by Hart, Callie
TWELVE
FIX
An eight-year-old girl told me she was being molested once. I was tired as fuck and I was ready for the day to be over. The line for the confessional had felt like it would never end, and I’d been relieved when the short, narrow frame of the child had entered into the booth and sat herself down on the stool on the other side of the grill. Children were bad at confession as a rule. They didn’t like punishment, even if it was just a few Hail Mary’s and a promise never to sass their parents again; typically, they confessed a few arbitrary sins, and typically I let them off light, making the experience as short and sweet as possible. I was a terrifying authority figure to most kids. A direct line to God, who I knew seemed like a pretty fucking frightening overlord, ready to smite them for their crimes if they were disobedient. So, I was soft with them. Tried to relax them. Make them feel as comfortable as I could during a time that normally scared the shit out of them.
I’d spoken to the little girl before. She was a collector of shiny trinkets. Thief would have been the wrong word to describe her, though she frequently delved into women’s purses on the hunt for glossy lipsticks and compact mirrors, and had been known to relieve department stores of candy on the odd occasion when she thought she wasn’t being watched. She’d grown out of her compulsion for the most part, but there were still times when she took something she wasn’t supposed to, and I would gently chastise her and send her on her way.
On this particular Sunday, she’d sobbed quietly on the other side of the booth, holding back her hiccups and her misery, and told me that she was scared. She’d said she didn’t want her mother to hear her crying, because her daddy would punish her for it when she got home.
Her father was an upstanding member of the congregation. Directed the church choir. I’d gone for beers with him a couple of times after charity drives, when I’d needed to blow off a little steam. He was funny and down to earth, seemed like a real family guy, and I couldn’t imagine him punishing the girl for being upset. I asked her why she thought she’d get into trouble.
After a little coaxing, she’d begun to tell a disturbing story of abuse and assault that had me gripping the side of the booth until my fingernails had gouged deep holes in the wood. If she didn’t eat her food, he touched her between her legs. If she broke something in the house, he put his fingers inside her. If she made her mother angry, he made her open wide, and he put the thing between his legs inside her mouth until she couldn’t breathe and she was sick.
I’d erupted out of the confessional like a raging storm. My blood had boiled. My vision had swum, tinged crimson by my rage. The little girl’s father had already gone home ahead of his wife and child. Her mother had begged and pleaded with me not to call the police. She’d asked me to wait until she’d had chance to ask her husband about the little girl’s claims, and said she was sure her daughter was just confused and didn’t know what she was saying.
I’d considered holding back. For a split second, I’d thought about letting the girl’s mother handle the situation, but I saw how it was going to play out in my head. The guy would deny everything. He’d be disbelieving and hurt that the little girl would say such things. He’d make a show of trying to comfort the child and would ask her why she was so afraid of him. His wife would believe him—nine times out of ten, they always did, preferring to believe their kid was making shit up instead of wrapping their minds around the possibility that the man they married was capable of abusing their own child—and then the girl would pay. She’d be branded a liar.
Of course, there was a chance she was lying. I hadn’t been about to check the girl’s body for signs of assault. But I also hadn’t been willing to risk the chance that she was telling the truth, and I was sending her back into a dangerous household. I wasn’t going to teach the child that speaking out led to angering the adults around her, and that her bravery would be rewarded with punishment. I wasn’t going to leave her fucking alone in her fear.
I’d called the cops. They’d arrested the guy, and when the little girl had undergone a medical exam, it turned out she had been telling the truth. The guy had gone to prison, but every day after that I’d regretted my actions. Yeah, I’d done the right thing. The little girl was no longer being abused by a person who was supposed to be her most staunch defender against the worst kinds of evil that existed in the world. But I’d never been able to shake the feeling that I hadn’t done enough. I’d wanted to hurt the guy who’d ruined that little girl’s childhood. I’d wanted to break every single one of the fingers he'd used on her. I’d wanted to zip tie the bastard’s hands behind his back and cut off the dick he’d forced into her mouth. Slowly. As painfully as possible, while I’d made him watch.
