River of Glass

by Jaden Terrell

  “That doesn’t sound like something he would do?”

  She raised her hands, palms up. After a long moment, she said, “He has much anger in him.”

  “Toward women.”

  “Toward everybody. But yes, toward women. I will tell you a story.”

  Khanh opened her mouth, and I held up a hand. Wait.

  “We were very young. Karlo had a wife then, Sonia, and a baby girl. He loved them very much. It was a happy time. You would not have known him.”

  She was right. I tried without success to reconcile the man she’d described with the one who had snapped a girl’s neck and shoved her into a dumpster. She went on. “I was engaged to marry a boy named Pyotr. We loved each other since we were children. One day, there was bombing in our village. Karlo was in the field, plowing, and when the bombing stopped, we all ran to see who was hurt, who needed help. Karlo’s house was destroyed, and in the rubble we found the bodies of his wife and baby girl. His wife . . .” She lowered her gaze. Her hand tightened around the cup. “She was naked. And Pyotr . . . he was with her. They had been . . . together. Karlo changed after that. He joined the military the next day, fighting the Serbian oppressors.”

  “That war’s been over for a long time.”

  “There is always war somewhere.”

  “And with war come the spoils of war.”

  Her cheeks pinked. “You think he rapes women, but no. I think he has never touched a woman after that. Not that way.”

  I must have looked skeptical, because she took a deep breath and leaned forward, punctuating her words with staccato jabs of her finger. “He thinks sex is filthy. Disgusting. And women who do it are the same. He is proud of his control, that he does not lower himself to this.”

  It fit what we’d learned from Amber. He hadn’t tried to sleep with her. He’d jerked off while she danced and called her nasty names. Angry at her for being a whore. Angry at himself, maybe, for wanting what she offered.

  I said, “Is that why you never married?”

  “When we first came to America, I met a man. We went out a few times. Dinner, a movie. One day that man disappeared. No body, nothing like that, but nobody ever saw him again.”

  “You think Karlo did that?”

  “I love my brother. But I think it is safer for everyone if I stay away from men.”

  I said, “Some of the people we spoke with . . . they thought Karlo might be hurting you.”

  “My brother loves me. He uses his fist sometimes, but that is the way of things, no?” Her fingertips brushed absently at her jawline. There might have been a shadow there, a healing bruise beneath her makeup, but I wasn’t sure if it was really there or if I was only seeing what I expected to see.

  “No,” I said. “That is not the way of things.”

  “I will tell you another story,” she said. “It happened last spring, Karlo finds a bird under my maple tree. It’s a young bird, fallen from the nest. I see in my brother’s face he intends to rescue it. It is still dazed, its little mouth gaping. Karlo cups it in his hands to lift it back into the tree. It begins to struggle. It’s frightened, poor thing, and it pecks him, pecks his finger. And just like that, he snaps its neck.” She looked down at her lap. “I am an intelligent woman. I do not peck.”

  “You’re pecking now,” I said. “Just by talking to us.”

  Khanh stood up, walked to the window and looked out through the prisms to the yard outside. The rosebuds were splashes of color against the green leaves. She said, “You man disappear. Why you not tell police?”

  Eyes averted, Leda set her cup and saucer carefully on the tray. “What would I tell them? There was no evidence of foul play. He was just . . . gone. My brother is very good at being a soldier.”

  I said, “He’s not being a soldier now. He’s just hurting women.”

  She stared down at her hands, clasped so tightly that the knuckles were white. Then, “Maybe this is possible. If he sees these women as whores. He would not think of them as people who matter. And . . . I think he does not think rape is wrong if it happens to an enemy.”

  “And women are the enemy.”

  “Not all women.” She looked away, but not in time to hide the sudden moisture in her eyes. “A girl who was pure . . . if it happened through no fault of her own . . .”

  I thought of how the Serbian soldiers had systematically raped Bosnian and Croatian women in order to break them and demoralize their men. Thought of something she’d said earlier—Beautiful things but fragile. Like life. She gave a strained laugh, made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, as you said, that was all a long time ago. This woman you think he took . . . is she good girl?”

