Past Rites

by Claire Stibbe

  “Alice sat here next to Zarah Thai.” Miss Baca approached a table and tapped one of the chairs with both hands. “Zarah was Korean, descended from Emperor Gwangmu and one of his concubines. Lily sat over there by Rosa. And on this side were Senator ‘Lucky’ Barnes’ twin granddaughters. Both played a Stradivarius and―”

  “Does the school have its full quota of students this year?”

  Miss Baca raised an eyebrow. “Not quite.”

  “Why?”

  “There were, shall we say, some cancellations. Let me show you around.”

  They entered the first classroom to the sound of scraping chairs as the students leapt to their feet and droned a greeting. Miss Baca allowed him a brief look before leading him down a narrow hallway where a grand piano was nestled in the crook of a sweeping staircase.

  “Students and visitors are never allowed use the front stairs.”

  “I would take off my shoes, ma’am, but I haven’t changed my socks in a couple of days.”

  “This piano was often played by Asha Samadi, especially in the evenings,” she said, leading up the staircase. “Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat major. No one has mastered it since. Lily shared a room with Rosa. She was an opera singer. Sang the national anthem at the Yankee stadium last year.”

  The one in the photograph, Temeke thought, whose name he had forgotten. The bedroom faced east and looked out on a wide expanse of lawn where a small gazebo stood at the northeast corner, capped with a dome and supported by four pillars. He squinted at the weathered stone, gray and silent as if there was no life in it. His thoughts were interrupted by hers.

  “We call it the Pepper Pot,” Miss Baca said, following his gaze. “Lily was clever though, you could see it in her eyes. Then her father died. It was like a dark cloud across the sun. All teenagers have it. A black hole between fourteen and eighteen. They want to write gloomy poetry and hang themselves in the bathrooms. In some cases, I wish they would. You’re not taping this are you?”

  “No ma’am. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Ms. Baca clacked along the corridor to the bathroom, a white tiled room with French doors leading to a small balcony and a fire escape.

  Temeke felt a stab of sadness when he saw the tub and its lion’s paw feet, shower attachment sitting on a silver cradle. The nozzle pointed to the left, suggesting a right handed user.

  “This is where I found her.”

  Her voice trailed off then and her eyes seemed to follow a dust mote as it settled against a double-hung window five feet to the right of the French doors.

  “Do the girls also take showers?”

  “Our foreign cousins prefer to bathe, detective. We provide both.”

  It was a free-standing tub, white, elegant, the type you could fall asleep in. He recalled how Alice was found that night, head thrown sideways, water crimson with blood.

  He walked to the French doors, each fitted with a security bar. Looking through the metal girders of the fire escape, he saw the parking lot, the lawns and the Pepper Pot. He checked the door. Locked.

  “Everything’s to code, detective. All fire escapes are fixed, two on each side. The window used to stick a little. It’s secure now.”

  “Any burglaries?” He wished he had been the reporting officer that night, wished he could have checked the locks then.

  “None.” She seemed absolutely certain. “There is something I would like you to have.”

  She led him back down to the study and unlocked the top drawer of her desk. It was a thin leather bound book engraved with the words, The Lilin Esoterica.

  “Demonic nonsense.” She drew out the last word as if it was the most terrible of felonies and half smiled at the same time. “It belonged to Alice. I found it behind the bookcase in her bedroom.”

  “Did she smoke?”

  “They all did. We found cigarettes in bird houses, toilet cisterns, pianos. And vodka in shampoo bottles.”

  “Teenagers can be quite enterprising.”

  “Not quite. They were all in love with the same boy. Silly business. Alice confided with one of the younger teachers that someone had been flirting with her boyfriend. Of course, we never encourage intimacy with our students.”

  “The boy’s name?”

  “Patrick Brody. He not only hung out with Alice, but there was another girl he took a shine to. Adel Martinez. And then he migrated rather rapidly to Kenzie Voorhees. The air was thick.”

  Temeke pulled the photograph of Alice’s funeral from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “That’s him,” she said. “Do you understand now?”

