The Fever Kill

by Tom Piccirilli

  He parked the 'Stang out front and made his way up the wide walkway to the front door. He hadn't rung the bell yet when Burke appeared. Like he'd been perched in the window for hours, waiting for Crease to come along.

  Sam Burke recognized Crease immediately. His bland expression upgraded fast. It twisted and crept across his face inch by inch, emotions fluctuating as they went along. Sadness, puzzlement, even disdain showed vividly before returning to the carefully engraved contours of apathy. It was a little spooky that the guy would be so on top of him like that.

  They both stood there, waiting for something to promote the moment. The dead girl was there with them. Crease felt Teddy's presence growing stronger. Crease's father's ghost wafted between them all, the man wanting redemption or maybe just another bottle of booze in hell.

  Burke finally moved aside and Crease stepped in.

  The house smelled of furniture polish, floor wax, potpourri, fresh paint, and stale air. It was the aroma of somebody desperately trying to clean away events that could never be undone. Crease knew the windows would be spotless but painted shut. These were people who had closed themselves in with their pain in order to keep it alive. Mary's room would look no different now than it had seventeen years ago. Her belongings would've been touched and caressed many thousands of times, and every fingerprint washed away again. Burke probably napped in his daughter's bed, but the intense dreaming would be too much for him. The thread between them tightened up with every step Crease took.

  Burke was perfectly groomed, almost prim. He wore a very short, well-kept beard. Every button on his shirt was buttoned—right to the collar, the cuffs. The fold in his trousers was sharp enough to slice paper.

  Burke evoked constraint. Inhibition, pressure, duress. Someone who killed two hours every morning in the bathroom, spent the day at work assembling and arranging and coordinating, and then faded the rest of his night sitting on the center cushion of the couch. Not touching anything, not moving.

  The living room had been decorated by a woman but you could tell it no longer contained her living touch. Everything had been arranged where it was a long time ago and never been moved. Mrs. Burke was dead or gone. The place was immaculate as a museum. Crease didn't want to make any quick moves for fear of breaking the solemn air around him.

  There were no photos anywhere. He could understand why. You couldn't put out any of your parents or your in-laws or your dog without having a few of Mary too. And to put her photos in your line of sight would just be a reminder that you couldn't protect your own kid, that your faith in the police and your friends and your neighbors was totally misplaced.

  "You look very much like your father," Burke said.

  The thought of it shook Crease for an instant. It got his back up, the heat rushing along his spine. Then he realized Burke meant the way his father had looked before the downfall, back when he was still doing his duty.

  At least it's what Crease hoped the man meant. "I'd like to talk to you, if I could."

  "I can guess why you're here. All of us reach a particular crossroads, an apex, and eventually return to where we began. You've got a lot of gray in your hair. You're young to be having a mid-life crisis, but rest assured I know something about that." Burke spoke with a clipped, rushed speech. Very tight but very carefully enunciated. "Still, let me ask, don't you think it's simply a waste of time?"

  Crease didn't know how to answer. Burke didn't wait for one though, and merely stepped past him into the living room.

  "No," Crease said to the man's back.

  "Of course it is. You're just having some other crisis of life or faith, and you thought coming back here would be the way to resolve everything. You're on a grand search, a journey of conscience. Perhaps you've left a wife home wherever it is you now come from. Yes? Perhaps children. An irritated employer, a job half done. You've dug yourself a hole, you're walking a wire in high wind, would you say? And all these things will be set right if only you can solve the case that smashed your father's career and ruined his life. Do you really expect to clean the blood off his hands at this late date?"

  The guy was sharp all right. You couldn't sell him short just because he had his collar buttoned and his windows stuck shut.

  "Not everything will be straightened out," Crease said. "But it's a loose end that I want to try to tie up."

  He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it was out of his mouth.

