“Wish us luck, Colonel,” I called weakly, lifting the head of my cane in his direction. “We now enter the world that you turned your back on forever—and God knows if we’ll ever get out…”
{iii.}
The Kurtz house turned out to be a surprise: not because of its generally run-down condition, but because of what it had originally been. It was, indeed, a little white house with peeling paint by the side of the road; but it was not a modern modular home, which I had been expecting. Rather, it was a house of about the vintage of Shiloh, and in a similarly Italianate style, but something of a Potemkin-village version of that breed. The front of the building had a shallow porch, with narrow square columns and the requisite filigree at the top of each; but, once you moved around to the sides of the rectangular structure, the porch vanished, and you could see that the roof was simply sloped toward the back, rather than being composed of the four triangular sections that gave the more genuinely Italianate houses their feel of solidity and scale. The rooms on the second floor must have been quite cramped, little more than attic quarters with hard-angled ceilings and half-windows at the base of their walls; and yet it could not be denied that the place, for all its design shortcuts and peeling paint and collapsing black shutters, had far more charm than most of the intact modular units that dotted County Route 34, and then dominated Route 7 beyond.
Houses like the Kurtzes’ were not entirely uncommon in Burgoyne County; but more and more of them were being abandoned to foreclosure and collapse, and it was always heartening to see one still up and inhabited. When we arrived, Lucas and Derek (Derek Franco, I had learned his full name to be) were out on the small, steep bit of shaggy front lawn that rolled right down to County Route 34. They had probably been waiting to welcome us, originally; but that dull chore had descended into a bout of no-holds-barred roughhousing, or, as they would later label it, “mixed martial arts combat.” Such appeared to involve (in their case) not only that so-called sport’s punching, clenching, and kicking, but biting, gouging, and blows to any and all parts of the anatomy. It seemed playful enough, as they were both laughing in fits, although it was hard to see how Lucas would not take the worst of it, so much larger and stronger was Derek. Yet as we pulled over and into the driveway (Mike murmuring, “Those idiots are going to kill each other”), I was reminded of the essential gentleness of Derek’s character, and of the deference he usually displayed toward his smaller friend: it was clear that he was not fighting at full strength, although the same could not be said of Lucas, who was battling away like a dervish on amphetamines.
It was an ordinary boyhood scene; and it troubled me for just that reason. I had become so used to seeing Lucas as the precocious member of our investigative team that I think I had, to some extent, lost sight of how young he actually was; and this reminder—much like the jolt of hearing him refer to himself as a throwaway child on the way down the mountain on Sunday night—was not entirely welcome. But, whatever my misgivings, at the sound of the Empress’ throaty twin tailpipes pulling into his driveway, Lucas popped his head out from amid the mass of his own and Derek’s tangled arms and legs, and then convinced (or, based on his gesticulations, it would be more accurate to say ordered) his friend to get off of him. He grinned and moved toward the car, trying to do what he could with his grass-strewn mop of hair while straightening his usual uniform, a neutral-colored T-shirt and jeans. Derek, for his part, hung back, making a small effort to tidy his own appearance but never smiling, and clearly apprehensive about our visit. Lucas ran to a dilapidated, barn-red garage at the end of the short driveway and pulled open its two doors, revealing an empty bay: evidently the elder Kurtzes had taken whatever the family’s vehicle had been with them. Mike followed our young partner’s directive to pull into the garage, and Lucas immediately closed the door behind us. This would almost certainly guarantee that no one in the area would be aware of our visit, provided they had not been watching during the few seconds it had taken to get us hidden away: thus far, then, Lucas seemed to have planned the meeting well.
The kid moved to switch on a lone light bulb that hung from one of the garage’s crossbeams; but during the few seconds before light shone down and Mike and I opened our car doors, my partner reached for the Empress’ glove compartment and pulled out his neoprene-encased .38. Moving swiftly, he fixed the gun’s holster to his right leg by its Velcro straps. I watched as he completed this ominous task, a little dumbfounded; and finally, when he’d rolled his pant leg back down and Lucas had got the light in the garage on, I asked, “What the hell are you doing, Mike?”
