Prodigy

by Charles Atkins

  She heard his anger, and knew that it was just a matter of a few pounds of pressure to end Justine’s life … just as she’d ended Ellen Martin’s. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “That’s better. Get into the cage and close the door behind yourself.”

  She looked at the opening to her sister’s prison, a simple door with a latch, and a heavy padlock that lay open. So how would he manage putting the lock back on once she was inside? He’d need to let go of Justine.

  “Get in!” he shouted. “Do it now.”

  “Okay,” she said, with the sickening certainty that he intended to kill Justine once she’d complied. She stepped through the opening, having to duck her head, and noting the bare mattress and plastic bucket that Justine had been forced to use as a toilet. But it was the stark fear in her sister’s eyes, the desperation that mirrored her own, that held her. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching toward her.

  “Don’t touch her,” James Cyrus ordered. “Close the door, and then reach through the bars and put on the lock.”

  Of course, she thought, he had no intention of letting go of Justine. He’d wait until the lock was in place, and just as she’d strangled Ellen, he’d do the same to Justine.

  A shuffling noise, and the sound of the door banging open at the top of the stairs, made Barrett turn, and James Cyrus inhale. Footsteps, coming closer, and for Barrett the surge of hope, that someone had come to her rescue. Into the light, blood glinting around her neck, Ellen Martin appeared, gun in hand.

  “Good,” she croaked, assessing the vignette.

  “Chicky, so good to see you. I hope you understand; I didn’t have a choice.”

  Ellen Martin approached the cage, her gun fixed on Barrett. “Don’t even think of moving,” she whispered hoarsely, as she reached for the lock.

  “If you hurt her,” Barrett said, “I’ll never give you what you want. Do you hear me?”

  Ellen paused. “What are you saying?”

  “If you harm my sister, I swear to God, I’ll abort, I’ll puncture my uterus. I’ll make sure you never get your heir. Do you hear me Jimmy?” she was shouting.

  “There are other bitches in the sea,” James Cyrus hissed back.

  “Not you!” Barrett said. “I’m not talking to you! Jimmy. I want to talk to Jimmy, little Jimmy. I want little Jimmy now! Come out now!”

  “So sorry, but little Jimmy can’t come out to … Barrett,” Jimmy Martin’s voice shifted, softer, younger. “Barrett.”

  “Jimmy,” Barrett said, her eyes fixed on Ellen Martin, not yet hearing the click of the lock, “you have to let go of my sister.”

  “You hurt Ellen, I saw you hurt Ellen. You tried to kill her.”

  Ellen smiled, as she closed the lock.

  “Jimmy, if you hurt Justine, I’ll kill myself.”

  “No! You can’t.”

  “I will, Jimmy. But that’s what’s going to happen to me anyway after I give Ellen and your father what they want. They’re planning to kill me.”

  “No! That’s a lie.”

  “Shut up!” Ellen said, pointing the barrel of the gun from Barrett to Justine.

  “It’s true,” Barrett said, positioning her body between Justine and the gun. She had no way of knowing how far Ellen had gotten with her homegrown artificial insemination, but she did know that her only bargaining chip was her womb, its viability, and what might—or might not—be growing in it. “Ask your sister—she was planning to kill me right after I gave birth. Isn’t that right, Ellen?”

  “She’s lying, Jimmy.”

  “I’m not,” Barrett persisted, “even your father can tell you that. He and Ellen were in this together. Let go of Justine, Jimmy. Do it now. Do it for me.”

  “Okay.”

  And Justine crumpled to the ground.

  It was the tiniest of victories and short-lived, as Ellen circled the cage.

  “Hurt her, and I will kill myself,” Barrett repeated. “You won’t get your heir, and eventually, even with all of your money, they’ll come looking for me. Remember, with Jimmy under board supervision, they don’t even need a search warrant to come in here.”

  “They can look all they want,” Ellen said, “it’s a pity things have to be like this.” She looked at Justine, barely moving on the floor, and then back at Barrett.

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy asked, bewildered. “Ellen? She’s my wife. You can’t kill her.”