I’d wanted to fucking kill him for what he’d done.
I’d regretted not doing so ever since.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
One day, and one day soon, Sixsmith Lafferty and I were going to have a little fucking chat.
THIRTEEN
SERA
The house was grand on a Victorian scale, but Colonial in design. Six white columns braced the front of the building, supporting the deep overhanging eaves that wrapped around the property. There was no porch swing here, but rather an expensive set of garden furniture, three and four-seater rattan sofas and armchairs complete with tasteful floral cushions that created a vibrant slash of color against the stark, bright white paintwork of the house itself. The tall, arched windows on the upper floor were all in darkness, but three of the six ground floor picture windows glowed a warm yellow, lit up against the night.
Fix grunted in displeasure as we pulled up outside the vast mansion. “No one’s supposed to be here,” he muttered under his breath. Silencing the engine, he got out of the car, a stony expression marring his features. I got out after him, my legs complaining as I stretched them.
“Are you going to tell me where here is?” I asked.
Fix displayed an uncharacteristic level of discomfort as he faced the house, shoving his hands into his pockets. “This,” he said tightly, “is my parent’s house. Or rather it was. It’s mine now.”
Ho-ly fuck.
I didn’t want to be that girl, gawking in shock over someone’s surprise wealth, but this was just fucking ridiculous. In a city where space was at a premium, the penthouse back in Brooklyn was huge, so I’d known he had money. But this wasn’t money. This was rich. My-ancestors-were-founding-members-of-the-country-and-made-billions-during-the-oilrush-of-eighteen-sixty-seven kind of rich.
I tried not to react, but my surprise must have been all too obvious.
“You can say it.” Fix’s eyes were hard as flint. “It’s fucking obnoxious.”
“It’s not obnoxious. It’s just… it’s…”
“Obnoxious. It’s bigger than a department store.” He began walking to toward the front door.
“Shouldn’t we wake Monica?”
Fix bent down and looked through the window at the sleeping woman, the bridge of his nose crinkled. “She’s dead to the world. I’ll send Richard out for her in a little while.”
“Richard?”
Sighing, Fix rubbed at the back of his neck. “My father’s man.”
I must have been pulling a face, because Fix clarified. “His butler. My father had a butler. Before he went into the church, we lived here, and he had a butler called Richard.”
He was snappy, but I gave him a pass. He was exhausted, and something about coming here made Fix very edgy. If we hadn’t had our backs to a wall, I suspected he would never have brought us here, to this sprawling pile of brick and stone in Upstate New York. Following after him, my eyes caught on a flash of wicked metal at the base of Fix’s back—the gun he’d pulled on Rabbit.
This was so surreal.
This was so fucking surreal that I was beginning to question my own sanity now. How the fuck had any of this happened?
I’d left Seattle over a month ago now, with only a small su
itcase containing a week’s worth of clothes. I was supposed to have an interesting cross-country adventure on my road trip, celebrate Amy’s over-the-top wedding, and then I was supposed to get back to work. Instead, I was walking up the sweeping staircase of a twelve-room mansion behind a man who’d just committed murder, and—
A bar of light fell across my face, and I looked up. The monstrous double doors to the house swung inward, and the silhouetted, dark shape of a man appeared.
“Master Felix,” a voice called down to us. “I didn’t know you were coming. I nearly called the police.”
“You’re meant to be at home,” Fix growled.
As I climbed the final step, I found myself standing in front of a tall, reedy-looking man with eyes that might once have been brown but were now clouded and milky with cataracts. His wrinkled skin looked paper-thin and was a beautiful dark bronze color, and his top lip was capped with a snowy white moustache. His hair was short, salt and pepper curls. It was just after four in the morning, which explained the red, worn dressing gown hanging over his shoulders, but not the crisp white button-down shirt he was wearing beneath it, or the neat black dress pants. The old man’s hands shook a little as he gestured to Fix, beckoning him to step into the light.
