Strawgirl (Bo Bradley Mysteies, Book Two)

by Abigail Padgett

  "I am your grandmother now, Hannah," Eva went on. A note of authority rang in her voice. "And this is our way. Samantha and your mother are gone, and your hurt is terrible. You must let some of the hurt out, or you will be very sick. The water is here to take your hurt away ... now."

  Bo watched as Hannah turned her head to face the Indian woman. Slowly the small hands formed fists, extended, and curled tightly again. The child's face contorted as tears sprang up and a rasping hiss escaped her bared teeth.

  "Hold her," Eva told Bo. "Don't let her hurt herself."

  Hannah began to pound the water with her fists, and then to kick. In seconds she was thrashing violently, flinging gallons of water like liquid groundfire from the tub.

  "Fine, that's just right," Eva encouraged until the girl relaxed in exhaustion, sobbing quietly.

  Only then did Bo notice the crowd of people standing silently in the hall.

  "We were afraid the chanting would disturb her," a young woman in a SUNY Albany sweatshirt addressed Eva Broussard, "so we haven't done the morning chant yet. Is she going to be all right?"

  "She's much better," Eva answered, taking a stack of clean clothes from the grandmotherly woman Bo had seen on the porch yesterday afternoon. "Aren't you, Hannah?"

  It was in the set of the child's shoulders. Bo saw it before the ramifications became obvious. Hannah allowed Bo to help her into clean white panties and her Minnie Mouse shirt, and pointed to the beads still pinned to the nightgown on the floor. Bo retrieved the amulet and fastened it to the sweatshirt as the child watched, but said nothing.

  "Hannah?" Eva repeated.

  Hannah's wide lips clamped over her teeth for a moment, and then went slack. In her eyes a deep fear struggled with her need to remain attached. Eva and Bo exchanged a glance of troubled acceptance. To push the little girl right now would be disastrous.

  "It's okay if you don't want to talk." Bo smiled, hiding her dismay. "We know how scared you are. You don't have to talk until you aren't so scared."

  The only person who might lead them to Samantha's killer had just been pulled from the shock of grief only to stop talking. Hannah Franer had elected to become mute, not out of rational thinking but out of a stark terror operating in the deepest channels of her mind. Somebody named Goody had told Samantha her mama would die if she revealed what he'd done to her. But Samantha had told her big sister, Hannah. Bo could almost see the two, tucked in their Raggedy Ann sheets, one of them bleeding internally, sick, frightened. Sammi had told her big sister what the man had done, and then Sammi had died. Next Bonnie Franer had crumbled under the intolerable weight of her distorted grief and taken her own life. And that left Hannah with irrefutable proof that to talk is to die.

  "We're going downstairs for a little while," Eva told her after settling her in a clean bed and assigning one of the group to read aloud from a book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. Hannah didn't seem to hear.

  "Repetitive rhyme and meter are comforting to children," the Indian woman said as she led Bo and LaMarche to an alcove beside one of the fireplaces. "The brain of a child is not like an adult's. Somehow we've lost sight of that." Bo noticed that the woman's hands were trembling as Napoleon Pigeon laid a glazed pottery tea service on an end table, and padded away.

  LaMarche noticed as well, and poured the tea with deliberate indolence. The ploy gave Eva time to regain her composure, and gave Bo an opportunity to contemplate what the term "gentleman" must have meant when it still meant anything. Her grandmother, she thought while admiring the twig chair Eva occupied, would have joined Andrew LaMarche at the altar within minutes of his proposal. Any altar. But Bridget O'Reilly's fondness for "the laddies" had been legendary. Bo monitored a similar proclivity in herself like a radioactive isotope. Dangerous when not properly contained.

  "Elective mutism in children is fairly rare these days," he mentioned conversationally. "Understandable in Hannah's case, but she will need to be seen by a child psychiatrist as quickly as possible. Bo, I don't see that you have any choice but to—"

  "I am a psychiatrist," Eva Broussard interjected. "I don't specialize in children, but I'm the last available adult this child knows and trusts. She must stay with me. The next days and weeks will be critical. Surely you can see that."

