by C. L. Bevill
The choice she’d given him before rang through Raoul’s brain. “You can cut the knuckles off yourself, like the yakuza do, or I’ll have one of them cut off more than two knuckles, and it won’t be in a place that can be worked around.”
Raoul had cut the knuckles off himself. The blood had spurted onto a creamy cheek that belied her age, and Adrienne had merely laughed, wiping it away with finely manicured fingers.
One of the bodyguards had used a propane torch to cauterize the wounds before Raoul could bleed out. Then they’d taken him to the doctor who was on Adrienne’s payroll. She’d kept the dismembered knuckles.
He didn’t know what she did with them. Certainly, his weren’t the only ones she possessed. She’d even taken some from her own son.
The dress slithered across her skin as Adrienne finally turned to Raoul. Her uncanny eyes surveyed his form. “You look somewhat colorless, Raoul. Perhaps you should get some more sun.”
“I don’t have time for that,” Raoul said shortly. Immediately he wished he could change his response.
Adrienne smiled faintly. “I assume you have something you need to tell me.”
“I had our people spread the word about the woman,” he said and saw that Adrienne’s eyes were impatient. Adrienne was already well-versed with it. It had been almost a week since the woman had escaped from the hospital.
Raoul had counted every day since the escape and prayed the severed digits wouldn’t become infected. Inflamed skin would streak up his arms, and he dreamed he would wake up, an armless freak, screaming out to Adrienne to spare him further agony. There was no cure for Adrienne’s ichor, and there was no way for Raoul to flee her wrath. Even if he died, she would be waiting for him…
He steadied himself and began, “There have been a few reports that turned out to be nothing. The police who are on our payroll have gotten nowhere. The hospital’s staff isn’t interested in the woman. The social worker moved on to her other thousand cases. I thought the woman might have hitched a ride out of town. We have feelers in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Atlanta. There has been nothing.”
Adrienne put her iPad on the mantel and turned to examine the flower arrangement sitting there. Raoul couldn’t remember what it’d been the night his knuckles were dismembered, but now it was full of yellow daisies, sunflowers and carnations. The daisies had red middles, as if they had been bleeding. Her hands deftly arranged the contrasting baby’s breath so that it was perfect once more.
“But,” he added before Adrienne could say anything, “I got a call from a guy in Marigny. He hires illegals to clean places for him. He hadn’t heard the word before. He said he’s got a gal working for him that might be the one.”
Adrienne turned back to Raoul. Her expression was nonchalant, as if she was a typical CEO, and Raoul was an underling. “He described this woman?”
“Yes. Sounds like her. A woman like that, nearly six feet tall, with a reason to hide. He said her hair was dark, but he didn’t remember the color of her eyes. Can’t be many of those about.”
“Why don’t you already have her?” Adrienne asked in a deceptively gentle manner. “Why are we having this conversation instead of you saying, ‘She’s in the trunk of my car with handcuffs on her wrists, awaiting your pleasure, Miz Viqc?’ What else has gone south?”
“The woman didn’t show up for work this morning,” Raoul said. A muscle in his cheek twitched abominably. He didn’t dare reach up to soothe it. He wanted to add that he wasn’t alone at fault, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good.
“This man, this business owner who hires illegals, bungled somehow,” Adrienne mused. “He warned her, inadvertently.”
“His name is Titus Perdue,” Raoul offered. “Makes money paying half minimum wage to people like that. People who don’t have green cards or have a criminal history or such.”
“People who don’t remember who they are,” Adrienne said, “or people who don’t have a social security card or a driver’s license?”
“I’ll go to the business and find out what Perdue knows about the woman,” Raoul said. “I’ll take care of it personally.”
Adrienne nodded. “This woman has worked for Perdue for days?”
Raoul nodded. “Since the day after the miss at the hospital.” His mouth shut again. It wasn’t a good idea to remind Adrienne of his failure. His bandaged hand went behind his back.
A wry smile passed over Adrienne’s face as she perceived his action. “Then some of the people she works with might have an idea where she stays at night. They might know something about her, about what motivates her, wouldn’t you say?”
