All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

  I led him the Beeson way so we could cut through to the Red. I liked watchin’ the Red when it was rainin’, seein’ it rise up like it’d burst.

  Grace hadn’t felt right since Coralee Simmons got taken. The streets had an edge to them I can’t really explain, maybe like we were just waitin’ on our turn and glancin’ at each other and wonderin’ who it was gonna be. Daddy had a talk with us about not goin’ to church till the Bird was caught and I nodded like I was listenin’ but my mind was on Bobby. I sat out again and watched Savannah as she took that same route toward Hell’s Gate but there weren’t no way I was gonna follow her in there. I pictured her runnin’ the trails with a flashlight, her heart poundin’ out while she taunted the devil. That veneer so perfect she was desperate to crack it.

  “You like to read, Sam?” I said.

  “No one ever called me Sam,” he said, kinda smiling again. “I ain’t never really read a book.”

  “I sit by the window and read and drink tea and Momma says she ain’t even sure I’m her daughter.”

  We cut into the woods. The rain died with the trees holding it from us and I could hear the creaks and groans and the snaps under our feet.

  “Is it hard being so white?” I said, and it sounded funny and Samson started laughin’.

  “Sometimes it is . . . lookin’ like this.”

  “I like it, your hair, it’s nice.”

  He blushed.

  We stood on the edge of the woods and watched the rain land and I told Samson how I wished it’d flood Grace. He made a joke about an ark and I thought of Noah, who’s a kid in my school and he’s on dialysis ’cause his body don’t work right. I wondered about evolution and independence, if people like the Bird were just angels in a different guise, sent down to dent the numbers and hold the fear. Two birds and one stone and a whole lot of ripples. God’s work can’t always be clean ’cause he knows better than anyone about the science of suffering. Lessons learned and forgot.

  “How’s your daddy doin’?” I said.

  “He don’t say much to me . . . I mean about his sickness, he don’t tell me. We have nurses stop by, but sometimes I have to help, lift him out the tub and all. He gets mad at me, he yells a lot.”

  “Maybe ’cause he’s embarrassed.”

  Samson nodded but I knew, everyone knew about the pastor. He was mean and crazy and folk were shit scared of him. He’d look at me like I was somethin’ bad, even though I was at the church more than the other kids.

  “It’s good that you go to church, Summer. Most of the kids only go ’cause their parents drag ’em.”

  “I always liked St. Luke’s. When I was small I’d stare at the colored glass, the pink that falls. It’s so pretty.”

  “It’s nice talking to you, Summer.”

  I smiled. “It’s decent of you to walk me back.”

  I took my cello from him. It weren’t really mine but Savannah had a couple and said I could keep one so I could practice at home and school.

  “Summer,” he said.

  I turned.

  “You’re nice. The other girls ain’t, but you’re nice.”

  “You’re nice too, Sam.”

  I felt him watchin’ me as I walked away.

  *

  I asked Momma to tie my hair up pretty. I walked the even mile to Bobby’s place just before sunset. I like that time, that perfect hour when orange day turns to blue night, when you glimpse the first lightnin’ bug and crickets drown the birds.

  I played Debussy but felt far from innocent and far from naive. I reckon innocence is overrated, we’ve all fallen short, it’s what he expects and I weren’t gonna disappoint.

  Savannah clapped once when I was done.

  “What color is flaxen anyhow?” I said, layin’ the bow down.

  “The same color as your hair,” Savannah said.

  Sometimes she didn’t speak for the longest time. At first I thought it was some kinda test, like maybe I was supposed to hear somethin’ in the acres of silence.

  “You want me to play it again?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  I looked over to the corner of the room. “What’s that?”

  She followed my eye. “A lute.”

  “Who busted the end?”

  She smiled. “It’s supposed to be like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded.

  “I think I saw one. Maybe it was in a painting, Orpheus or somethin’. That sound right?”

  She cocked her head a little. “Yes, that sounds right. There’s a play I like, The Honest Whore . . . the heroine is a lutenist.”