  Temeke wasn’t sure he did. He wasn’t even sure he’d heard all of it in those tight twenty minutes.

  The four o’clock bell rang and she handed him the book. “Naturally I would offer you tea but tongues would wag. I don’t want your lot all over the place again. There are limits.”

  Temeke made his way to the parking lot and lit up a cigarette. Snooty-ass cow, he thought, taking seven long drags before crushing the rest of it out under his heel. It left white shreds of paper and tobacco on the gravel.

  He looked at the pale stucco walls and a coil of ivy that had snaked its way almost as far as the base of the fire escape. Wind whistled through the metal frame, and somewhere up there was a delicate ring, a wind chime whose terminals butted up against the girders. He hadn’t heard it from inside.

  Turning his back to the building, he stood there for five long minutes, staring at the curve of a small path, cutting through the lawn and leading to the Pepper Pot. If he tried hard enough he could imagine a shadow behind a float of drapes, eyes set in a tight gaze, red hair tousled in the wind.

  He looked back at the bathroom window, the horizontal platform and a fixed staircase below. The boys would have had no access to Quartermain house, at least not from the inside. He wondered how many had attempted that lofty climb just for a quick peek?

  Perhaps someone else stood in this very spot the night Alice died. Someone who might have seen Alice with Paddy Brody. Someone who sneaked off again, only to come back later and pay her back in kind. The Martinez girl certainly had a motive. It wasn’t one of those surefire hunches, just a hypothesis born out of jealousy.

  Hugging the book to his chest, he sensed the scrutiny of a workman in the parking lot, someone in a gray van parked next to his jeep. He lifted a hand and walked toward it, heard the engine turn over a few times before roaring into life. Saw the rear end fishtail as it hurtled up the drive toward the street.

  Dumbass, he thought, clearing his mind and jumping into his car.

  So what have we got? A slender, dignified redhead and a sister entrenched in witchcraft. There was nothing extraordinary about a redhead. It was the witchcraft that bothered him.

  TEN

  Gabriel waited in the darkness, all for the sake of that book. He had a feeling it was here and he could smell it like the stench of wet dog. Counting the minutes, he studied the cars that came and went. Two dark colored sedans, a white Bronco, three light colored trucks and a sports car. Vassar Drive had never been busier on a Wednesday night.

  It had been this time last year when Mackenzie Voorhees applied for a job with Élus Models. She wanted to shake up the industry, win an exclusive contract with Rogue’s Bazaar and bring in more dollars than a supermodel. They accepted her, of course, because she had the genetic coding for stardom.

  Kenzie... that’s what they called her at school. But beautiful was not how Gabriel remembered her. Uglier than a pug and with half the brain. Pity he couldn’t bring his camera this time, too heavy, too loud. He’d have to use a cell phone instead.

  There was a smell in the van, a musty odor in the fabric seats that reminded him of the locker rooms during his senior year. He cast his mind back to the memory, when he had been standing on the soccer field and Kenzie had whispered those awful words in an Afrikaans accent.

  What are you now, ninety pounds? You’re a puke and a disgrace.

  Gabriel remembere
d running to his safe place, arms curled around the stone pillars as if they would embrace him in return. Patrick Brody had been groping Adel Martinez in the bushes, walked over when he heard him sobbing, offered him a tissue. It was all so humiliating.

  The rhythmic sound of his heart and the strumming of snowflakes against the window brought him back to the present. He couldn’t relax. Far too nervous for that.

  The delicatessen car pulled up outside the adobe house. Nine o’clock. A man with spiked hair took a bag of steaming food to the front door.

  Gabriel pulled on a thick woolen beanie. He was darker than a shadow tonight, screwdriver tucked into his pocket and a black mind to go with it. Zipping the jacket up to his chin to cover his protective clothing, he reached a single-hung window on the west side of the house, studied the frame, rotten and peeling just as he thought. Although the bottom sash was in place it was slightly crooked in the frame, suggesting the latch had not been fully engaged.

