The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  Among other things.

  And just as I let him do other things, I let him fuss over me, and take care of me, and tuck me into his bed while he went to get a tray from Lorraine. I wouldn’t have thought I could sleep, but I did, all night with his breath against the back of my neck as he stroked my hair and sides.

  The next afternoon, as I relaxed in my own bed with Bliss keeping me company, Lorraine threw a package at me. While Bliss muttered something about foul-tempered bitches who needed to stick their heads in an oven, I unwrapped the plain brown paper and started to laugh.

  It was a book of Poe.

  “So the Gardener didn’t approve of what his son did?”

  “The Gardener cherished us, and genuinely regretted killing us. Avery was just . . .” She shakes her head, folding her legs beneath her on the chair. She winces and presses a hand against her stomach. “I’m sorry, but I really need to use the bathroom.”

  The tech analyst opens the door a minute later. Inara gets up and joins her there, then glances back at Victor as if asking for permission. At his nod, they leave and close the door behind them.

  Victor shuffles through the photos of the hallways, trying to count the individual sets of wings.

  “Do you think that’s all the girls he took?” Eddison asks.

  “No,” Victor sighs. “I wish I could say yes, but what if a girl was injured in such a way that it damaged her wings or back? I doubt he displayed them then, because these are all in perfect condition.”

  “They’re dead.”

  “But perfectly preserved.” He lifts one of the close-ups. “She said glass and resin; have the scene techs confirmed that?”

  “I’ll find out.” He shoves back from the table and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. As long as they’ve been partners, Victor’s never seen him able to stand still while he’s on the phone, and as soon as the number’s dialed, he starts pacing back and forth across the narrow room like a caged tiger.

  Finding the pen attached to Eddison’s notebook, Victor scrawls his initials across the bag with the collection of IDs and slits it open, letting the plastic cards spill out over the table. It gets a curious look from Eddison that he largely ignores as he sifts through them until he finds the name he’s looking for. Cassidy Lawrence.

  Lyonette.

  Her driver’s license was only three days old when she was taken, and the pretty girl in the picture beams with excitement. It’s a face meant for smiles, for joy, and he tries to age that into the fierce-eyed girl who welcomed Inara into the Garden. He can’t quite manage it. Even when he places the ID against the picture of those pumpkin wings caught in glass, he can’t make himself accept the connection.

  “Which one do you suppose is Giselle?” Eddison asks, shoving the phone back in his pocket.

  “Too many redheads to guess, unless Inara can tell us which butterfly she had.”

  “How can he have been doing this for thirty years without us ever noticing?”

  “If the police hadn’t gotten that call and noticed our flags on some of those names, how much longer do you think he would have gone unnoticed?”

  “That’s a fucking terrible question.”

  “What did the techs say?”

  “They’re closing up the scene for today, giving a tour to the guards for tonight. They said they’d try to open the cases tomorrow.”

  “Closing up?” He twists his wrist to check his watch. Almost ten o’clock. “Christ.”

  “Vic . . . we can’t release her. She could just disappear again. I’m not convinced she’s not part of this.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why aren’t you pushing harder?”

  “Because she is more than smart enough to turn it back on us, and”—he laughs sharply—“more than enough of a smart-ass to enjoy doing it. Let her tell it in her own way; all it costs us is time, and this is one of the few cases where we have the time.” He leans forward, clasping his hands against the table. “The suspects are not in good condition; they may or may not survive the night. She’s our best chance of learning the larger picture of the Garden.”

  “If she’s telling the truth.”

  “She hasn’t actually lied to us.”

  “That we know of. People with fake IDs aren’t usually innocent, Vic.”

  “She may be telling the truth about why she has it.”

  “It’s still illegal, and I still don’t trust her.”

  “Give her time. That will also give us time for the other girls to recover enough to talk to us. The longer we keep her here, the better our chances of getting the other girls talking.”

  Eddison scowls but nods. “She’s irritating.”

  “Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”

  Rolling his eyes, Eddison scoops the IDs back into the evidence bag. He stacks each photo neatly into a pile and lines the edges with the corner of the table. “We’ve been up more than thirty-six hours. We need to sleep.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “So what do we do about her? We can’t let her disappear. If we take her back to the hospital and the senator hears about her . . .”

  “She’ll stay here. We’ll get some blankets, see if we can find a cot, and in the morning we’ll resume.”

  “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  “A better idea than letting her go. If we keep her here, rather than moving her to a holding cell, it’s still an active interrogation session. Even Senator Kingsley isn’t going to butt in during an active interrogation.”

  “Are we holding our breath on that?” He gathers the trash from dinner, stuffing everything into one of the bags until the paper splits and bursts around the strain, and heads to the door. “I’ll hunt down a cot.” He yanks open the door, scowls at the returning Inara and Yvonne, and stalks away. Yvonne nods to Victor and returns to the observation room.

  “What a pleasant man,” Inara notes dryly, and slides into her seat on the far side of the table. The soot streaks and dirt are gone from her face, her hair neatened into a heavy twisted bun.

  “He has his uses.”