“What the hell’s it look like I’m doing, L.T.?” he said calmly. “Aren’t you strapped?”
“No, I most certainly am not ‘strapped,’ ” I said, opening my door and then leaning to my left as Marcianna leapt over the seat back and then poured her lithe form out the door. “What the hell are you thinking is going to happen here, Li?”
“Trajan,” Mike breathed wearily as he opened his own door, “I no longer have any idea of what is going to happen anywhere, on this case…”
It was a somewhat less than rousing thought; but I could not deny its essential truth. And with it in mind, we stepped into the world of the Kurtz family, a small group as representative of the evils that have grown to plague contemporary working-class America as anyone could hope to encounter. Lucas led us from the car into the backyard, which was shielded on all sides, by the back of the house itself, as well as by two steep earthen embankments covered with trees, and finally by the garage. Within this little area, the only adornments were an old swing set, rusted away, and a picnic table, benches, and chairs that, like a low platform-patio that stood outside the back door of the house, were made of pressure-treated wooden boards that had long ago faded to that depressing shade of moldy grey-brown. But the hidden siting of the yard meant that the ever-curious citizens of Surrender would not observe Marcianna’s presence; and as I grew calmer on this score, so did she, allowing me to give her a little more lead on her leash.
Turning to the larger of the youths, who continued to hang back a few steps from the very gregarious Lucas, I said, “Hey, Derek. Good to see you again.”
“Hunh?” he noised, as if I had just roused him from some deep reverie. “Oh, uh—yeah. Hi.” Lucas rolled his eyes in that same comical way he had during my first encounter with the pair, then balled a fist and lightly punched his friend in the upper arm, nodding to him to continue. “Hunh?” Derek noised again; and when I glanced briefly at Mike, I could see that he had already taken the measure of our second host. “Oh,” Derek went on, “yeah, sorry, it’s, uh, nice to see you again, too.”
“Hello, Derek,” Mike said, stepping forward and offering his hand, before the kid was put through any further torment. “I’m Dr. Li—Dr. Jones’ partner. And no, not gay partner, before you start wondering. His professional partner.”
In his inimitable way, Mike had gambled correctly: what could have been a politically incorrect, inane, or even insulting remark (suggesting that Derek was too dim-witted to grasp the situation) instead brought a good-natured chuckle from the slow, deliberate young man, whose deep brown cheeks flushed a bit. “I know,” he answered, shuffling his feet in a way that would have seemed affectedly aw, shucks had one not known him. “Luke told me who you are,” he went on. “Said you weren’t Chinese, but…” Derek’s face grew puzzled. “…you sure look Chinese.”
At which Lucas spun on his friend and gave him another slug in the shoulder, this one much harder, as he said, quickly, quietly, and involuntarily, “God-fucking-dammit, Derek. I told you about watching what you say today, didn’t I?”
“But, Luke—” Derek began to protest.
His friend cut him off: “And I told you that, too! I ain’t Luke—at least, not in professional situations.” At which Mike stepped in again:
“Don’t worry about it, Lucas—and don’t you worry about it, either, Derek. I get comments like that all the time. Can’t think why.” As D
erek grew even more confused, Mike indicated Marcianna. “So—Dr. Jones tells me you’ve already met his favorite sister.”
Derek’s expression quickly changed, and became one of knowing amusement. “Nah, that ain’t his sister. We been through that. He just says it is because of the name.” The young man looked past Mike to me. “We Googled it, Dr. Jones—we know why you named her that, and why you say she’s your sister, and all.”
“Really?” Mike said. “You Googled ‘shape-shifters’ and got a reasonable answer?”
This comment of course confused Derek again, so I hurried to say, “Don’t pay any attention to him, Derek—when he was a baby his mother hit him in the head with a mallet. I’m glad you were able to find out what you did—but has it made you any easier about approaching her? It’s the best way to put her at her ease.”
