And then the pain hits you. It is spiritual.
* * *
“I am making sense. You know exactly what I mean.”
“Mean, Frankie?” Chandler brushes the gun away from his face as though it were a mosquito.
“You left me in that store. Bleeding out on the floor. My leg blown off.”
Leaves and debris and occasional fat cold drops of rain are darting around the two of you.
“Frankie, I had no choice.”
“My leg. My fucking leg.”
“My hands were tied.”
“You lie.”
“Be reasonable. Now is not the time.”
“No, now is the time. Now.”
“You break my heart, Frank. I’ve always loved you like a son. I took you in. You were just a boy. I raised you like a father would. When your real father wouldn’t. Who do you come to when you’re in trouble? Me. It’s always been me. You’ve always been with me, Frankie.”
“You took me in. You fixed my father. I owe you. I’ll always owe you. But you left me in that store. I won’t leave Billy. I won’t make the same mistake you made.”
“The sins of the father, is that it?”
You put the gun back through your belt.
“I’m going, too. All three of us.” And you realize that you love Chandler. You could never hurt him.
Chandler leads, carrying the empty green Rubbermaid tote. Billy carries the girl. And you are last, using the shovel like a cane, picking your way across the creek and following on into the woods.
This time Burdick’s GPS takes you exactly where you want to go. A ritzy house with nice gardens, and it looks like the grounds are maintained like a golf course.
You talk to a Mexican kid who is hurrying to put down fertilizer before the rain starts. His English is non-existent, but when you say Rajaguru, recognition lights his dark eyes and he points to a four-bay garage up near the house.
You knock on a side entrance of the structure and a small Indian man opens the door. You flash the shield and fear springs up in the little man’s face. And then recognition. Briefly, escape. And finally, resignation.
Chandler’s humming really bothers you. Nursery rhymes. It’s like he’s in a good mood. Like his spirits are uplifted. The three of you are going to bury a small child in the woods. Bury her alive. It is not a time for humming or high spirits.
He hands Frank a piece of white chalk.
“Here. We don’t want to make the same mistake as Hansel and Gretel. You’ll find out what lost is. Mark a tree every time I tell you.
You are tired and you sit down for a minute, Cris resting in your lap. Frank is far stronger than you. He should be the one to carry Cris, but you want it to be you. And it is harder for him to get around in the woods with his leg.
Frank marks the peeling paper bark of a Birch tree with a white chalk slash.
“Let’s go, Mr. Man,” Chandler says to you.
You get to your feet and march deeper into the woods. The wind is calmer now, and you can hear rain in the canopy of tree crowns above, but it is not yet falling to the loamy earth.
A flash of lightning illuminates what you are doing, and thunder follows in protest.
You are breathing through a handkerchief because of the odor. It’s not strong; in fact it’s very faint. Probably been several days since a batch was cooked here. But you know from your stint on the Narcotics Enforcement Unit that the chemicals can linger for weeks and turn your lungs into Swiss cheese. You’re careful about touching any surfaces for the same reason. That shit can migrate right through your skin. It sticks to walls, furniture, clothing. Once inside you, it targets your organs.
Uday Rajaguru sits at a small desk where he presumably keeps track of worker hours, places orders for equipment and supplies, and whatever else might be required of a man of his position. Like the Mexican boy you talked to outside, Uday is probably an illegal. He offered no protest when you pushed your way into the garage. He’s made no commotion or whined about his “rights.”
At first, you passed the ether smell off as starter fluid. Just one of the odors you could expect in a garage workshop with mowers and small engine machines. Maybe the tell-tale rotten egg odor was from a lingering beer fart. It happens. But you add in the sharp ammonia twang, and there’s just no way around it. Someone’s been cooking meth.
“Uday, listen, you want to mix up the occasional batch of bathtub speed, hey, far as I’m concerned, have at it. Knock yourself out. That’s not my concern. That is not why I’m here today. Not my circus, not my monkeys.” All of which is true, but you have every intention of stopping back by the sheriff’s office on your way out of town to alert them to the possible existence of a methamphetamine lab. Chemicals from byproduct fumes could be leaching into the main house, poisoning the family that lives there. Wreaking havoc with their health.
“No, Uday, we’re here today to talk about photography.”
“I am rehabilitated,” he says in a thick accent. Rah-hee-beel-ee-tated.
“We know you’re rehabilitated, Uday. We know that. And we’re not here to dig up the past. Not at all.”
Burdick jumps in with, “And your wife. I bet she knows you’re rehabilitated too.” Which is not helpful. It breaks your rhythm and puts Uday on more of a defensive track than you wanted him. At this point, you want Uday to see light—a way out—not more darkness.
“Why do you persecute me? I have done nothing wrong. I am a good worker.” Peerseecute.
“And that’s what we’ll tell your employer. And your parole officer. That you’re a good worker. That you’re rehabilitated. That you’re not cooking crystal.”
“Why do you do this to me? I don’t hurt nobody.”
“Do you know John Chandler Norris?”
“Maybe I think I need lawyer?”