  “That’s what she’s going to do, Jimmy,” Barrett said. “She’ll take the baby, and then I’ll go into the oven. It’s just another game of Hansel and Gretel.”

  “Noooo.”

  “It’s not true, Jimmy,” Ellen’s voice was soothing—the big sister—the strong one.

  “Ask your father,” Barrett persisted, shielding Justine’s body as Ellen circled. It was a stalemate that couldn’t last, she’d pushed Jimmy, but Ellen was as steady as the lock on the metal bars. Barrett frantically scanned the meager furnishings of Justine’s prison—the bare mattress, the slop bucket, the remnants of a meal tray, complete with the same plastic cutlery used in the hospital. She grabbed for the tray and retrieved the white-plastic knife.

  “What are you doing?” Ellen asked.

  Barrett met her gaze, as she squatted next to Justine and showed the knife. “You’re going to kill us both anyway, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be your brood mare.” She moved the knife under the hem of her slip.

  “Jimmy!” Ellen shouted at her brother. “Run up to the pantry and get me the syringes.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Jimmy pleaded.

  “She’s hurting herself, do it now! Hurry!”

  Barrett remembered years back in training, she’d had a horrific experience of a psychotic woman who’d punctured her uterus out of the delusional belief that she was carrying the devil’s child. If in fact Ellen had succeeded with the insemination, this didn’t seem all that different. She felt the scraping of the plastic against her naked flesh, and heard Justine’s sobs, her body shivering. She thought of her mother, and of Ed Hobbs. She pictured her last night with Ralph, as Jimmy’s footsteps came bounding back down the stairs.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he pleaded with his sister, as he handed her the capped syringes.

  “Jimmy,” Ellen said, “I need Father, now. Tell him to come out.”

  “No. You’re going to hurt her.”

  “I need Father, now!”

  “No … I won’t … you can’t … Hi Chicky.”

  “Thank God,” Ellen said, and handed the gun to James Cyrus. “If you fuck up again …”

  Barrett’s body tensed as Ellen approached the cage.

  “Stay away from me,” Barrett shouted, when in fact she was praying for Ellen to unlock the door and give her one last chance. “Stay away,” she made a show of moving her elbow around as the knife moved harmlessly against her inner thigh.

  The key went into the lock, the shank came free, and with James Cyrus aiming the gun at Barrett and Justine, Ellen entered the cage.

  Barrett was through with caution; no one was coming to their rescue. She lunged, toppling Ellen back, as James Cyrus, excitedly shouted. “Stop! Leave her alone.”

  Barrett slammed Ellen’s head back hard against the cement floor and with the palm of her hand, shattered the bridge of her nose, sending fragments of bone and fat up into the tiny vessels of her brain; it was a killing blow, one that Sifu had shown her late at night many years back after several shots of his favorite whiskey.

  With cat-like precision Barrett was on her feet and explosively lunged at the cage door, just as James Cyrus was struggling to replace the lock. The metal door swung out and caught him in the side of the face and shoulder. He stumbled back, his gun raised. Barrett dove for the ground as the first shot hit the floor behind her. She tried not to think about her semiconscious sister, as she tucked into a somersault and tackled him. A second shot rang overhead. Her fingers clamped down on Jimmy’s wrist, and she struggled to get him to
drop the gun. He kicked and spit in her face. “Bitch, cunt!”

  She kneed him in the groin, and shot her elbow hard into his solar plexus. The air flew out of him, and the gun came free. She pushed off of the gasping man, and pointed the gun at his head. “Move and you’re dead.”

  James Cyrus struggled to get his breath; flat on his back, he stared up at her; he blinked. “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, in his little boy’s voice. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

  She felt her finger tighten on the trigger; it would be so easy. “Justine,” she called out, “get away from the cage … You … in it. Now!”

  Jimmy cowered, his eyes wide and innocent, “I love you. You love me. I’m sorry.”

  “Get in the cage Jimmy or I pull the trigger.”

