Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  Everyone in church was on their feet now, trying to see what was happening. Those in front saw Abraham Stonds reach for his granddaughter, pin her arms behind her. One man called to his neighbors to help out the doctor: A bunch of old women and preachers can’t handle that Starr by themselves—feeling her body in his own hands, blood pounding in his temples, around him faces glowing with the same desire, pushing into the aisles: yes, let’s help out the doctor.

  Those in the back of the nave could only see the shadows that the altar candles cast on the back wall. In the shadow play Starr seemed to be a great horned beast, a wild cow. A witch. Kissing a woman in church … Mother of harlots … Pastor Emerson said eradicate … In the Bible … suffer a witch …

  They poured into the side aisles. A few timid hands tried to hold them back, but were knocked away. If you side with witches you are a witch, one youth shouted.

  The tide roared up the chancel stairs. Pastor Emerson tried to restrain them but was brushed aside, a piece of driftwood in a raging sea. A dozen hands grabbed the great gold candlesticks and heaved them at Starr. Mara broke away from Grandfather. She took Starr’s arm and tried to drag her to safety, but frenzied fingers tore her from Starr’s side, threw her and Jacqui and Luisa to the floor. Manic fists punched Hector in the eyes and mouth, shoving him away from Starr.

  The cameraman caught what he could, but bad light, bad angle, could see the backs of the mob on top of Starr but not what they were doing.

  Oh, yes, again, smash again, the bone turns to pulp beneath the skin, yes, she’s a slug, a reptile. Crush, smash, destroy her. On the wall the shadows danced. The candlesticks were giant maces rising and falling until the cow’s head collapsed and disappeared onto the floor.

  50

  Murder in the Cathedral

  MARA LAY IN Harriet’s bed, her head on her sister’s lap. After weeks of sleeping on the ground it felt strange to be in a bed again, especially her sister’s, in the room where she had often sneaked uninvited. With her eyes shut Mara tried to believe she was still on the beach and that it was Starr’s head, with hair wilder than her own had ever been, above her. Her lips twisted in a painful smile at herself: for nineteen years she had tried to become Harriet. Now she wanted Harriet to become Starr. No, not that. What she wanted was the vile slaughter at the church never to have happened. She wanted to be home as she was, with Harriet tenderly holding her, and for Starr to be wandering the city someplace where Mara might come upon her.

  She clutched Starr’s red T-shirt closer to herself. Everything in the room was pale, from her sister’s white-gold hair, to the ivory walls and drapes needing a spectroscope to find out they had lavender or pink in them. As Starr was the most urgently alive person Mara had ever met, it was perhaps right that the only color in the room be the Bulls shirt Starr had on when she died.

  Harriet stroked the shaved head in her lap. It was sprouting little black curls now, like sea moss. Mara wasn’t quite asleep, but Harriet had nothing to do but stroke her head, and let her sister sleep or not as she would. For the first time in the twenty-six years since she’d moved into this room she was on no schedule, awaiting no event.

  When Harriet brought her sister back to Graham Street, Mara was still sobbing out her grief and horror at Starr’s murder. Harriet herself was moving in a marble trance, not crying or thinking. Like an automaton she took off her bloodstained dress, put on a robe, ran water in the tub. As Mara needed to hold on to Starr’s shirt, Harriet needed to hold on to Mara. While she was undressing her sister, bathing her, running shampoo through the tiny new curls, Harriet wouldn’t collapse.

  By the time Mara climbed from the tub she was quieter. She looked at the large wet patch down the front of Harriet’s ivory dressing gown and said she would dry herself, she was ruining Harriet’s robe.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Harriet said, thinking first of the blast from Mephers for being so careless: good silk, didn’t you pay three hundred dollars for that, telling me it would last forever? and then how ridiculous it was, to care about a dressing gown after seeing—her body shook at the memory of what she’d seen, and she gathered Mara more tightly to herself.

