Strawgirl

by Abigail Padgett

  The psychology that would help children accept the unfamiliar in a hospital could do the same in a canyon. Except a child made comfortable here would be primed not for the strangeness of surgery or medical tests, but for the grotesque strangeness of adult sex. Zolar hadn't done this, she was sure. This was the work of a mind capable of complex planning and execution. But Zolar had witnessed something, and had wept at the memory of it. Bo kicked the battery pack to pieces before ducking back through the low door, tears blurring her vision.

  This, she was certain, was where somebody had raped a little girl whose hair became spun crystal under operating room lights. Somebody who called himself Goody had created this place for that reason. A place to delight children into acceptance of the intolerable. Children from the daycare center. Little ones, too young to verbalize well. Small, inarticulate people too immature to distinguish cheap paint and sparkling lights from love and safety. In her worst moments Bo had not imagined anything this diseased. She wanted to scream and tear the canyon apart, rock by rock. Above, Zolar paced and muttered.

  "Oh, shit." Bo breathed against Mildred's furry side. "What will happen to him if I tell the police about this?"

  The answer was a dead certainty. Paul Massieu might be off the hook, but the young man who'd led Bo to the truth would be crucified. She could see the headlines—"Canyon Crazy Arrested in Child Rape After Cult Member Goes Free." Absolutely no one would believe that Zolar hadn't built the pink hellhole, in spite of his obvious incapacity. Wasn't it similar to his own "home"? And everybody would recall that mentally

  ill people are universally prone to unspeakable crimes, overlooking the fact that mentally ill people are almost invariably victims, not perpetrators. Bo felt the pressure of an ethical dilemma. An Olympic headache. A desire to leave town and surface in New Zealand with a phony passport.

  "You're going to love Auckland," she told Mildred. But the fantasy wouldn't take the place of the tears she'd seen in the young man's eyes when he remembered Goody. When he remembered things he must have witnessed. Zolar had wept for the horror in that canyon, a horror even worse than his own. Bo felt a kinship with the young hermit, and a need to protect him. Dar Reinert, she guessed, would produce a half-baked theory that Zolar might be Goody and not know it. That he was one of the "multiple personalities" now in vogue despite their statistical rarity. Everybody would like that theory; in a matter of days it would be regarded as hard fact. People in diverse bureaucracies would close their cases on Samantha Franer and her sister, Hannah, and an innocent man suffering from one of the most terrifying disorders in the medical annals of the human race would vanish into a prison for criminals who are also insane. There would be widespread relief. And a clever, resourceful rapist would destroy more children.

  Bo gave Zolar five dollars, tried to talk to him briefly about new medications, and ascended the canyon wall. After a few yards she looked back and saw nothing. As if Zolar, the pink chamber, none of it were really there.

  "And we'll leave it that way," she told Mildred. "At least until I figure out what to do."

  The Kramer Child Care Center was dark when Bo left. Her banging on the security bars produced no response from inside. The nameless woman, the children, and even the orange cat were simply gone.

  At home she'd phoned Dar Reinert and left a message requesting information on the owner of the Kramer Child Care Center. Then she'd phoned Estrella and begged her to go by the facility before the memorial service tomorrow. If the woman were there, Es could talk to her in Spanish. After a bubble bath shared by Mildred, she'd dressed and driven to pick up a waiting Solon Gentzler, who seemed not to notice the gray cloud nesting on the bridge of her nose as they drove toward La Jolla and its seafood.

  "You're exhausted," the radical attorney mentioned much later as Bo stumbled against him on the beach. They'd gone back to her apartment after dinner so Bo could change before their walk. And he was right. She was so tired the familiar beach stretching north of her apartment seemed alien. Its piles of ropy kelp could have been somnolent, feathery eels. And a lone tourist in a Hawaiian shirt just sitting on the seawall appeared to be watching her and Gentzler as if he knew them.

  "You're right. I'm so tired I don't think I can drive you back to your motel," she agreed. Something about the tourist made her think of pinball machines. A mechanical carnival of simple gravity. A steel sphere rolling down a maze. The image was cold, inexorable. And crazy.

