Burn

by Nevada Barr

  Jordan had abandoned her. The pigeon ranger was missing. Maybe she’d seen the governess and gone back upstairs. Or she’d been taken or killed. Mackie was gone, maybe to sleep in a corner, maybe thrown out to be run over in the street. Clare couldn’t care. All that mattered now—all that had ever mattered—was Dana and Vee.

  In corners behind potted plants, in niches with half-drawn curtains, in front of a small audience gathered around a divan, two of the three smoking cigars and sipping booze with the show, she found children being used.

  After several more children and their captors, she wanted to go blind, to gouge out her eyes like a character in a Greek tragedy, but the need to see the faces of her daughters forced her to take in each miserable picture, knowing it would be burned on the back of her eyes until she closed them for the last time on earth. Probably longer.

  The men perpetrating this basest of evil faded and blurred until they were as shadows; she could scarcely believe that they were real, that they existed. The period costumes, the low hum of conversation, the palms, and the strains of piano music—it all made them seem like something from an old black-and-white movie.

  All her adult life she had worn costumes, played roles. Clare loved acting, loved bringing a character to life with her skill. Was that what these men were doing? Cloaking their sickness in a kind of glamour? Creating a world of wealth and grace where their criminal perversions were as acceptable as having a glass of wine on a summer afternoon?

  Skirting the baby grand, averting her eyes so she would not see who played the piano in hell, she entered the courtyard. The fancy house and grounds took up half of a city block. Even with the house there remained space for a courtyard large enough to hide a myriad of sins. Bricks formed the walls up to about twenty feet. Gas lanterns, low enough for privacy but bright enough for enjoying the scene, were affixed at shoulder height every few yards. From the top of the brick up, the gray of more prosaic building material took over. Climbing fig greened the walls. Bougainvillea in hot pink, lavender, gold, and red showered through the lamplight in waterfalls of color. Night-blooming jasmine and gardenia filled the still air with perfume. The garden had grown up over the years until many of the trees and shrubs were taller than the walls, leaving winding paths and darkened nooks throughout. The sound of water came from many directions as fountains joined together to make soothing music in a place where children found no solace.

  Because she knew what happened in the garden, the beauty came to Clare stinking with debasement: Shadows were too dark, colors too opulent, foliage threatening and laden with ugly memories. The scent of flowers was fetid in her nostrils as she remembered Candy’s description of the fancy house, the singing and the thumping and the smell of flowers. Insupportable weight pressed on her eyes and the back of her neck. Piano music clogged her ears. The odor of gardenias was filling her lungs till air could not penetrate.

  Unless Anna had found the girls upstairs, but for this small maze there was no place else to look for her children. Her steps slowed. Thoughts ran from her skull like the pattering of fountains. Finally she stopped, still as death, in a darkened turn and was nothing: not awake or asleep, afraid or hopeful, alive or dead.

  Into this trance came a hushed voice counting, “One, two, three. Like pin the tail on the donkey.” This was followed by men laughing and then a child’s cry, short and sharp, and more laughter.

  One more.

  Here in the garden was one more child being taunted, raped, molested, made drunk, or beaten. Clare could not let herself sink into the void until she had witnessed one last horrific act, taken on the pain of one last lost child. She owed her daughters that.

  The six or seven feet she had to force a body that was shutting down from starvation, exhaustion, and stress to reach the laughter seemed an endless push through a darkling jungle. Then she was at the end of the brick path. Ahead, tucked into a corner of the wall, was a lion head fountain, water trickling from the beast’s mouth into a triangular basin. Benches angled out from it in an ell. On each bench sat a man, both startling in their complete unremarkableness, one nearly bald, the other with hair thinning in two runs up from his eyebrows. They could have been a middle-aged grocer gossiping with the driver of the bread truck or a stockbroker trading stories with his Realtor. The bald man wore a wedding ring. Both wore glasses.

  Between them on the minute stage floored in brick and lighted by the gas lamps was a dark-haired child wearing a blindfold. One of the men was turning her gently around and around as one might in a child’s game of hide-and-seek to render the one designated as “it” dizzy.

