Strawgirl

by Abigail Padgett

  "Do you know about this yellow drawing on Samantha's stomach?" Eva asked as if the topic were not fraught with horror.

  The straw-blonde head nodded. Bo exhaled smoke and forced herself to become very still.

  "You saw this drawing on Samantha?" Eva Broussard's voice was like a silken rope, pulling.

  A nod.

  "Did Goody draw it?"

  A snuffle, a shake of the head.

  "Do you know who drew a yellow face on Samantha, Hannah?"

  The round face turned up toward Eva, convulsing with something Bo recognized as guilt.

  "Oh, Hannah," the Indian woman's eyes registered a sudden understanding, "you painted the mask on Samantha to make her feel better where it hurt, didn't you?"

  A shuddering nod, then sobs.

  Eva gathered up the shaking girl and sat on a deck chair stroking the child's hair. After a while she explained to Bo.

  "It is an Iroquois tradition, rather complex. The girls have seen a midwinter celebration. I took them myself. The masks, the 'false faces,' represent things seen in dreams. At midwinter, if someone is ill with unhappiness, they search their dreams for these spirit faces, which are the things they must have in order to survive. When they know, they tell the tribe and the tribe will provide what is needed. A companion or a skill, or something like forgiveness for a wrongdoing. At all the festivals people appear in the crowd wearing these husk masks. They are for insight, for healing. Hannah was trying to heal her sister by drawing a healing mask over her pain."

  Bo imagined the scene. The two little girls in their Raggedy Ann sheets, the younger one in pain and terrified that Goody would kill her mother if she told. The older one trying to manage the situation. The older one, burdened always with knowing just enough more to feel responsible.

  Softly Bo had knelt beside Hannah and looked straight into the child's eyes. A clear, unveiled look in which there was no pretense. "I had a little sister, too," she said. "Her name was Laurie and she died, just like your sister Samantha did. And then my mother died, just like your mother did. And I was so scared and sick. But pretty soon I could start feeling better. You're going to feel better, too, Hannah. I promise."

  The wide-set eyes looked back, a brittle smile spasming in the lips. Then Hannah fumbled with the safety pin holding three strips of beaded straw to her sweater. Slowly she took one of the strips off the pin and handed it to Bo.

  "They're grieving beads," Eva whispered. "They represent a gift of words for one whose senses are blunted by sadness. Hannah is offering her words to help your sadness."

  Beneath the bowl-shaped Pacific darkness Bo felt perfectly isolated, locked in an extended moment that embodied truths too large for her grasp. "Thank you, Hannah," she answered softly, taking the beads from a hand at once childlike and ancient. "Thank you for your words."

  At the Travelodge Bo scanned the lobby for an immense attorney whose voice could be heard as far as Tijuana. Somebody who looked like a sumo wrestler, or maybe a lumberjack. No dice. The only figure obviously waiting was a short, barrel-chested guy in an alligator polo shirt that had once been white, before it was washed with something blue. Probably the same jeans he had on, which were too long and frayed where they scuffed the ground at the heel.

  "Take me to your lox!" he boomed genially. "That is, if your name's Bo Bradley."

  "I was expecting Demosthenes," Bo told him on the way to the restaurant.

  "My folks wanted me to be a cantor," Solon Gentzler explained. "Big disappointment when I couldn't carry a tune in a washtub. There was nothing for it but to accept defeat and go to law school. Let me show you."

  Throwing his head back he belted out the chorus of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof. Mildred, Bo thought privately, could more accurately reproduce the tune.

  "The Met's loss is the bar's gain," she agreed. "So what are you doing with Paul Massieu?"

  Over a breakfast impressive for its lavish display of calories he outlined strategy.

  "The guy's innocent of the charge, but that's not our point. Our thing is, the evidence for the arrest includes references to cult aspects of the case such as a symbol drawn on the victim and Massieu's admitted membership in some group that sees spaceships and metal people. Even if the guy was guilty, the arrest is no good. He's got a constitutionally protected right to exercise whatever beliefs he wants to. You can't arrest people based on their beliefs. Not in this country."

  "So what will happen? When can you get him out of jail?"

  Bo decided to withhold what she knew about the curious drawing on Samantha Franer's abdomen until she assessed the extent to which she might trust Solon Gentzler. So far, he seemed okay.

