Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

  “The red stuff must drip through a hose into a bucket of some sort down where the lights are attached. Gotta be a pump of some kind sending it back up to flow down again.”

  Spence just shook his head and sighed.

  We had to check our guns with a guard at the prison gate; I hate to do that, especially when I’m going into a place that I know is full of criminals. The thing weighs a ton on my hip, but there’s a certain comfort in having it there when the hand comes through the bars and squeezes your neck.

  Garamond was waiting for us in one of the screened-off reception cubicles, as opposed to the glass-partitioned high-security cages, where contact was limited to the telephone.

  “He must be behaving,” I said quietly.

  Spence hmphed. “Might as well make it pleasant.”

  Jesse Garamond wore the familiar bright orange coveralls that are so endearingly hard to miss in the outside world, where no one would be caught dead in that color. He had a few more tattoos than he’d sported the last time I saw him, which was on the day of his sentencing as he was being taken out of court. He wore his thinning hair in a straggly ponytail and had a decent-size gold hoop dangling from one ear. I wondered why it hadn’t been yanked off him. You could barely see his mouth for the mustache.

  He actually smiled when he saw Spence. “Man, you’re startin’ to feel like a member of the family.”

  “How ya doin’, Jesse?”

  “I’m okay, can’t complain. They mostly leave me alone because I keep to myself. I’m writing a novel, don’t you understand, so I need quiet. The other guys don’t want me writing nothing bad about them, so they give me my space.”

  Spence grunted. “That’s very interesting.”

  Jesse was not fooled. “So what’s up with this unexpected visit, not that I mind havin’ the company, especially since you had the good manners to bring me a lady to look at. . . .”

  “Detective Dunbar is working on a case similar to yours, and she wants to ask you a few questions,” Spence said.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Am I a suspect? ’Cause if I am, I want my lawyer.”

  He grinned at our expressions. A gold tooth gleamed on one side of his mouth. He gave me a lascivious once-over; it was creepy and unwelcome. Then his expression turned cold. “Your ass she’s working on a similar case. You just want to try to get me to tell you I did that kid so you can sleep better, that’s all. Man, don’t waste no time and no taxpayers’ dollars. I didn’t do it. I told you that a thousand times, I’ll tell you again. You’re sitting still, so here goes: I didn’t kill that kid. I diddled the first one, but I am not a kid killer. How many times I gotta tell you? Shame on you for hiding behind a skirt with this kind of bullshit. Now, why don’t you get your sorry ass back out there and find the guy who really did it, you know what I mean? Be productive. Earn my respect.”

  “Mr. Garamond,” I interrupted.

  “You can call me Jesse, pretty lady. And don’t waste your time asking me questions about these other cases. I been in here, remember? So I couldn’t have done anything. And I wouldn’t be hearing anything either.”

  “Mr. Garamond,” I repeated, “I know you’ve already talked to Detective Frazee extensively on your own case, but I want to ask you just one more time. Is there anything you may have neglected to tell him at the time? I know that was a difficult period for you. Stress like that can make you forgetful.”

  “I didn’t forget nothin’. I told Mr. Detective here everything I could about what happened. I was with my brother’s wife. She told you so. Now I gotta do time for something I didn’t do because I don’t want no trouble between my brother and his wife.”

  “That’s very admirable,” I said. “But there must have already been trouble between the two of them if you were having sex with her.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I did her a few times as a favor when he had to be out of town for a couple of weeks for that army reserves shit he does. I don’t know why—he leaves his old lady and their kids all alone. She got lonely, that’s all. I was just taking care of her for him.”

  “Very brotherly of you.”

  “Yeah. They should let me out early for that.”

  “You’re doing okay here now already,” Spence said. “Last time I was here, they had you in one of the cages.”

  “It ain’t what you think,” he said. He looked around furtively to see if any other prisoners were close enough to hear him. “I been telling the guys here that I got sent back on a parole violation. Most of these guys don’t have a clue about what’s going on outside. But then this dude comes in for embezzlement, and he’s a newspaper kinda guy. Most of the dudes in here used newspapers to house-train their pit bulls. But this one actually reads them. He remembered me right away from the papers. Started telling stories about the conviction and all.”

  “So?” I said. “You’re innocent, right?”

  He sniggered ironically. “Lady, that’s what they all say in here, you know that. Except in my case it happens to be the truth. Trouble is, now the guys are starting to think that I’m something I’m not. My first gig was for having sex with a girl who was thirteen. They all done that, but none of them got caught. But now they think I offed a kid. You know what they do to those guys in here?”

  I’d heard a rumor or two.

  “You’ll pardon my language, my mother didn’t raise me to talk like this in front of no ladies. But you gotta know, so you can understand my position here: They make sausage out of your dick, and then they make you eat it.”

  I could see Spence cringing and crossing his legs. We weren’t going to get anywhere with this line of inquiry. I stood and said, “Well, I appreciate your candor and your willingness to meet with us, Mr. Garamond. Even if nothing came of it.”

  “Hey, no problem,” he said. “You can come back anytime. Anytime.”