  The child was naked but for the blindfold and button-up boots. Her dress was crumpled on the bench near the man who spun her. The powdered wig she’d been wearing lay like a dead cat half under the other man’s foot. The spinner lifted his hands from the child’s shoulders, and she staggered several steps, and then righted herself, hands outstretched in a macabre game of blindman’s bluff.

  The man who’d watched the proceedings thus far reached out a fine, long-fingered hand and tweaked the child’s nipple hard enough that she cried out. Both laughed. The other man, not to be outdone, goosed the child in the bottom with the toe of his shoe.

  The child was Dana.

  “Stop,” Clare whispered as her mind screamed incoherently. Intent on their game, the men hadn’t noticed her silent arrival, hadn’t seen her standing in the shadows. Now they did. “Stop,” she said again, and again it came out as a mere breath of sound.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business, buddy?” said the man who’d spun Dana.

  “She is my business,” Clare said, and she fell to her knees, hitting the brick so hard that the pain flapped black wings in her mind. When had she gotten so weak? So sick.

  Dana tentatively raised a hand, lifted one corner of the blindfold, and shot a quick glance at her captors to see if they’d noticed she was breaking their rules.

  “Honey,” Clare croaked and held out her arms.

  Dana pulled the blindfold down again. She didn’t recognize her mother. “Have I changed so much?” Clare murmured, but she knew she had. This brittle, black-haired man of bones and cigarette smoke was just another client come to join the game to Dana, and one she didn’t want to see.

  “Look, pal, why don’t you bug off?” the bald man said and stood. Clare flashed on the annual Halloween show Seattle Rep toured to the grade schools; Ichabod Crane, his hideous skeletal length unfolding to the horror of the children.

  Clare tried to stand and managed to get one foot on the ground so she knelt like a suitor about to propose marriage. Her head swam. She couldn’t see the man for looking at her daughter, afraid that if she looked away for even a second Dana would vanish.

  “This is my child,” she managed.

  “No, asshole, this is our kid for the evening. We paid triple for a virgin, so fuck off,” the second man said, and he, too, stood. Ichabod turned to his cohort. “You think we should call security? One of those rent-a-cops?”

  Instead of answering, the shorter man lifted his foot and kicked Clare in the face. She didn’t even have time to raise her hands to deflect the blow. The heel of his boot struck her forehead, opening a cut near the hairline. Blood poured into her eyes. Ichabod reached down with one long mechanical arm and lifted Dana into the air.

  Clare grabbed his leg, clawing up his body to get to her child. “Dana, it’s Mommy.”

  “Doggone it,” Ichabod said, shaking his leg as if to free it from an aggressive Chihuahua.

  “Going long,” the man who had kicked Clare said and jogged backward a few steps. Ichabod threw him the blindfolded child. Dana screamed. Freed from his burden, Ichabod backhanded Clare, and she fell the few feet she’d gained. Crawling, blinded with weakness and her own blood, she crossed the bricks to the man holding Dana.

  “Please,” she said. “She’s my little girl.”

  “And a pass down the field,” Ichabod cried, getting into the spirit. The kicker h
eld Dana above his head and danced away from where Clare begged at his feet. Dana was old enough it took two hands to hold her, and he threw hard. Her arms and legs windmilled in terror.

  “Punt,” he said and kicked Clare again. The boot struck her shoulder, and she fell hard, the side of her head cracking against the brick. Midnight flowed from the edges of the world until all she could see was a narrow bit of brick, red and close, in front of her.

  “Jordan!” she screamed.

  “What the hell?” someone said.

  White-hot rage, the anger of failure and cruelty and life on the run, the fury of the gutter punk, poured into Clare, and, as her consciousness receded, Jordan came to his hands and knees. A booted foot flashed toward his face. He raised one hand and shoved it aside. Clenching his fist in the trouser cuff, he roared to his feet, snarling. The man he’d caught stumbled backward and sat down hard on the rim of the fountain. Jordan let go of the cuff, grabbed him by the ears, and smashed his own forehead into the man’s face. Blood splattered: Jordan’s, the pervert’s. Jordan reveled in it.

