Before he could step around the car, Cosette suddenly pulled him down again behind the vehicle.
“What—” Alan began.
Cosette put a warning finger to her lips and then Alan heard it as well: two voices raised in argument.
A man and a woman. The sound came from the direction of the building they’d been about to enter.
Peering over the hood of the car, Alan saw two figures leave the tenement. One he recognized as John Sweetgrass until he realized it had to be John’s doppelganger, since Cosette, sneaking a quick glance beside him, drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the approaching pair and quickly dropped out of sight again. The doppelganger’s companion he only recognized from Nora’s description of “a real punky-looking girl.” These were the two people who’d kidnapped Isabelle from the courtyard in Joli Coeur. Rushkin’s creatures.
“Don’t let them see us, don’t let them see us,” Cosette was chanting under her breath.
Alan ducked below the hood as the pair crossed the street.
.. have to walk back, thanks to you,” the man was saying.
“Don’t blame me. I think she almost broke my fucking wrist.”
“Serves you right, panicking the way you did.”
“They’re supposed to be social workers in that place,” the girl said. “Not street fighters.”
“That’s no excuse. If you hadn’t screwed up, we’d have the paintings and not have to walk back across town to get them.”
“So we’ll steal another car.”
“So we’ll steal another car,” the doppelganger repeated, mimicking the girl’s voice.
“I didn’t see you doing all that well,” the girl responded sharply. “No one said you had to follow me back.”
“I couldn’t very well take the paintings and fight them all off at the same time once you buggered off on me.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” the girl said. “If that black bitch is still in the office when we get there, I’ll rip out her heart.”
They were talking about Rolanda, Alan realized. They’d gone after the paintings hanging in the Foundation’s waiting room and somehow Rolanda and the others there had chased them oft: And now they were on their way back. He turned to Cosette, about to whisper to her that Rolanda had to be warned of a second attempt on the paintings, when he realized that the conversation they’d been eavesdropping on had suddenly fallen silent.
Oh, shit, he thought.
There was no time to do anything. The doppelganger came around the front of the car before Alan could stand up. When he did, he raised the tire iron only to have the girl drop silently from the roof of the car and kick him in the shoulder. The tire iron fell to the pavement with a clang, and Alan backed away from the girl. His whole arm had gone numb, from his shoulder down to his fingers.
“Yum, yum,” the girl said, a feral light burning in her eyes as she caught sight of Cosette trying to hide behind Alan.
“Scara!” the doppelganger warned.
The girl gave him a sour look. “Who put you in charge?”
“Plain common sense. She belongs to Rushkin—or do you feel like explaining to him why you took her instead of bringing her to him?”
Scara’s only reply was to look sullen. She spat on the ground at Alan’s feet, but made no further move toward Cosette.
“Don’t even think of it,” the doppelganger said, directing his attention now to Marisa, who’d been edging her hand toward the fallen tire iron.
Marisa let her hand fall back to her side and rose to stand beside Alan. Cosette got to her feet as well, trying to wedge herself into the narrow space between Alan and the car so that Alan would be between her and Scara.
Considering the hungry light in the girl’s eyes, Alan didn’t blame Cosette at all. He wished there were someone he could hide behind.
“What—” Alan had to clear his throat before he could continue. “What do you want with us?”
John’s double regarded him with amusement. “A better question would be, what do you want with us?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who’s come spying on us.”
“We’re looking for Isabelle,” Marisa said.
“Oh, she’s inside.”
Alan and Marisa exchanged glances. It was going to be this easy? “Inside,” Alan repeated slowly.
The doppelganger nodded. “Painting.”
“But you ... we were told you’d kidnapped her.”
“How do these stories get around?” the doppelganger said. “We did bring her here to visit with her old mentor, but she certainly wasn’t kidnapped.”
The man was so reasonable that Alan felt confused. It was true Scara had kicked him, but then he’d been threatening her friend with a tire iron. And while the conversation between the pair concerning Cosette hadn’t exactly been comforting, neither of them had actually done anything since then that could be construed as a threat.
“Bitterweed,” Scara said.
It took Alan a moment to realize that she was using the doppelganger’s name.
“This is getting boring,” the girl went on. “We’ve got things to do.”
Things to do, Alan thought. Like stealing Isabelle’s paintings from the Foundation and assaulting Rolanda and whoever else happened to be there. His resolve returned.
“Listen,” he said. “You can’t just—”
“If you’re so worried about whether or not Isabelle wants to be here,” Bitterweed broke in, “why don’t you come in and ask her yourself?” Alan hesitated. “I ...”
“Of course we’ll see her,” Marisa said. “That’s why we came.”
She sounded brave, but she walked very close to Alan as they followed the pair back into the tenement. Cosette bookended Alan on the other side. She walked so near to him that he could feel her trembling.
It was dirty inside the building, the walls smeared with more graffiti, litter clogging the floor. The air smelled stale, with a sweet rankness lying underneath it.
“Why would Rushkin want to live in a place like this?” Marisa wondered aloud.
The same question had lodged in Alan’s mind.