  “Please tell me talking to damaged children isn’t one of them.”

  “He’s better with suspects,” he allows, and wins a hint of a smile. He looks for something to occupy his hands, but Eddison’s compulsiveness straightened everything on the table. “Tell us about being in the Garden.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Day to day, when nothing out of the ordinary was happening. What was it like?”

  “Boring as all fuck,” she answers succinctly.

  Victor pinches the bridge of his nose.

  No, but seriously, it was boring.

  There were usually twenty to twenty-five of us in the Garden at any given point, not counting Lorraine, because really, why would she have counted for anything? Unless he was out of town, the Gardener “visited” at least one of us a day, sometimes two or three if he didn’t have to work or spend time with his family or friends, which meant he still didn’t spend time with all of us within a single week. After what Avery did to me and Giselle, he was only allowed in the Garden once a week, and only under his father’s supervision, though he defied that as often as he thought he could get away with. It didn’t last long, anyway.

  Breakfast was served in the kitchen at seven-thirty, and we had until eight o’clock to eat so Lorraine could get everything cleaned up. You couldn’t get away with skipping meals—she watched us eat and reported it to the Gardener—but one meal in a day you were allowed to be “not as hungry.” If you did it twice, she’d show up in your room to do a checkup.

  After breakfast—except those two mornings of maintenance, when we were stuck behind walls—we were free until twelve, when lunch was served in another half-hour window. Half the girls went back to bed, like they thought sleeping through the days would make them go faster. I usually followed Lyonette’s example, even after she was in the gl
ass, and made my mornings available for any girls who needed to talk. The cave under the waterfall became an office of sorts. There were cameras everywhere, and mics, but the crash of even such a small waterfall made it too difficult for conversation to come across clearly.

  “And he allowed this?” Victor asks incredulously.

  “Once I explained it to him, sure.”

  “Explained it to him?”

  “Yes. He sat me down to dinner one evening in his suite to ask about it, I suppose to make sure we weren’t fomenting rebellion or something.”

  “And how did you explain it?”

  “That girls needed some semblance of privacy for mental well-being, and as long as those conversations kept the Butterflies healthy and whole, why the fuck did it matter? Well, I expressed it a little more eloquently than that. The Gardener liked elegance.”

  “Those conversations with the girls—what were they like?”

  With some of them it was just venting. They were restless and scared and pissed off and needed someone to talk all that feeling from them. They’d pace and rage and pound the walls, but at the end, if their hands and hearts were sore, they were at least a little further from breaking. These were the girls like Bliss, only they lacked her courage.

  Bliss said whatever she wanted, wherever and whenever she wanted. Like she said the first time I met her, the Gardener never asked us to love him. He wanted us to, I think, but he never asked us to. I think he valued her honesty, just as he came to value my straightforwardness.

  Some of the girls needed comfort, something I was not especially good at. I could have patience with the occasional tears, or the tears that came of that first month in the Garden, but when it went on and on and on, for weeks and months and even years . . . well, that was generally when I lost patience and told them to get over it.

  Or, if I was feeling magnanimous that day, I sent them on to Evita.

  Evita was an American Lady, her back inked in faded oranges and dull yellows before the wingtips spread to intricate black patterns. Evita was sweet, but not quite bright. I don’t say that to be mean, but because it’s true. She had the understanding of a six-year-old, so the Garden was a daily source of wonder for her. The Gardener only came to her once or twice a month because she always got so confused and scared by what he wanted from her, and Avery wasn’t allowed to go near her at all. Every time the Gardener came, we all worried that she’d end up in glass, but that simple sweetness was something he seemed to treasure.

  That simple sweetness meant you could go to her, bawling your eyes out, and she’d hug and stroke and make silly sounds until you stopped crying; and she’d listen to you pour your heart out, without saying a word. For those girls, being around Evita’s sunny smile always made them feel better.

  For my part, being around Evita just made me sad, but when the Gardener came to her, she came to me, and she was the one person whose tears I could always forgive.

  “Do we need to get a special needs advocate to the hospital?”

  The girl shakes her head. “She died about six months ago. An accident.”

  Around eleven-fifteen, the “office” closed and a group of us ran laps through the hallways. Lorraine would glare at us if she was present but never said anything against it, because it was really the only exercise we got. The Gardener wouldn’t give us weights or treadmills or anything because he was worried we’d use them to injure ourselves. Then, after lunch, the afternoon was ours until dinner at eight o’clock.

  That was when the boredom set in.

  The cliff top became my place even more than the waterfall cave, because I was one of the few who enjoyed climbing up and sprawling close to the glass that marked the edge of our prison. Most of the girls did better pretending the sky wasn’t so close, pretending that our world was bigger than it was and that nothing waited Outside. If it helped them, I wasn’t going to argue with them. But I loved it up there. Some days I’d even climb the trees and stretch out and press my hand against the glass. I liked reminding myself that there was a world beyond my cage, even if I’d never see it again.

  Early on, sometimes Lyonette, Bliss, and I would sprawl in the afternoon sun and talk, or read. Lyonette would fold her origami creations, Bliss would play with the polymer clay the Gardener bought for her, and I’d read aloud from plays and novels and poetry.