  Sputtering, the pervert fell back, butt sinking into the shallow catchbasin.

  “You hurt me!” he cried out in shock and outrage. “You broke my nose! I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got!”

  “Sue this,” Jordan growled. He jerked the man out the water by his shirtfront, head-butted him again, and let him fall back.

  Snarling like a rabid dog, Jordan spun around to catch Ichabod watching the scene in dumb shock. “You bastards can deal it out but can’t fucking take it.” Jordan spit out the words. With a feral growl, he sprang at the tall, bony frame, striking the man in the chest with knees and elbows. Hands around the skinny throat, he bore the second man to the ground. A brick had come loose where the edge of the walk met with the soil of the planter, and Jordan prized it up.

  “Don’t kill me!” Ichabod cried.

  “Why not?” Jordan said and brought the brick down hard.

  FORTY

  Instinctively, Anna started forward. The chief rapped the barrel of his revolver sharply against the little girl’s skull, causing her to cry out. Anna stopped. The child’s twin sister moaned as if the blow had hurt her as well. The children pressed closer, clinging to Anna’s hands and skirts, hobbling her as effectively as the pistol pointing at the girl’s temple.

  Several men rousted by Anna’s intrusions paused in their exodus to stare at the odd gathering.

  “We’ve an intruder,” the chief said calmly. “It’s being taken care of. I suggest you gentlemen take your leave.”

  Two of them raised their hands to shield their faces in the way of politicians being walked to jail before banks of avid photographers and sidled by. Anna heard one murmur, “Excuse me.”

  When they’d gone, the chief jerked the girl up against his chest and nestled the gun under her full skirts, where it was obscenely concealed. “Who sent you?” he demanded.

  “Paula’s mother died,” Anna said. “I’m going to be the new governess until she can get her father settled in an extended care facility. This is on-the-job training.”

  For a moment the man’s face wavered the way Jell-O will if set down too hard. It firmed up quickly.

  “Right. And your first lesson was bashing visitors over the head with ashtrays.”

  “No,” Anna snapped. “I learned that at my previous job.”

  “And what, pray tell, was that?”

  He seemed to be enjoying the conversation in a creepy sort of way. There was no tension in his shoulders, and his feet were planted with the confidence of a big man used to being in control.

  “The security here, your boys?”

  “Can’t live on a beat patrolman’s pay,” he said affably. “Who is here with you?”

  “I’m alone,” Anna said. “I paid Paula a couple hundred to let me in through the service door from the Bonne Chance.”

  He thought about that. Anna could tell he liked the lie; it exonerated his security people of any failing. “Paula lent me the dress so I wouldn’t upset the guests,” she continued. “I’m from the Picayune. I’d hoped to get a story on the sex slave trade here in the Crescent City. I got lucky. This is Pulitzer Prize stuff. Would you mind giving me a quote for the piece? My photographer is downstairs, but we’ll be sure and set something up with you before we go.”

  The chief liked this even better. Anna could tell he loathed the local paper. The paper probably felt the same about him if he was as crooked and venal in his other dealings as he was in the area of vice. He would enjoy dealing with a reporter on his own turf.

  Just then the front of Anna’s dress cackled and the words “Hey, Paula, what the fuck’s going on?” came out from her bosom.

  It didn’t take the chief long to react. “Fish it out,” he demanded. “Two fingers, just like it was a gun and I might shoot you if it looked like you wanted to use it.”

  Anna fished Paula’s radio out of her bodice.

  The cop set the little girl at his feet. “Lay down,” he told her. She did, her face on the floor, her tiny hands over her ears, the absurd period dress bunched up, her feet in their Mary Janes poking out from the petticoats. Never taking his eyes off Anna, he lifted one booted foot and, like a circus elephant, lowered the mighty hoof onto the back of the child’s neck.

  “Now hand me the radio nicely,” he said.

  Anna did.