  "They can't hold him longer than Monday. That's the law. I've signed on as co-counsel with his appointed attorney. I'll be at the preliminary hearing on Monday. We'll get him out of jail then, but of course he'll have to stay around if there's a trial. So what's your part in all this?"

  Bo checked her watch and wondered why she felt so restless. Like there were forty things she should be doing instead of nursing a third cup of coffee over the ruin of an epic breakfast. Restlessness wasn't good. It could mean trouble. She made a mental note to watch it.

  "I have to document the progress of the case for juvenile court," she said casually. "The status of the alleged perp in the criminal system will be crucial to Hannah's placement, when she's located." That last bit either sounded crisply professional or hopelessly phony. Bo wasn't sure which.

  "You're bullshitting me," Gentzler said, grinning. His teeth showed evidence of successful orthodontia. "What are you really up to? Anything I need to know?"

  Hopelessly phony.

  "I'm not sure yet," Bo replied. "I'll know more later, I think."

  "Great. You'll tell me over dinner. Seafood. I don't eat shellfish, but I love that mahi mahi. Meanwhile I'll give you a copy of everything I've got on Massieu, just to help you know more. Do you think there's any connection between this case and that church desecration?"

  "Yes," Bo answered. "But not anything obvious. Do you have any kids, Solon?"

  Two could play this game.

  "I'm not married," he replied. "Haven't found a woman who wants what I want out of life. Somebody Jewish, traditional, smarter than I am. The usual. She's out there, though. In the meantime I'm free for dinner."

  Bo wasn't going to let go of it. "Do you care about children, about what happens to them when adults get caught in the legal system?"

  Solon Gentzler gazed levelly at the parking lot outside the restaurant window. "I care about keeping this country from becoming a police state," he said. "That my life's work."

  Bo grabbed her keys and stood. "That's what I thought."

  Chapter 18

  Bo dropped Solon Gentzler at his hotel and slipped a tape of Handel's Second Concerto for Two Choruses into the BMW's tape deck. The introduction, she mused, might make a provocative sound-back for a pantyhose promo. It would feature a lissome mother of three who just loves her job as a molecular engineer but can still toss off her lab coat in time to drink champagne with a tuxedoed husband in the spray of an Italianate fountain. The husband has chosen this moment to present her with a rope of pearls because her eyes remind him of infinity. In the final frame her reasonably priced pantyhose have not yet run. "May the king live forever!" sang two choruses as Bo miraculously located a parking space on Narragansett only doors from her apartment building. She wondered if she could find a job in advertising if Madge succeeded in getting her fired over this case. Dog food commercials might be fun. Or those ads for 900 services where you could find true love or have your palm read over the phone. Bizarre, but no more so than this case, which seemed to be tapping a vein of primitive tribalism in the community. Everybody in guarded camps of opinion, each one of which seemed to be missing something. But what?

  The sudden accumulation of men in her life aside, Bo was free of distractions and able to think clearly. No mania, not a hint of depression. Everything sh
e'd done so far regarding Hannah Franer was, rationally speaking, perfectly sane. The child was safe in Eva Broussard's care, seeming to have begun already her journey out of grief. That Madge Aldenhoven would never acknowledge the wisdom of what Bo had done was irrelevant. So was the fact that Madge had put Bo on probation and was no doubt plotting at this very moment a future in which Bo Bradley would be merely an unpleasant memory. What wasn't irrelevant was a universal lack of insight into what was actually going on.

  "So what is actually going on?" Bo asked the musicians of the London Symphony. In the final chords there was only music.

  In her apartment Bo ignored both the blank canvas beckoning from its easel in the sunny living room and her blinking answering machine. Instead she took Mildred to a grassy park and pored over a folder of information Gentzler had given her. A clinical description of the injuries that had resulted in Samantha Franer's death, signed by Andrew J. LaMarche, M.D. Copies of warrants for the arrests of Paul Luc Massieu, thirty-six, a Canadian citizen, and Bonnie Corman Franer, twenty-nine. Bonnie Franer's warrant was stamped "Deceased." Legal documents setting forth the opinion of the American Civil Liberties Union that a San Diego County Criminal Court had screwed up royally. Cases in which the United States had opposed people named Seeger and Ballard were cited as precedents, as well as a California case in which an unspecified "People" had opposed somebody named Woody. Bo tried not to envision a woodpecker in the dock, and failed. There were also newspaper clippings.