“And where the fuck are you going to get a lawyer, Uday?”
“Know what they do to your kind in prison?”
“Or India. Indian prison, if you should get deported. You and your wife.”
Uday does something with his eyes, which you take to be an internal struggle. A moral reckoning. But it’s difficult to know how much of it is play-acting. Calculated.
“I am so ashamed,” he says and buries his face in his hands. “So ashamed. I have the picture. He make me take.”
Uday has rolled the dice. He’s kinda-sorta admitting that he has lewd and or pornographic images of children. This makes sense, though. It’s simple possession. He does not create this type of material on his own. Never has. He just buys it. And he realizes that even if the cops play dirty and don’t let him walk in exchange for information, he is in a far better position copping to the possession of indecent images than running a meth lab.
“Have you ever bought pictures from Norris?”
Morally, you made the decision long ago that the tradeoff was worth it. Letting the little monsters go so you could catch the big monsters. The world, you knew, was disappointingly full of men like Uday. Men who had secret stashes on their computers, in safety deposit boxes, under their mattresses—stashes that they took out in dim rooms and masturbated to. Sometimes, you knew, these stashes were handed down from father to son. They are sick pathetic weak human beings, each of whom you would be happy to crush under the heel of your shoe, leaving behind only a faint red smear that would disappear with time. But you can’t do that. And these men are far too common to erase. They are just weaklings who hide in the dark with their perversion that they would rather indulge than let go. They are not the big monsters. They do not entice children. They do not molest children. They do not photograph and videotape and film children. They do not steal childhoods. Except, of course, they do.
If Uday gives up Chandler, will you really let him walk? You’ll decide that later.
You repeat the question. “Have you ever bought pictures from Norris?”
Uday looks uncertain. Trying to make up his mind.
“It’s okay,” Burdick says. “
We’re not after you. We want Norris. You won’t get into any trouble.”
Which for once you are glad Burdick spoke up. It’s on him. On his soul. Caught in the devil’s bargain. Welcome to it, Burdick.
Uday reaches under the knee hole of his small work desk. He retrieves a manila envelope that had been taped to the underside of the drawer and hands it to Burdick.
“From Chandler.” Shandleer.
Burdick shuffles through the Polaroids—my God but pedophiles love Polaroid cameras—and then hands them to you. You look through them. It is not the hard stuff. You are glad for that. It is a series of photographs of a young girl in provocative, playful poses. If these were in a family picture album, no one would think twice about any of them. The single most revealing shot shows the girl in a pair of panties without a top. She appears to be asleep in all of them. This is low-grade stuff. And in its way, you find it far more disturbing than the hardcore material. Because as disturbing as the explicit images are, at least you can connect the dots in some crude fashion. At least you can somewhat understand that videos and photos of children posed or engaged in sexual situations still has a sexual element to it. There is provocation. But with these childhood poses, you just cannot on any level comprehend that an image of a sleeping child propped up by a stuffed animal could evoke a sexual response in an adult human being.
You imagine what Uday would look like under the heel of your shoe. The sound his bones would make as you crushed them. The red smear he would leave behind.
You slide the Polaroids back inside the envelope. You reflect on the disturbing aspect that the girl is asleep in all of them. Propped up. Posed. But asleep. Pale skin. With dark circles under her eyes. Like she might have been drugged. Or had recently been sick.
You do not yet know it, but the girl in the photographs is Crisium Lovejoy.
The rain comes down so hard you can hardly breathe. The ground is sodden and it sucks at your shoes, making it hard to walk. There doesn’t seem to be any purpose to the path that Chandler chooses. He turns, goes forward, goes backward, and snaps his fingers at Frank whenever he wants a tree marked with chalk.
He stops and drops the plastic tote. He motions to Frank for the shovel. Chandler takes the shovel, then holds it out to you. You shake your head.
You realize that Chandler must wear makeup because mascara has melted around his eyes and is running down his face.
“I’m holding Cris.”
“You little fuck. Take the shovel.”
“No.”
“You better have a talk with your little buddy, Frankie. He’s playing with fire.”
Frank doesn’t say anything. He is picking at the pimple on his face. The pimple he has picked at so much that now it looks infected.
Chandler thrusts the shovel, almost hitting you. “I said take it.”
You shake your head and a hundred yards away lightning strikes a tall pine tree, splitting it in half, right down the middle, and the three of you watch the tree fall and smell the smoke and ozone as it wafts down to you.
“See,” Chandler says. “God don’t like ugly.” And he starts to dig. “When we get back, I’m going to show you what pain is, my little friend.”
“I’m already in pain.”
“No. But you will experience it. You will know it.” He stares you down and the black drip of mascara running down his face disturbs you.
You start coughing, issuing a red mist from your mouth.
You turn to Frank.
“Frank, we can’t do this. It’s wrong.”
“She won’t get hurt. It’s only for a little while. In case the police come to look for her.”
“She’s sick.”
Frank takes out his little baggie of powder, bends over to shelter it from the rain, and bumps up from the end of his car key.