Raoul would have swallowed, but his mouth was dry. He might have very well had a mouthful of dirt. Her eyes glittered like emeralds, and his were caught up in her rapt gaze. If he were merely a fellow from the Bayou Country, he might never have gotten caught up in this but he wasn’t. It hadn’t bothered him when he was reaping the benefits. But the downside was dealing with la sorcière.
“Any word of the other one?” she asked softly. “I can feel his soul, turbulent and filled with anguish, but he lingers outside of my reach.”
“There have been more stories about a giant…dog wandering the city at night,” Raoul said. He wanted to ask why the other one was out of Adrienne’s control, but it was another subject that he didn’t dare broach. It smacked of her weakness in a singular area. It was as if something integral was slipping through her fingers. The thought made his injured digits spasm involuntarily.
Adrienne’s astute gaze flicked to the arm of the hidden hand. “And your fingers, Raoul, are they healing?”
“Yes, m’dam,” he answered honestly. He hoped so. He hadn’t looked at them for days, and they itched something fierce.
Adrienne’s fingers sketched a little movement in the air. Raoul shuddered again. His injured fingers began to spasm. The barely healing skin stretched under the bandages. Bullets of pain shot up his arm, making him grit his teeth in agony. He would have pulled them out to see what was happening, but he was afraid to look away from Adrienne.
“Best to have le docteur take a look at them,” Adrienne whispered. “Mustn’t risk your arm, or your life, for that matter, to an infection.”
Raoul bit down on his lower lip, sinking his teeth deep. Something was crawling inside the bandages. He could feel the tiny movement, pushing through torn tissues, nibbling, increasing their numbers even in a few seconds. It wriggled madly. No, dozens of them writhed wildly, trying to eat at his damaged flesh. He thought he would scream and run, but he knew Adrienne was testing him again. The maggots began to crawl out of his bandage and inched their way up into his sleeve. Their sticky presence made him break out in a thousand goose bumps, and his good arm convulsed to madly brush them off.
Her green eyes scrutinized him relentlessly.
Raoul struggled not to move. They made their way up his arm, under the shirt, toward his upper arm, aiming for the soft flesh under his arms or perhaps to his ears where they could burrow inside…
Finally, Adrienne smiled again, and her fingers slashed the air. She turned back to the iPad, saying, “Best to take care of one’s self, wouldn’t you say, Raoul?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “My little sister wouldn’t want you crippled, would she?”
With Adrienne’s back to him, Raoul whipped the bandaged hand in front and looked down, prepared to shriek with the sight of hundreds of maggots crawling over his skin, seeking to…
There were none. His breath jammed in his throat for an endless moment. There was an anxious catch in his voice as he answered Adrienne, “No, maman wouldn’t be happy with that.”
“How that girl doing in New York City?” Adrienne shook her head as she looked at the iPad. “Living up there with all those Yankees. I can’t fathom it. Surely I cannot.”
Raoul swallowed convulsively and looked at his bandaged hand again. “Maman’s fine. She likes all the seasons there. She likes the city, too. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
>
“You do that, Raoul.” Adrienne looked up, smiling, and the unnerving smile was like taking a dip in the Antarctic Ocean.
* * *
Christien was watching me; often without me knowing it. He heard one of the others say my name, Jane thought. Perhaps he asked someone about me from Perdue’s Cleaners. There’s no weirdness about it at all. If it was him at the hospital leaving me the note, then he could have looked at my record.
Making a face, Jane thought about all the “normal” things that happened to her of late.
Just like the oversized-monster animal that wandered into the stairwell at the hospital and then turned up in the cemetery while I was there. There’s a very big dog out there that likes to follow me. Maybe it was Raoul’s dog and he got free and I’m just reaching for anything, aren’t I? I just missed out on the announcement that there’s a new breed of oversized dogs that talk, right?
