by Rhodi Hawk
Zenon leaned in and lowered his voice, as if that might hinder any eavesdropping by the authorities. Madeleine knew their conversation was probably being monitored, and it made her uncomfortable.
“Why no, Madeleine, you got me. I have not been taking them. Why should I take pills from somebody who don’t know nothing about me? You know me better than anyone else on this planet, now, don’t you?” His voice was intimate, and she shifted in her seat. “Yes ma’am. We know each other real well, you and me.”
He took a long drag from his cigarette. “Well anyway, yeah, maybe I been hangin out with old Josh some. We got this little game goin. I ask Josh about some of the other prisoners, and he shows me what crime they committed—or ain’t committed; some of’m’re actually innocent, can you believe that?” He shrugged. “Passes the time. Like watchin TV. That’s how I come to know about your new boyfriend here.” He gestured toward the prisoner in the next booth. “Kind of funny, him goin down for stealing cars after he did all that rapin and killin.”
Madeleine looked away. As she held the phone to her ear, she noticed a strange prattle in the background. A radio. But the language was unfamiliar.
“Is there a radio there with you?”
Zenon motioned his head toward the guard. “He carries it around for me. Don’t really need it here while I’m talking to you, but it’s best to keep them guards in practice. They practice listening for you inside their heads, and they don’t even know it. I keep’m exercising. You let’m go too long they get rusty.”
Madeleine felt sick, knowing she’d been one of his pigeons. “What language is that on the radio?”
“Hungarian.”
“Why do you listen to languages you don’t understand?”
“Well that’s my own exercise. Jiujitsu for the brain.”
She looked at the shortwave. The sound of the announcer’s voice sounded eerie somehow, if only because it didn’t match. But at the same time, because she didn’t speak the language, it wasn’t as distracting as an English-speaking program. It almost soothed her, and her mind danced across the plane of words with gentle oblivion, pausing to collect the odd intonation that sounded familiar. Ház sounded like “house.” And she thought she caught the word “carton.”
The radio snapped off. Nobody had touched it.
He was watching her with a leer. “Enough radio. Maybe I’m sharing a little too much, yeah. Gettin hypnotized by those devil blue eyes.”
She lowered them, afraid to look at him, but then steeled herself and returned his gaze. “What about Anita Salazar? And Angel Frey?”
His face grew hard and he leaned in close. “Listen to you, bringing that up. Kind of personal, don’t you think? But hell, what can I say, baby, it’s in my genes. That’s what Joe Whitney thinks. This new trial, I’m pleading not guilty by reason of mental defect.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bad genes, baby. Predisposed to kill. Ain’t nothing you can do if it’s in your genes.”
She sat dumbfounded. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Got it on both sides of the family. My mama killed my step-daddy. Didn’t you know that? Made me help get rid of the body. She never thought twice about doin what had to be done in that sense. And Daddy Blank, hell, you know what I got runnin around in my genes from that side.”
She was mute. She could only stare at him.
“Daddy Blank used to smack you and Marc around when he was out of his senses. He was a violent bastard. And Marc was too. Hell, I remember when Marc went after Daddy Blank with a two-by-four. Worked him over good, didn’t he, yeah? And what was that shit about Marc frying that electrician worked for him? You and I both know that weren’t no accident. And then Marc killed his own self.”
He leaned back in satisfaction. “Predisposed, baby. And you, hell, I don’t need to bring up the thing with Carlo, do I? We can’t help it, it’s in our genes. We’re violent people. One big happy family.”
She swallowed hard. It sounded like he was rehearsing for the new trial.
“You’ll never pull this off, Zenon. People don’t just get away with murder on a ‘bad genes’ defense. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in the real world.”
“Yeah, it’s a long shot, ain’t it? Joe Whitney says it’ll be a landmark case. Josh seems to think so too. Josh also thinks I can persuade a jury to do anything I want them to do.”
She deliberately kept her voice soft. “But what’s the real reason you did it? Why did you go after Angel Frey?”
