Burning Books

by Sharon Gerlach

  Then her mind flashed to Magnus, with the knife wound he said was from opening a package of cheese but which neither she nor Lynda had witnessed. Magnus, who had likened Genevieve to a spider and who had admittedly been annoyed with her at the book-club meeting on Saturday. And Viv harbored an indisputable attraction to Magnus; she wouldn’t hesitate to go off with him alone.

  Cary, in his psychiatrist persona, had asked her if she was certain Magnus wasn’t a serial killer, and he hadn’t been flippant about it. When Viv was able, would she finger Molly’s brother as her attacker?

  The doors to the back whooshed open. Cohen glanced over his shoulder just as the surgeon caught sight of him and motioned him over. Brenda blanched and moved to the chair beside Molly. Molly offered her hand, and Brenda clutched it tightly with her cold, clammy fingers.

  Cohen listened to the surgeon, nodding occasionally, then drew in a deep breath and bowed his head, his shoulders slumping, as the surgeon delivered whatever news he had come to impart and vanished back into his domain. The detective stood alone, head still bowed, for several seconds before looking up at where Molly sat with Brenda, the tragic news stamped on his face.

  Brenda sucked in a shuddering breath and collapsed into Molly’s arms, sobbing.

  And Molly sat, numb with dread, wondering if her brother was a killer.

  ∞

  “I just can’t believe it,” Lynda said for what seemed like the hundredth time since they’d arrived back home.

  The three of them sat in Molly’s kitchen, subdued and shocked. The purple half-moons under Magnus’s eyes seemed more pronounced, although he’d changed out of his soiled clothes and combed his hair as soon as they came in. The blood splattered on his jeans and shirt was nowhere near enough to indicate he’d mutilated a woman. Molly had paid careful attention to that detail as he’d come back into the ER waiting room, his hand clean and wrapped in gauze. Granted, he could have changed out of what he’d worn to—

  Stop it, Molly. Just stop. Dislike for the woman and a cut on his hand didn’t equal murder. Cary had picked up takeout from the same restaurant, and she wasn’t sitting here contemplating how capable he might be of cold-blooded murder. Why did she always have to believe the worst of her brother? He was right to be wary of her, right to hold her at arm’s length. Her censure and suspicion and incessant nagging must be to him like breathing poisoned air.

  Suffocating sister. Meddling Molly.

  She stared at her hands, which still bore the marks from Brenda’s fingernails digging into her flesh as Harvey Cohen delivered the news of Genevieve’s demise. She could offer comfort to a woman she didn’t even like, and nothing but disapproval and judgment to a brother she loved with all her heart.

  “I’m going up to bed,” she said abruptly. “It’s been a long evening.”

  Lynda half rose from her chair as Molly stood, but Molly left the room before she could say anything, aware of the whispered conversation going on behind her but too dazed to care much about what they were saying. Perhaps tomorrow her mind would be able to operate outside the detachment in which shock had cocooned her. Right now, a desperate need to be alone drove to her room, where she bolted the door and curled up on her bed. She stared at her phone, lying within arm’s reach, but was reluctant to call Cary. He would want to discuss Magnus. Her heart was already raw, tiptoeing around the horror of Genevieve’s brutal death, afraid to look too closely lest she see her brother’s hand at work. Cary’s shrewd observations, his blunt questions, and his almost certain demand to spill her suspicions to his father-in-law would rip those raw parts to shreds.

  And when her phone lit up, his number splashing across the display in big, green, glowing numbers, she let voice mail take his call. She would handle this on her own. Didn’t serial killers usually keep souvenirs taken from their kills? Cecily’s home had proven easy to access; Molly could gain entrance again when Magnus was at group or off on some other errand. And while he was gone from their home, she could go through his bedroom.

  If she found anything suspicious, then—and only then—she would throw her brother to the wolves. But until then, she had only groundless suspicions, circumstantial evidence that wouldn’t stand up to even the closest scrutiny. And she could never be sure what had really triggered the alarm bells clanging in her head: Magnus’s cagey behavior, or her own willingness to always believe the very worst of him.

