The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  Symbols. Rituals. Murder.

  Burn, burn, burn.

  The hailstorm crescendoed to a cannonade, smashing down on the car and dimpling the metal. Oscar slowed to thirty miles per hour, then twenty. His view of the highway was now more white than black. He could see no cars in front or behind.

  The image of Naville’s belongings stuck in his mind. The pencil. The notepad. Charcoal. Cinnamon incense. The latter was unusual, and tugged at a hidden, recent memory … but it eluded him.

  The car’s engine hiccuped, and Oscar frowned. It coughed again, then sputtered and fell silent. The car coasted, decelerating. He looked at the fuel gauge. Empty. It had been half-full when he drove into the jail.

  He rolled to the side of the highway, parking as tightly as he could against the high concrete barrier, and flicked on the hazard lights. Hailstones smashed on the roof, blows sounding like a madman with a hammer. A tiny crack appeared in the windscreen. Oscar pulled out his phone to call the police breakdown service, wondering if they still regarded this vehicle as breaking down or broken. Before he dialed, he noticed a sedan pull up behind him. He leaned back and waved through the rear glass, hoping the good Samaritan had the sense to stay in his car; going out in this weather could result in a broken skull.

  Then Oscar’s car rocked as a third vehicle hit it and scraped hard up its side, smashing off the driver’s side mirror before halting directly alongside. Oscar jumped reflexively; through the smeared glass, he could just make out a man in the other vehicle’s driver’s seat pulling on what looked like a white hat. The man got out of his car and hurried around in front of Oscar’s hood. Despite the downpour of hail, Oscar could see that he wore a heavy jacket, a construction hard hat and, underneath it, a balaclava. Something shimmered in his hand. A bottle with a flaming neck. The man threw the Molotov cocktail hard at Oscar’s hood, which erupted into a sheet of flame. The man reappeared in the corner of Oscar’s side mirror and threw a second flaming bottle at the asphalt near the rear wheel of his car. A crash of glass, and more flames erupted with a mighty gush of hot gas. Over the hail, Oscar heard a car door open and close, and the vehicle behind him reversed a few feet, then sped away, vanishing in the storm.

  Oscar tried opening his car door, but it wouldn’t budge against the abandoned car alongside. The roar of flames outside was loud. He shut the door. He’d parked himself against the tall barrier, so neither passenger door would open. He was trapped. Flames were now turning the windscreen soot-black. There was a loud bang as a rear tire blew.

  Oscar grabbed the photograph of Naville, tucked it into his jacket, and threw open the glove box. He grabbed a polishing chamois (that, to his knowledge, had never been used) and quickly wrapped it around one hand. He snatched up his hat and climbed into the backseat. The air in the car was already growing hot and thinned of oxygen. Yellow flames obscured the view out the side glass and half the rear window. He wondered what would happen if the tank blew now. It was empty, but the residual fumes could still blow like a bomb. He didn’t need to speculate much; he’d seen the remains of a woman caught in a burning car—a large splinter of ruptured fuel tank had driven right through her rib cage and severed her spine like a scythe. Quicker, at least, than burning alive. Sweat began to pour from his skin. He lay back on the rear seat like an amorous teenager at a drive-in and swung his feet up toward the rear glass. He drew his knees down to his chest, then kicked upward. The shock jolted through his body, and he bit his tongue. The glass held. There was another ominous pop from somewhere underneath the car. He drew down his legs and kicked again, harder. The rear glass crazed into a jellied sheet of ten thousand crystals, and the sound of flames became as loud as storm surf. Oscar pushed the glass aside with his chamois-wrapped hand, held his hat over his face, and climbed out onto the trunk lid, keeping as close to the barrier and as far from the flames as he could. Melting ice made the metal slick. Hailstones pummeled his scalp and shoulders, and a heavy ice stone struck him hard on the back of the skull—his vision blurred.

  Don’t pass out now.

  Fire licked at his hair and loose strands shriveled. Another pop, louder this time. Oscar scrambled off the trunk and fell onto the road. He smelled the acrid reeks of melting plastic and burning paint. He staggered to his feet and ran, slipping on ice balls and wet tarmac, away from the vehicles. There was a third, very loud pop, followed by an even louder metallic clap, and Oscar was shoved to his knees by an enormous warm slap of air. Something whizzed by his right ear and clattered on the roadway far in front of him.