“This is my home,” he replied churlishly.
“Your home’s four miles away. Remember? That three-bedroom villa by the water? With its own private dock?”
The man, Richard, gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Psshhaaw. That place? Haunted. As. Fuck.” He hefted his considerable, bushy eye brows up toward his hairline. “Told you not to buy it. Told you I wan’t gon’ live in it. Might as well sell it again, you brat.”
The very last thing I expected to be doing at this end of the car ride we’d just taken was laughing, but I couldn’t help it. Fix? A brat? If anyone else had called him that, they’d have been nursing a broken jaw. Fix just scowled at the old man, and then he scowled at me for good measure.
“I done told you plain and simple I wan’t gon’ retire. I looked after this house since I was twenty-nine years old, an’ I’m gon’ look after it ’til I’m dead. That’s all there is to it.”
“Great,” Fix replied. “So you’re gonna die here and make this place haunted.”
Richard turned around, hobbling a little, and went back inside the house, crooking a bent finger behind him over his shoulder, clearly expecting us to follow. “Damn straight, I am. I’m gon’ haunt the shit outta you, boy. ’Sides, I wouldn’t be the first shade to walk these halls.”
Fix loosed a weary sigh. “If this place is haunted, then what’s the big deal about the old Fallbrook villa?
Richard made an angry sound at the back of his throat. “I know these ghosts. I don’t know none o’ they ghosts. I am eighty-nine years old. I shouldn’t have to be learnin’ no new ghosts. Have you forgotten all your damn manners, boy, or are you working up to an introduction?”
Richard’s gaze flittered pointedly to me.
“Richard, this is my friend Sera. Sera, this is Richard Montrose Jnr.”
“The third,” the old man emphasized, holding up three gnarled fingers for me to see. His hand then swooped down and snatched hold of mine, lifting it up to his face. He didn’t kiss the back of my hand. I thought he was about to, but he didn’t. He bowed his head in a show of deference and dipped a little arthritically at the knees, then he turned a broad smile on me, his skin creasing at the corners of his eyes.
“You are a very pretty woman, Sera,” he informed me. “I am honored to make your esteemed acquaintance.”
I sought out Fix’s attention, unsure what to do.
“Don’t be asking him no questions with those fancy eyes o’ yours. That boy knows nothin,’” Richard chided. “You come on inside with Old Richard. You both look frightful, and I got a nice bottle of whiskey I been thinkin’ ’bout openin.’”
******
The interior of the house was much like the outside: sumptuous, grand and breathtakingly beautiful. For starters, the foyer was larger than my entire apartment back in Seattle. The polished floors were old fashioned parquet, but the woodwork looked brand new, as if it had just been laid yesterday. People didn’t make this kind of flooring anymore, though. It was a lost art, replaced by quick and easy solutions like the polished cement in Fix’s penthouse.
An imposing staircase arced around in a circle up to the first floor, at the foot of which a stunning grand piano sat with the fallboard open, as if it someone had been playing it moments ago and had only just stepped away. Antique sideboards, bookshelves, and sleek mahogany cabinets. Vases filled with sprays of colorful flowers, and cut crystal decanters resting on silver service trays. Massive, heavily gilded frames, and stately oil paintings. Everything inside the house screamed of money, decadence and luxury, but that wasn’t what I noticed first. The atmosphere was nothing like I would have expected it to be—austere and stiff. There was a worn quality to the place that made it feel lived in: the slightly worn pathway on the narrow rug that ran from the foyer into what looked like a formal sitting room; the stack of papers balanced behind a gold cast figurine of a slender woman holding a baby in her arms; the tasseled lamp on by the entranceway that looked like it belonged in a great-grandmother’s parlor; the large umbrella propped up against the wall, half fallen open where the fastener hadn’t been closed around it after its last use.