  He blinked; his tongue licked lewdly across his upper lip, “I don’t think you would, Doctor.”

  Repulsed, her grip tightened. “You have until three. One … two …”

  “This isn’t over,” he said, crawling toward the cage, while keeping his eyes fixed on the gun. “You married the boy, and a wife must perform certain duties. You have a responsibility to the community. To the family …”

  She tuned out his prattle, watching for the moment he was fully inside. She moved fast, slammed the door and clicked the lock.

  “Justine, go upstairs and call for help. Then get yourself out of here … Go to mom’s. I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” her sister replied, as Jimmy’s father persona continued to ramble.

  “Please don’t argue,” Barrett said, keeping her eyes on Jimmy as she knelt next to Ellen’s unmoving body. With two fingers she felt for a pulse; there was nothing. “Good, go Justine … I’ll be fine.” She sat cross-legged in front of Jimmy’s locked cage, holding the gun steady, and listening to the sound of her sister running up the stairs. Help would come soon. And this time there’d be no slip-ups; she’d stay until the cops arrived; she’d make sure that everything was done by the book, and that Jimmy Martin would get locked away—and never, ever come out.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Four weeks later, Barrett was back in her office, trying to get through her work, but unable to focus. She was pregnant. She’d done a home pregnancy test immediately after her escape, and was shocked to see it was positive. Of course, as her gynecologist told her, that could have been from the fertility drugs they’d been giving her. What complicated matters was that, if in fact she was pregnant, it could quite possibly have happened that last night she was with Ralph. She’d been ready to have a baby, they’d not used protection, but now … she was waiting for the results of the DNA test. Was the fetus inside her Ralph’s or Jimmy’s? And depending on how that got answered, she either would—or wouldn’t have— some hard options to consider. In her entire life Barrett had never contemplated abortion. She firmly believed in a woman’s right to choose, but that was other women; it had never been this personal, this immediate. It was hard to breathe, and she wished the damn call would come. Her doctor had said it would take at least a week—the week was up.

  The phone rang, her stomach lurched and she picked up.

  “Hey Barrett,” it was Hobbs, calling from his hospital room.

  “How’s it going?” she asked, glad for the intrusion, and remembering how relieved she’d been to discover he was alive, but shocked when she’d gone to visit him that first day in the hospital. He’d been heavily sedated and lucky to be alive. He’d been covered in gauze, and what exposed skin she could see was red and slick with antibiotic dressing—more than 30 percent of his body had second- and third-degree burns. Ed was facing months in the unit, and had tried to crack jokes about the mind-numbing series of skin grafts he was facing.

  “It’s going. Although I just got word that Jimbo’s attorneys are going to shoot for the not guilty by reason of mental defect crap.”

  “No surprise there,” she said.

  “You think he’ll get it?”

  She pondered the complexities of the case, and of Jimmy, “Hard to know. It could go either way.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, “they’ll try and pin the actual murders on Ellen, and make him out as some crazy-assed accomplice. Either way, he ain’t ever coming out.”

  “You sure of that?” she said.

  These calls with Hobbs helped. Even with the burns that covered his face, hands, scalp, and torso, he’d insisted on following the case, and keeping Barrett up-to-date. The Martin mansion was sealed off and thoroughly searched, as was the carriage house and the elaborate reproduction of Barrett’s condo. Each day had revealed fresh horrors that stretched back through decades.

  In the dirt-floored basement of the mansion, bone fragments and ancient blood-spatter were discovered in the area of the coal-burning furnace. Jimmy’s story about the nanny was probably accurate, although the exact identity of the nanny, Maylene, wasn’t known. When they brought in a small excavator and dug up the courtyard they found additional bone fragments, the DNA matching that of James Cyrus Martin and Vivian Alfort Martin.

  He also told her how the investigating team had been besieged with calls from distant Martin relatives, all wanting to know what would happen with the Martin fortunes.

  “They have two detectives and a forensic accountant working on just that,” he’d told her. “You can’t imagine how rich these people were.”