He shrugged. “What do you want from me? I was under orders. Josh is a bossy fucker. I didn’t have no choice.”
“You didn’t have to follow any orders.”
“Yeah, I did. This shit’s still new to you. But for me, Josh been coming around almost ten years now. You can’t hold out forever.”
“Ten years,” she murmured. “There were others then, weren’t there? These two girls weren’t the first ones.”
“Don’t get all high and mighty. You follow orders and that’s that.” He shrugged, and looked genuinely puzzled. “Don’t you know? Hasn’t your little parasite friend been working you? They start you off slow, I guess, but you’ll catch up. You ask me, they’re threatened by certain kinds of people. And those people are a threat to us, too.”
“How can people like Angel Frey possibly be a threat to us?”
Instead of answering, he said, “She was golden inside. Just like all the others. You seen it yet?”
“Golden? I don’t know.”
“Oh, you’d know. Lumens, they’re called. It’s contagious, too. You and me, we’re already paired up. And we’re paired with the wrong kind.”
“I’m paired with Severin. And you’re paired with Josh.”
Zenon’s gaze traveled elsewhere, just over her shoulder to a blank zone where he probably saw the shapes in his mind more clearly than those around him. “I don’t think people like Angel Frey even know what they are. Just like you and I didn’t know. Till it’s too late.”
He said, “Least that’s as much as I can make out from the mile-deep pile of grass turds Josh keeps feeding me. It’s the culling, yeah. When you cull, you shape what’s left.”
He took a drag from his cigarette, gaze still diverted. “You think you got a choice, baby? You ain’t got no choice. And it dudn’t make a difference anyway once you got blood on your hands. You’re just a damn mouse in a maze. Your little parasite friend gonna tell you how to get where you’re supposed to go, and you’re just fuckin yourself if you don’t listen. Take it from me.”
Madeleine didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she could ever become a killer like Zenon. But then she had come very, very close to killing Carlo. And when Severin led her through a labyrinth of swampland on a stormy night, Madeleine had felt an awful lot like a mouse in a maze.
Zenon took a deep breath, and for a moment, he looked like the boy she remembered. Vulnerable. Maybe even frightened. “We should have had this conversation a long time ago, I guess. I wanted to. But you kept avoiding me. Chloe’s right, you know. About you and me.”
She drew in her breath, shaking her head. Beyond unthinkable. “Zenon, that’s just wrong. That will never happen.”
His stare crystallized to ice. “Oh, that’s right. You’re too busy wrapping your legs around that gimp of yours. Faithless, that’s what you are. No loyalty at all.”
Madeleine lowered her voice and spoke through her teeth. “Why in God’s name would you ever want to lay your hands on your own sister? You knew about all that but you still . . .”
“You want the long answer, you go see Miss Chloe. But here’s the short answer: I wanted to touch you ever since we were kids, before I ever even knew anything about Daddy Blank and his dirty secrets. I kept my hands off out of respect. I loved you and Marc both, even then. Before any of it. Before I found out respect was just another little trick people use to manipulate other people. But I have learned my lesson, sister-baby. You’re a faithless fuck
ing whore and that’s how you’re gonna get treated.”
He cocked his head, and suddenly Madeleine felt the urge to unbutton her blouse and reveal her bra. The force of the thought was overwhelming, stronger than Chloe’s trick. Strong as she remembered.
“Stop it,” she said through a clenched jaw.
He laughed. “Oh, come on, baby, it’s what you’re made for. It’s how you end. You ain’t got a shred of loyalty to you, not even for your own blood. You’d just as soon see me fry.”
“This isn’t doing either one of us any good.”
He puffed, a single expulsion of air. “Maybe not for you, but I’d just as soon watch you go home to meet your maker. You think they’d take you in up there at the pearly gates? With a devil on your back? Or maybe they send you down below where your daddy and other brother gone, yeah?”
Her hands began to shake, but she held the receiver fast to her ear.