  Khanh’s head snapped around. “She have good heart.”

  “But maybe a little bit wild, yes? I do not like to think my brother would do these things, but I think . . . if she is a little bit wild . . . it is possible.”

  I said, “Who are his friends? Who does he hang out with?”

  “His friends are all dead. He has no friends.”

  “How about business associates?”

  “He never talks business with me.”

  I blew out a frustrated breath. “Does the name Mat Troi mean anything to you?”

  “No. Why? Is he one of these traffickers of women?”

  “We think so.” I leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything at all?”

  “No. Not about these men, the selling of women. But if this is true, you should know this about Karlo . . . he can turn his heart off, like a machine. You know he was a mercenary. What you do not know . . . his specialty was breaking prisoners.”

  A small sound came from the back of Khanh’s throat.

  “Tuyet is strong,” I said to Khanh, though I had no idea if this was true. “She’ll find a way to hang on until we find her.”

  Khanh moaned. “She not know I come for her. She think she all alone.”

  “Does she know about your arm?” I said, “About the mine-field?”

  Khanh nodded.

  I put my arm around her, felt her shoulders tremble. “Then she knows you’re coming.”

  Tuyet

  The punishment pit was dank, half a foot of brackish water lapping at the feet and haunches of the three women who squatted there. Each had claimed a separate wall of the pit for her own, Tuyet on the south, Hong across from her on the north, Beetle between them on the west. A flash of pink caught Tuyet’s eye—the rippling flesh of an earthworm lacing itself into the earth beside her face. She stretched toward it, dug her fingers into the dirt and came away with a handful of black earth. She rifled through it with a forefinger until the worm lay naked and wriggling in her palm.

  “Hey,” she called to Hong, who huddled silently against the opposite wall. “Hey!”

  Beetle watched from across the pit with flat, reptilian eyes. A predatory stare. Tuyet tore her gaze away from Beetle and said again, “Hey!”

  Hong didn’t answer. She hadn’t answered for the past two days, sinking deeper and deeper into herself. She no longer went to the farthest corner of the pit to relieve herself, choosing instead to soil herself where she lay. Perhaps she had a point—the rainwater around their feet was rank with their waste anyway—but Tuyet, perhaps still clinging to some shred of humanity, perhaps in the grip of an irrational stubbornness, refused to foul herself.

  She sloshed over to Hong, keeping to the center of the pit. Away from Beetle. Away from the shallow cleft on the opposite wall, where a mound of jumbled skulls and bones rose from the dark water, shadows curled around them like burial rags. It seemed darker there, as if the sun itself feared to disturb the dead.

  A breeze caressed her cheek. Like the fingers of dead women, she thought, and shivered.

  She stretched out a hand and brushed the hair from Hong’s face. The older girl moaned and covered her eyes with her hands. A pang of guilt shot through Tuyet’s chest. Hong should not be here. The kindest of them all, she had bee
n taken because Tuyet’s confession had not come quickly enough. That knowledge was a weight in Tuyet’s stomach.

  “Look,” Tuyet said, opening her fist. “You have half.”

  Hong made no move toward the worm. Across the pit, Beetle came to her feet.

  Tuyet plucked the worm from her palm and bit it in half, felt grit and slime and the slight resistance of the worm’s flesh between her teeth. There wasn’t much taste, nothing but earth and rain and a sudden rush of energy she knew was all in her mind. For days, she had lived on worms and grubs and the occasional scrap that sailed into the pit from above.

  Those scraps gave her hope. She told herself they meant the men intended to keep her alive, and if they meant to keep her alive, they would feed her soon. Starvation aged a woman, made her old before her time. A used-up, shriveled husk would bring a poor price. The men would want her to be beautiful again, and so there would be a limit to her punishment.

  An image of her grandmother haggling over the price of octopus came to her, and tears sprang to her eyes. She shook her head to banish the memory, but it was as if that moment in Mat Troi’s bed, that moment when she had summoned up her loved ones, had broken the walls she had built in her mind. Other memories flooded in, so strong they drove her to her knees.