  After she had gone into Pastor Emerson’s office to call an ambulance for Luisa, she ran outside to wait. She was rattled, but alert enough to prop the vestry door open with a book so she wouldn’t be locked out. While she waited, immobile in anxiety, she could hear the rising roar from the mob inside. Mara, what are you doing? Reckless little sister taking on Rafe, his bullying son and all those engorged men? Why isn’t the ambulance here, why don’t they come, looking at her watch, only three minutes? Two days was what it felt like, starting back inside the building to call again when the paramedics pulled up.

  “Over here,” she cried as they trotted toward the main entrance with their stretcher. “You’ll never get to her through the front of the church.”

  They didn’t hear her. She had to run across the grass to intercept them, to tell them a jerky confused story of Luisa—a bad accident, maybe broken neck, angry crowd.

  The medics were used to panicked people: rich white woman, probably seeing her first crisis—if someone had fallen in church probably all the old ladies were fainting and thought they needed an ambulance. The medics patted Harriet soothingly and followed her into the building. Through the vestry they could make out the clangor: screams, shouts, maniacal laughter. Their indulgent contempt of Harriet’s alarm died; they moved cautiously to the chancel entrance.

  They couldn’t at first make sense of what they were confronting. A ritual of some kind—backs and arms lunging up and down in a massive parody of a dance. But there was a smell, of blood, of singed hair, and an unholy noise, like the baying of a thousand hounds. This was a mob, worse than any they’d ever seen on the streets. The paramedics backed hastily out of the church and dashed to their ambulance to summon police in riot gear.

  They ran past the minister, not seeing him slumped in one of the carved stalls behind the altar. His lips were moving soundlessly in his waxy-green face. Harriet spotted him as she looked about in terror, hoping for a sight of Mara or Hector.

  “Pastor Emerson.” She flung herself at the minister, “What’s happening? My sister—”

  He didn’t respond. She shook him, and he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Harriet gave a despairing cry and launched herself into the pack. When the police arrived with bullhorns and billy clubs, she was still at the edge of the mob, unable to push through to her sister.

  The paramedics had let the vestry door slam behind them when they ran off to call for help; they had to bring the police in through the great doors at the front. The cops felt silly, walking down the aisles of a cathedralsized church with riot gear on, but when they saw the ferocity of the mob they were glad for their helmets and face screens. They called for order through their bullhorns but no one paid any heed.

  The police started wrestling people on the fringes of the melee to the ground, snapping on plastic riot cuffs at random, moving deeper into the fray. Patsy Wanachs and Mrs. Thirkell stared at each other on the floor in their cuffs before looking away in shame.

  As police thinned out the crowd and the noise died down, those at the heart of the riot grew quieter. Men and women looked at each other, saw glistening eyes and slobbering mouths, and backed away in disgust.

  The paramedics, who’d been hovering in the rear of the nave, made their way unhindered to the top of the chancel steps. Starr lay in front of the communion table, her face a bloody mass. The great black horns of hair were gone, pulled out in clumps, leaving her scalp patchy with blood.

  Jared Lowrie stood near the body, holding a black tuft in his left hand. When a cop went to put cuffs on him, Jared was smirking. He jerked his body away in indignation.

  “What did I do? Why don’t you go after the real ringleader, that Mara Stonds down there?”

  The officer, wrestling the cuffs over Jared’s wrists, came away with a handful of wet hair. He stared from it to Starr�
��s lacerated scalp and threw up on Jared’s arm.

  Hector and Mara were cradling Starr. Hector’s own face was covered with blood from the blows he’d taken at the start of the riot. His right eye was swollen shut, but he didn’t seem to realize it.

  Behind him Jacqui, Nanette, and Luisa crawled out from beneath the stone communion table where they’d ridden out the fury of the storm. Near them, not with them but safe also, were Dr. Stonds and Mrs. Ephers, Rafe and Cynthia.

  “Jesus, have mercy,” Jacqui whispered, kneeling next to Hector.

  Harriet pushed through the remnants of the horde to reach her sister. “Oh, Mara, oh, Beebie, my precious baby, I’m so sorry.”

  She sat next to her sister and embraced her, trying not to flinch from the torn flesh in Mara’s lap, Mara wouldn’t let go of Starr’s head, but she leaned against Harriet and began to weep.