He sniffs and says, “It’s only for a little while. We can’t really back out now. We’ve done it. We can’t take her back and call the whole thing off. Just for a little while, okay? This will get you what you want.”
“I want it to stop.”
You hear the sharp snick of the shovel blade cutting into the wet earth.
You maneuver the sedan through the rain and pass the turnoff to return to Chandler Norris’s trailer.
“Missed the turn,” Burdick says.
“We gotta stop by the S.O.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’”
“I mean why are we going back to the Sheriff’s Office?”
“So we can tell him that we’re going to arrest Norris,” you say. “And they can send someone out to arrest the Iranian.”
“I believe Mr. Rajaguru is Indian. And I thought we promised him a pass if he gave up Norris.”
“I changed my mind. He’s a pervert. And he’s running a meth lab.”
“Doubtful. Maybe he cooks a little, but I’d hardly call it a lab. It just smelled like a groundskeeper’s shed to me. Fertilizer and fumes.”
Burdick shrugs. That shrug says a lot of things to you. Things you don’t care to hear. Fuck him. Fuck Burdick.
“I know you know about me,” you say. It’s something you should have said a long time ago.
There is only the sound of the wipers, wheels on wet pavement, and rain battering the car.
“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just back me up.”
“I always back you up,” Burdick says. “And you need to let me talk sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just back me up.”
“. . . N-G-O . . . B-I . . . N . . . G-O . . . and Bingo was . . .”
The hole is deep. Filling with muddy water. The shovel strikes into it one final time and lifts out mud and root debris.
“His name-o.”
Out of breath, wet and mudstreaked, Chandler tosses the shovel aside. He picks up the empty Rubbermaid tote and wedges it into the hole. It doesn’t quite fit, but you can see he is tired and not willing to widen the hole anymore. He pushes down and jiggles it, forces it using his bodyweight, until finally it slips out of sight beneath the ground.
Chandler turns to you, his arms outstretched. You sit against the trunk of a tree, Cris in your lap. You look at Chandler and shake your head.
“No,” you say.
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“I mean no.”
You appraise Chandler’s face. There is a vacancy there. He has excused himself from the reality of what he is doing. And you understand that at this point he could do anything. Kill you. Kill Cris. You doubt Frank could stop him. You doubt Frank would try to stop him. For it seems that Frank, too, has excused himself from this present reality. Frank has jumped down a rabbit hole of white powder to escape.
“I mean that I’ll do it. Let me do it.”
“Well, could you hurry the fuck up and do it?”
You carry Cris to the hole. You are going to nestle her into the Rubbermaid container, but you see that water has got into the bottom of it. Dark dirty water. You lay her on the ground and start scooping the water out with your hands.
“There’s no time for that.”
“She’ll drown.”
“Christ on the cross! She has the hose for air. She’ll just get a little wet.”
“Fuck you,” you say. “You don’t know what wet is.”
And you resume drying out the inside of the container. Chandler must have heard something in your voice, because he walks away from you. And after a minute you’ve got most of the water out, but it seems like it just creeps back in, and you hear Chandler say your name, a repentant whisper.
“Billy-Boy?”
You look up and the shovel blade catches you full in the face, just under your jaw. And you are out.
* * *
When you wake up, it feels like only a little bit of time has passed. Frank is patting your cheek. Rousing you. And you wonder what happened to your protector. Why isn’t he disemboweling Chandler wi
th the shovel? But you know why. It is because he loves Chandler. In you, Frank sees himself as he might have once been, even if for just a moment. And he wants to protect that. But in Chandler he sees the man who is his fatherprotectorlover. And you can never be more important than that.
Chandler picks Cris up from the ground. “My sweet,” he says and gives her an air kiss the same way a housewife might pretend-kiss a roast before popping it in the oven.
You crawl over to the hole and look down at Cris curled in the container. The right side of your face is swollen and it’s hard for you to swallow. You remember the butterscotch in your pocket. You reach down and pry open her furled fingers and place the sun-colored candy inside her clenched fist.
Chandler snaps the lid on and feeds the section of garden hose through the X cut on the top. He drops the shovel inches from your face where you lay on the ground.
“Guess who’s going to shovel now?”
You pick up the shovel and struggle to your feet.
“And if you even think about taking a swing at me with that thing, I’ll kill you and put you in the box with the girl.”
And how could it have come to this? What sequence of events has led you to these dim wet woods and put a shovel in your hand with which to bury alive a small child? A butterfly flaps its wings in China and a hurricane forms off the coast of Florida. Is it chaos? Or is it fate? What brought you here? Were the choices yours, or did something outside of you conspire to bring you here? Did a butterfly flap its wings, and that puff of air is what carried you here?
Unforeseen and unpredictable.
In other words, not your fault.
“Okay, Billy. My boy. Shovel.”
And you do. Wet shovelful after wet shovelful you dump onto the box, filling the hole. Your head is throbbing, and something inside you feels broken. The swelling in your face has affected your throat, constricted it. You have to swallow over and over to keep it open or your throat will swell shut.
Abnormal Man: A Novel Page 11