  “So have you heard?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she admitted, glad that Hobbs knew everything, and she didn’t have to explain how she might be pregnant with Jimmy Martin’s child.

  “Can I make a horrible joke?” he asked.

  “Yes, but only you at this point.”

  “You know if it is his kid … and don’t shoot me … but he’d be the natural heir to all of that money.”

  “I know,” she admitted. “And don’t think I haven’t thought about that, and don’t think I hate myself for even mulling it over.”

  “It’s human, Barrett. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Whatever decisions you have to make, you’ll do the right thing.”

  “I wish I was so sure, she said, feeling the tears that were never far off. “I wish I had the fucking test results … Ed?”

  “What?”

  “There’s something else…when Jimmy showed me all that crap about you, I shouldn’t have listened. I should have trusted that you would have told me—or not—I should have just trusted.”

  “Water under the bridge, considering what you’ve been through … what we’ve both been through … all that seems kind of small. Any chance I’ll be seeing you? I could use the company. This place is boring as hell.”

  “Sure … I’ll pick up Chinese. Although, if I get the results, I could be a total basket case.”

  “Is that the clinical name for it?”

  “Yeah, that or head case.” And after she hung up, she was surprised to see she was actually smiling.

  Hobbs had that effect on her, unlike work, and this new job, which she wasn’t certain she wanted. Anton had hastily resigned; his last interaction with Barrett an embarrassing and disturbing encounter.

  “You can ruin me,” he’d told her, knowing that the trail of his research funding could be easily traced back to Ellen Martin. “I’m begging you not to.”

  She’d said little, her rage too close to the surface. “It’ll all come out; I’m not going to stop that.”

  “But you could …”

  “I won’t,” she’d said. “You let Jimmy out.” She’d wanted to say more, but the meaning was clear.

  “I didn’t know.”

  She’d glared at him, realizing that all of this could have been prevented if he’d done his job, and resisted the money. “Get out, Anton,” were her final words. She’d tried to remember how they had ever been friends.

  The day he handed in his resignation, she got a call from Housmann.

  “They’re pulling me out of mothballs to head up a search committee. I don’t know why, seeing as they didn’t take my advic
e the last time,” the retired psychiatrist had told her. “I told them that you were the only internal candidate I’d consider. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Right now I’m just trying to keep one foot in front of the other.”

  “I just read your article in the American Journal. They’d be foolish not to give you the job. It can be whatever you want it to be. You get to take the best cases, the best students. And I’ll see to it that they don’t try to stiff you on the salary …”

  “It’s not that,” she’d said, picturing the bespectacled man in his sun-flooded living room.

  “I know; we’re still human. You can’t go through something like what you’ve been through without being changed by it. The only people who wouldn’t be affected are sociopaths. That’s why I think they’re better adapted for survival. Stuff like this doesn’t faze them … So what are your symptoms? Flashbacks? Nightmares? Jumping every time the phone rings?”

  “All of the above, and always feeling like I’m two steps away from a panic attack.”

  “Are you seeing anyone?” he’d asked.

  “No.”

  He’d chuckled, “Spoken like a true doctor … You could see me. We wouldn’t call it therapy, more like supervision.”

  “I’d like that,” she’d said, knowing that there were few others who’d be able to understand.

  “And you’ll think about taking the job?”

  “If you throw yourself in as a supervisor, not just about this, but I don’t know a thing about being an administrator, and you do.”

  “Deal,” he’d said, and then pushed further. “So I’ll tell the board that you’ll fill in as the acting director with the expectation that after a brief and cursory search we’ll offer you the job.”

  “If I don’t like it, or can’t do it?”

  He had laughed, “I don’t think your competency is in question, but we’ll talk about how you survive being the boss. If you think Martin was a pain in the ass, just try telling forty whining employees that they can’t all have Christmas week off.”

  Still, there was more. Daily encounters with reporters and photographers who waited outside her co-op and the clinic, trying to get her photograph and gruesome details of the millionaire murderers. The tabloids and even The Times devoted pages of ink to the ongoing investigation and the titillating discoveries in the Gramercy Park mansion.