  The chief thumbed the mike. “Gershwin, this is Ziegfeld. Come back.”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “We got a spot of bother. Maybe a newspaper photographer down there. Look around, will you? Find Paula; looks like she let’em in. Call the Magician. Evacuate the clientele. Tell them everything’s under control. You got all that?”

  Anna noticed he didn’t bother to tell the other cop that he had a gun on one of the “newspaper people.” She tried to look deserving of such an oversight, harmless and small and one who actually believed the pen was mightier than the sword. Just as she was thinking she was glad that Jordan had changed into costume to blend in, the chief asked, “What’s your photographer wearing?”

  “I lied,” Anna said. “I came here by myself. I’m not really with the Picayune. I work for Chase Bank out in Metarie, but I thought if I could get this story it would be my big break.” Rounding her shoulders, she offered him a sheepish smile.

  He narrowed his eyes. He’d swallowed the newspaper bit as far as it went, but this was too much even for his big gut. Leaning forward, he ground his foot into the back of the little girl’s head. She squealed; her twin echoed the cry.

  “He’s wearing black Levi’s, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, and black running shoes,” Anna said quickly. “I don’t know where he is. He could be anywhere in the house.”

  “Has he got one of those goddamned iPod things that can send his pictures to the Internet as soon as he takes them?” the chief asked and pressed harder on the little neck beneath his foot. This time the child did not scream. Anna hoped her neck hadn’t snapped under the pressure.

  Would it be better for her if her photographer could send the images instantly or better if he could not? She didn’t have a lot of time to ponder the issue, but guessed the instant another intruder became priority one the chief would gun her down and go for the next target.

  “No,” Anna said. “He’s only got a small thirty-five millimeter. The phones don’t take high enough quality photographs.” She had no idea if that was true or not, but then, neither did the man with the gun and the hostage.

  Clicking the mike button again, the chief relayed Anna’s description of the imaginary photographer to a “Gershwin” and a “Busby.”

  “Find the photographer. I’m bringing down Miss Marple.” Anna winced; her days of being called Nancy Drew were at an end. “Get Blackie here. We’ve got some disposal to take care of.”

  “Blackie quit,” came back.

  “Get Dougie, then,” the chief snapped. He tucked the radio into the side pocket of his pants, then crooked his finge
r at the free twin. Thumb stuck in her mouth, she stumbled over in her stiff skirts. Grabbing her wrist, he jerked her up as he had her sister, then removed his foot from the other child’s neck. The girl on the floor didn’t move, but Anna was fairly sure she could see her breathing.

  “Give me your cell phone,” he ordered Anna.

  “I don’t have one.”

  The chief thought that was the biggest lie of all, right up there with “I don’t watch television.”

  “I mean, I have one,” Anna said quickly. “But not on me. It was in my pants, and I left them in Paula’s room when I changed.”

  To this he just grunted. “You kids get out of here,” he said to the group huddled around Anna. None of them moved. Whether they knew Anna had come to save them or were just paralyzed with fear was hard to tell. Anna could feel small hands clutching and plucking at her skirts.

  Disturbed by this show of noncompliance, the chief cocked the pistol with his thumb and pointed the barrel at a child, the white powder of her makeup streaked with mascara from crying, her elaborate wig askew. “Get out of here,” he said.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Anna exploded. Those would very possibly have been the last words she ever uttered had not a man come rushing up, taking the stairs two at a time.

  It was Dougie.

  He skidded into the crowd of frightened children like Kramer into Jerry’s apartment on the old Seinfeld show. The gunman’s attention flicked to the newcomer. If ever she was to act, this was the time. Once she and the children were taken downstairs there would be too many guns.

  Dougie wasn’t a big man, not more than a few inches taller than Anna and no more than twenty pounds heavier. As he stopped amid the confusion, he turned toward the chief. Seeing the gun, he threw his hands in the air like a cowboy in an old Western.

  Scattering children, Anna slipped behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and slid her hands up his chest and around his neck, trapping him in a full nelson. Locking her fingers together on the base of his skull, she yelled at the children, “Run!”