Jane sat on a bus seat and thought about it as the large vehicle lumbered toward the Mississippi. She’d caught a bus into Marigny and then another bus that headed south toward the river. She looked over her shoulder while she waited on the bus, but there was no sign of Christien. Once on the first bus, she systematically scanned all the passengers. One man had taken that as a sign of encouragement and asked her if she was interested in an early nooner. Jane had threatened to introduce his testicles to his esophagus if he didn’t desist. Fortunately for both of them he had desisted.
She’d asked the time from the second bus driver, and he’d wryly informed her that it was after 10 a.m. “Don’t you got a cell phone, girl?” he asked. “Most folks got two these days. My daughter, she’s got three. One for work. One for her friends. One for bullshit. You believe that?”
Jane smiled and sat down. Who am I going to call? Should I buy a cell phone just to tell the time?
“You look familiar,” said a voice.
Jane looked up and saw a woman in her late sixties sitting in the seat opposite. Her deftly styled hair was the shade of a stormy gray day. Her eyes were blue and twinkled with interest. Her skin was wrinkled with decades of overexposure to the sun, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Dressed in a blue button-down shirt and brown khakis, she looked as though she was taking a ride for the pure fun of it.
“Sorry?” Jane said.
“You look very familiar to me,” the woman said. She brushed her gray bangs away from her forehead and adjusted the tortoise shell glasses on her nose. “I don’t usually forget faces. Names sometimes.” She smiled mockingly. “Oh, well, names frequently, if I have to admit it. But faces not so much. I think I have selective Alzheimer’s.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Jane said, unwilling to add aloud the other part she thought, And if I did, I probably wouldn’t remember you. But I remembered my mother being dead.
The woman tapped her chin with an index finger. “It’s slipped my mind.”
Join the club, Jane thought ironically.
“You work somewhere in the Quarter, am I right, dear?” the woman persisted.
“Lately, I’ve been skipping around. Sometimes Marigny. Sometimes the Quarter. A couple times in the Garden District.” Titus had contracts with buildings all over. He kept his crews busy at many locations.
Jane studied the other woman. She didn’t appear like someone who was homeless. She wore a gold watch on her wrist, and the diamond in her engagement ring was a carat or more. She wasn’t the type to hang out wherever Jane had been staying. Like in the bayous with the Roux-Ga-Roux. “Excuse me, ma’am, but do you happen to know a large, furry creature with glowy eyes? No? Where you going?”
The older woman considered it. “No, it’s the Quarter. I’m thinking it’s a restaurant. I go someplace different every night. I hate to cook,” she added in an undertone that suggested that was a bad thing for her to admit. “But I love to find new restaurants. And New Orleans is the queen of culinary delight.”
Damn straight, Jane thought. That’s exactly why I picked—
I picked what?
The errant thought was gone again. I remembered something about my life. I remembered it, and now it’s like a door has been shut again. Hell and damnation.
“For example, there’s this place on St. Ann Street that serves the most delightful po’ boys. The shrimp could have been plucked from the sea an hour before I ate,” the woman continued to speak, as if Jane was actively participating in the conversation instead of appearing lost in thought. “And the bread, oh…my…God…handmade from scratch. No mix, mind you. They come in a 5 a.m. to bake the bread they use. Make your mouth cry with joy, bless their hearts.
“But I digress, dear,” the woman said after a pause. “I swear I know you from somewhere. Perhaps one of those places on Dumaine.”
“Sorry,” Jane said again. “You know how many people wander this part of the city.” It was a lacking thing to say, but she couldn’t be responsible for someone trying to remember her.
But if she remembered you, then you might remember. Silly girl.
It wasn’t Jane’s thoughts. It was the other one again. Him. He was markedly unwelcome in her head. He hadn’t answered the evening before when she had been desperate and alone.
Not alone, came the return thought. Never alone.
But he had a point.
“Dumaine Street, you said,” Jane repeated.
“Oh yes, dear,” the woman said happily, obviously glad to strike up a conversation with a stranger. “There are several places there. Raggedy Ann’s. Bon Soir’s. Bienvenue’s. Little Blue Mikey’s. Grubbo’s. My God, the place is inundated with restaurants, and can you believe how we’ve bounced back after that dastardly Katrina? That foul-hearted witch of a storm nearly ruined our fair city.”