“Free rent,” Bitterweed called back over his shoulder. “Isabelle’s upstairs in the studio.”
When they got to the second floor, Scara darted ahead of them, stopping at a closed door about halfway down the length of the hall. She seemed to take longer than necessary to simply turn the doorknob, but her body shielded whatever she was up to.
“In here,” she said cheerfully when they joined her.
She opened the door and stepped aside. Alan got a glimpse of Isabelle’s startled features turning toward them, and behind her, an unfinished canvas on an easel; then Bitterweed gave him a hard shove.
He stumbled into the room, dragging Marisa and Cosette along with him. The door slammed behind them and he heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.
“How could we have been so stupid?” he cried, turning back to the door.
The knob remained immobile in his hand when he tried it. He gave the door a kick, but only succeeded in hurting his toe. Swearing softly, he turned around to face the rest of the room. Marisa was regarding Isabelle with frank curiosity. Cosette had attached herself to Marisa now and stood hip to shoulder against her. Marisa hesitated for a moment, then laid a comforting arm across the girl’s shoulders. Isabelle regarded them with an unhappy gaze. Her eyes were rimmed with red and swollen from crying.
“Why ... why did you come?” she asked, her voice heavy with despair. “We wanted to help,” Alan said.
Isabelle shook her head. “But now he’s got you, too.”
“You mean Rushkin?”
“I mean the monster.”
Alan waited, but she didn’t elaborate. The silence that stretched between them grew uncomfortable.
Alan cleared his throat. He looked at the painting behind her, marveling at its emotive power even in this unfinished state.
“That painting,” he said.
“She was going to be my vengeance on the monster,” Isabelle told him. Her voice seemed drained of expression. Not toneless, but empty. “But then John told me how numena can’t harm a maker and then the next ... the next thing I knew ... he killed John ....”
Her eyes flooded with tears and she began to cry. Alan regarded her helplessly, wanting to be supportive, but there was something about her that made him keep his distance. She simply stood there, shoulders shaking, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She was looking right at him, but Alan didn’t think she actually saw him.
“Alan,” Marisa said softly. “For god’s sake, go to her.”
Her voice broke through Alan’s paralysis. He glanced in her direction to see that Cosette had buried her face against Marisa’s breast, John’s death hitting her just as hard. Marisa indicated Isabelle with a nod of her head. Alan hesitated a moment longer before closing the distance between them. He put his arms around Isabelle, gathering her close. There was no pleasure in the contact. Only days ago, he’d have given anything to be this close to her, but since then everything had changed.
Isabelle pressed her face into the crook between his neck and shoulder. Her arms gripped him tightly. But the weeping didn’t stop. It felt as though it would never stop.
Rushkin hadn’t only killed John, Alan realized. This time, with this death, he’d utterly broken Isabelle.
VII
Roger Davis stayed on at the precinct to catch up on some paperwork after his partner left for the day. Reports were always backing up as new cases took priority, and it seemed like he was always behind. It wasn’t until the evening shift came on that he was finally ready to call it quits himself.
Tomorrow was soon enough to print the files. He shut off the computer he’d been using and leaned back in his chair, stretching the stiff muscles in his lower back. How people could work at a desk job all day was beyond him.
Picking up his sports jacket from where it hung over the back of the chair, he slung it over his shoulder and headed downstairs. On the way out to his car he stopped by the sergeant’s desk to double-check that the All Points Bulletin on Alan Grant had been dropped. That was when he discovered another APB, this time for a pair of nameless thieves: white female, approx. five-one, 105, late teens, black hair, wearing death-rocker punk gear; and a Native American, approx. six foot, 170, black hair in a ponytail, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.
The mention of the ponytailed Native American was what had first caught his eye, but then his gaze settled on the address where the robbery attempt had taken place. In the offices of the Newford Children’s Foundation. He thought: ponytailed Indian spotted in Mully’s hotel just before she’s murdered, Mully trying to grab the money from her daughter’s books that was being channeled into the Foundation, ponytailed Indian involved in a robbery attempt at the Foundation. There were connections here. He couldn’t see them yet, but he could feel them.
“Who caught this?” he asked the desk sergeant.
Hermanez leaned to have a look. “Peterson and Cook.”
“Are they still in?”
“Nah. Their shift ended the same time yours did, except they were smart enough to go home.”
“Some of us aren’t so good at fitting twenty hours’ work into an eight-hour shift.”
Hermanez laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“So you know anything about this robbery?” Davis asked.
“Started as a ten-sixty-seven, but by the time we got on the scene, the only thing left to do was take statements.”
“What were they after?”
“A couple of paintings—supposed to be pretty valuable, Cook says, but nobody could put a dollar value on them.”
“Paintings,” Davis repeated.
Hermanez nodded. “Me, I’d have them evaluated and insured if they’re that valuable, you know what I mean?”
But Davis wasn’t listening. The connections were weaving more tightly together now. He’d seen those paintings. They were by the same woman who, according to Alan Grant, was going to be illustrating this collection that Margaret Mully had been so set on suppressing before she’d been murdered. Had the Indian killed her? Maybe they’re running some kind of scam together and when it goes bad, the Indian kills Mully, then tries to pull this heist so that he can still come out ahead.