  Burke sat on the center cushion of the couch, crossed his legs and said, "Well, how touching. Is that how you see it? What happened to my daughter? The greed that spurred your father?" Maybe the man was inoculated, safe behind his austere wall. "I don't consider her murder a 'loose end' at all. Nothing dangling there, you see. Quite the opposite. Her death severed all ties. That's what death does. There's no point in dredging that all up. Digging up the dead. It's been so long. You not only look like your father, you act like him as well. Are you a police officer?"

  Christ, Burke was on the ball. All this time in the house alone, thinking, it really exercised his gray matter. "Yes."

  "Are you a good one?"

  "Depends on who you ask."

  "I'm asking you."

  He hadn't thought about it for a while and wondered how Burke had managed to take control of the conversation the way he had. Crease had come here to ask questions, and in about two minutes flat Burke had him pinned beneath glass. Maybe he owed the man an answer, maybe not, but something about the house, and Burke's controlled energy and direct way of speaking, the way he peeled Crease apart with his gaze, made Crease feel like he should give it a shot.

  "I'm effective because I spend my time down in the mud with the guys I'm trying to stop. I'm good at my job but that just means I'm rotten at everything else. You understand that?"

  "It sounds as if you're striving for nobility."

  "If that's what you heard then you're mistaken." And he

  was. Burke was burned up with a fever of his own. "Perhaps," Burke said. "In any case, I think you should let the dead rest."

  He was surprised to hear Burke speaking like that, no matter how far down the man had gone to get away from his pain. Crease felt his father's presence all the time, often very strongly, and thought Burke would never be able to let his murdered daughter go, not even if he wanted to. Especially when you lived in the same house where she'd lived, from where she'd been stolen.

  "Is that what they're doing? Is Mary at rest?"

  "Are you prodding me?"

  "Would you want me to?"

  Crease finally decided to sit in a chair opposite Burke. The cushion made a heavy rasping noise. No one had sat here for a hell of a long time. The sound took on a whole new meaning in the silent house.

  "Mrs. Burke?" Crease asked.

  "My wife no longer resides with me. To be truthful, I don't know where she is, it's been some years since I've seen her. Perhaps with her sister in Terrytown, Connecticut. Or . . . elsewhere. I have no idea."

  It wasn't the kind of thing you could say you were sorry about, but there was no point. Crease looked around and couldn't help thinking about security. No burglar alarm. No lock on the front screen door. No deadbolt. A good second-story man could get up onto the roof, and the screens could easily be popped out of the window frames. Just like he used to do when climbing up to Reb's room.

  He lit a cigarette—still only had the menthols on him, he had to get to a store soon—and was surprised when Burke didn't show any upset about smoking in the house.

  Crease leaned forward and pulled a shining glass ashtray close to him.

  He said, "Tell me what happened."

  "What's the point?"

  "Maybe there is none. But explain it to me anyway. Give me the details."

  "Don't you already know them?"

  All that Crease knew about Mary's kidnapping, and everything that followed, was mired in memories of his own shame and urge to run. He had to start over, disconnect from it, get it clear. "Not in the broader sense."


  "How broad a sense do you want them?"

  Crease sat back, took a deep drag, and said, "How about if you quit running me around the block and just tell me what happened the day Mary was taken?"

  The voice got a rise out of Sam Burke, who raised his chin an extra inch like he was expecting to get jabbed. He folded his hands over his knee and focused himself, going way deep inside. Crease could see him diving.

  "This isn't about my little girl. This is about you and your father. That's the only reason you're interested. For your own selfish reasons. "

  "So what?" Crease said. "Maybe I can get done what the others were never able to do."

  "I don't see how."

  "You don't have to see how."

  "Your father killed her."

  "I know that."

  Sam Burke sat waiting for more. It was going to be a long wait. Crease had never apologized for his old man and wasn't about to start now. Saying you were sorry for somebody else, ten years dead, just wasn't going to get the job done.