  “The Honest Whore, is it blue?”

  She laughed. She’s got the kinda laugh that’s on reins, like laughin’ ’cause it’s needed but ain’t wanted.

  “No, it’s not blue.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “A lady named Viola, she’s married to Candido. He’s mild-mannered, and it bothers Viola, so she comes up with ways to provoke him, to see his temper lost.”

  “She wants to piss him off on purpose?”

  “Yes, basically. It’s humorous.”

  “How does she do it?”

  “Various ways. She gets her brother to help.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Candido doesn’t lose his temper, but he ends up being incarcerated as people think he’s mad.”

  “So she’s happy about that?”

  “Devastated, actually.”

  I looked at the lute again, at the polished wood and the golden strings and how much it said about Savannah and the distance between us.

  “She wouldn’t have done that if she was married to my daddy. But maybe my uncle Tommy, ’cause he don’t care enough to get riled.”

  Savannah laughed again, like she knew him and she knew us.

  “Have you finished your paper yet?”

  “You reckon the other kids won’t like me ’cause I’m a Grace girl?”

  She reached forward and took my hand. “I think you’re strong, Summer.”

  I kept glancin’ at the door.

  “Bobby’s not home,” she said.

  I got it then, that she knew somethin’. I was thinkin’ maybe she reckoned I had a crush on him, like all the girls in Grace did. That was all right if she thought that. Maybe she thought it was sweet, that I doted on the golden pastor, maybe I drew hearts in my schoolbooks and stuck his initials inside. Maybe I dreamed of marryin’ him, virgin in white walkin’ the aisle in St. Luke’s.

  She cried then. It was so sudden I didn’t know what to do. So I sat there and watched, and then I told her I needed the bathroom and she told me she was sorry.

  They had a grandfather clock as tall as me. It was dark wood and glass and ticked so loud I reckoned they could hear it from their bedroom.

  Their bedroom. I pushed the door open, soft light and cream carpet, neat and ordered and glossy. I looked at the bed. They had five throw pillows on it. The sheets were cool, maybe silk or something like it.

  I walked over to the dresser. I opened the middle drawer, smelled somethin’ floral and spiced. I pulled out one of her bras; it was lace and fancy and made me feel like a child.

  There was a bottle of perfume. It was French and I took it and put it in my bag.

  That night when I lay in bed I held it to my nose and closed my eyes. I reached down there and moved between lives.

  26

  Perfumed Girls

  There was a backwater behind the church, a mirror of rippled sky that twisted and wound miles through woodland till it met with the Red somewhere near the county line.

  The church was burned till just a skeleton of the building remained.

  The West End Mission.

  It was Della Palmer’s church, ’cause if you cut through the pines it was only ten minutes to Standing Oak.

  They’d had trouble after, when someone decorated it with a pile of dead squirrels and a large pentagram. Rumor was their own pastor lit the match, mayb
e ’cause he wanted to see if it would burn and not consume. The Mission took a hard line; their faith was unflinching.

  A year back, when the case was red hot, Black had been called to a party that got outta hand at a rental near Brookdale. They’d got there and found the usual; high school kids getting lit and getting high, music loud. But then he’d gone round the back and seen the girls, three of them, scared white. They were pointing in the direction of the woods. Black had called for backup, gone in with Milk, locked and aiming. They’d nearly blown the kid’s head off. A jock, big and dumb, as was the custom. He’d made the feathered suit himself, thought it’d be funny to scare his girlfriend.

  That was the first of the hoaxes.

  The newspapers had been first to speak of the devil. There weren’t no grounds for it. Folk lapped it up, what with the Panic looking for kindling. Some idiot at the Briar County News cooked up a cover sketch of Baphomet with feathers, said they sold out in every town so ran it again week after week till it was burned in the minds of every kid in the area. It kept them outta Hell’s Gate, though into Ouija boards and other nonsense that freaked them out enough to call in every weekend.

  Black walked over to the church and ran his hand along a piece of charred timber twenty foot long.