  LaMarche smoothed his mustache with a thumb and stared into his tea. "Dr. Broussard, could you explain exactly what these people, including Paul Massieu, are doing here? And could you outline your reasons for choosing to believe that Massieu is innocent of Samantha's injuries and death?"

  "Andy!" Bo slammed her cup into its saucer, creating a ripple of clove-scented air in the alcove. "You believed he was innocent from the beginning. Has the mother's suicide changed your mind? And have you forgotten that this is my investigation?"

  Eva Broussard stood and breathed the steam from her tea. "Dr. LaMarche is asking the obvious questions. Here are the answers. In two years of close professional association with Paul Massieu, I have seen nothing to suggest that he's capable of sexual assault of any kind, particularly sexual assault on a child. His relationship with Bonnie was a healthy one, despite differences in their backgrounds and education. Paul is an unusual man, especially by American standards. More like a European. He does not feel any need to conform to some model he cannot fit. An academic, he teaches cultural anthropology at McGill, devotes his leisure time to camping and the pursuit of numerous interests that center on salvaging cultural artifacts ..."

  "What cultural artifacts?" Bo asked, recognizing that kiddie porn might just fall in that category.

  Eva Broussard leaned against the fieldstone wall, one moccasinned foot propped behind her. "Adirondack guideboats, old Huguenot cookbooks in French, and eighteenth-century Roman Catholic ghost stories involving Montreal's numerous convents and monasteries. Paul collects original wine label artwork, belongs to an international organization determined to preserve the oldest known names of streets and roads, and actually lost a finger attempting to rescue a millwheel destined for extinction in Vermont. In addition to that—"

  "We see your point," Andrew LaMarche admitted from deep within an overstuffed plaid love seat facing Eva. "And none of Paul's interests, insofar as you know, have involved the usual pastimes of pedophiles?"

  "No. Paul has no interests that could be used to attract children. No video games, sports or soda fountain equipment, toys or pets. With the exceptions of Hannah and Samantha, I feel safe in saying that Paul has a minimal awareness of children."

  Bo couldn't restrain herself. "What was he going to do with a millwheel?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Eva answered. "It was years ago. Before he came to me for help with the experience that has created this community."

  "The San Diego police say Paul's a member of a cult." Bo took the cue. "Is this some kind of cult?" She couldn't shake a sense that the whole interrogation was pointless. That they might as well have been whistling at each other through straws while something terrible grew worse, unchecked.

  "Paul and several of the others here report having seen silvery, humanoid figures at night in these mountains. Paul and three others recall being medically examined by these figures. Those with this experience generally attribute it to contact with extraterrestrial life-forms. The experience was intense and transforming for them. They and others who believe in this experience gather here. That's all. Scarcely a cult, as the term is properly used."

  "And Paul isn't delusional?" Bo croaked in disbelief.

  "My question as well," echoed Andrew LaMarche.

  "And Paul's," Eva continued, sitting to pour more tea. "He came to me fearing that he was going mad. You'll have to trust my assessment that he shows no evidence of any psychiatric disorder. I can't explain what happened to him. But my purpose in establishing this community is to study that experience."

  The sound of padding feet alerted them to the presence of Hannah, a leggy wraith in her sweatshirt and underpants. Glaring at LaMarche, the child looked questioningly at Bo and then fl
ung herself against Eva. The dark flesh around her eyes made her look made-up, like a classic Oriental dancer. The effect was eerie.

  "I'm right here, Hannah," Eva reassured the child. "And I'm glad to see you. Why don't you get your jeans and shoes now, and then you and I will see what's in the refrigerator to drink."

  As Hannah scuttled away, Eva turned to face Bo. "I will come to California," she said. "I will see to it that Hannah is in the jurisdiction of your agency. It will be better for her to see that Paul is alive, in any event. But she must stay with me."

  "What are you going to do?" Andrew LaMarche asked after Eva had coaxed some orange juice into Hannah and taken her out to walk near the lake.

  "There are options." Bo sighed. "California may not be the best one. Eva could take Hannah up to Canada for a while. It would take weeks, even months for the paperwork to extradite them back to California. Hannah must stay with Eva if she's to come out of this at all intact. She's like the mother ..."