  Neither of us had much to say as we threaded through the endless corridors between the interview area and the main reception lobby. There was good lighting, and the walls were all painted a cheerful soft white. Everything was simple and clean. The bars were brushed steel, reminiscent of the handrails in a modern hospital. But there was no getting around it: This was a dungeon, pure and simple. There was no natural light, and if someone wanted us not to get out, we wouldn’t get out.

  As soon as we had our guns back, Spence straightened up again, having reacquired the ability to shoot anyone with a notion of making sausage out of any part of him. For myself, I was relieved to see the daylight when we exited the front gate and headed toward our vehicle.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” Spence finally said.

  “No, it wasn’t. I believe him now too. Unfortunately, what that means is that I probably have another case to solve. Not to mention there’s an innocent man—well, maybe not innocent, but certainly not guilty—in this prison. That’s not right. One of these days we’re going to have to do something about that.”

  “You can’t say anything yet, Lany—this guy was convicted by a jury of his peers. And the prosecutor knows everything I know about this case, about the sister-in-law, all the details. I haven’t been exactly quiet about my feelings on all of this, but no one has done anything to challenge the outcome of the trial.”

  “Then we have to make a lot more noise. This isn’t right, Spence.”

  “I know that. But it would be career suicide for either of us to stir anything up right now. And you know as well as I do that he was legitimately convicted of the crime that landed him in jail in the first place and that he probably shouldn’t even have been out when the boy got grabbed. Don’t think he didn’t force that girl either. The only reason he didn’t get convicted of forcible rape is that he pleaded guilty to statutory. And when you find the real guy, this will all take care of itself.”

  “If I find the real guy.”

  “You will, Lany. Like you said, you have that intuition thing going. I can see it in your face. But until then you have to leave this alone. There isn’t any eviden
ce to refute the eyewitness testimony, unless he gives up the sister-in-law. We have nothing.”

  Sadly, he was right, and I knew it. So now I had a new case, a perplexing, difficult case, loaded with nothing.

  nine

  I squandered a perfect day by wallowing in old misery over the terrible events that had befallen me so many years before. In my own defense, I must put it forth that in the wake of my new discoveries, the ancient hurt over my son’s loss seemed fresh again to me. Perhaps after two decades it ought not to have, but it did.

  The sun glowed high over the castle, the courtyard, and all the surrounds, but I could not seem to feel its warmth. The flowers in the courtyard garden showed their appreciation for the weather by filling the air with great waves of scent. I sat between a peony and a rose on a bench with a base of carved marble angels, whose plump little arms reached up to support the wooden seat on which the weary were supposed to find rest, though there was little comfort to be found on the hard planks. A few soft yellow rose blossoms had just come open, as if signaled by their fading Oriental cousins to spring forth and take up the cause of seducing insects and passersby. In my lap there rested an old but serviceable surplice, the very one whose repair had ostensibly sent me to Machecoul for the supplies I failed to buy. God be praised, I found the required threads at the bottom of my basket and was therefore not stymied in effecting the repair. But it seemed too much effort at the moment to blend my own stitches into those that had been laid down, quite sloppily, by my less fastidious predecessor.

  All I could think of on this day, when I should have been living from one sweet breath to the next and enjoying the pleasant labor (it could, after all, have been the despised accounting of the expenses instead), all that filled my heart and mind was the sorrowful past, specifically my son Michel and what might have been had he not been taken from me. Another letter had arrived from Avignon from his brother, or so a messenger this morning had said; such was the depth of my despair that the thought of reading it hardly inspired me at all.

  Letters from Michel would have been far different from those I received from his brother, especially in the regularity with which they arrived. Michel’s would have been sporadic at best, unlike Jean’s, which were more predictable than my erstwhile menses. But had both my sons survived into adulthood, Jean might not have been as inclined to ameliorate the absence of his brother with frequent missives, so who can say what he might have done under more normal circumstances? I had often mused on what the content of my younger son’s letters would have been. He would first have filled them with the joy and wry humor that colored his everyday demeanor. There would have been plenty of good news and very little bad, that unlikely proportioning intended to lessen my concern over having a son who waged war for a living. All mothers of sons born to the saddle and the sword have such worries, but of course mine would be the only one who mattered. His sooty parchments would arrive tattered from some battlefield or outpost to which he had been sent by his liege lord, whoever that might prove to be.

  Would he have served Gilles de Rais, his childhood playmate? Perhaps, but I think not. I always considered it possible that their diverging personalities might have forced an eventual parting of ways—Michel was so deeply good, and Milord Gilles could never seem to trust his own worth after having it beaten out of him by his grandfather, that beast of a man.

  I began to notice just before Michel’s disappearance that Milord often seemed lost in thought. Around this period he took to spending time alone as much as possible, though his sycophant cousins de Sille and de Briqueville were always attempting to cling to him. When he appeared to have entered one of his dark reveries, I would ask my young master what he was thinking, but it was nearing the time when he would shed me, his childhood nurse, like a snake molts a skin that has grown too tight. Usually I was ignored, but when he spoke he would often claim that he was engaged in his own imaginings, though rarely would he reveal to me what those imaginings might be. So many times I said “Ah” to him, as if I understood, which I did not.