  Are you trying to bring on another manic episode? Get some sleep!

  "I'll take a cab," Gentzler said. "Don't worry about it."

  The sense of implacable cold seemed to roar, bouncing off the young lawyer's words. Bo stared at her sandy feet and listened to the roar. "Sol," she said after several seconds, "this will sound strange, but I don't feel like staying alone tonight. This isn't an invitation to carnal bliss, although I admit to toying with the idea earlier. I'm just a little shaky. I'd like it if you stayed over, if you can handle sleeping on my couch. Does that sound as crazy to you as it does to me?"

  "Not crazy at all," he replied, yawning. "I'm tired, too, and the couch will be fine. Which is not to say," he grinned, "that carnal bliss holds no appeal. Rain check?"

  The space on the seawall occupied by the tourist in the Hawaiian shirt was now vacant.

  "Who knows?" Bo answered, although the words were really directed at herself.

  After helping Gentzler make up the couch in the tan pinstriped sheets, Bo collapsed into bed and a sleep undisturbed when her answering machine on the kitchen counter clicked on several times, silently recording messages she would not, under normal circumstances, have heard until morning. But a sleep very much disturbed when something tried to beat her door down at 2:00 A.M.

  "What the hell ...?" Solon Gentzler growled, stumbling in the darkened living room toward the door as Mildred ran between his feet, barking.

  Bo pulled on a luxuriant yellow terry robe with white satin starfish appliques on the pockets. She hated the starfish, but the robe had been a steal at a bedroom boutique sale. An unclaimed custom order. Not surprising.

  Gentzler was booming, "Who is it?" in decibels usually reserved for unamplified auctioneers, and struggling with Bo's several locks.

  "Dr. LaMarche," the familiar voice answered as Bo opened the door.

  In the greenish exterior lights of her apartment building Andrew LaMarche's face registered dismay and then something like nausea.

  "Oh, God," Bo said, turning on the interior lights and then turning them off again when she realized how she and Solon Gentzler must ... did ... look. "Andy ..."

  "I was terribly worried about you, Bo," he explained in a voice that struggled to remain impersonal and failed. "I've phoned several times, as has Detective Reinert and Madge Aldenhoven. You may be in danger." He noted the rumpled attorney in a t-shirt and boxers with something like a sneer. "How reassuring to see that you're not alone." With that he turned and stalked toward the stairs, a lean figure in khakis and a wrinkled blue dress shirt with a white collar. Running after him, Bo noticed that he had on only one sock. For a second she thought she might burst into tears, but then rejected the idea. What was the point?

  "Andy, what is it?" she called from the top of the stairs.

  He stopped and turned to face her. "Cynthia Ganage, that conniving psychologist who created this whole Satanic frenzy, was murdered tonight, Bo. I didn't like her, couldn't abide what she was doing, but she didn't deserve this." He leaned against the stair railing and looked out to sea. "Reinert phoned me an hour ago, asking questions about Satanic killing as if there were such a thing. He said Ganage's body was found in the bathtub of her hotel suite, fully clothed and floating in her own blood. The killer apparently knocked her unconscious, placed her body in the tub, and then opened her left large jugular with a kitchen knife. Then he collected blood in a hotel ashtray, carried it into the sitting area of the suite, and used it to write 'Satan claims a stupid pig' on the wall. According to Reinert 'claims' was misspelled '
clams,' although it may be construed to mean 'silences.' But the reason I'm here . . ." he took a deep breath, "is that Ganage received an anonymous message earlier today saying, 'Satan called.' Reinert got an identical message and so, according to Madge Aldenhoven, did you."

  "My God." Bo shuddered. "Everybody connected to the Franer case. And Andy," she remembered the man on the seawall, "there was a guy on the beach tonight watching us walk. He looked like a tourist, but there was something weird about the way he seemed to know who we were."

  Andrew LaMarche's tanned face grew ashen. "Perhaps he did, Bo. Am I safe in assuming that your guest will remain with you for the rest of the night?"