  His car was now a lantern, burning brightly on the inside. He skittered backward on his behind as the other car, a plain white utility, suddenly jumped up as if stung from beneath. A fireball rose sixty feet into the air, and the utility landed on bursting tires.

  Hail continued to fall. Oscar pulled his hat over his head, his collar over his hat, curled into a ball, and gritted his teeth against the pain. As the hail thundered down, ice stones hitting his body and exploding on the asphalt, Oscar peered between his elbows. The dead boy was sitting beside him, his ghostly hand resting on Oscar’s arm.

  Chapter 28

  Ow.”

  “Baby.”

  Oscar tried not to wince while Denna Lovering inspected his scalp. He sat in front of a kerosene heater with a towel around his waist, teeth gritting whenever she found tender spots. Paz fidgeted in the kitchen doorway.

  “Only you could get yourself next to murdered in a hailstorm,” Lovering muttered. “Selfish, I call it. You going to pay for the panel-beating on my car?”

  “Pazel Hadasse,” Denna warned.

  “What?” Lovering said. “Look at it now. Dented everywhere. Seriously devalued.”

  “It was seriously devalued in 1989 when you drove it drunk into my mother’s pear tree.”

  “It’s a classic.”

  “It’s a Toyota.”

  Denna rubbed ointment onto Oscar’s cheek. “I can’t tell which cuts are from today, or two days ago, or whenever,” she said to Oscar. “You need a holiday.”

  “That’s coming,” Oscar said.

  “I think you should take it now,” Paz said softly.

  Denna excused herself and left to get some bandages.

  Oscar looked around the room. The dead boy was nowhere to be seen. When the hail had eased and Oscar saw blue-and-red flashing lights coming toward him, the boy had retreated. Lovering, whom Oscar had called after the police, arrived not long after. The uniformed officers had run the plates on the white utility: it had been reported stolen from a nearby railway station that morning.

  “How much trouble are you in?” Lovering asked quietly.

  Oscar shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Is this all about the dead girl?” He drew a star shape over his belly.

  “Yes.” Oscar felt the older man watching him. “What?”

  Lovering frowned. “This thing you’re involved in, you need to get uninvolved.”

  “I can’t.”

  Lovering shook his head. Oscar could see that he was anxious. “We filmed stuff in Iraq, Oscar. Back in ’05. Stories about the reconstruction. We were out in the desert, way out nowhere, northwest of Ash Shabakah. Dangerous spot. Our transport broke down, and we were stuck waiting for parts. We heard rumors that we were near an old pre-Christian town, so we decided to shoot some overlay footage. What the hell, we were bored. We went out on donkeys. Two hours, and we were there. A whole fucking deserted city. A ghost town. There was one building, I remember. Our guide wouldn’t go in. He said the city was cursed by God, and that building was the reason. In its heyday, it had been filled to the ceiling with the bones of children.”

  Oscar looked at his friend. He could see that the old man was scared.

  “We’re a long way from the Middle East, Paz.”

  Lovering shook his head, eyes locked on Oscar. “Don’t mess around with this shit. You don’t know what the fuck it is.”

  “They’re killing children here.”
r />   “Well,” Lovering said. “Judging from today, they’ll soon be killing you.”

  “Here, now.” Denna returned with a small box of butterfly bandages and used two to close a gash on the back of Oscar’s hand. She straightened. “There. Best I can do.”

  He stood and kissed Denna’s head. “You’re a mensch.”

  She squeezed his chin. “And you are a schlimazel. I’ll make coffee. Is Pazel driving you home?”

  “No,” Oscar said, turning to look at Lovering. “He said he’d lend me his motorbike.”

  Lovering’s eyes widened.

  Denna’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” She looked at her husband as if he’d made a very significant breakthrough and gave him a kiss on the lips. “Finally, my husband’s growing up.”

  Lovering glared at Oscar, who stared back evenly.

  “I’ll get the keys,” he said glumly.