  As Mildred rolled in the grass Bo read the most recent clippings. Cynthia Ganage had suggested that Paul Massieu might be issuing orders from jail to escalate Satanic activity in San Diego as a protest against his incarceration. She suggested that San Diegans purchase her recently self-published book, Protecting Your Children from Satanic Abuse, available by mail order. Dar Reinert was quoted as hoping public overreaction would subside, and asked that citizens not call 911 to report Satanic graffiti in public places, which was in his opinion the work of bored teenagers seeking attention. A memorial service for Bonnie and Samantha was mentioned, to be held tomorrow afternoon at St. Theresa's Church. Father Frank Goodman would officiate.

  Bo scratched the fox terrier's white chest and thought about taping the service so that Hannah could hear it later. She hoped Frank Goodman would chant something. The guy had a great voice. Like an Irish tenor, except with a name like Goodman he probably wasn't Irish.

  Goodman.

  The realization hit Bo at the back of her tongue. The gag reflex.

  "No," she said to Mildred. It can't be. Not him. Not a priest."

  But her thoughts ran on. Bonnie had taken the girls to his church. That's why he came to the hospital. Would a three-year-old call somebody named Goodman "Goody"? It wasn't unlikely.

  Twenty minutes later Bo, accompanied by one exuberant fox terrier, knocked at the door of St. Theresa's rectory. "I'd like to see Father Goodman," she told the housekeeper.

  He was in back, shooting baskets with an older priest wearing a cassock. In T-shirt and sweatpants, Frank Goodman looked even younger than he had at St. Mary's Hospital. "Hello." He grinned, tossing the ball expertly to the older priest and jogging toward Bo. "Aren't you the CPS investigator on the Franer case? You were at the hospital."

  "Yes," Bo answered. She kept her gaze open and neutral despite the grisly suspicion that had brought her. This had to be done quickly. Mildred, sensing Bo's edginess, began to growl. "And you're Goody," Bo pronounced.

  Her timing was perfect, even with a sour-tasting nausea lurking in her throat. A snake's timing. Quick and clean. He hadn't had time to prepare for the assault, and would inadvertently display some minuscule acknowledgment if he recognized the damning sobriquet. Just a second of darkness in the eyes, or a twitch in the muscle connecting jaw to skull. And Bo wouldn't miss it. She'd know. But there was nothing.

  "Huh?" he said, and cocked his head at Mildred. "Dogs usually like me. What's her name?"

  Bo slumped to a sitting position in the grass. "Mildred." She sighed. "And sorry, I was just running a check on your potential as an arch-deviant. You flunked."

  Frank Goodman sat cross-legged beside Bo and scratched Mildred's head. From his dark curls floated the unmistakable odor of incense. Realizing that her choice of seating would inevitably produce grass stains on her white slacks, Bo decided it was divine retribution. A small price to pay.

  "You thought I was the one who hurt Samantha," Frank Goodman said as though he'd solved a puzzle. "The police already checked that out. I was at a diocesan meeting the entire day she was ... injured. Then I drove back here with Father Karolak." He nodded toward the elderly priest who continued to perform impressive slam dunks, showing off. "I read the Office in the garden in full view of two priests and the cook, ate dinner with the same two priests and a businessman from the parish who's going to pay for restuccoing the educational buildings, and watched an Agatha Christie rerun on PBS, again with Father Karolak, who is quite verbal about his preference for Dorothy Sayers. Then I went to bed. Didn't the police tell you?"

  For a man who'd just been accused of one of the most repugnant behaviors imaginable, he seemed remarkably unruffled.

  "No," Bo said into her knees, "but then I didn't ask. It hadn't occurred to me yet. Not until I thought you might be an Irish tenor, except you're not Irish." Her grandmother, Bo mused miserably, would have done twenty novenas and made a pilgrimage to Muiredach's Cross, just to atone for her granddaughter's nasty mind. "Look, I'm really sorry, but—"

  "Don't be," Frank Goodman said. "It happens. Priests have been known to molest children. The church is finally admitting it, and keeping these guys away from kids. So why did you call me Goody?"