  “You lookin’ for a rabbit at the altar? Or was it a parakeet?” Milk said.

  “It was bullshit, that’s what it was.”

  Black looked down and saw a BOWDOIN CONSTRUCTION sign in the dirt.

  “Don’t look like Ray’s done nothin’ at all,” Milk said.

  Pastor Roberts had made the complaint. He reckoned the church had paid Ray Bowdoin five grand to begin clearing the site ready to rebuild it. Ray had taken the cash months back. Hadn’t done shit yet.

  “You still friendly with the mother? That girl that came here, I forget her name.”

  “Peach Palmer,” Black said. “Her name’s Peach Palmer and her daughter’s name is Della.”

  “Della was the first,” Milk said, his tone softening.

  “Yeah.”

  Black rubbed his eyes.

  “They made the link already. Connected dots that ain’t there.”

  Milk was talking about the hacks. The Bird was back, God sent the cloud ’cause the devil was at work in Hell’s Gate.

  “So now we’re back chasin’ shadows,” Milk said.

  “This guy ain’t even got a shadow.”

  “There’s somethin’ we’re missin’.”

  “Maybe. We’re tryin’ to see what others couldn’t. But maybe there ain’t nothin’ out there.”

  Milk glanced at him.

  “Could be some guy, no record, just started up and can’t stop. The only hope we got is that he makes a mistake. But how many girls go before he does that?”

  Black sighed.

  “How about Tommy Ryan? Anything on that?” Milk said.

  “I found the lady he was seeing, Greta Gray, she confirmed it. Dates line up too, she dragged him to Pinegrove, then he dropped her cold.”

  “Tommy Ryan goin’ to church and volunteerin’ at Pinegrove. What did she look like?”

  “The kinda lady worth findin’ God for.”

  Milk laughed.

  “Funny thing was he visited the place a couple times after he’d canned her, when he knew she weren’t workin’.”

  “Jesus,” Milk said. “Tommy Ryan helpin’ others, what’s the world comin’ to?”

  They were about to get in the cruiser when they heard a car pull up. The track was deep so they couldn’t make out who it was. They walked the leaves till they reached the clearing and Chason Road and they saw an old Taurus, wheels in the hard mud, engine running but no one inside.

  Black glanced around, and then he saw her. She was coming outta the trees, young-looking redhead with tired eyes and a sweep of freckles across her nose.

  She was startled when she glanced up, took a step back and nearly tumbled.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Milk said.

  She licked her lips like they were dry. “I don’t see nobody out here, that’s all.”

  “You part of the Mission?”

  “Yes,” she said, glancing about like they weren’t alone. “The mail . . . I collect the mail, some of the folk in White Mountain still send letters to this address. It’s overgrown now, I have to wade through just to find the box.”

  “Where you guys at now?”

  “Wherever Pastor Roberts can get, sometimes the hall in Ayling, sometimes in the fields. Don’t matter, God hears us wherever.”

  “Right,” Milk said, throwing a glance at Black.

  “You here about the money? We raised funds, all we got we gave to that Grace man,” she said.

  “We’ll talk to Ray Bowdoin,” Milk said.

  She nodded, began to walk, and then turned. “We pray for Della, all of us, every day we pray for her.”

  They watched her drive away and they walked slow back up the track toward the cruiser and the burned church.

  “All these people prayin’ for these girls,” Milk said. “I really hope there’s someone listenin’.”

  *

  It was a little before midnight when Joe Ryan walked into the police station and asked to speak to Black. It weren’t the way anyone thought he’d come—alone and through the front door.

  Black appeared quick with Milk behind him.

  Black ushered Joe into the back room while Milk locked the door and kept an eye on the four trucks sitting out front. The square was calm and sleeping but Milk knew how quick it could turn.

  Joe sat, Black offered him something to drink but Joe waved him off.

  “I heard Samson lawyered up,” Joe said.

  Black recounted Samson’s version of events and didn’t leave nothing out, even offered to let him listen to the tape just to prove he was showing his hand early and honest.