  A police sergeant came up with the paramedics. He tried to question the group around Starr, but no one was able to respond. Dr. Stonds muttered something about Mara, girl a troublemaker from the day she was born, while Mrs. Ephers nodded in savage approval; Harriet raised her head to protest, then realized Grandfather was speaking so incoherently the police weren’t paying attention to him.

  Don Sandstrom suddenly loomed behind the paramedics, his mike in hand. He thrust it in Mara’s face, and saw to his delight that the woman holding her was the lawyer for the hotel, the mediagenic Harriet Stonds. Usually so calm you felt you needed an icebreaker to talk to her, today looking like the tail end of a tornado.

  “Ms. Stonds, Were you present at this horrendous event as a representative of your law firm?”

  Harriet looked up involuntarily, her eyes almost black with anguish. “Were you here? You filmed all this and did nothing to stop it? Did you think you were a spectator at a game that you couldn’t put down your camera to call for help?”

  Her lips were so thick she could barely frame words. She leaned forward to hold her sister more closely. Don backed away from the chancel. Tight-ass broad, always on her high horse about something. He had footage of her covered in blood, see how she liked having that all over the five o’clock news. He gathered his crew together—no point in staying for the rest of the cleanup. They’d get statements from the cops back at the station.

  The paramedics gently removed Starr from Mara’s and Hector’s arms. The crimson Bulls shirt, now wet with blood, came away in Mara’s hands.

  “What will you do with her?” Mara whispered to the medics.

  “We’ll take her to Midwest Hospital,” one of them said. “And, buddy”—to Hector—“you’d better come along, get someone to patch up your face. Your cheekbone’s broken, by the looks of it.”

  “Does that mean she’s not dead?” Jacqui asked. “If you’re taking her to the hospital and all?”

  The medics paused in embarrassment.

  “No.” Hector winced as he became aware of the pain in his face. “She’s quite dead. They have to get a death certificate from the hospital before they take her to the morgue.”

  “Is one of you next of kin?” the medics asked him.

  Harriet braced herself for Mara’s claim that Starr was her mother, but it was Luisa who spoke. “I’m her sister.”

  One of the medics turned to Luisa for details, and the diva, as fluent as though she were reciting from a score, provided them with a last name and an address for Starr. No autopsy, Jacqui said, we don’t want them cutting on her. Nonetheless, she has to go to the morgue, the medics explained: the law. You can claim the body for burial next week. The police can give you a case number for her.

  As the medics started to load Hector onto a stretcher Dr. Stonds stood, dusting his knees. “I’m Abraham Stonds, head of neurosurgery at Midwest. There’s an old woman here with a bad heart who ought to be looked at before this young man. He’s perfectly able to walk. She needs the stretcher.” Dr. Stonds’s voice was once more firm, authoritative.

  The medics turned to Mrs. Ephers: heart attacks were something they were used to, adept at treating. They’d take her out, hook her up to an EKG, oxygen, phone for another stretcher unit for Hector. Dr. Stonds was annoyed at their coddling of Dr. Tammuz, ought to know better than to try to hog medical care when an old woman was in need, did he understand the oath he’d sworn?

  Harriet turned her head aside. How like Grandfather. He’d seen acquaintances of sixty years slavering like jackals at a kill, but he was blotting that out, trying to pretend that if anything serious had happened it was Hector or Mara’s fault.

  She drew Mara tighter to her, walked with her behind Starr’s stretcher. Jacqui and Nanette were in attendance, as well as a weeping LaBelle, who’d hidden under the side stalls near the altar and emerged only when her friends started to leave. Luisa climbed into the back of the ambulance and waited for Starr.

  Harriet held Mara’s hand while her sister knelt to kiss Starr’s bloody lips, held on to Mara while she herself bent to embrace Hector, pressing a piece of paper with her home number scribbled on it into his hand. “Call me when they finish with you, I’ll drive over to get you.”

  “And Hilda?” Grandfather demanded from the rear of Mephers’s ambulance. “You are going to let the woman who was more to you than a mother take off for the hospital without so much as a glance, while you lavish attention on the very people who caused her so much distress?”