“I can’t really do much while I’m sitting in here, but this one,” he nodded at the prisoner who’d been leering at her, and lowered his voice. “I bet you he can pull it off, yeah. What you think, baby?”
The prisoner with the scarred cheek paid no attention to them now, but instead continued to chat on the phone with his visitor. Zenon was watching Madeleine’s face.
“Yeah baby, he’s a wild one. They gonna let him out in a few days, I expect.”
She tried to steady her voice. “I thought you said they convicted him for grand theft auto.”
“No, baby, he ain’t convicted yet. This here’s just a holding facility. Looks like he’s gonna be free as a bird. Prosecutor doesn’t have a case.”
Perhaps the prisoner overheard Zenon talking, because now he looked at Madeleine and winked again.
Zenon grimaced. “He’s one that doesn’t even need any encouragement. He already got his eye on you. I s’pose you best start lookin over your shoulder once he gets out.”
She’d heard enough. She hung up the phone under the leering gaze of that awful prisoner. Zenon rose and swaggered toward the door, and the guard offered him a fresh cigarette and a light. She supposed that he probably had them tending his every need. They were his pigeons, just like the prisoner he was dispatching to come after her. Just like the twelve jurors he would eventually have at his new trial. All of them part of Zenon’s pigeon games. “Not guilty,” the jurors would surely say. Zenon would go free. Free to kill and cull for as long as he lived.
Zenon blew her a kiss as he disappeared through the heavy metal door.
She stood to leave, and realized the pigeon-prisoner was massaging his crotch as his gaze followed her.
No way was she going to let Zenon get away with this.
She turned and stared directly into the prisoner’s face. She formed her mind into one single thought.
His expression changed ever so slightly, and he removed his hand from his lap. His gaze drifted back toward the door where Zenon had exited.
Madeleine repeated the idea in her mind once more. Allowing for the violence to stir in her imagination.
And she knew she had gotten through to him.
seventy-seven
NEW ORLEANS, 2010
MADELEINE LEARNED THAT ANOTHER prisoner had attacked Zenon on the night she’d gone to visit him. Without being told, she knew who the other prisoner was. She’d unleashed him herself. But in the attack, Zenon did not die; he was, however, left in a catatonic state. He could breathe on his own but was otherwise unresponsive.
Madeleine’s intention was not that Zenon should suffer injuries in that particular way. When she had used the trick on the other prisoner, she had bent her mind around the concept of killing Zenon. And probably, that’s what the prisoner intended to do. He’d broken Zenon’s neck with his bare hands, and then proceeded to beat him nearly to death. Madeleine learned that he had acted suddenly and without provocation. And when the guards caught up with him, he was trying to remove Zenon’s jumpsuit, and they suspected he’d intended to sexually assault him.
An important thing to remember when cross-pollinating suggestions into other people’s minds: The thoughts that grow will sometimes be hybrids.
Zenon had left a living will. In it, he’d provided for the situation that he might become incapacitated. In such a circumstance, Zenon had appointed power of attorney to his sister, Dr. Madeleine LeBlanc. He also deeded the old plantation, Terrefleurs, to Madeleine.
She wondered if she would ever understand him.
MADELEINE LED ETHAN INTO the foyer of her new old home on Esplanade, looking up at the staircase that swept in a curve to the mezzanine above. The railing, made of a smooth polished cherry that seemed to glow from deep within, beckoned her to touch its surface. The steps arced around the foyer in contour to the crystal chandelier dropping into the heart of it.
“It looks exactly how it did before the fire,” Ethan said.
Madeleine nodded. “They’ve done an amazing job. But, it isn’t really exactly the same. There are new details. Step lights hidden in the stairs so you can see your way in the dark. Modern kitchen and bathrooms. Things like that.”
Some things simply had to change in order to accommodate a new era. Now, at this point in her life, Madeleine understood that better than anyone.
Jasmine bounded ahead, her furry tail standing with recognition as she leapt from one new-but-familiar room to another. Severin, too, explored as if in a giant doll house. An instant ghost to haunt the halls.