  Crease wondered if Burke would get some kind of a kick out of hearing how he went to the mill and ran around pointing his finger and going bang bang, pretending to be his father, imagining the girl right there in front of him. Probably not.

  "You've got nothing to lose," Crease said.

  "Don't I? Are you quite so sure of that? Because you shouldn't be, no, you truly shouldn't be, I would say. Every time I see her photo, every mention of her name, the name `Mary', I lose myself. Can you understand that? Can you possibly know what I mean? I disappear, I cease to exist for an instant. I go someplace where my girl is still with me, where she is looking up into my eyes, and holding my hand, and my wife is not in Terrytown or elsewhere. I vanish off the earth. And then I come back, you see. There's the trouble. That I come back. And yes, she's still dead, and I am alone, and the things that once mattered most can matter no longer. So I say to you, I do have something to lose, and it will be very costly to me to lose any more of it."

  So that's how it was for him. Crease got it now.

  He'd been wrong. Burke didn't have nearly as much control over himself as he did over his environment. The man was ready to shake loose at any second. He didn't want to say anything more, but his mouth wouldn't stop working. You could tell it panicked him, but it had been so long since he'd spoken about Mary that he couldn't turn it off.

  "You know what she enjoyed doing more than anything else? Playing hide-and-seek. It was more than a child's game, you see. This house is over one hundred and twenty years old. There are many nooks and niches in it, places for a little girl to hide herself away from the world. She would grab something from us—my watch, her mother's gloves or some kitchen utensil, and she would run. She would hide. A girl who likes to hide so much came out into the open and was stolen from our own yard. Yes, that's what happened. Appalling. She stepped into the open and was shot down by the sheriff whose duty it was to get her home safely again. Don't you find that ironic?"

  "No," Crease said. "I find it tragic."

  "You only say that because it is," Burke said. "I'm vanishing, you know. Inch by inch, I'll soon be gone."

  Crease could see it happening. He thought, this guy, he doesn't have much longer to go. Maybe if Crease could get some answers, Burke would start seeing himself in the mirror again.

  Burke's clipped, darting style of speech went on and on. "There isn't much to tell, really. It was the fifth of June, a warm day, a sunny day, but not especially hot. Mary didn't want to wear long sleeves, she hated long sleeves, and she and Vera—my wife, Vera—fought about that, but not much, really, and Mary usually won such battles anyway. She was just going to play in the back yard, alone, with some dolls and their accessories. Everything has accessories, the cars and the pools and the wardrobe for the dolls, an entire city set up in the yard. She was very popular, Mary was, she had many friends in the neighborhood, but that day she was alone."

  "You were home?"

  "Until noon or so. I went in to work late, being the owner does have some advantages. I spent the morning watching a film I wished to watch. A documentary on VHS, rented right next door to my hardware store, Bob's Video. It's not there anymore. Don't ask me which documentary it was, I don't recall. I remember a great deal about that day, but not the film I wanted to watch so badly that I spent the morning at home. Afterwards, Mary, Vera, and I had lunch together—chicken salad. I didn't say goodbye to her. She ran out the back door to play and I left through the front. Vera followed me down the driveway to get the mail from the box, and I drove off. An hour later, she phoned me at the store. Mary was gone."

  Crease stubbed out his cigarette. "Had they made contact yet?"

  "No. I rushed home and we searched the house . . . we thought perhaps she was playing hide-and-seek again, although Mary never did this when we spoke firmly with her and demanded she show herself. She would always come out then, smiling, happy to have fooled us for so long, and that was all right. It was always all right so long as she showed herself when we finally asked, you see? But she didn't come out that day. We searched the yard, we visited our neighbors, we called the police. I—"

  Here it comes, Crease thought.

