Burn

by Nevada Barr

  Clare’s heart jerked like a landed fish, but the child was several years older than Dana. Panic sickened her as she wondered if she would know her own children. These wore high complicated wigs or hairdos; their faces were powdered till they were the color of pearls. Pink lips were painted on in cupid bows, beauty marks pasted on chins or cheeks, their fragile bodies deformed by costumes. They were Hispanic, African American, Mideastern, Indian, and Caucasian.

  On a divan close to the stairs where Clare had frozen, a Latina child sat on the lap of a man in his forties, playing with the paste jewel in his stickpin as he chatted with another man of like age seated next to them. The child wore the Victorian dress, full skirt and neckline frothed with lace, but the neckline was cut to the level of her sternum so her smooth chest and tiny nipples peeked over the ruffle. The man holding her had one hand up under her skirts. Another child, with soft brown curls piled on her head, clad in a velvet dress of midnight blue with white trim, walked by, concentrating hard to keep from spilling a drink she carried on a tray. The back of her gown and petticoats had been cut away so, as she passed, the naked little bottom and thighs above her black cotton stockings were exposed.

  Clare managed the last two steps down. In front of the ornate curving staircase, she stood in a daze, turning. On a low, richly upholstered bench, two little girls in costume played quietly together with dolls dressed as they were. Waiting for customers.

  Clare kept turning. Through the archway in the room behind the stairs another slave boy, this one Asian, tried to wield a peacock-feather fan. A trickle of blood ran down the back of his thigh, and tears ran silently down his face.

  Clare turned. A girl in Bo Peep pink, a monkey doll held tight to her shoulder, was sitting on a table with her dress rucked up around her hips, being fed sips of champagne by a laughing man in shirtsleeves and vest.

  And turned: Four girls sang and danced, ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, they all fall down, the nursery rhyme from the plague years, when children died and their bodies were thrown onto burning piles because there were too many to bury.

  And turning: A man carried a beautiful black child in his arms, nuzzling her soft face with his bearded chin, ascending the stairs.

  Turning: Clare felt herself falling.

  The boy, Tyrone, was pointing up the stairs, where Anna Pigeon was coming down. The governess was at his shoulder.

  Clare staggered to the bench where the girls played with their dollies and slumped down as blackness closed around her.

  From somewhere she heard Mackie crying.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Having counted one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, all the way to twenty-Mississippi, Anna started down the stairway. Heroes in books and movies never counted one-Mississippi—at least not out loud—but Anna had learned that twenty seconds of waiting to do something stupid and dangerous was entirely different than twenty seconds to catch a bus. At a rough guess, about seventeen thousand times longer. More like holding one’s breath underwater. She descended carefully, the long gray skirt held tightly in her fists so she wouldn’t trip.

  As she moved delicately down the carpeted steps, trying to look as if she belonged in a nineteenth-century gown in a nest of pedophiles, she brought to mind the photographs of Dana and Vee that Clare had shown her. Both had dark eyes and heart-shaped faces. The younger one—Vee—had lighter hair, cut shorter and with a touch of natural curl.

  The faces would not come into focus. Young children—lucky young children—had yet to have identifying marks carved into their flesh in the form of scars, droops, and broken noses, lines carved by care, capillaries broken by sun and smoke, eyes dulled by disappointment. Other than to those who loved them dearly, one child could look pretty much like another of like age and coloring.

  Anna resolved simply to whisper their names in the ears of any likely candidates. If they were here, they hadn’t been prisoners long enough to have forgotten their birth names.

  Unless they were so traumatized they’d forgotten everything.

  Anna chose not to think about that.

  Reaching the halfway point, where the stairs curved in a graceful sweep so that one might make an entrance in style, she stopped. The real governess, a grim look on her face, was staring up at her, following Tyrone’s pointing finger.

  Snatching her dress tail into a great wad, Anna fled back upstairs. The governess didn’t cry out or otherwise disturb the clients but ran after her. Anna could hear her feet striking the carpet. The woman ran lightly and without effort—Anna was only a woman, after all, and the governess could see she was younger than her quarry and taller and outweighed her by fifteen pounds.

