The Searing

by John Coyne

  Tom leaned forward, picked up the folder of newly-typed notes and dropped them into the basket. A wasted morning. And he had to call his editor and tell him to kill the story.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I coulda swore that kid had been strangled. Did you see her face? It looked, you know. like she suffocated. That kid suffered before she died, I swear.”

  “Yeah, you’re pissing in my ear and you’re telling me it’s raining. Give me a call when you’ve got a murder, Joe.” and he hung up the phone.

  There was no school bus to Renaissance Village, so the mothers had organized their own car pool. On the day Amy Volt died in her hayrack crib, Marcia Fleming left the Smithsonian early to take her son Benjamin and four other third graders home from the Virginia Day school.

  “I want you to play indoors this afternoon, honey,” Marcia instructed Benjamin as she unlocked the front door and let them into the house.

  “Oh, Mom!” Benjamin protested. “It isn’t even dark and I told Debbie we’d go hunt for flowers.” He threw his book bag down on the hall table and went on, “Miss Maness told us all to bring in three different kinds of flowers for class tomorrow.” He stood in the hallway with his small hands on his hips, blocking Marcia’s way to the living room. He had the same dark looks as his mother, and at his age it made him adorable-looking.

  “Miss Maness will have to do without your flowers. I don’t want you wandering through the fields, and I’m sure Debbie’s mother won’t let her go out either.” She moved around her son and continued through the house, going into the kitchen.

  “If I’m the only one without flowers tomorrow, Miss Maness is going to kill me. When Derek Nevins didn’t do his homework last week, she made him bring his parents to school.” Benjamin tagged after his mother. There were tears in his eyes, and he let them stream down his face so his mother would see how much she’d hurt him.

  Marcia put on the kettle for tea and went to the refrigerator and took out the milk. “Benjamin, would you like a snack?” she asked calmly. She was immune to his nine-year-old theatrics.

  “No!”

  “No, thank you.”

  “No, thank you, I don’t want a snack.” Benjamin plopped into a kitchen chair and buried his head in his hands, crying uncontrollably.

  Marcia had to force herself not to go to him. It was times like this that she realized she had to be strong. It was the only way she could put discipline into her son’s life. As it was, Benjamin was already spoiled by her permissiveness, by her continual guilt at not having a father for her son.

  “If you want, you can have Debbie come here and play, or you can go and play at her house until supper. But you are not to go into those fields! Do you understand?” She let her voice be sharp.

  “I don’t want to go play at Debbie’s house. I want to play outside.”

  Marcia did not respond. She knew his tactics, the way he pouted. It was not the time to try to reason with him, and besides, she didn’t have the strength. Since the evening at the Volts’, Marcia had had a headache and, though she had been taking aspirins all day, the pain was still there, lodged like a long knife in her forehead, low and sharp between her eyes.

  Marcia poured boiling water from the teapot, but her trembling hands spilled it all over the oven top, and the hot water hissed when it touched the flame.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?” Benjamin asked.

  Marcia shook her head. “Nothing, sweetie.” She knew that she would have to tell him about Amy Volt. He would learn about the death soon enough from the other children in the Village. It was not something that could be kept from them, and she wanted Benjamin to hear the true story from her. Still she hesitated. Benjamin had visited Amy and even held the baby in his arms. How would he feel when he found out Amy had been murdered in her cradle?

  The telephone rang in the kitchen and Benjamin scrambled off the chair to answer it.

  “You can’t go outside, Benjy,” Marcia repeated.

  “Yeah, Mom!” He sighed, picking up the telephone. “It’s for you,” he said, stretching the lengthy cord across the kitchen and handing the receiver to Marcia. “It’s Neil,” he whispered, grinning.

  Giggling now, Benjamin skipped away, grabbing a cookie from the plate.

  “I’m going upstairs to watch T.V.,” he called back over his shoulder.

  “Don’t go out!” Marcia shouted after him; then she said nicely into the phone, “Hello.”