  ∞4∞

  Had Magnus and Lynda left, Molly would have spent that very night rummaging through his room, looking for evidence of sinister extracurricular activities. But Magnus had come up to his room long after Molly locked herself in hers, pausing by her door and in the end moving past it to his room without disturbing her. She hadn’t heard Lynda leave, so she suspected her friend had installed herself in one of the downstairs guest rooms, as she often did when she’d stayed late.

  Molly roused herself from her stupor a while after Magnus’s door closed. Now she sat poring over the computer spreadsheet into which she’d compiled her book purchases, the information gleaned from bank statements, receipts she’d kept, and her memory. Presuperstorm, she’d spent a small percentage of what she’d spent post-superstorm. She wasn’t certain if this information would be of much use in establishing a magical pull to find the burning books—she’d had limited income as a college student before the event, and a sizable inheritance at her disposal after it.

  What chilled her blood and made her close her computer was that she could find no record whatsoever of purchasing the burning books.

  In the morning, she found a pair of notes on the kitchen island, tented to grab her attention: one from Lynda that informed her: Went to work. Will probably be a busy day since they’ve started track & field in PE. Will call you when I have a chance. XOXO, Lyn.

  She eyed the tented note next to Lynda’s, presumably from Magnus, doubting she would find any Xs and Os but still disappointed at his short, impersonal message: Meeting some friends for the day, then going to Cecily’s to watch movies. M.

  Her eyes traced the blocky letters—Magnus’s handwriting rivaled that of a blueprint—seeking any vestige of warmth or concern. Finding none, she let it drop into the waste can along with Lynda’s and made herself breakfast.

  Annis called while she nibbled toast and wrestled her way through the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, although she doubted the book club would meet in April after all. Once she was assured that Magnus would be absent for the day, Annis agreed to return to her duties on the condition, she warned in dire tones, that her schedule be reworked around Magnus’s absences. Molly agreed and kept her initial thought of Good luck with that to herself; even she couldn’t predict when Magnus would show up.

  While Annis went about vacuuming and dusting and tidying up the house, Molly went to the garage and retrieved the fourth book from the bag of old clothes. She would search Magnus’s room and ignite the magic to burn the book after Annis left. In the meantime, Cecily’s story was much more interesting than the hardships of the Joads.

  She settled in her favorite chair by the fireplace, accepting the tea Annis insisted on making for her, and opened the book, bending it backward to loosen the spine.

  Even my own parents don’t know where I’m living—it would be too easy for them to be followed—so my father brought the kids to a park today so I could see them. While they played, I told him again everything that had been happening in my house. Things being moved, waking up tied to the bed. I know he thinks it’s all in my head. He has good reason to think that. But it’s not. I know it’s not.

  When he asked why I thought the very man I should trust the most, the father of my children, would do this to me, I told him about the box of trophies I’d found that sent me into hiding.

  But it doesn’t matter now. He knows where I am. He’s been in my house. He probably even knows the name I’m living under. Knows I have a lover. And he must suspect by now that I know about the trophies, and that I took them.

  They aren�
��t safe in my little cottage anymore. There aren’t any fail-safe hiding places; the house is too small. I brought them with me today to give to my father. Maybe the police can connect them to any bodies found. God knows, in the Seattle area, there are any number of victims they could have been taken from.

  He’ll make his move soon. I can feel it every bit as much as I can feel those trophies are his, that he came by them through dreadful deeds. Will she take my suspicions to the police if I vanish? Or will she, like my father, refuse to believe him capable of making me disappear?

  There is nowhere safe to hide anymore. I don’t have long. I just hope that I have long enough.

  The text ended there. Molly turned the few remaining pages, but the book yielded no others words but for her own name printed inside the back cover. She closed the book without triggering the magic to burn it; she would do that when Annis left.