  But I am old and mean and on the side of the angels, Anna thought as she turned the corner at the top of the stairs and grabbed up a waist-high porcelain vase filled with yellow silk gladiolas. Pressing her back against the wall, she held the narrow mouth of the vase so she could swing it like a baseball bat. She’d scarcely planted her feet when the governess, skirts whirling, rounded the corner into the second-floor hall. Anna swung hard.

  The governess threw up an arm. The vase struck in a shower of silk blossoms. The governess grunted with the impact, but the power of the blow was deflected upward. Before Anna could pull it back to try for a more vulnerable area, the woman closed on her with the speed and confidence of an individual accustomed to physical violence. She didn’t try to punch or pry the vase from Anna’s hands; she just plowed in, her shoulder ramming Anna’s chest. Air exploded from Anna’s lungs, and for a terrifying moment she couldn’t breathe. Whipping a forearm over Anna’s windpipe, the governess leaned in with all her weight, her heels braced on the carpet, her face so close Anna could see the tiny hole in the woman’s nostril where she wore a ring and smell the Juicy Fruit gum she’d been chewing.

  Anna had done the very thing she’d scorned the governess for; she had underestimated her adversary. Without enough air to fill her burning lungs or fuel her scattering thoughts, Anna could black out. Once down, she would probably never get up again. She would be murdered in a reeking children’s brothel by a twit half her age with a goddam nose ring.

  “Enough,” Anna growled through clenched jaws and narrowing windpipe. Walking her fingers, spiderlike, along the underside of the arm crushing her throat, she found the woman’s hand. Then she found the web between thumb and forefinger.

  Too busy killing her to bother noticing these tickles, the governess didn’t even twitch her fingers out of Anna’s way. Feeling for the soft spot where she’d learned the pain would be most intense, Anna pinched as hard as her failing consciousness allowed.

  The woman grunted. The arm moved. Not much, but enough Anna could suck in a lungful of air, the literal second wind. Using this newfound strength, she focused every erg of it on the tiny patch between her finger and her thumb. Pain compliance; when negotiations failed there was nothing like it.

  Finally, screaming as much in anger as in pain, the governess backed off, her need to stop the pain overcoming logic. Anna squeezed harder, and she went down on one knee.

  “Shut up,” Anna said. She stepped behind the woman, dropped her hand, and locked her forearm across the governess’s throat, pulling it tight with her opposite hand on the wrist. Twisting, the governess managed to get her chin into the crook of Anna’s arm, but she’d stopped making noise.

  All at once, she went limp, dead weight slumped forward. Anna hoped it was the sleeper hold and not a ruse. Her hopes were dashed in a swift hard shove. Staggering back, Anna caught her bare foot in the bottom of the dress, and the two of them fell to the carpet. The sleeper hold broke, and the governess shoved her fists between Anna’s arm and her own throat.

  Anna abandoned the hold for the tried and true fighting style of women and cats. Catfights were mocked in a man’s world, but Anna had had too many cats not to give them the respect they were due. More than once she’d seen a six-pound tabby turn into a storm of claws and teeth that made grown men quai
l and large dogs flee the room.

  With a low guttural cry, she sank her teeth into the first bare bit of flesh she found, an ear. She raked her nails where she could, pulled hair, slapped, and all the while growled low and fierce.

  Under the insane onslaught, coming as it did from behind, the governess lost her will to stay in the clinch. Throwing herself forward, hampered by the yards of fabric that wadded up around them, she tried to crawl free.