  Her mother’s hand on her forehead, her grandmother’s cracked voice singing a ridiculous folk song. Good memories followed by a rush of shameful ones, a harsh word to her mother, an argument about her life in the bars, the time she’d stolen her grandmother’s earrings, the time she’d tossed her hair and called her mother ugly and her grandmother a traitor. She was an ungrateful daughter. Probably, their life was better without her. Probably, they were glad she was gone.

  A wave of heat surged up her cheeks, and suddenly she leaned forward and shook Hong’s shoulder roughly, forced the worm between the other girl’s teeth. “You eat, you hear, stupid girl? We stay strong or we die.”

  No response. Then, slowly, Hong’s jaw began to move.

  From above came the rattle of boots on gravel. Then a shadow passed in front of the sun and fell across the pit, and an obscene joy coursed through her. His name burst from her lips, and she wasn’t sure if it was a plea or a curse: “Mat!”

  “Guess again.” The thick European accent made her stomach sink. The tattooed man tossed a rope ladder over the edge of the pit and laughed. “Come up.”

  She shook her head. It was too far. She had no strength. And he would only hurt her if she came to him.

  Beside her, Hong moaned. “No.”

  “No?” He pulled out a pistol, something ugly and militarylooking. “Come up or die. It makes no difference to me.”

  Tuyet squinted up at him and saw the truth in his face. He would leave them there forever, and their bones would join those at the edge of the pit. She shook Hong again. “Come on.”

  Hong wrapped her arms around her knees and curled into a ball. “No,” she whimpered. “No, no no no no no no.”

  “Still no?” The laugh from above was harsh. “Okay.”

  The pistol bucked in his hand. There was a crack, and Hong slumped forward, a thin stream of blood trickling from her forehead and staining the water at Tuyet’s feet.

  The pistol muzzle swung toward Tuyet. “Now you,” he said.

  She swallowed a sob and pushed herself to her feet. “No, I come! I come.”

  She slogged through the water and mud and stretched one hand toward the ladder.

  “Wait.” He tugged the ladder upward, just out of reach. “I have a better idea.”

  His leer sent a shiver of fear through her stomach.

  From his waistband, he drew a long-bladed knife with a serrated edge. He pointed it at Beetle. “You. You want to live?”

  Beetle’s lips twitched upward. She nodded.

  “One girl live, one girl die. You decide.” The knife splashed into the water between them. Beetle plunged after it.

  For a moment, Tuyet stood frozen, muscles trembling with exhaustion. Then, too late, she leapt for the knife.

  23

  We left Leda’s with a Tupperware dish full of Kremšnita and her promise not to tell Karlo about our visit. I thought she’d keep her promise, if only because learning about us would make him unhappy, and an unhappy Karlo was something she would want to avoid. If I’d had to make book on it, I’d have said 98 percent. Not bad odds, but it was the 2 percent that would kill you.

  I texted what we’d learned about Leda Savitch and her brother to Frank and Malone, then waited for Khanh to ask what came next.

  She didn’t disappoint. “What now?”

  “Now we let this simmer. I’ve got my son tonight. His mom has probably already dropped him off at the house.”

  She opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it again.

  “I’ll work on it from home,” I said. “While Paul’s asleep.”

  “You do favor, who am I say what you do, not do?” Her tone said she had a definite opinion about what I should and shouldn’t be doing, but I didn’t rise to the bait. In her place, I would have felt the same way. We rode home in silence, and by the time I had the truck in Park, Paul had launched himself from the front porch and was halfway down the sidewalk.

  I scooped him up with my good arm and introduced him to Aunt Khanh. He buried his head in my shoulder and gave her a shy wave, then coughed into my shirt collar, his breath smelling of eucalyptus.

  Jay stood on the front porch, the remote control in his hand. “Maria says Paul has a cold. She sent Benadryl, Vick’s, a bunch of other stuff. And his Scout project.”