Strangely, despite the cost of such a residence, its contents weren’t wrapped in cotton wool and preserved like museum pieces. This was a home. It felt like a place that might have been a sanctuary to a happy family once upon a time.
Fix was watching me as I took everything in. He stood like a statue in the foyer, hands still stuffed into his pockets, his demeanor calm and still, but I could tell there was a tempest of emotion roiling under his unruffled façade. He most certainly was ruffled.
“You want ice in your whiskey, Lady Sera?” Richard called from the sitting room.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Fix. He was at war with himself, but why? What was troubling him so badly that he looked like he was going to turn on his heel and march right back down those stairs again? I had absolutely no idea what was going on in his head. “No. Thank you.”
When Richard came back, he handed me a tumbler containing a healthy pour of amber liquid. Fix was given the same. “Since you are here, Richard, Monica’s in the car outside. She’s asleep. Can you make sure she gets to bed, please? Her usual room will be just fine.”
So, Monica had been here before. She had a usual room. I didn’t know why I found that surprising; the two of them had been through a lot together—Monica’s attack and subsequent recovery, Fix leaving the church, Monica leaving the church, not to mention their burgeoning assassin-for-hire business. “Sera and I are going upstairs. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Richard gave him a mock salute, winked at me, then trundled outside, presumably to show Monica to bed. Fix took me by the hand and started to lead me up the wide, carpeted staircase.
“I’m assuming you’re too tired for the nickel tour,” he said stiffly.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “But maybe tomorrow…?”
“Yes. Tomorrow.” There was a frosty edge to his tone that I found less than heartening. What the hell was wrong with him?
At the top of the stairs, a broad hallway stretched to the left and right; Fix turned to the right and led me after him. After passing a number of closed doors, he stopped at the second door from the end and opened it. The room inside was nothing like his bedroom at the penthouse. Where that room was fairly sterile and spare, this room was overflowing with stuff. Baseball gear. A basketball, wedged between a row of books on a wall-mounted shelf. CDs and DVDs. A lovely brass telescope beneath the window, the lens pointed up toward the sky. This was the room he had grown up in, and, while all signs of his adolescence was gone, I could easily imagine the walls covered in posters of sports cars and woman in bikinis leaning over motorcycles as if they knew how to ride them.
Then again, maybe the original Father Marcosa hadn’t allowed such suggestive images on the walls of his home.
Fix dropped my hand and raised the tumbler to his lips, taking a sip as his eyes traveled around the room, as if seeing everything for the first time. “Maybe we’d be better off in one of the other rooms,” he said.
“What’s wrong with this one?”
He stepped toward the large double bed and swiped something from its surface, stuffing it into his back pocket.
I canted my head to one side. “You trying to hide something from me, Mr. Marcosa?”
Leveling me in a pitiless stare, Fix shifted his weight from his right foot to the left, raised his glass to his lips again and drained its contents in one mouthful. “Yes,” he said.
Oh.
He was being honest, at least. But fuck that. After the past month and everything that had happened, he figured hiding things from me now would be okay? “Why?” I demanded.
“I’d have thought that was obvious. Because I didn’t want to see it.”
“I just watched you kill a man. Before that, I watched you electrocute a man in a bathtub. What could you possibly not want me to see now?”
A hard, unyielding light flared in his eyes. He thought for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “All right. Fine. Here.” He reached into his back pocket and produced the mystery object he’d secreted away out of sight. He slapped it into my outstretched hand, and I stared down at the piece of stiff white fabric with a morbid kind of fascination.
It was a Roman collar.
A priest’s collar.
His.
“Richard must have forgotten to throw it out,” he said.
“Why would you want to hide this from me?” I asked slowly. “I know about your past. I know who you were before you started all of this.” I held up the collar, frowning at it, and then turning that frown on him. “This is nothing to be ashamed of, Fix. Just because I don’t believe in a higher power doesn’t mean I’ve judged you because you used to be a priest. Is that what you think?”