  "I can see that." LaMarche nodded, buttoning the cuff of his shirt recently returned from the lodge's dryer. "She's a nervous, delicate child ..."

  Bo shook her hair, now a mat of damp tangles. "She's not delicate, for God's sake, Andy, it's more serious than that. If anything she's tough as nails to have made it this far. When will people stop embroidering these cute little terms for life-threatening situations?"

  His puzzled look alerted Bo to the intensity of her own words.

  "I'm on a soapbox, right? I'm overreacting. She's just a kid with a lot of losses. But Andy," Bo slapped the table where the tea service sat cooling, "it's more than that. The mother's a suicide. That doesn't happen in regular people no matter what the stress. It takes a certain ... imbalance. Hannah's got the problem, too. I've seen it. My sister ..."

  Bo stopped herself and toyed with the hem of the caftan she was wearing.

  "I'd forgotten," LaMarche said softly. "Didn't she ...?"

  Bo looked up from the wool fabric. "Not an easy word, is it? As manic depression goes, I was lucky. I got the mania, mostly. Laurie got the depression. And yes, she committed suicide when she was twenty."

  The gray eyes showed pain. "I'm sorry, Bo. No wonder you're upset."

  Bo stood and walked to a window overlooking a small creek. Its splashing filled the silence. "Just trust me on this, Andy. I'm going to have to do something a little irregular."

  "Irregular? What are you talking about?"

  "Eva wants to take Hannah back to California, to be near Paul. She's right when she says it will improve Hannah's sense of security. The child has lost her sister and her mother within twenty-four hours. Paul Massieu has been a father to her. He's all she has left."

  "But Paul's in jail."

  "There'll be a bond. Surely Eva will pay it. Paul will be free until his trial, if the real perp isn't caught first."

  "So what's the problem?"

  Bo pushed up the sleeves of the woven caftan, and then pulled them back down. Her hands were still cold. "The problem is the system. My system. The one that sent me here to bring Hannah back."

  LaMarche leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. The body language of mistrust. Bo had expected it.

  "I can certify Eva Broussard as a temporary foster parent, and she's already established a relational claim to Hannah by adopting her into her tribe as an Iroquois. That relationship will stand. It's legal. Or at least I think it is. The problem is that even though I can certify Eva, and even though she's technically Hannah's grandmother now, CPS will never allow Hannah to stay with Eva."

  LaMarche shook his head. "Why not?"

  "Because it's not the way the system works. In particular it's not the way my supervisor works. Madge goes by the book. Temporary foster care certifications are only used in emergency situations when a close relative or family friend steps in to save a child from going to strangers. And while I think Eva matches that profile, Madge won't. If I take Hannah back as Eva's grandchild, Hannah will have to go to an Indian foster home for weeks, maybe months, while Eva establishes residency and jumps through hoops for foster care licensing. Hannah's mental state is too fragile for that, or for any foster home. It would destroy her."

  "You may be projecting, Bo. Kids are resilient. They snap back more easily than—"

  Bo grabbed a copy of Adirondack Magazine and threw it against the twig chair. "Why did I know I could count on you to remain stone deaf to what I'm saying? Hannah isn't just a kid, she's a special kid who's just lost her world, to quote a pediatrician I once knew. She has to remain under the care of the one person with whom she feels secure. If she's torn away and sent to strangers, we could lose her."

  "You're not suggesting," his tone was distant, professional, "that Hannah may try to ... harm herself, are you?"

  "Eight-year-olds, even troubled eight-year-olds, rarely attempt suicide," Bo said through clenched teeth. "But they do learn to live in fantasy, fail to cope. If Hannah is ripped from the last person she has on earth and forced to live among strangers right now, she may very well vanish into a world of her own making. Some dim world inside her own head. That cannot be allowed to happen."

  "This little girl isn't you, Bo. More to the point, she's not your sister. You've lost your objectivity." LaMarche's voice bore an impersonal sympathy. "Maybe you should rethink your decision to stop the lithium. You're getting too involved."