  “Marcia, it’s me.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair. Neil’s voice always excited her.

  “Have you spoken to Peggy?” he asked.

  “No. Why? What’s the matter now?”

  “The baby. She wasn’t murdered. I went by the house on the way home and the police had come. That detective didn’t know what he was doing last night. They did an autopsy and found the child had died from some sort of brain dysfunction that caused swelling and oxygen starvation. It only looked like she had been strangled.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Marcia whispered, and immediately she felt guilty, realizing it was Benjamin’s safety that preoccupied her mind. And then, as if to make amends, she asked, “And how’s Peggy?”

  “No better than anyone could expect. She’s being sedated.”

  “And Kevin?”

  “Who can tell? I never know what he’s thinking. Besides, they’re both still in shock. The implications of all this won’t hit them for another few days. She lost her child, Marcia.”

  She heard his voice crack on the telephone, and then a muffling sound as if he had put his hand over the mouthpiece. Marcia was a little surprised that the baby’s death had affected him so much, but his vulnerability made her love him more.

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner? There’s just us, nothing special.”

  “Thanks, I’d love to. I’ve got to meet with Magnuson this evening, but I’ll be done by six.” He sounded happy that he had somewhere to go for dinner. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Whenever you can, don’t hurry.”

  “Well, I want to hurry. I want to see you.”

  She smiled, touched and briefly overwhelmed. “Thank you,” she whispered, and hung up. It had been so long since she had really been loved that she had forgotten how the emotion could knock her for a loop.

  She pushed herself from the wall, only to be startled by Benjamin standing silent at the doorway.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” The little boy’s brown eyes were wide with apprehension.

  “Yes, darling.” Marcia opened her arms to him and Benjamin rushed forward and hugged her.

  “You know what?” Marcia said into his hair. “I think it would be all right if you went out and collected those flowers, after all. Why don’t you call Debbie and have her meet you here?”

  Benjamin scooted from her arms, giggling and escaping. “I’ll go by Debbie’s house and pick her up,” he said, running into the foyer and pulling down his coat. “We haven’t got much time. It’s almost dark.” His voice shrieked with excitement.

  “Benjy, darling, please don’t shout; I have a headache.”

  “Oh, sorry, Mom.” He zipped up his jacket, and then went to his mother, kissing her on the cheek. “Can I take the farm wagon? We’ll need something to carry the flowers.”

  “Yes, dear, take the wagon.” She had bought it at the Delps’ auction, and Benjamin played with it whenever he could.

  “I’ll be home before dark,” he added, anticipating her question.

  “Be sure you are. And please don’t invite Debbie for dinner. I’ve asked Neil over, and I just want a quiet evening, the three of us.”

  She waved good-bye and closed the storm door. Her life, she thought, was turning out all right. After the terrible years since she left Jeff, her life was finally getting back on course. She and Benjamin, her work at the Smithsonian, her new home in the Village. And now, perhaps, she had Neil. She smiled to herself and went upstairs to take a nap before dinner. It was four o’clock and within the hour another ch
ild would die in the valley.

  In the thick stand of woods at the top of the thumb-shaped valley, the man walked up the hill and away from the river, his heavy footsteps crushing the dry dead leaves of fall. Now, before dark, he was searching for his daughter, moving quietly through the black trees.

  At the crest he stopped and, still hidden in the trees, looked across the open fields above the Village. He did not see his daughter, but he could hear children, their voices carrying clearly in the late afternoon, that last hour of the day when the sun was down and the landscape lit only by the soft light of fall.

  He could not see the children in the tall grass, but he followed their voices like a trail as they climbed the hill. Then their heads appeared on the hilltop. They were like spring calves, he thought, the way they rushed about, picking the wild flowers from the long grass.

  The two children had Debbie’s textbook with them, which showed color illustrations of the plants and flowers they wanted, but in the high weeds of the hillside it was difficult to find the right ones. When they did find one, they shouted out their discovery and pulled the old battered farm wagon across the field to cut away the patch, leaving an unnatural bare spot in the thick foliage.