  But sometimes we’d go down to the main level, where the stream bisected the almost jungle-like growth, and we’d spend time with the other girls. Sometimes we’d just read together, or talk of less sensitive things, but there were games too, when we got bored enough.

  Those were the days that seemed to make the Gardener happiest. We knew there were cameras everywhere because at night you could see the winking red eyes, but on days when we played, he’d come into the Garden and watch us from the rocks by the waterfall, a soft smile on his face like this was everything he could have dreamed of.

  I think it’s a tribute to just how bored we got that we didn’t all scatter to our rooms and solitary activities the minute we saw him.

  Six months ago, about ten of us were playing hide-and-seek, and Danelle was It. She had to count off to a hundred while standing near the Gardener, because it was the one place none of us were likely to hide, and so the only place she wouldn’t easily hear us hiding. I’m not sure if he was aware of the logic or not, but he seemed charmed to be part of the game, even peripherally.

  I nearly always climbed the tree during these games, mainly because practicing for two years on the fire escape of the apartment meant I could climb higher and faster than anyone else. They might find me pretty easily, but they couldn’t actually reach me to tag.

  Evita was scared of heights, just like she was scared of enclosed spaces. Someone always stayed with her at night in case the walls came down so she wouldn’t be alone and terrified. Evita never climbed. Except that day. I don’t know why she wanted to, especially not when we could see how scared she was once she got about six feet off the ground, but even when we called across that it was okay, she could still hide somewhere else, she was determined. “I can be brave,” she said. “I can be brave like Maya.”

  From beside Danelle, the Gardener watched us with worried eyes, like he did whenever one of us went against our habits.

  Danelle reached ninety-nine and just stopped, giving Evita more time to hide. We all did that sometimes, if we could hear her. Danelle kept her back turned and her hands over her tattooed face, waiting for silence.

  It took Evita almost ten minutes, but she pulled herself up the tree inch by inch until she was fifteen feet up and sitting on one of the branches. Tears tracked down her face, but she looked at me in a nearby tree and gave me a wavering smile. “I can be brave,” she said.

  “You’re very brave, Evita,” I told her. “Braver than all the rest of us.”

  She nodded and looked down between her feet at the ground that seemed so far away. “I don’t like it up here.”

  “Do you want me to help you down?”

  She nodded again.

  I stood carefully on my branch and turned so I could start down my tree, only to hear Ravenna cry out behind me. “Evita, no! Wait for Maya!”

  I looked back over my shoulder in time to see Evita windmilling wildly and teetering down the branch until it was too narrow to support her weight. The branch snapped and Evita shrieked as she dropped. Everyone rushed from their hiding places to try to help, but then her head struck a lower branch with a sickening crack and her screams abruptly stopped.

  She fell into the pond with a great splash, and was still.

  I shimmied down the tree as quickly as I could, scraping my legs and arms on the bark, but no one else moved, not even the Gardener. They all stared at the girl in the pond, at the blood floating away from her pale blonde hair. Wading into the stream, I grabbed her ankle and pulled her closer to me.

  Finally the Gardener came running, and heedless of his fine clothing, he helped me get her out of the water onto dry land. Ev
ita’s lovely blue eyes were frozen open, but there wasn’t any sense in trying to make her breathe.

  Part of that crack had been her neck breaking.

  Death was a strange thing in the Garden, an omnipresent threat but not something we actually saw. Girls were simply taken away and a pair of wings in a display case in the halls took their place. For most of the girls, this was their first time seeing death firsthand.

  The Gardener’s hands shook as he smoothed Evita’s wet hair back from her face and cradled the wet mess on the back of her skull where she’d hit the branch. Then we were all staring at him rather than Evita because he was weeping. His entire body moved with the strength of his sobs, his eyes screwing shut against this unexpected pain, and he rocked back and forth with Evita’s body clasped to his chest, blood staining his sleeve and water soaking through his shirt and trousers.

  It was like he’d taken even our tears from us, then. Alerted by the screams, the other girls had come running from their rooms or elsewhere in the Garden, and together all twenty-two of us stood in dry-eyed silence as our captor wept for the death of the one girl he hadn’t killed.

  She takes the stack of hallway photos and flicks through them until she finds the one she wants. “He arranged her hair so the damage wouldn’t show,” she tells Victor, laying it out for him to see. “He spent the rest of that day and night doing something, off where we couldn’t see him, and the walls came down, and the next day she was up in the glass and he was asleep in front of her, his eyes red and swollen. He stayed there the rest of the day, right in front of her. Right up until a couple of days ago, he touched the glass every time he passed it, until he didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. Even when the glass was covered, he touched the wall.”

  “She wasn’t the only accidental death though, was she?”

  She shakes her head. “No, not by a long shot. But Evita was . . . well, she was sweet. Utterly innocent, incapable of comprehending the bad things. When they happened to her, they touched her lightly and then let her go. In a way, I think she was the happiest of us, purely because she didn’t know any other way to be.”