  Bo felt the flush racing up her cheeks, her hair rising imperceptibly from her throbbing scalp. "Here is what we're going to do," she said in a deliberate monotone. "I'm going back alone today. I will say that Eva has fled to Canada with Hannah. The two of them will secretly fly out later, and rent a place. We'll secure Paul Massieu's release, and Hannah will be able to spend time with him. I'm convinced this plan is in Hannah's best interests. I ask only that you keep your mouth shut. Will you do that?"

  His bushy eyebrows became one bristled rope above his eyes. "You're asking me to jeopardize my entire career by withholding information from the police and Child Protective Services, and all on the word of a ..." He bit his lip and looked at the floor.

  "Of a crazy woman? That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? Overlooking, of course, the fact that you've already withheld information from the police . . ." Bo stood straight and felt an astonishing calm in spite of her outrage. Why had she not expected this from him? She'd certainly expected it from everybody else. Tears swam in her eyes but she blinked them away. "Yes, I'm asking you to bend the rules on the word of a crazy woman. On the word of a woman who's been in psychiatric hospitals, in restraints, even. A woman who has to take psychiatric medication at times, and who isn't taking any at the moment. Are we abundantly clear about what I'm asking?"

  Andrew LaMarche didn't return her direct gaze, but instead rose and walked to the door. "I'll keep quiet if you'll agree to let me check on Hannah at least weekly. That's the only way I can go along with this. But Bo," he turned to glance at the stairs from which a Gregorian chant drifted, "nobody's going to believe you."

  "Oh, yes they will," Bo whispered as the door closed behind him.

  On a low table near the plaid love seat was a phone. After dialing 619 and the information number, Bo took a deep breath. "Could I have a new San Diego listing for a psychologist named Cynthia Ganage?" she asked, and wrote the number on a matchbook advertising snowshoes.

  Chapter 13

  In his small office with its view of bamboo plants screening the boy's club dumpsters, John D. Litten signed a name carefully to each of a stack of documents. The quality-control response form for a supplier of volleyball nets. A work order for the June groundskeeping contract service, identical to the May work order. Copy for a classifieds ad that would notify job-seekers that the Bayview Boy's Club needed one bus driver, weekends, and a short-order cook, weekdays four to six. The name he signed was "James Brenner," a halfback who died at fifteen of an undiagnosed heart valve deformity during a high school football game in Dalton, Georgia, fourteen years ago. John Litten's signature
, an efficient scrawl practiced to resemble that of a doctor, gave no clue that its writer had once been Jonny Dale Litten of Estherville, South Carolina. Jonny Dale had lived with Gramma in a trailer on "Poot Hill," right over the dump. John D. lived in a downtown loft apartment overlooking San Diego Bay. A loft apartment in a building gutted and refurbished with exposed beams and brushed-chrome doors to attract architects, photographers, designers. Half the units in the building were used as offices, empty at night. No one around to hear anything. And John D. Litten was very, very careful.

  At the slightest hint of trouble he moved on, followed the wind to the next big city where he could be invisible and do exactly what he wanted. And it was time to move again. The memory of yesterday began to throb in his crotch. The delicious child, pink as a rosebud as she giggled and squirmed in his lap. He'd lost control, but it was so good! Too bad the kid had died. He hadn't meant to go that far, but it was just too good to stop. And the videotape, showing a masked clown named Goody at erotic play with a naked cherub, would be worth some bucks later. Big bucks.

  Beneath the Formica-topped desk John Litten felt a stiffening inside the gray tropical worsteds he always wore with the navy blazer. A navy blazer identical to one worn by the director of United Way. And the chief of the club's advisory council. And the Methodist minister from a wealthy suburban church who came two Wednesday nights a month to teach a Bible class. John Litten knew exactly how to blend in, to look like what people wanted to see. Except his blazer had a Pierre Cardin label and his gray tie with pinpoint navy polka dots was pure silk, from Saks. Underneath, he wasn't identical at all; he was better. Classier. And smarter.

  The hallmark Litten jug ears had been surgically trimmed and contoured to lie attractively flat against his head. The baby-fine mouse-colored hair was razor-cut and given volume by an imported thickener. His crooked, rotting teeth had been capped by the United States Navy, which had also taught him how to order and distribute supplies. John Litten could get a job just about anywhere.