  So, Cecily hadn’t trusted her children’s father. She never outright called him her husband—emotionally separating herself from a man she suspected of terrible deeds, or because they never married? Not for the first time, she wished she could ask Magnus about his friend. Magnus didn’t invite questions, and the few she’d posed about the mysterious Cecily had been deflected with a sardonic look that warned her to butt out of his business.

  Annis called from the kitchen that she was going to the grocery store and let herself out through the garage. Molly waited a few minutes, then peered out the kitchen window at the driveway to make sure she was really gone. She would have an hour, two at most, provided Magnus didn’t come home.

  Breaching her brother’s room felt more like breaching his trust, but Molly couldn’t see any way around it. She would be the insufferable sister one more time to set to rest her suspicions over last night’s unlikely coincidence. Magnus frequently opened a cheese package with a steak knife. He just usually didn’t do it right when an acquaintance was in the hospital dying of stab wounds.

  It had been a long time since she’d last entered Magnus’s room, so its preternatural tidiness startled her. Was it always this neat, or was it only because he hadn’t been at the house much since Annis had last tidied it? She was careful to put things back precisely where she’d found them as she explored his dresser, closet, and desk. The drawer in his bedside table held nothing but a battered copy of American Psycho, his place kept with a tattered cardstock bookmark from Barnes and Noble. She opened it to the bookmark, read a paragraph, and snapped it closed, grimacing, distaste coiling through her stomach. Between this and the Hostel movies, was it any wonder she was considering his capacity for torture and murder?

  She replaced the book and closed the drawer, turning in a circle, her eyes crawling over every inch of the room she could see, searching for evidence of hidden niches. She even turned back the rug and probed for loose floorboards. Nothing.

  A cold and calculating thought occurred to her as she stood there, empty-handed but for her paranoia and suspicion. Magnus, were he to collect execrable relics from abominable deeds, would never store them here, not where his suffocating sister was likely to find them in a faithless search of his private quarters. No, he would store them where he thought she could never find them: Cecily’s. And because he skillfully kept Molly in check by throwing her own insecurities at her time and again (suffocating sister . . . meddling Molly), he doubtless never expected she would follow him to his friend’s house.

  He was going out with friends for the day, and then to Cecily’s for at least the evening. She wouldn’t be able to search his friend’s cottage today.

  She closed his bedroom door behind her, certain she had left no physical trace of herself in his personal space but unable to do anything about the psychic imprint he was bound to detect. Perhaps he’d be at Cecily’s long enough that she’d be able to pass off her invasion under the guise of depositing his mail on his bed.

  Cary had left her a message while she was tossing her brother’s bedroom, offering sustenance and diversion for the evening. Molly refused to think too deeply about their relationship as she texted back her acceptance and packed an overnight bag. If there were a reckoning later for their involvement, both then and now, she would gladly pay it when the bill came due. Right now, she wanted to exist merely through sensation rather than intellect. She stuffed the fourth of Cecily’s diaries in her bag; while he slept, she would burn it without ceremony or fanfare, and take one more step down this dark road.

  She read for a while—not a burning book or The Grapes of Wrath, but something frothy and lighthearted that she didn’t remember later, and at the agreed-upon time, set out for Cary’s with an almost desperate need to curl into his arms and find oblivion in his kiss.

  He waited for her on the porch, as he had done the previous two times she’d come to his house, this time sans umbrella as the day had been clear. His shoulders hunched under the green fisherman’s sweater he’d worn when they met, for it had been as cold a day as it had been clear. She walked into his arms, pressed her cheek to his chest hard enough to feel the weave of the knit cables, and watched her breath drift away on the cold air like a phantom.

  “Harvey told me about your friend,” he said at length.

  Molly replied, “She wasn’t my friend, but it was an awful way to die.”

  His fingers toyed with her hair, lifting a lock, stroking down its length, over and over. Molly could have stood there forever, letting him stroke her as though he were soothing a skittish pet. But her nose was starting to run, and she didn’t want to leave a trail of snot over that lovely sweater. So she pulled away and took his hand.