  The bug screen was hardly substantial and inserting the screwdriver blade along the bottom edge of the wire mesh, he felt the spring pop as the frame jumped from the grove. He pushed the frame upwards, barely letting in a sigh of wind and it gave him enough time to crawl over the frame and close it before a blast of cold air announced an open window.

  Loud music. A pure-toned contralto voice singing about heartbreak on the TV. Gabriel liked the song.

  It was a sparsely furnished sitting room, one couch and an easy chair. The skin of an African deer had been stretched tightly across one window, letting in only a thin bar of light, and a galley kitchen lay beyond the open door. There was a bottle of wine and a romance novel spread-eagled on the table.

  Kenzie was still talking to the delivery boy, voice fading in and out over the music. It gave Gabriel time to have a look around, time to search for a brown leather-bound book.

  During those precious seconds a pack of cigarettes caught his eye, a gold monogramed lighter and the stove with its five silent gas burners. It was as if someone had thrown a railroad switch in his head and he began to speed on a diverging track, onward and downward into that black tunnel.

  The front door thudded loudly and when he felt the vibrations of a heavy tread against the wooden floor, he slipped behind the living room door. His breaths came in quick, short spurts now as he watched Kenzie swing a plastic bag onto the kitchen counter, reach for a plate and pour herself a large glass of wine. She seemed to hesitate when the phone rang across the hall, waited for one more ring before changing her mind.

  As she sauntered toward the phone, Gabriel darted for the stove, smelling a strong whiff of garlic and parmesan. He pushed the dials and heard each ignition stutter, not enough to spark into life, but enough that a simple breath of gas would be masked beneath the sounds of that soulful voice.

  “Asha?” Kenzie’s tone was surprised, then relieved. “No, she’s not here. Probably with Sarah Hughes... African American Sarah.”

  Gabriel sensed a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was Paddy that Kenzie was talking to. Had to be. Paddy didn’t know Asha was covered by a thin layer of topsoil and packed into the New Mexico dirt. He didn’t know this was the last time he would ever speak to Kenzie Voorhees either.

  Gabriel’s heart was thumping like a jack hammer as he made his way toward the back door, breath steaming against a pane of glass. He took a black sharpie from his pocket and wrote the name Kohinoor in large letters on the underside of the doorframe. She wouldn’t see it immediately. She might not see it at all.

  The door knob was stiff, creaking slightly beneath a shaking hand and the slight rustle of his hooded coveralls. How long would it take to fill such a small house with gas? How long before Kenzie lit a cigarette and was engulfed in a tidal wave of flames?

  So much cleaner than leaving blood spatters all over the floor, so much easier than carting a stinking body around in the back of a van. It was like a science experiment, only not as trivial. This was blistering hatred, the type that gripped and squeezed until you grabbed whatever object you could find and pounded until it was all gone.

  Your parents should have used birth control. Retard. . . look at you, bag of bones. Be-Atch.

  Gabriel was out of the house in the count of three, careful not to let in too much of that cold air. It would only spoil the fun.

  Making his way to a young cherry tree in the front yard, he watched the lighted window between the fulcrum of two branches and snapped a picture with his cell phone. There was no flash and he realized it would be blurred. But it was the memory that mattered.

  Kenzie sat at the kitchen table, plump lips pursed around a fork and fingers gripping the stem of a wine glass. Her eyes were fastened on that book, turning pages with the flick of a finger and taking a sip of the wine now and then. She was already drunk and Gabriel wanted to laugh. If ignorance was bliss, Kenzie must have been the happiest person alive.

  But Kenzie had a few dirty little secrets. She’d kissed Paddy Brody in the back of her Mercedes G-Wagon, steamed up those windows for a good two hours. Gabriel was the only one who knew, the only one who saw.

  And Kenzie was anorexic. A face-stuffer. Threw up each meal to stay thin. No chance she’d throw up this one. There wouldn’t be time.

  Gabriel shivered, feet trampling the grass just to stay warm. Ten minutes... fifteen minutes and Kenzie was sitting back against that chair, book in hand.

  “Go!” Demon whispered.