  A small bit of her ear remained between Anna’s teeth. She spit it out. It was not something she would think about now. Or ever, for that matter. Struggling up from her knees, she hurled herself after the crawling woman. Now that the governess knew it wasn’t a prank or a game, but in deadly earnest, she would run for security. Probably the only thing that kept her from shouting the house down was the ingrained need to keep things on a seemingly even keel for what had to be a skittish clientele. Politicians, moguls, movie directors, doctors, lawyers—all the bigwigs could recover from an affair made public. Many could recover from being indicted for fraud, tax evasion, drunk driving, and wife beating. Nobody recovered if the public got even a whiff of the kind of perversion Anna’d seen tonight.

  The taste of blood in her mouth, Anna threw herself on the governess’s back and grabbed the bun at the nape of her neck. Using it as a handle she smashed the other woman’s head against the hardwood floor beside the carpet runner. And again. And again. Blood gushed from the governess’s nose and lips. Anna banged her head down once more, and she went limp. This time she wasn’t playing possum.

  Exhausted, Anna let her weight fall on the inert form beneath her. The battle had lasted no more than sixty seconds, but she had not held back; there were no reserves, and her breath was coming in great gasps. It was probably that which saved the governess from being killed. Customarily, Anna didn’t like killing, maiming, or even causing psychological pain to others. She much preferred life flow along in a peaceful vein with time for listening to the birds sing and watching cocoons open to butterflies, and butterflies as their newborn wings dried. Here in the “fancy house” she wanted to kill or, rather, was indifferent to whether she killed or not. The crimes were too heinous, the hope of rehabilitation too slim, the damage to the victims too great. Some evils deserved no second chances; they merely needed expunging.

  Recovering, she rolled off the unconscious governess. The woman smelled of sweat and expensive perfume. Now Anna smelled of it as well. Under other circumstances she might have liked the scent. From now on she would associate it with vile odiousness. With difficulty she found her feet in the morass of skirts and got up. Breathing returning to normal, she could hear again and listened to see if their tussle had set off any alarms. There was no yelling, no sound of running feet. From below came raucous laughter, the kind she associated with viciousness, but that might have just been her state of mind.

  One floor up was a fat man with a headache or dead. At her feet was a bloody woman. If they lived, either of them, they would be recovering consciousness, hollering for help. She could kill them both and drag the bodies out of sight. That would give her and Clare more time to look for Dana and Vee, but Anna’d lost her killing rage. Necessary as it might be, she couldn’t bring herself to put anyone to death at the moment.

  Since she wasn’t going to turn butcher any time soon, it behooved her to move. The time she and Clare had before they were found out was short. Given the secrecy, moneyed backing, and security of the operation—and that its managers had no qualms about murdering children when they were of no more use—Anna doubted house security would have any qualms about killing her and Clare. Nor would any of the patrons raise a finger to stop it or, once it was done, report it to law enforcement. Anna would simply go missing. Clare was already missing.

  Paul would never know what happened to her.

  Anna had never lost anyone close to her—some had died, but never had anyone gone missing. Reading the ordeals of parents with missing children or brothers and sisters that simply disappeared one day, she always thought that would be infinitely harder to cope with than death. The dreams alone would be devastating: the good dreams of finding the beloved, only to wake up to the truth and the nightmares of where they might be that one would never wake from.

  She could call Paul. Then Paul would call in the cavalry. And what was the problem with that? The more the merrier, the bigger the guns the better; Clare had found what she was looking for, if not whom. The police would look at her differently because of it.

  For a long and miserable second, Anna couldn’t remember where she’d left her cell phone. Then it came back to her: She’d given it to Jordan to carry because there were no pockets in the dress Star lent her. Moving quickly, she frisked the governess. No cell, but a radio. Anna doubted it called out—or if it did it wouldn’t be to anyone she could consider a friend. It would be for internal use.

  Taking it with her, she ran to the next door and threw it open. A man was sitting splayfooted on the edge of a pouf. A tiny girl was stroking his cock and singing the alphabet song. Holding firmly to the doorjamb so she’d not strike the man down with the heaviest object she could find, Anna said, “Girl, come with me. Now!” The child turned at the sound of her voice, the dark brown eyes as lifeless as two buttons sewn onto a Raggedy Ann’s face.