  “Let’s go inside. You can make me some tea, and I’ll tell you about Genevieve.”

  But once inside, he hung her coat on the coat tree, framed her face with his hands, and kissed her, a deep, languorous kiss meant to chase the chill from her bones and the ghosts from her mind. And it worked for a while, long enough to see her through dinner with his children, homework questions, and then his brief absence while he saw them into bed for the night.

  When he came back down, he leaned against the jamb of the sitting-room door, watching her silently, hands tucked into his trouser pockets. Worrying, certainly, since concern was etched onto his face for anyone to read. Analyzing her, undoubtedly, because he wouldn’t be able to help himself. His training would dictate it no matter how hard he tried to set it aside. But it was all right; they both already knew that she suffocated and constantly criticized her brother, so he wasn’t likely to be surprised by her suspicions.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  The weight of his sympathy and the caress of his voice should have been like a warm blanket settling over her. Nothing penetrated the chill in her heart, not the cozy family dinner or his children including her in their homework endeavors or the solid comfort he wanted to offer.

  Molly looked up from her hands, fingers linked between her knees. “I think my brother might have had something to do with her death.”

  His gaze sharpened, and he straightened from the door. When he took the chair adjacent to hers, leaning forward to gauge her expression, she wanted to flinch away. There it was, her biggest failing of Magnus: betrayal. Always believing the worst of him. And murder was definitely one of the worst things that came to mind.

  “Tell me why.”

  “He came home last night with a deep cut on his hand, bleeding all over the place. Said he cut himself opening a cheese package with a steak knife. But . . . coincidentally, Genevieve happens to die not long after of multiple stab wounds.”

  Cary digested this thoughtfully. “Harvey told me she’d most likely been dumped in the forest yesterday, maybe the day before.”

  Molly put a hand to her temple. Had Harvey Cohen mentioned that detail to her? She couldn’t remember. Her head ached so hard, she could barely think. Falling into bed and sleeping until noon the next day was rapidly becoming her deepest desire.

  “Was his wound fresh?”

  “I suppose so. It looked it,
anyway. At least, I think it did. I didn’t look too long.”

  “If it was a fresh wound, Molly, he probably got it exactly the way he said he did. He couldn’t have sustained it while stabbing someone yesterday or Tuesday. He’s innocent.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut. Fat tears welled under her closed lids and spilled down her cheeks, scorching on her cold skin.

  “Molly, please—will you tell me why you were so quick to suspect him?”

  She barked out a laugh that strangled into a sob. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I always have to believe the worst of him. I just want him to love me, but is it any wonder that he doesn’t? Just look at me, sitting here thinking he . . . that he did those awful things to Viv . . . I’m a terrible sister, Cary.” The sobs broke free. Tears dripped off her chin and onto her hands.

  He slid off his chair and onto his knees in front of her, tucking her face against his neck, his arms linked securely around her until her sobbing abated to hitching, hiccupping breaths.

  “Come on, let’s get you into bed. I prepared the guest room down here for you since my children are here. I’ll stay with you awhile, though, until you go to sleep.” He lifted her chin and wiped the tears away. “I wish I could take your pain, Molly. I would do it in a heartbeat.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Because I see you clearly, every bit of you. And I love it all—the flaws, the failures, the triumphs. Your courage. Your heart for others. You’re a glorious, imperfect, bewitching woman.”

  She stared at him, her eyes burning from the salt of her tears, her head thumping from anxiety, her heart screaming in sorrow, and said, “Take me to bed and help me forget for a while.”

  The night before, his passion had been a fearsome hurricane, sweeping over her in gales of magnificent sensation. Tonight, his touch was delicate and cautious, as though she were fragile and breakable, his eyes following his fingers as they traced over her scars. The moonlight puddled on the bed through the open curtains and turned the livid lines to rivers of silver, and for the first time since the car accident, she found beauty in their lovely symmetry. He cradled her gently in his arms and slipped away when he thought she was sleeping.