  Mephers more to her than a mother? Perhaps. At least, within her lights. Harriet gave her sister to Jacqui for a moment and went to climb into the ambulance, where Mephers lay attached to monitors, her heart as steady as a clock pendulum.

  Mephers kept her eyes shut, turned her head to avoid Harriet’s lips. “You’re making your bed, Harriet Stonds. Be sure it’s the one you want to lie on.”

  Harriet climbed back out of the ambulance and took Mara with her to the mausoleum on Graham Street. By and by little sister slept.

  51

  And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

  NO ONE KNOWS exactly what happened at the Orleans Street Church this morning,” Don Sandstrom said. “There’s no doubt that the grape juice the church uses for communion had turned into wine, but whether this was the prank of an alcoholic singer and a disturbed teenager who were hiding out in the church, or the demonic intervention of the homeless woman Starr, as some church members believe, we will probably never know.”

  Becca Minsky, with her dog Dusty and a nest of stuffed animals around her, was watching the six o’clock news in her bedroom. Ever since the police beat up Judith Ohana at the wall last night, Becca had been frantic to get into Chicago. What did she propose to do in the city, Harry demanded: get herself beaten up as well?

  Becca couldn’t say what she wanted—to be a hero, to rescue Luisa, to be part of the excitement of the city. Karen and Harry decided they’d better not leave their daughter alone for a minute. In the middle of the night, when Becca tiptoed out of her room an hour after her parents went to bed, she stumbled into one of the security guards from her father’s scrap metal yard. She’d known the man her whole life, but neither her cajoling nor her tears brought her anything but a visit from her father, and the news that she was not to leave the house.

  If her father couldn’t trust her, Becca snapped, if he had to spy on her, hire guards to look after her, then Becca wasn’t going to come out of her room until school started.

  If you think I’m bringing you your meals on a tray, young lady, think again, Karen said, appearing behind Harry in the hall, so Becca turned up her nose and announced grandly she was on a hunger strike. After skipping breakfast and lunch, she was wondering if fasting was really necessary, but she forgot her hunger when she turned on the news. Footage of Luisa flung against the side of the communion table, a close-up to show the thickness of the stone; Becca was tumbling out of bed to scream for Karen, Luisa’s been killed, when her aunt sat up and smiled, embraced Starr. Becca stopped in her doorway, her fingers in her mouth. While she watched, all hell broke loose on the screen.

&nb
sp; “After the bodies were pulled apart, there was one death, that of the aphasiac woman Starr, and numerous injuries, the most serious to Hector Tammuz, the idealistic young doctor who’s been dedicating himself to these homeless women.” The screen briefly showed Hector swathed in bandages in his hospital bed.

  “An important question remains: what happened moments before the mob converged on Starr? Was Luisa Montcrief’s neck broken, as Dr. Tammuz believes? Or had she merely collapsed, as neurosurgery chief Dr. Abraham Stonds claims? We were unable to talk to Dr. Tammuz: he is recovering from surgery to rebuild his broken left cheek, but Dr. Stonds assures Channel 13 that Luisa Montcrief was faking her injuries, as part of the same scam that led her to pretend to interpret the dead woman Starr’s various grunts.”

  Sandstrom had gone to the hospital to get Hector and Stonds on tape, and been disappointed that the young man was too groggy from anesthesia to speak. He’d been lucky in one respect: Monsignor Mulvaney was in Dr. Stonds’s office. The archdiocese had sent the priest over to find out if the creature Starr had really raised a woman from the dead. It would place the church in an intolerable quandary if they had to assign miraculous powers to an aphasiac nymphomaniac; Mulvaney was counting on Stonds’s assurance that Luisa had either been acting, or collapsed in a drunken stupor.

  Stonds and Mulvaney actually went with Dr. Hanaper to Hector’s bedside to order him not to make irresponsible statements to the media. Stonds in particular was furious at the idea of that damned young resident making it look as though he, Abraham Stonds, couldn’t tell if a woman was alive or dead.

  Sandstrom, paddling happily in their wake, secured footage of Hector’s swaddled face, and a promise from Monsignor Mulvaney to participate in a panel discussion, “The Woman Starr: Saint or Psychopath?”