  It was too steep a climb for the livestock of the farm, and as a result only pheasants and the small white tail deer used the ridge as a sheltered spot. But now the children of the new village threatened the seclusion of the rocky citadel at the crest of the hill.

  “It’s a Wild Pink,” Debbie shouted, pointing toward the tuft of flowers that grew thick in the fissure of the rocks.

  “No, it isn’t,” Benjamin insisted, angry that he hadn’t seen it first. He checked the textbook, hoping to prove she was mistaken.

  “Yes, it is!” Debbie shouted again and, without waiting for Benjamin, scrambled onto the mound at the top of the ridge and crawled across the rough surface, moving quickly toward the beautiful wild bouquet.

  It was their joy that made him angry. He was always that way with other children when he saw how bright and sane they were, and then he saw Cindy standing at the edge of the wood, near the children, close to the ancient burial site.

  Sara saw the women running as she drove along the farm road, up toward Petrarch Court. Then she realized they were carrying a child and she pressed on the accelerator, speeding up the curving drive, reaching the women at the entrance of Erasmus Court. She skidded the car to a stop and jumped out.

  The child lay limp in Helen Severt’s arms. Sara gave her one practiced look, then rushed back and unlocked the trunk of her car. She was ill-equipped, she thought frantically, for emergencies. Her medical bag was full of the new experimental drugs she was researching, and she had little to help an injured child.

  “What happened?” she called to the two women.

  Helen Severt said nothing. She hugged her daughter to her, and did not take her eyes from Debbie’s quiet face.

  “She was playing up on the ridge with Benjy,” Marcia Fleming shouted. “He came running back and told me that she just fell down and didn’t move again. That’s how we found her.”

  Sara pulled the car blanket from her trunk and tossed it to Marcia. “Spread this on the lawn and stretch Debbie out on it.”

  It was getting cold, she realized; they would have to get more blankets if they were going to keep the child from going into shock. But she didn’t send Marcia home to get them. In her heart she knew she would not need them.

  Falling to her knees, Sara knelt on the blanket beside the child and quickly, gently helped Helen settle the girl. Both of the women were talking frantically, explaining how they had found Debbie at the base of the mound, but Sara wasn’t listening. She reached for the little girl’s wrist and deftly probed for a pulse. Then, leaning forward, she lifted the closed eyelids and admitted to herself that the child was dead.

  The breath went out of her and her hands began to tremble uncontrollably. Carefully she touched the white face of the child and then, there, in the open yard above Erasmus Court, she collapsed into the storm of tears that had been frozen inside her ever since that icy day on Mount Auburn Street.

  “The mothers found her,” Joe Santucci explained. He was sitting in his car with the reporter outside of the Severt home.

  “What time?” Tom asked.

  “Sometime around five. Fleming telephoned Helen Severt, Debbie’s mother. There were no husbands around. Richard Severt works at the White House, some sort of energy advisor, and Marcia Fleming is separated, no divorce.”

  Tom Dine could not see the detective’s face, but the tone in the man’s voice told him that Santucci had suffered in the last few hours. “Did they move the body?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah. The mothers went crazy, of course, and grabbed the child and came running downhill looking for Doctor Marks.”

  Tom Dine’s head jerked up, but he let the detective continue.

  “She had to tell Helen Severt that her child was dead. Oh, she made a stab at reviving her—mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—but it didn’t do any good. The kid was dead. When I got here, she was still stretched out on the grass, covered with a car blanket.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  Joe Santucci stirred again behind the wheel. “It’s a fuckin’ bitch.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “At the morgue. They’re doing an autopsy.”

  “Any marks?”

  “She had hit or scraped her right cheek, and her front teeth had been chipped. And there was blood in her nostrils.”

  “Like the Volt baby?”

  In the dark interior of the front seat, Joe Santucci turned to the reporter. Tom could see flashes of the streetlight shine in the detective’s eyes.