  Michel tried to draw Milord out of his grief during the period after his father and mother passed to eternity. He would tempt him with inspiring activities such as hunting or swordplay. But his earnest, heartfelt appeals—why are you playing at conjuring, Brother, when the sun shines so fair and bright? Come, let us ride out instead and frighten a few foxes with the noise of our swords—were largely ignored. I suppose it is only fitting that when one has been left behind by someone so near and dear—in Milord’s case, two people at one time—one would want some solitude within which to think on the nature of death and life and the like, or whatever else struck the sad one’s fancy. I know this as well as anyone can.

  When his principal companion was in one of these dark moods and did not wish to be disturbed, it fell upon Michel to entertain himself. This he did in reading, or in swordplay with his own shadow, or contests of martial skill with his father if Etienne happened to be in the castle and was not engaged in some other occupation. There were many such times in the unsettled period after Milord Guy passed on, because Jean de Craon was engrossed in the act of securing his daughter’s holdings. He was vicious in his determination to see the estates remain as one inheritance, but no one faulted him, for we all understood that he was a father looking out for the interests of his daughter, who was completely paralyzed by her husband’s unexpected death. Lady Marie then had the audacity (I once heard Jean de Craon curse her for the inconvenience) to die herself.

  Milord Gilles, a tender eleven years of age, was thrust into two contradictory positions. In the eyes of the world he was the unaccountably young master of a huge realm, in which his every whim was catered to by anyone within earshot. All the while he was a puppet to his vile grandfather. At this time there came a visible separation between him and Michel. Before then, the difference in their stations had hardly mattered—they were as close as any brothers. But I suppose everything changes, given time; some folks rise, others fall, as fortune dictates. Loved ones come and go; those who go send letters if they have the means and learning to do so.

  Letters from Michel . . . if God would grant me just one, and if within the lines there could be some reasonable explanation for what happened to him, I would find a way to live sinlessly for the rest of my days in repayment. What would his adult hand look like? His writing as a child was spirited and loose. I knew Jean’s neat inscribings; if you laid before me a pile of a thousand parchments, I would wager my soul’s reward on picking out the one he had written. The fluid lines of prose that crossed the page from left to right had the same straight perfection as the sea’s horizon. I cannot say whether Michel’s lines would have made such orderly progress as Jean’s; he was a far more rowdy boy than Jean at the same age, destined for battle as his father had been, in opposition to the birth order that dictated the church for him and battle for Jean. One cannot force a child to be what he will not be, in my opinion, though I know it has been done countless times before. But this is a modern age, where we permit our sons some self-determination. Michel was not destined to take up the cloth, and Jean would surely die in his first battle were he to take up the sword. If Michel was indeed dead, and if there is such a thing as a correct demise, how I wish he could have had the chance to die the warrior’s death, which would have been proper for him.

  In the midst of this dark abstraction I heard my name called, or, more accurately, my title. Mère was said timidly by a young priest I had seen in the abbey but did not know. He startled me so that my embroidery threads fell to the ground. The young man fairly groveled in apology and vowed that he would not have disturbed me for anything less than a summons from his Eminence. It took me a few moments to recover any sort of grace after all the threads were gathered up. Though clearly mortified, he waited patiently. I wished he would have left me alone—I would find my way to Jean de Malestroit as easily as if he had laid out a row of crumbs for me to follow.

  What would his need be today? The hour
gave me pause (before lunch, when he was generally preoccupied with the duties of state) as did the look on his face when I entered his hallowed lair. First Jean de Malestroit gave me the letter that had come for me from Avignon. I nodded my thanks and let the feel of it filter into my palms, but instead of slipping away at once to tear open the seal and devour the words as I would ordinarily have done, I tucked it in my sleeve and waited for the Bishop to speak on the matter that had prompted him to summon me with the day’s business still in progress. I could see that he was flustered when I arrived; he was milling about his chamber and could not seem to put his thoughts in order.

  “Eminence, how you have managed to be a statesman I will never understand,” I said.

  He sat himself down abruptly in his high-backed chair and took a long, deep breath to calm himself. “Ah, Guillemette, sometimes I do not understand it myself. I like the hat of a diplomat far less than the miter.” He smiled philosophically and shrugged his shoulders. “But, then, no man has ever worn two hats at once with any ease or grace. It would require two heads. I often find myself torn between disappointing God or Duke Jean, neither of whom particularly cares to be let down.”

  But I had seen him switch one hat for the other with uncanny ease. It would not have surprised me to discover that Jean de Malestroit had a spare head for his other hat, tucked away someplace where no one would think to look for it. I imagined stumbling upon the grisly thing in a cabinet, one with a squeaking hinge. I would open the door in search of a wick or a thread or a whetstone, and that head would stare out at me with its one eyebrow and then quickly remind me to tend to the bothersome noise of the hinges as soon as possible.

  Or maybe Sister Élène could see to it . . . the head would say with a wicked smile.

  The current hat-wearer snapped me out of my fantasy by saying, “I have something to tell you.”

  After a pause I said, “You sound as if you think I will not be pleased.”