  Everything hurt, but the wind in his face felt good. After the storm, the air was crisp and smelled clean, and blew coldly against his skin.

  Lovering had taken him to the Triumph Triple like a prelate leading a novice to a holy sepulchre, spouting a monologue of remonstrations and instructions, then reluctantly handed Oscar the keys.

  Without knowing where else to go, Oscar rode to headquarters. The outflux of public servants had finished, and Oscar had the stairwell to himself. He exited on the third floor and went to the Department of Civic Prosecutions. There was no one on reception, and he walked through to the offices. Jon had a gray cubicle in the middle of the floor and was shutting down his computer. When he saw Oscar, his eyes widened.

  “What the fuck happened to you?”

  Oscar sat heavily and told him about the attack on the freeway. When he finished, Jon sat quietly for a long while, his face tightly drawn.

  “Are you sure they were after you?”

  “It was a deliberate attack,” Oscar said. “Someone siphoned most of the gas out of my car. They knew I’d run out on the freeway.”

  “Someone siphoned your gas,” Jon agreed. “That happens five thousand times a day across the city.”

  “They jammed me in and tried to burn me.”

  “Okay,” Jon conceded. “But because you have state secrets? Or just because you were an easy target on the side of the road? You know there are plenty of young turks out there who get their jollies setting things on fire. People included.”

  “It was planned,” Oscar insisted. “Something happened at the jail.”

  “Something,” Jon said. “What?”

  Oscar unfolded Albert Naville’s prison photograph. “They say this guy died. I say he escaped.” He then unfolded the security-camera printout from Stuart, showing a shadow-faced, ponytailed man carrying a large cardboard box toward a car.

  “You think these are the same guy?” Jon asked. Oscar heard skepticism undercurrent in his friend’s voice.

  “You think I’m making this up?”

  Jon shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. No. But I do know conspiracies are fucking hard to organize.”

  “I didn’t say conspiracy.”

  “You said the jail has him down as a death-in-custody but you think he’s out. No one escapes from jail on their Pat Malone.”

  “Look at the photos.”

  Jon tapped hard on the security-camera printout. “I work with prosecutions. This could be anyone. It’s a likeness, but it’s a crap image taken at night. I could make a jury believe this was Pope Benedict if I wanted to.” Jon’s voice had risen. He toned it down. “Who is this guy supposed to be?”

  “Dad put him away for mutilating a girl. I had a young Jane Doe with a similar mutilation.”

  “Jesus!” Jon whispered.

  But it wasn’t the tone that Oscar wanted to hear. “Jesus, what?”

  “Your father put him away? You know what a defense-appointed psychologist would do with that?”

  Oscar blinked. “I don’t have issues with my father.”

  “Everyone knows you have issues with your father! Everyone knows you had an episode at Leonie’s party. Everyone has heard that your partner was killed by a bootlegger and you’re really upset.”

  “Kannis didn’t kill her.” Oscar was silenced by the look in Jon’s eyes. “You think I’m going nuts,” he said quietly.

  Jon shook his head slowly but didn’t deny it. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m not fucking crazy.” Oscar stood. “These are the same guy. He’s abducting disabled kids and cutting them up.”

  “And I suppose Geoff Haig is helping him out.”

  Oscar said nothing.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Oscar.”

  Oscar turned and stalked out of the room, fists clenched.

  Foley’s computer was on, but his chair was empty. Oscar sat at his own desolately empty desk. He rang Jon’s extension but hung up after twelve rings and stared out the window.

  They tried to kill me, he thought.

  That was encouraging; it meant he was on the right track.

  “Heya, Mariani.”

  Foley waddled into the room, tucking his shirt into his vast trousers. When he saw Oscar’s face, his eyebrows rose an inch. “Fuck me, what’ve you been doing? Buggering crocodiles?”

  “How are you, Foley?”

  Foley inspected Oscar’s head, face, neck like a plumber looking over a badly blocked toilet. “Dear oh fucking dear. I heard you totaled a car.”

  “Not me. I was there, though.”

  “Hmm. How’s your dad?”

  “Operation’s tonight.”