  “That’s right,” he whispered. “Like the Volt kid.”

  “Is there some kind of connection? Do you think maybe they were both killed?”

  “We’ve got the coroner’s report on the baby. She died from massive brain swelling. It’s tragic, but it ain’t murder.” He nodded toward the hill behind the Village. “That little girl was murdered. I don’t know how, and I sure don’t know why, but she was murdered. That’s one thing I’m sure of.”

  “What do you mean, sure? Has the little boy told you something?” Tom did not look up from writing his notes.

  “For the moment I’m not saying.” His whispering made it all sound mysterious.

  “Come on, Joe, what’s all this bullshit? What did you find up there?”

  “We found tracks. Several good impressions. It might mean something. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

  “Then we’re back to the muddy tracks on the basement floor.”

  “Yeah, we’re back to them.”

  “Okay, then what do we have? How do I write this up? A murder in the field. A little girl dead, but as to how and why, we have no clues yet. And another death. A baby death thought to be caused by a brain dysfunction, and for the time being the police aren’t making any connection linking the killing and the crib death.”

  “It’s all under investigation,” Joe added.

  “That’s just great. I haven’t got shit, Joe, and you know it.”

  Santucci did not move.

  “Off the record, Joe. Deep background. Come on, what gives? What do you guys know?” He could feel himself getting uneasy. He was always that way when he began to push for a story.

  “I think it’s the farmer.”

  “The farmer? What farmer?” The news surprised Tom. He hadn’t heard of any such person.

  “Bruce Delp. His family owned all this land, about a hundred acres since the Civil War. He sold out to Lewis Magnuson, the guy who put together the co-op village, but only under heavy pressure.

  “Magnuson owns one of the banks that Delp owes money to for farm equipment. So, Magnuson cut a deal with him. He wiped out the loan, gave Delp his house and a job as handyman, and let him keep the family burial ground up on the ridge. And Magnuson! He got himself a goddamned real estate bonanza.”

  “
Have you arrested this guy … Delp?”

  “I’ve got him under surveillance,” Santucci said.

  Tom stopped writing and looked at the man. Santucci was grinning as if he had just done something clever, and Tom realized then that Santucci was simply a big, dumb ex-jock. For the last few weeks, he had foolishly thought that behind Santucci’s flat dull face, there was a reservoir of down-home common sense, an innate knowledge, but he was wrong. Santucci was a fool. A dangerous fool.

  Tom closed his notebook and said softly, “Joe, two little girls have died mysteriously in the last twenty-four hours and you’ve got a suspect. What is this, ‘I’ve got him under surveillance’?”

  “I’ve got nothing on him, Tom,” Santucci snapped back.

  “Then why’s he a suspect?”

  “Look, Dine,” Santucci tried to shift his bulky body in the tight space, but there wasn’t room, and the confinement only frustrated him more. He was someone who needed room to move around. “You don’t know this Delp family,” he told the reporter, lecturing him, pointing his thick finger at Tom. “They’ve been in trouble with the law before. Bruce Delp himself, his old man Hank, uncles and cousins. An older brother killed a girl out here back in ’52. The Delp people take up one whole file drawer over at the office. They’ve always been in trouble with the law, one way or the other.”

  “And that makes him a suspect.”

  “You’re damned right!” Santucci was still fuming. He stared out the front window and for a moment neither one of them said anything. Then Dine cleared his throat.

  “What about that coroner’s report? Any chance of it being available to the press?”

  “You can have both reports—the Volt kid and this Debbie Severt—but they won’t mean shit.”

  “Thanks, Joe, you’re all heart these days.”

  “I got a fuckin’ killer loose, Dine.”

  “Well, drive down to the farm house. I’ll help you put him under arrest.”

  “Never mind, we’ll do it my way.” And then he reached over and turned on the ignition. “I’ve got to go,” he said, closing off their interview.

  “The coroner’s reports?”

  “Come by the office tomorrow morning.”