It was a bittersweet tour; Madeleine would sell the house. She could not afford it. She had agreed to a settlement that drained almost everything, including the rest of the trust fund and the sale from the cottage in Bayou Black. But, she still held the warehouse on Magazine and the apartment within it where she lived.
She looked through the window of the grand hall, beyond which reporters were assembled along the street.
Ethan followed her gaze. “Let’s get away from prying eyes.”
She gave a rueful smile and looked up to where Severin was running along the top of the landing upstairs. “If only it was just them.”
Madeleine led him to the rear courtyard, the little hidden garden nestled against the crook of the house, and Jasmine trotted along with them. Jazz found a stretch of shade beneath the gentle, lacey honeysuckle, and lay down.
Ethan looked around. “Is the girl here right now?”
Madeleine shook her head. “Inside.”
“It amazes me how you handle it.”
“Thanks, but I’m not so sure I am handling it. Just trying to make it through each moment.”
The courtyard still had some construction rubble. Leftover ends cut from sheetrock, a square industrial pencil, a screwdriver, and other odd bits that lay piled in the corner. Madeleine would have to see about getting it all hauled away. Her old wrought iron bistro table and chairs still rested in the sunshine, and on the table lay a construction worker’s forgotten paper cup with coffee and cream and about half a dozen cigarette butts.
Ethan cleared the cup and sat on one of the chairs. “The truth is, Madeleine, you’re one of the most amazing people I know.”
Her urge was to correct him, argue about the “amazing” part, but she stifled it. She sat down opposite him, not meeting his eye. She thought of Zenon and all the things she wished she’d done differently.
Ethan said, “And I know how hard it’s been, but when you think about it, you really come from a brilliant family legacy. Me, my family’s got genes that breed athletes and scientific minds. That’s nice and all, but your family, it’s like you’re a step ahead of evolution.”
Madeleine looked over her shoulder toward the French doors, as though the house itself were a reflection of that legacy. “I suppose. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Can’t figure out whether we’ve all been cursed or are just unlucky.”
“Or gifted.”
She looked at him. “Chloe called them gifts, too. But gifts aren’t supposed to come with a price.”
“It’s just part
of it, baby. Any time a change comes along, it’s just the natural human condition to react with fear. But fear ain’t nothing but what you get when you’ve yet to understand.”
“Or accept.”
“Yeah, or accept. The disconnect in your family is just that you’re all out of sync. None of y’all understood the other one’s deal until it was too late.”
“Now it’s too late for Zenon.”
Ethan turned away for a moment, his gaze following a golden butterfly lighting upon the fresh greens climbing the side of the house. Those vines looked so different from the black thorns that had become her inner garden.
Madeleine said, “I can’t figure out why he deeded Terrefleurs to me. But I think I might try and fix it up.”
Ethan looked back at her. “I’ll help you.” And then he said, “You’re the last of them, you know.”
She shook her head. “Technically, there are two of us. Zenon’s still alive.”
“I don’t know, Madeleine. I’ve seen a lot of neurological trauma before, and I don’t think he’ll ever be anything but catatonic.”
“I’m going to look after him. Make sure he’s comfortable in the hospital bed, at least.”
“You know you didn’t have a choice.”
“I didn’t. But there are so many what-if’s.” But then she recalled her brother’s secret. “Actually, you know, Zenon and I aren’t the only ones left.”
Ethan thought for a moment. “Marc’s child.”
She nodded. “It’s not too late for the baby.”
“It’s not too late for you, either. You can be the one who tries something different.”
“But what? Just make it from day to day without getting overtaken? Seems that’s what we’ve all done.”
Ethan rubbed his jaw. “Me and Sam both wanted you to get treatment at first, but now . . .”
Madeleine shrugged. “What treatment? There’s no existing therapy for this.”
Ethan considered this. “Maybe it’s not so much a matter of treating. Maybe it’s about training.”