  “You believe him?” Joe said.

  “At the moment I ain’t got reason not to.”

  Joe sighed, rubbed the muscles in his neck, and closed his eyes. His arms were big; his hands were scarred across each knuckle. The beard was thickening as each day passed.

  “So I’m just supposed to leave it at that? Take your word, take his –”

  “Ernie is sendin’ someone over first thing in the mornin’. We’ll go over to the Lumen house and search every inch; if Summer was there we’ll know about it. To be honest it ain’t much of a reason to search the place. We got so little, Joe.”

  “I appreciate you being straight with me.”

  “I appreciate you not comin’ in heavy.”

  “There’s still time.”

  “I know.”

  Black tried to put himself in Joe’s shoes, found it weren’t a nice place to be. Black’s girls had been small when his wife took them. He’d tried to write them a couple times; RETURN TO SENDER was all that came back. He tried to imagine what it was like raising teen girls. A fuckin’ nightmare was the way he saw it.

  “How’s Ava holdin’ up?”

  Joe looked down at his hands, fiddled with his wedding band, spinning it back and forth. “Ava’s just about the strongest woman I ever met, but she’s startin’ to lose herself now. She was all right the first days . . . but it’s so dark, this storm comin’, and Summer being out there alone. The newspapers gettin’ ready, talk of the Bird again. We’re still searchin’, do it in shifts so we can keep people here and watchin’.

  “I remember when we found out it was twins, I was thinkin’ maybe we’d get one of each, or maybe two boys, I could take ’em to ball games, take ’em fishin’. I didn’t even think about two girls, I ain’t even sure why.” He cleared his throat. “I fucked up bad, missed out on more than you can imagine.”

  “Holman is a rough place.”

  Joe shrugged. “I ain’t never been scared, not even when I was small, fear . . . it ain’t somethin’ I remember. But when I knew I’d miss it, first steps and first words . . . that smell, their hair when they’d
come visit. I’d sit there, one on each knee.”

  Black smiled.

  “They held hands all the time, you remember that?” Joe said. “When I got out Ava made that party, but I stayed outside awhile, just lookin’ in, watchin’ my girls holdin’ hands, nervous faces ’cause they thought I weren’t gonna show.”

  “You’ve changed a lot, Joe.”

  “I ain’t, not really. It’s all right though, doin’ a job I hate, Ava pickin’ up extra shifts, scrapin’ to get by. They made it all right. Raine blames you, you know that?”

  “I know that.”

  “Tell me this ain’t linked to the Briar girls. Tell me this guy ain’t got my girl.”

  Black looked down at the table between them.

  “Five girls . . . the church, is that somethin’ to do with it? All this talk about rituals and shit. Devil worship. When I was inside Ava was mad with it, the Panic, keepin’ the girls safe from somethin’ that maybe ain’t even real.”

  “There’s nothin’ that says Summer’s been taken. The Briar girls, they didn’t pack bags. They weren’t runnin’.”

  Joe nodded, his eyes heavy. “Could you have got him, that day, the Bird? Way people tell it . . .”

  Black dropped his head a little. “Rumor ain’t fact.”

  Joe nodded like he could see through.

  “Can I ask you some more about Summer? I been tryin’ to build a picture, I spoke with some of her teachers.”

  “You see her play at St. Luke’s that time?”

  Black nodded. He’d been there, it was a day no one would forget.

  “I saw her that day. Really saw her.”

  “How?”

  “Before it was talk, you know, just numbers and words, shit I’d never get. But watchin’ her play, even though I ain’t exactly sure what it was she was playin’, that was beautiful. There were people cryin’, not just those old coots you got that sit up front and cry every Sunday. I saw Dale Crashaw cryin’, and Dale’s mean as they come. So that’s when I saw just how special my little girl is.”

  They heard noise outside. Black got to his feet quick, looked at Joe and fixed him with an even gaze. Joe stood and followed him out.

  Milk was standing still, a hand on his gun but he hadn’t drawn. He saw Tommy Ryan by the door.