  "Yes," she answered. "But Andy, it's not what it looks like. He's sleeping on the couch ..."

  "You don't need to explain," he muttered. "As long as you're not alone. I've already phoned Eva. She did not receive one of the Satan calls, so she and Hannah may not be at risk. I'm going there now in any event. I'll be with them if you need me."

  With no further discourse Andrew LaMarche bolted down the stairs and was gone. Bo gripped a weathered support holding the roof over the walkway of her apartment building, and bumped her forehead softly against the wood.

  You've done it now, Bradley. You've ruined his sugary little fantasy. There will be no more Cajun dancing.

  "No big deal," Bo said aloud, and recognized a lie when she heard it. Nobody as decent as Andrew LaMarche deserved to be hurt, even if it was his own damned fault. Or if it was nobody's damned fault. Bo decided to file the entire incident for some future moment when she might redeem a personal reputation about which she had never cared one whit. But now, for some reason, did.

  The news of Cynthia Ganage's grisly death only confirmed what she'd sensed all along. Paul Massieu was innocent, and Samantha Franer's unknown rapist was uncharacteristically responding to media attention by escalating his activity to church desecration and now cold-blooded murder. Not a run-of-the-mill child-molester at all. Not the ill-developed male personality she'd seen a hundred times in her work, afraid of or repulsed by adult sex, aroused by the powerless innocence of children. There had always been such men. They were noteworthy for nothing so much as their unshakable devotion to a particularly repugnant lust, no matter what therapy tried to reshape them. But beyond their clandestine sexual practices, they were usually indistinguishable from anyone else. Mail-carriers, preachers, bankers, computer repairmen. Socially adept men, often active and popular in church and community work. Not prone to criminal activity. They never regarded their torment of children as criminal, merely as their right. But this man was different. This man was playing a high-stakes game that didn't fit the profile of a common child-molester. This man, Bo conceded, was a mystery.

  From the beach beyond her apartment's balcony a scent of iodine, of sea chemicals and drying kelp floated against her nose. Hannah Franer was safe. Bo inhaled sea air and congratulated herself on that much. But she was going to have to tell the police about Zolar and the pink horror in the canyon. They would have to inspect the hidden cave for fingerprints, fibers, traces of Samantha's killer. And then what would happen to Zolar? The picture made her sick.

  Exactly where is your loyalty, Bradley? You're as sane as it gets, for the moment. But when the time comes to draw the line between us and them, you identify with a depressed child and a lost soul whose hospital chart would undoubtedly read "Paranoid Schizophrenia." Is this what you want?

  Through a tear in the fog a patch of blue-black sky sparkled with stars. There was nothing else. No hidden meaning, no subtle, multifaceted message. No unaccountable feeling adrift anywhere. No wailing of Caillech Bera, that old Celtic barker for the sideshow called madness. Those things were not gone permanently, Bo knew. They'd be back. They were part of her. But right now they were absent, leaving a window through which stars and clear thinking were possible. Bo memorized the moment, photographed it mentally against an inevitable future when she would doubt the decision she was about to make.

  "Yes," she answered her own question. "This is what I want. Being me is just fine. I knew how to protect Hannah and talk to Zolar. I didn't learn those skills being somebody else, and I'm sick of pretending to be somebody else. And there's a pederast-turned-killer out there who's going to be sorry Samantha Franer wound up on my caseload."

  Back in her apartment Bo found Solon Gentzler standing gloomily before her open refrigerator. "Three pounds of carrots?" he asked. "A bag of raw broccoli, two six-packs of salt-free tomato juice, and a picture of some gorgeous broad who looks like the head of an island protectorate where art thieves vacation. Bo, why do you have no food and this picture taped to your butter bin?"

  "That's Frances Lear," Bo grinned, "role-model for ladies-on-lithium who aspire to wardrobes without polyester. I'm trying to lose weight because I've been taking lithium for nine months."

  The cat, out of the bag, merely sat there.

  "Isn't that the stuff they make batteries out of?" Gentzler queried, still searching for edible objects.