Flimsy, Davis, he told himself. Very flimsy. But he was curious now. “You remember who they talked to?” he asked the desk sergeant.
“I forget her name. Remember the black woman who brought that bunch of kids by for a tour of the precinct last month? She was a real looker.”
Davis had to think for a moment. “Something Hamilton,” he said. “Rosanne. No, Rolanda.”
“That’s her. She’s the one that stopped them and did most of the talking. Want me to get someone to track down their report?”
Davis shook his head. “No. I think I’ll swing by the Foundation on my way home and have a talk with her myself “
“Now you’ve got me feeling itchy,” Hermanez said. “What do you see here that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” Davis told him. “At least not yet. But the only lead I’ve got in a case that Mike and I are working on is a ponytailed Indian and the really interesting thing is that our case has a connection to the Foundation as well.”
“You’re talking about the old witch that got murdered last night—the one who wanted to take away all the money from the Foundation’s kids.”
Davis nodded.
“Maybe you should give the guy a medal, if you find him,” Hermanez muttered.
“If it was up to me,” Davis admitted, “maybe I would.”
“Course, we don’t condone murder on our turf,” Hermanez said. “No matter how much the victim deserved it.”
“Of course,” Davis agreed.
The two men smiled at each other. Davis tipped a finger against his brow and headed out to his car.
VIII
Isabelle recovered first. While Cosette still wept quietly against Marisa’s shoulder, Isabelle finally stepped out of Alan’s embrace. She didn’t look any better, Alan thought. All that had changed was that the tears had stopped. Lodged in her eyes was a wild and desperate grief. She started to speak, then dropped her gaze and swallowed thickly. Turning away, she picked up a clean rag from the work-table and first wiped her eyes with it, then blew her nose. With her back to them, she squared her shoulders and stared at the unfinished painting on her easel.
“How ... how much do you know?” she asked.
She spoke with the same empty voice she had earlier. Alan glanced at Marisa, but Marisa only shrugged as if to say, Play it however you think is best. Alan sighed. It was probably the wrong thing to do, considering how Isabelle was feeling at the moment, but he knew the time had come to put aside all the bullshit.
“I think we’ve pretty well figured it all out except for a couple of things,” he said.
“Even the numena?”
Alan glanced at Cosette. “Maybe especially the numena.”
Isabelle let the silence hang between them for a moment. Alan shifted from one foot to another, but before he could speak, Isabelle asked, “So what do you need to know?”
“Why did you keep Kathy’s letter from me?” Alan asked. “Why did you pretend that Paddyjack had burned in the fire? And why did you turn your back on me at Kathy’s funeral?”
He wasn’t trying to rekindle old arguments or make her feel bad. He asked because he had to understand. Before they could go on from here, before he could be of any help, he had to have something more than old ghosts and memories to work with. There was a solution to their current situation, and he was sure they could find it. But the trouble was, he also knew it was tangled up somewhere in the middle of all the lies and evasions that had grown up between them over the years. Not just since Kathy’s death, but from before that. It dated back to the fire on Wren Island, when all of her artwork had supposedly gone up i
n flames along with the farmhouse.
Isabelle turned to look at him, but her gaze could only hold his for a moment. It shifted to the worktable, where she picked up a yellow-handled utility knife with a retractable blade from in among the brushes and tubes of paint. Turning it over and over in her hands, she walked over to the nearest wall.
With her back to the wall, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor, legs drawn up to her chest. She put the knife down on the floor beside her and hugged her knees.
“I ... I’ve got a problem with negative situations,” she said.
She still wouldn’t look at him. Her voice was so soft that he had to walk over to where she was and sit down across from her. Marisa followed suit with Cosette in tow, settling down beside Alan. Isabelle took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“When something ... bad happens,” she went on, “I ..” She broke off again, but this time she looked at Alan. “Remember how Kathy used to say that all we had to do was reinvent the world when we didn’t like it the way it was? If we believed it was different, then it would become different?”
Alan nodded.
“You and I, we always argued with her about that. We’d try to tell her that the world was a far more complicated place and just because one person decided to see things different, it didn’t mean that things would actually change.”
“I remember,” Alan said. “And then she’d say, if it changed for you, then that was enough.”
“Except I could never do it—at least that’s what I’d say—but I learned the trick too well and the irony is that Kathy couldn’t do it at all.”
“You’re losing me.”
“I found her journal. She didn’t lead a very happy life, Alan. She couldn’t reinvent the world at all.
But I did. I just didn’t know I was doing it. Something bad would happen to me and I’d simply shift the facts around until it was something I could deal with. It’s like when I’ve talked about my parents in interviews, I’m always going on about how supportive they were, how they were so proud of me, right from the first.”
Alan remembered the first time he’d read that in an issue of American Artist and how he’d thought she was saying that just so that she wouldn’t hurt her mother’s feelings. Because he’d known the truth.
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