  Gabriel took short steps, still keeping his eye on that window. It was the sudden clap of a screen door that made him turn, the patter of feet on the neighbor’s driveway. Shoulder length hair, and the mystique and charisma any girl would die for. The man’s lips began to move.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he said, face sullen.

  Gabriel shook his head and began to smile. He shouldn’t have been so flippant, not when they stood so close to a gas leak.

  “Haven’t I seen you before?” the man asked, not waiting for a reply. “Name’s Tom, by the way.”

  “Gabe.”

  Tom snapped his fingers. “I remember you. Same class as my sister. You must know her. Miriam Lahaye?”

  Gabriel shook his head. He hadn’t heard of her.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “Phoebe Baca.” It was the only name Gabriel could think of.

  Tom looked up and down the street and took a deep breath. He was taking his time, too much time. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Most of these are student houses. You could try Donnington. Number three four eight, house with the red door. There are four girls living there, I think.”

  Gabriel took a few steps back and tentatively looked at the house Tom was pointing at, keeping Kenzie in the periphery of his vision. He thanked him, turned on his heel and didn’t look back.

  He heard the sound of a car ignition turning over a few times before it caught, then a rattling along the pavement behind him.

  Come on, he thought, walking faster and seeing a flash of white cruising along the road beside him. The Bronco caught up, passenger window lowered. “Hey Gabe, wanna lift?” Tom shouted.

  Gabriel waved him on, smelling a thick trail of exhaust as the car sped down the street. His mind was tumbling now, visions blurring in and out with the thrill of the moment.

  He ran back to the van, fumbled for the keys and turned on the ignition.

  Dead.

  He tried it again, this time rocking in his seat and pumping the gas as if it would help. Again and again until the thing sputtered into life.

  “Easy does it,” Demon said, “or you’ll flood the engine.”

  Gabriel sat there rubbing his hands and taking deep breaths. “The thing’s dying,” he said. “It just wants to die.”

  “It’s just old,” Demon whispered. “I’ll keep it turning over. You’ll see.”

  The nausea came in waves and so did the memories. Gabriel kept zoning in and out; an incident in the school grounds, jeering, taunting, as they pushed a girl against the wall,
soaking her blouse with water so her bra showed through. They left her there to cry.

  You might be beautiful on the outside, Mackenzie Voorhees, but not on the inside.

  Gabriel drove to a space five houses down, didn’t want to part with Kenzie yet. It was forty-five minutes before a sports car pulled out from a neighboring house, gave a full-throated treble roar as it hurried down the street.

  Then came the explosion, shattering glass and flames rippling from what was once the living room window. The noise fractured the sleepy street, detonating car alarms and hurling roofing tiles at least forty feet into the air. Houses left standing were dusted in orange shadows from the dying flames and dust and debris flitted down the street, leaving a caul of white on the pavement.

  Gabriel took his fingers from his ears, watched the house come down like a deck of cards, a cap of gray hovering above it like the mushroom cloud of the atom bomb. He knew the police would spend hours agonizing over the blast pattern, thinking it was some kind of homemade incendiary device.

  The only thing Gabriel would agonize over was the proof. Was Kenzie finally dead? Had that patronizing, rubber-lipped mouth finally been silenced? He had to admit... a tiny part of him took pleasure in her suffering. He was even a little smug.

  Because if that bitch wasn’t dead, no amount of cosmetic surgery could replace the face she once had.

  ELEVEN

  West Albuquerque was a somber pallet of adobe and sandstone, and the sky was beginning to redden between the houses.

  Malin inserted the key into the door of her second floor apartment at Puerta de Corrales. Her head was buzzing with modeling agencies and collaged headshots, all with intense, confident gazes she couldn’t hope to copy. The reflection that stared back at her in the bathroom mirror only came off as sour and defiant, and she gave up pretending.

  Pouring herself a shot of wine, she slumped on the couch, glad to put her feet up after the shift had ended. There was nothing on the TV, thumb tapping the remote control until she settled on the Channel 4 news. A spool of old photographs, house fires where the narrator warned of the dangers of smoking in bed and leaving gas burners unattended.