  "I haven't been eating batteries for the better part of a year, Sol. Why don't we get dressed and find an all-night diner for coffee? There's something I want to tell you. And I've got an idea I need your help with."

  Chapter 20

  Rombo Perry set the front elevation of the NordicTrak Pro to eight degrees and slid the videotape of Vermont scenery Martin had given him for his thirty-eighth birthday into the VCR. But no New Age Indian flutes today. Selecting his Best of the Supremes CD, he turned up the volume, began the hour-long acceleration of his workout, and grinned. Diana Ross had not completed the impassioned story of her decision to avoid conceiving a "Love Child" when Martin St. John, dramatically patient beneath a film of whole wheat flour, approached from the kitchen.

  "I know you've been upset," Martin began, "but can this sort of adolescent regression really help?"

  Martin St. John's whole wheat Parker House rolls were the flagship of St. John Catering, in demand by the thousands every weekend for the endless buffets, cocktail trays, and dinner-party fund-raisers of San Diego's upscale liberal community. Special wiring had been required for the huge vertical freezer in the spare bedroom where the partially baked delicacies were stored on wire racks. A characteristic odor of bakery yeast invariably caused passers-by in the apartment's hall to salivate, and completely defeated the hi-tech decorating scheme Rombo and Martin had chosen five years ago. Before the rolls caught on. When Martin was still carving radish roses for vegetable trays and Rombo was job hunting between twice-daily AA meetings. The cozy smell wafted from the kitchen now.

  "Motown has been demonstrated to help eliminate free radicals from the bloodstream," Rombo lectured as footage of Green County, Vermont, under snow crossed the television screen. "And if I listen to one more Celtic harp and flute combo over running water, I'm going to shave my head and start wearing an orange sarong."

  "The sarong has possibilities." Martin beamed, his brown eyes fudge-dark in a floury face. "But this music reminds me of the Nixon administration. Bad karma. The rolls won't rise. And you're still a wreck. The woman died two days ago, Rom. You didn't even know her, really. You've got to let go of it."

  A film of sweat on his forearms reassured Rombo of his cardiovascular system's ongoing efficiency. "Let's go check on Leonor after we deliver the rolls, before the memorial service. Okay? Maybe take her a rawhide bone or something."

  Leonor was the very pregnant golden retriever who would soon present Rombo and Martin with a puppy already named Watson in honor of their collection of Sherlockiana. Rombo had given Martin a traditional Holmesian deerstalker cap to celebrate the news of Leonor's successful weekend idyll with a champion retriever stud named Gothard's Brendan, brought to San Diego from Palm Springs for the occasion in a vintage Mercedes. Leonor's owner, a rotund freelance window dresser, had bartered the expected puppy for a three-year supply of whole wheat rolls. And the best part, Rombo thought, was that Watson would have a yard. A real yard, with a view.

/>   "Sure," Martin agreed, abandoning hope of an end to the music. "Probably be good for you. Take your mind off things, huh?"

  Rombo watched Martin pad, barefooted, back into the kitchen, and thought about the house as he exercised. Between his salary and Martin's burgeoning business they'd been able to save enough for a sizable down payment on a house in North Park with a canyon view. The loan had included funds for renovation of the kitchen, to be used by Martin for his money-making little rolls. There would be no more chrome furniture with black basketball-rubber upholstery. They'd even picked out a couch at Ethan Allen, incurring from friends a shower of exquisitely awful grapevine wreaths and refrigerator magnets featuring geese in bow ties pushing wheelbarrows. The house would be ready in less than a month.

  Increasing the tension on the ski flywheel, Rombo breathed evenly and wondered why he wasn't dead. More than a decade of booze, poppers every night in Chicago bars, fucking around, trying to be the hot'n'hung young top everybody'd get down on their knees for. The one everybody'd want when some bartender in tit-clips and a leather jock under unbuttoned Levi's yelled "Last call, Mary!" through the smoke. It hadn't occurred to Rombo to ask himself what be wanted. Not until it was almost too late and he was working out of Manpower every other day, cleaning warehouses and portable toilets to pay for a room and watery shots of bar whiskey at 6:30 in the morning.