of whose board Lois Bittner was a member provided a living. The position had preserved a vocational integrity useful in getting her old job back at the reservation, and then in getting this one. But a year after Bo returned to New Mexico Lois Bittner had traveled to Germany for a conference, and died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in a Bremen bierstube. Friends had arranged for her burial there. Bo was saving for the day when she would lay a pastrami sandwich on that grave.

  "You're gone, aren't you?" she addressed the picture of Lois Bittner in her mind. "You're not there anymore. You're dead." The picture didn't change. But a message gleamed in the familiar eyes. "I'm not dead as long as some part of me lives in you," Bo answered for the best friend she'd ever had. "Don't blow it."

  Grinning, she gunned the car to the nearest 7-Eleven and dropped a quarter in its pay phone. "This is Bo Bradley from County Social Services," she abridged her place of employment to a more serviceable label for the floor nurse at County Psychiatric. "The police have informed me that a client I know as Zolar was taken there yesterday night. Is he still there?"

  The news was that Zolar, aka Patrick Darren Preble, had been taken by a family overjoyed that he was alive to a private psychiatric hospital called, like fully half of San Diego's schools, streets, and office buildings, Mesa Vista. Bo knew right where it was, only a few miles from her office. In fifteen minutes she was there.

  "So Patrick," she smiled, propping her feet on the edge of the bed where he lay clean and frozen in a darkness Bo recognized as a cousin to her own so long ago, "why are you here? Ignore the voices for a minute and let me tell you about this great little Mexican restaurant up the street. Fabulous carne asada and the best chicken chimichangas north of the border. Sound good? We'll go there in a few days, and that's a promise."

  A pulse of light deep in the teal blue eyes, a barely perceptible spasm near the corner of the mouth under the trimmed red beard were sufficient evidence of success. And then there was more. The blazing finale for any remaining reticence Bo might have regarding tomorrow's dive off an outgrown cliff.

  "How's Mildred?" Patrick Preble inquired thickly.

  Bo could only imagine the effort necessary to frame the polite and wondrously appropriate question through both the illness and the muddying medications that had given the young man back his name.

  "Mildred's fine," she answered. "And she remembers the jerky you gave her."

  Driving west on I-8 a half hour later, Bo turned on the radio for an exp
lanation of the purple-gray clouds roiling above San Diego. One of them, she decided as the announcer explained that a freak tropical storm named Annabelle was swirling offshore, looked like a Kodiak bear stretching to eat a file cabinet.

  It was exhaustion, she admitted. And the monumental stress of this case. There was no medication that could take away the disturbing imagery, the sense that odd and potentially horrifying realities lurked everywhere, their disguises simply gone. It was a perception Bo accepted simply as a truth few others could see. A perception to which she could give form in her paintings. Not quite delusional. Sometimes fascinating. Always unnerving.

  She'd run home, pick up Mildred and a change of clothes, and get to Estrella's before the storm hit. She'd be safe at Estrella's. She could rest and calm the odd sensibility, prepare for tomorrow. It was going to be okay.

  Chapter 25

  Eva Broussard walked barefoot along the beach, nearly deserted as Sunday afternoon picnickers and the perennial bands of surfers fled the oncoming storm. Hannah Franer ran before her, chasing flotsam thrown on the dull golden sand by frothing waves. In the dim light the child looked magical, like one of the Jo-Ge-Oh, the Iroquois Little People said to live in the lost ravines of the Adirondack and Catskill wildernesses.

  Eva watched the child and considered the reasons why all the nations of the world told stories of "little people" with magical power whose homes were hidden in natural places. Perhaps the tales were a way of honoring childhood itself, lost in each individual forever with the grim surge of reproductive chemistry at puberty. Lost, but remembered and reified in myth. The preservation of childhood, she nodded at her own thoughts, might be the telling variable in a human equation now dangerously skewed toward destruction.