“You remember me working at one of these places?”
“I would think so. I wouldn’t comment on it, but I have seen you before. I’m sure we’ve spoken. I don’t think that would be so if you were another customer. I don’t typically talk to other people when they’re eating. Very rude, that. But I would speak with a waitress or a maître d’hotêl. That’s got to be it. But,” she waggled a finger in the air as if concentrating hard, “you’ve changed your hair perhaps. Gone dark, is that it? It used to be lighter. That’s got to be right.” She squinted her eyes and tried to imagine it. “I’m thinking blonde streaks. Is that it?”
“I haven’t changed my hair,” Jane said. That I know of.
“You’re too young for plastic surgery,” the woman said. “Unless it was one of those injections in your lips.”
“I don’t do that,” Jane said. There were injection marks in my arms from all the times they couldn’t make me take the pills. The latter thought was an arrow shot into her brain at a thousand miles an hour.
“Well, I’m sure I’ll think of it, as soon as I’m off the bus,” the older woman said brightly. “Maybe I’ll see you at that restaurant again.” She looked up and added, “This is me.”
Jane watched the older woman get off the bus. She thought about it. I live here. I’m from here. All I need to do is find one person who knows me.
Well, you need to find one other person who knows you, came his wry thought. One who doesn’t want to catch you and do God knows what to you.
Yeah, there’s that, Jane agreed silently and glumly.
Chapter 13
Necessity breaks iron. – Dutch proverb
It was far too late to go to Perdue’s Cleaners for a job, and Jane changed her mind about heading back to the warehouse where she slept. For one reason, Christien knew about the location. For another reason, it was May in New Orleans, and the place was far from air conditioned. The temperature would be in the high eighties today, and the place was like an oven, holding the heat inside. In another month she wouldn’t be able to stay there without broiling to a crisp.
But it’s safe, she told herself. I can block the door. I can stay hidden. Jane looked around. She was almost there, but if she got off the bus and caught one headed east, then she
could go to a library branch in the Bywater neighborhood, just down from the Marigny area. Needing the information more than negated the risk of going to a public library. She briefly considered the pass from the Internet café, but Christien had to know about that, too.
It was a waste of money, but what else could Jane do? Trusting the wrong person could be a life or death decision.
With a little wrangling, Jane got a transfer and made it to the library by lunchtime. She got off two blocks south of the building and found it easily. The librarian was more than helpful, and Jane was surfing the net within minutes of setting foot inside the branch.
Her battered notebook let her start where she’d left off. Jane checked missing person’s posters until she felt like crying. All of these people, all gone, seemingly without a trace. And she was only looking at women with the approximate birth year range she would have.
None of them are me. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Finally, she left off that search and looked at something else. The Roux-Ga-Roux. There were several results. Some were on Wikipedia, and Jane read them with interest. The word was a common variation of the loup-garou legend. Loup was French for wolf. Garou was an older word that meant a man who transforms his shape.
It isn’t a dog, Jane thought. It’s a werewolf. A werewolf who likes me a whole lot. He knows my name. He hangs out when I’m in the cemetery. He doesn’t like Raoul, the man who wants to make me bleed…like a waterfall, right? I don’t really need all my old memories, do I? I’m making fascinating new ones. Oh yes and I’m cursed.
Jane sighed heavily, drawing a look from a nearby librarian. She read on. There was some dispute about the origins of the Roux-Ga-Roux. It was suggested that the legendary sasquatch might be a Roux-Ga-Roux or worse, the cannibalistic Wendigos might be the origin of the tales. She chuckled blackly at the photograph of the Wendigo. It didn’t look like what had paced around the crypt she had perched upon.
The most interesting section repeated what Marinette had stated in her moralistic revision of the legend. It born of a witch. It wicked evil. La sorcière is the only one who can make the loup-garou. She takes something of herself and makes the beast who wanders the night. She controls the monster, and he does her bidding.