  “What the hell are you thinking, coming in here like this?” Pants around his knees, abusing a little girl, the man had the gall to be affronted. Anna held more tightly to the jamb.

  “Herpes,” she said succinctly. “She’s got it. Come.” With those words, she stepped into the room, grabbed the child by the hand, and led her out. “I’ll send you a clean one,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t lose your place.”

  The door to the Chance had locked behind them. The only way out was through the courtyard Tyrone had mentioned, either through the parking garage or the port door. Between here and there would be whatever thugs the Chance paid for and a bunch of “good decent family men” who didn’t need publicity.

  Bridges burned, the only way was forward. Towing the child, Anna walked purposefully to the next room and snatched open the door. A naked boy about eight was bent over a bed. “God damn it!” Anna roared at a partially dressed man who shared the room. Then, “AIDS, that boy’s infected.” Before the man could react, Anna grabbed the dazed boy and left the room; two children now.

  Their only chance was to create as much confusion as possible. In the next room she yelled, “Fire, evacuate!” The man snuggling with a tiny Hispanic girl dumped her from his lap and ran without a backward glance.

  “Buddy system,” Anna said to the three children, wondering if they had ever heard of it, wondering if they spoke English. The naked boy evidently had. He took the little girl’s hand. The four of them went on.

  The next door Anna thrust open, she cried, “Police raid. Run!” The pedophile ran downstairs without pants or shoes, the white costume shirt flapping over his flabby buttocks. Two more children joined Anna’s forces, twins, African American and no older than seven. The radio she’d shoved down the front of the gray dress began to bleat. “Paula, what the hell is going on?” came a man’s voice from somewhere around her sternum. The bouncers or guards were beginning to notice that all was not right. Clients were streaming down with conflicting stories.

  “Come on, kids. Let’s run.” Anna scooped up the nearest child and ran down the hall, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet. Every door they came to she threw open. The men she sent running. One of the children panicked and followed her abuser. One man, perhaps one rung higher on the evolutionary ladder than his cowardly fellows, carried the child he was molesting with him when Anna yelled, “Fire!”

  After that she stuck to “Police raid.”

  The last door she pulled open was where she’d first begun. The fat man had come around and managed to pull on his trousers. Forgoing the fun of bashing him on the head again, she yelled, “Police raid! Run!”

  He didn’t run. He didn’t even look
particularly alarmed. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. He reached toward the hat stand where he’d draped his jacket and shirt. Behind the coat was a shoulder holster with the butt of an old-fashioned wheel gun sticking out of it.

  It was then that Anna recognized him. He was the man in Candy’s picture, the man who had gone on to become New Orleans’s chief of police. He knew the police raid was a farce because he didn’t call it. For a fat man he moved faster than a striking snake. The gun was in his hand before Anna could divest herself of the child she carried and pull shut the door.

  “You,” the chief snarled at one of the twins, “come over here. Now.” Scared not to, the child ran to him. He grabbed her slender arm and moved the gun from Anna to the child’s temple.

  “Now,” he said to Anna, “who the fuck are you?”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Dropping her head between her knees, Clare forced the darkness to recede. Futilely she wished she’d smoked less and eaten and slept more. When she felt she could stand without passing out, she rose. The girls who were playing with their dolls on the bench when she collapsed had stopped their game and were staring at her. Here in the fancy house falling-down men were surely a greater danger than those who remained sober. The children hadn’t run away. Probably because they would be punished if they did. So they waited for whatever horror might come to them and their dollies.

  “It’s okay,” she managed with a shaky smile. “I won’t hurt you.”

  The eyes got wider, the dollies clutched tighter. They’d heard that before, and it was never true. The only kindness Clare could offer was her absence. Before she left she asked, “Do you know any little girls named Dana or Vee?” and, as an afterthought, “Or Aisha?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Thank you,” Clare said mechanically. Thinking was so hard. She wondered where Jordan was and cursed him for going AWOL. Progressing on legs growing shakier with every move, she stumbled from room to room.