  "Hannah Franer, before she stopped talking altogether when she heard of her mother's death, told me and a woman named Eva Broussard that Samantha said Goody hurt her."

  The priest grimaced and shook his head. "That poor kid. It makes sense that you suspected me, with the name and all. I wish I could do something for Hannah. I read in the paper that you were unsuccessful ..."

  Bo pulled Mildred into her arms and turned to Frank Goodman. "Can you keep a secret?" she asked.

  "Part of the job. Want to make a confession?"

  Bo considered the possibility that trusting Frank Goodman with too much information might be dangerous. "Yeah," she nodded. "But only if it's real, as in privileged communication. Do we need to go into a confessional for that?"

  "Nah," he replied, "but I do need a stole to make it official. Wait right here."

  In minutes he was back, with the traditional length of purple satin flapping over his T-shirt. "So?"

  "I confess that I set Cynthia Ganage up with that story to keep Hannah out of the very system I got her into. To keep her out of foster care. I knew Ganage would blow it all over the papers within ten minutes and give us a cover. Hannah's here, Father Goodman. She's in very, very fragile shape, but she's with Eva, who's adopted her as an Iroquois, like a granddaughter, and since Eva's also a shrink I know she can take care of Hannah. It'll help when Paul gets out of jail and Hannah can see him. Until then, they're laying low in a beach place up in Del Mar. Waiting."

  "I can go to visit Hannah at any time, if it'll help," Goodman offered. "She knows me. The mother brought the girls to church here occasionally. Hannah was the quiet one, always looked a little sad. This has got to be hell for her."

  "She's like the proverbial house of cards," Bo said, throwing twigs for Mildred. "One more shock, even the smallest break in what's left of her sense of security, and we may lose her to a world inside her head. It's a tightrope right now. Dangerous. But I'll ask Eva if she thinks a visit from you would help."

  Bo allowed the youthful priest to pull her to her feet. "The best thing that can happen would be the arrest of the creep who really did this." She sighed. "But there don't seem to be any good leads."

  "What about the daycare center?" Goodman asked. "I told the police Samantha stayed at a center while Bonnie worked at a
part-time job and Hannah was in school. Paul was gone a lot of the time, scouting for property out in the desert. Bonnie found a place for Samantha to stay. Don't you have that information in your reports?"

  Her file on the Franer case, Bo realized as Mildred dropped a soggy twig on Frank Goodman's foot, had not been updated since her return from New York. But all new information would have gone through Madge Aldenhoven. And stayed there. Madge was covering her own tail, making sure Bo couldn't botch the case more than she already had. For once, Bo didn't blame her.

  "Do you have an address for this daycare center?" she asked the priest.

  "Sure. It's on Kramer, where it dead-ends in a cul-de-sac. But the police have already been there, I'm sure."

  "Just curiosity," Bo said as she headed for her car. "I'll see you at the memorial service tomorrow. And thanks."

  "Hey!" he yelled from the curb. "I forgot your penance."

  Bo pretended not to hear.

  A professionally lettered sign above the door identified the residence as KRAMER CHILD CARE CENTER. Gray security bars covered every window of the white-shingled house. The place looked, Bo thought, like Beaver Cleaver's suburban home converted to a jail. The house was long and rectangular and set squarely in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Behind it one of San Diego's innumerable small canyons sloped down through two hundred feet of scrub and sage to the usual seam of eucalyptus and sycamore bordering the canyon's drainage stream. Beside the driveway to the left several mature bougainvilleas created a mass of blazing magenta bracts and murderous thorns over a six-foot chain-link fence. To the right closely set white oleanders, equally mature, formed a dense, attractive wall between the daycare center and the adjoining property. An older house like thousands built in San Diego during the 1960s well maintained. And private. Very private. Bo carried Mildred, squirming, to the door and rang the bell.

  "Si?" a woman answered. In her arms a wet, naked baby boy of about a year struggled to be put down. Behind her a dark-haired girl holding an overweight orange cat stared at Bo with shy curiosity. The cat also stared, its orange tail sweeping laconically beneath the girl's arms.