  Foley sat heavily and his chair wailed a protest. “Good luck there.” He swiveled to his computer and opened up a spreadsheet. “Get your message?”

  “What message?”

  Foley turned back to face Oscar. “There.” Foley stared, and frowned.

  “Hmm. I left it on your desk.”

  Oscar’s desk was empty.

  “From Moechtar?” Oscar asked.

  “Nah, from a chick. Not the chick with dick from the other night, another chick. Zoe! I remember that. Zoe.”

  Oscar cocked his head. “What did she want?”

  “To talk to you. I said give me a number. She said she didn’t have one.” Foley turned back to his monitor. “Left an address. I guess she’ll call back.”

  Oscar frowned. “She left an address?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you left it on my desk.”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  And now it was gone.

  “When did she call?”

  Foley was typing, two-fingered. “Oh, hour or so ago.”

  Zoe had called him. Zoe, who was scared of cops. She’d left her address, and it had been stolen off his desk.

  “Who’s been to my desk?”

  “Christ, Mariani, who the fuck would come to your desk? No offense.”

  “Foley.” The urgent tone of Oscar’s voice brought Foley back around, blinking. “What was her address?”

  “Man, you really got to get a secretary.”

  Oscar took two fast steps forward, and Foley’s eyes widened. “Whoa-whoa!”

  “Seriously,” Oscar said.

  “Okay!” Foley said. “Fucksticks. Jeezjeezjeez.”

  Foley opened his drawer and pulled out a notepad, ripped out a page and handed it to Oscar.

  “You copied it?”

  “She sounded cute.”

  Oscar ran for the door.

  The motorbike’s exhaust echoed against the concrete balusters of the bridge. Oscar sped across the river, into West End. Two-story shopfronts, shuttered restaurants, blocklike apartments, and tin-roofed houses in dark narrow streets crooked in an arm of the river.

  An hour. Someone had come looking for Oscar and found the address of the girl from Elverly on his desk. Haig? Kace? It didn’t matter. Time did.

  He slowed, looking for street signs, but few sign posts had escaped thieves’ wrenches. He hoped his memory served him. He leaned the bike and twisted the throttle.


  Workers’ cottages were purposeful as miners jammed in a lift, each house an arm’s width from its neighbor. Weatherboard faces under corrugated hats, all dark. A dog barked. Oscar let the motorcycle roll to a stop outside a rusted chain-link fence guarding the skeletal, weed-choked remains of rosebushes. Out front was a glossy black sedan with no plates.

  The house was a pinched-looking timber building on dark stumps: two windows, a faded set of Buddhist prayer flags under a sagging awning, a set of dangerously listing stairs. Oscar dismounted the bike, listening.

  He stepped over the fence, avoiding the rusted gate, and hurried up the stairs.

  The front door was locked. He went down the side of the house, squeezing between the dark, warped battens and the side fence, his boot soles slipping on the mossy concrete.

  The backyard was a long, narrow pit of tall grass smelling of jungle rot. The thin light leaking from the evening sky picked out the aerial-like wires and struts of clothesline; a sheet hung like a limp sail, and a second trailed one end through the grass, still clipped to the line by a single peg. Dark paths had been beaten through the grass toward a hunched toolshed in the yard’s far corner. From behind the shed came sounds of struggle.

  Oscar ran. Two figures grappled silently in the black corner; the grass around them was beaten down by their fighting. Zoe Trucek was pinned to the ground by a dark figure who was trying to wrap a third bedsheet like a noose around her neck. Zoe was kicking hard, but the makeshift rope was finding purchase, and her legs swung weakly. The man had his back to Oscar, who was halfway across the yard.

  “Hey!” Oscar ran, reaching for Stuart’s gun tucked in the small of his back.

  The attacker’s shoulders froze momentarily, then he renewed his work with greater urgency. He twisted hard on the sheet around Zoe’s neck, and Oscar heard a strangled croak.

  Oscar thumbed back the .44’s hammer.

  The attacker hesitated no more than a second, then pushed powerfully onto both feet, ran three light steps to the fence, and vaulted it into the neighboring property.

  Oscar let his momentum carry him into the corner, feet sliding on the wet grass. He looked over the fence.