  “—spoke with your father." Burke wasn't able to keep the hostility out of his voice, and the fever started up in Crease's chest, began to burn. "He told me he'd be right over. It took less than ten minutes. He was very powerfully built, your father, with an air of authority. He seemed very assertive, effective, despite the recent death of his wife. I'd always found him trustworthy, even though at that moment I smelled the alcohol on his breath. But I was a near-sniveling mess. Vera was already in shambles. We held onto each other and dragged ourselves around together like cripples. The phone rang again. It was a man. A voice I'd never heard before. He said he had Mary. He would return her for the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. He was specific in his instructions. No police."

  "But my father was already there."

  "Yes, you see, your father was already there. I couldn't even follow his demands because the sheriff was already there."

  "What did the man on the phone say exactly?"

  "He was brief. He wanted fifteen thousand dollars. He wanted me to bring it to the abandoned mill and leave it. No police involvement. Mary would be returned to us within twenty-four hours without harm."

  "How easy was it for you to get your hands on that kind of money?"

  "Very easy," Burke said. "We weren't especially well-to-do, but fifteen thousand dollars isn't an outrageous sum of money. We had sixty thousand in our savings. It seemed like such a ridiculous amount to ask for in exchange for the life of our daughter."

  "Yes, it does."

  Burke made as if to change position, maybe move over on the couch an inch, but then he resettled himself to the same position."The details, do they still need to be so broad, or are you familiar with what happened afterwards?"

  "The dolls," Crease said. "Were any missing? Broken?"

  "Only her teddy bear. It was her favorite, her sidekick as it were. Her best friend. The other dolls were toys that she and Teddy both played with, you see?"

  "Snatched out of the yard. That points to someone she knew. You didn't recognize the man's voice, so it was probably a two-person team. Children are more likely to be lured away by women. They feel safer."

  "I don't recall anyone telling me that before. In any case, everyone knew her. She was friendly like that. We all were. My wife and I, back when we were together. This was a nice town, or so we all thought. Sarah didn't agree, but she was growing more fond of Hangtree as time went on."

  "Sarah?" Crease asked.

  Burke's head cocked, like it was a name he hadn't heard in so long that he didn't recognize it despite just having said it. "Yes, Sarah, my older sister. Older by nearly four years. Mary's aunt. She was living with us at the time. Recuperating. She'd suffered through a broken relationship."

  "Was she home that day?"

  "No. No, she wasn't. She'd gone to
spend the day in the park. To read and relax." Burke was clearly speaking by rote, repeating what his sister had told him, word for word.

  "Can I speak with her?"

  "No, I'm afraid not. It wouldn't be worth your time, you see. She's . . . unresponsive."

  Crease waited for Burke to tell him more, but the man didn't continue. His energetic burst of speech had come to a standstill. The man's eyes were now glazed. He was going even deeper. Crease said, "I don't understand."

  "My sister has had a great deal of upset in her life. She loved Mary so much, almost like she was her own daughter, really. When we lost her, she . . . well, she collapsed. She's never recovered, I'm told."

  "Where can I find her?"

  Burke's face tightened, his features folding in on themselves. "I don't want you visiting and bothering her."

  "Who was the man from the broken relationship? What other upset did she have?"

  "I don't want you to see her and I don't wish to discuss this any longer. I think it's time for you to leave."

  Crease waited. He watched Burke wrestling with himself, thinking of his dead daughter, his absent wife, all of the pain throbbing under his face, pulsing, like it would shatter his flesh and come flying through the shards at any second. "What other upset?" Crease asked.

  "As I said, a broken love affair. We've all had them. Are you going to tell me you haven't?"

  "No."

  "Then, it's settled," Burke said.

  "What's settled?"

  "This discussion. It's over. I hope you understand, surely you do, but quite simply I don't wish to speak with you any longer. There's nothing you can do for me. Nothing that can be done for Mary. Or your father. He's dead and good riddance to him. To think I stood in awe of him once, in my own home. How pitiful, how foolish." He reached over and drew the now dirty ashtray closer to him, pulled it into his lap like it was a child. "You've accomplished absolutely nothing. Now, leave. Please leave."

  Crease stood and walked out the door.