  Paul’s final Wolf Cub task was a collection of Tennessee leaves and wildflowers. Maria had sent a glass-covered display case, and inside it were index cards, two fine-point markers, a can of liquid acrylic, and three times more press-on labels than we could use in a century. My job was to help Paul find the plants and assemble the display, but since it was almost sunset, it seemed wiser to make the labels tonight and collect the samples in the morning.

  Paul helped me lay the case out on the living room table, where Jay and Eric came in and praised it effusively before heading out to Eric’s latest art show.

  “Make something fabulous,” Jay said, giving Paulie a quick peck on the forehead, “and we’ll see you in the morning.”

  Paul grinned and gave him a high five. Then, while Khanh sulked in front of the TV, I wrote the name of each plant on an index card and handed it to Paul, who painstakingly copied them onto labels.

  We’d gotten five made when my cell phone buzzed. I checked the ID, saw it was Frank, and picked up.

  “That drawing you gave us,” he said, “Karlo Savitch. We got him.”

  “That was fast.”

  “It’s a good drawing, and that’s a distinctive tat, and it helps we had a name to go with it. Guy has a record. Assault with a deadly weapon, but it didn’t stick. Witness got cold feet. I’d have liked a little more leverage before we brought him in, but with your girl missing, we figured we’d better give it a shot. Anyway, I wondered if you might want to come down here and watch the interrogation.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Call it a consultation. There’s something off about his affect. He isn’t acting like a guy whose DNA might be under a dead girl’s fingernails.”

  “And you want to brainstorm about why?” It was how we’d often worked, one of us handling the interrogation, the other taking note of anomalous responses and making suggestions for the next round of attack.

  “I do. But leave your shadow at home.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I looked down at Paul, whose head was bent, tongue stuck out in concentration. I sighed. “I’ll be right there.”

  Khanh looked up. “Be right where?”

  “They picked up Karlo Savitch. Frank wants me to watch the interrogation. Can you take care of Paul until I get back?”

  Her chin came up. “I go you.”

  “Either you watch Paulie, or we both stay here.”

  She l
owered her head, but not before I saw the flash of anger—or maybe desperation—in her eyes. “Okay,” she said, finally. “I stay Paul. You find out where Tuyet.”

  “I just watch. I don’t get to ask questions. Don’t worry. We’re getting close.” I knelt beside Paul, whose face was puckered with disappointment.

  “Police stuff?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, buddy. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Your Aunt Khanh will help you.”

  He turned his face away, laid his head on the table, and coughed. “Don’t want Aunt Khanh.”

  “I know, Sport. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I ruffled his hair, kissed the top of his head, and left them to their mutual disappointment.

  KARLO SAVITCH was built like a tent peg—big head and broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist and long, thin legs. While I watched through the two-way mirror, he shook a tangle of mud-brown hair out of his eyes and smoothed his mustache with a thick finger. That done, he folded his hands on the table in front of him. His sleeves were rolled up, the skin of his forearms unmarked. It had been more than a week since the Asian girl’s murder, but I would have been happier to see the tracks of her nails in his skin.

  Savitch lowered his head. Picked at a nail. Wiry black hairs crept down the back of his neck and into the collar of his wrinkled button-down shirt.

  Frank went in and sat across from him. Savitch unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair, teeth bared in a mocking grin. A man barely pretending to be civilized. Even taking into account that he had gamed the system before and won, he was too cocky for a guy who’d left DNA at a murder scene.

  Frank said, “We can end this right here, Karlo. We have skin and blood under the dead girl’s fingernails. So all you have to do is let us do a little DNA swab, and we can rule you out. No reason not to, right? Unless, of course, you’re guilty.”

  Savitch shrugged. In a thick, Eastern European accent, he said, “Go ahead. Take your DNA. You will find nothing. I did not kill this girl.”

  “You were recognized, identified by a witness.”

  Savitch leered. “Little blonde stripper I see on TV? No one believe that little whore. Especially when she say she did not get good look at face. Especially since no proof man she saw is even killer.”