Derek looked at Marcianna, whose head was bobbing about with curiosity, and then to Lucas quickly; and Lucas gave him another disappointed scowl. “And we talked about this, too, Derek,” he said. “You need to make her feel comfortable, else she’s liable to tear your throat out.”
“Lucas…” I warned.
“All right, maybe not tear your throat out,” Lucas conceded, “but come on, Derek, just do it—and don’t be nervous, because she’ll know it and it might make her freak out.”
“That much is true, Derek,” I said. “Do you think you can approach her in a calm way?”
Derek took a very deep breath, and none of the rest of us said a word as he began to move toward Marcianna. “Well…I been practicing in my head, so maybe I can…”
“Good man,” I replied; then I leaned down to Marcianna’s ear. “Marcianna, this is a friend. A friend, okay?” Friend was one of the keywords that Marcianna understood instantly—at least she usually did. But as Derek approached, her manner became odd: not aggressive or defensive, but something beyond ease or curiosity. She stared at the oncoming boy, then began to purr rather loudly; and as Derek got very close, she approached him—causing him to freeze on the spot—and began to grind her head and neck into and past his left leg. I stayed with her, keeping her on a short leash as I worked my cane quickly and she circled around to his front side again; and then, inexplicably, she raised up to put her paws on his shoulders, though not playfully or in some sort of mock aggression. Rather, it was a tender movement; but one that nonetheless caused Derek to stiffen further. Marcianna was not deterred by this reaction, however, instead continuing to purr and then beginning to lick Derek’s face, one would have had to say affectionately, even lovingly.
Both Mike and Lucas were looking to me silently for an explanation, which I had, but did not want to share with them in front of Derek: for it has long been known—and had been my own vivid experience, as well—that cats are extraordinarily alive to the illnesses of people. It is a reaction that is quite distinct from that which they embody toward weakness; rather, sensing that a person is in some way ill or simply “different” (as many put it, today) tends to make them very protective. Often during my cancer, for example, a small buff beauty that I called Suri never left my bedroom, during my diagnosis period and then my convalescence; and she was even allowed to spend brief periods with me in the hospital, a practice that Sloan Kettering has, I understand, discontinued, more’s the pity. And certainly, such had been a marked feature of Marcianna’s behavior for almost as long as I had known her—with the exception of that one early moment of confusion and bloodshed, of course…
As for Derek, it had been my suspicion since meeting him that he was mildly to moderately autistic, although he had never been diagnosed (not surprisingly, in Burgoyne County, where “slow” generally served as a folk analysis). Marcianna was simply demonstrating the feline protective instinct in its most profound and vivid form; but to say so, I would also have had to share my thoughts about the young man she was exploring, and so I remained silent. At length, having made her intentions known, Marcianna released Derek; yet the entire time we were at the Kurtzes’ that afternoon she seemed always to know where he was and what he was doing: ready, should the need arise, to come to his aid. You would have had a tough time convincing Derek of that fact, of course: once she was back off of him, he wiped his face quickly, let out a long breath that he’d been holding, and glanced in some fear from me to Lucas and back.
“Doctor—Dr. Jones,” he finally blurted out. “What in the hell was that?”
“Hey!” Lucas called to him. “Mouth, dumb-ass, especially when you’re talking about the cheetah. And she just showed she likes you, shit-for-brains.” Lucas’ tone was not mean, but a routine form of address; and he demonstrated his point by approaching Marcianna and stroking her head, which kept her purring. “What’s so weird about that? First time I really spent any time with her, she dragged me around like a deer carcass—I told you that, too, remember?”
Mike and I exchanged a quick look: this was our first hint that Lucas had been sharing details of his experiences at Shiloh with Derek—and we would need to talk to him about it. Yet Marcianna’s reaction to the bigger boy had also convinced me that there was no danger to be feared from him, no angry tempestuous fits such as one often finds even in the mildly autistic; and so I was not overly concerned.
“Yeah, I know you told me that, Luke,” Derek replied, at which Lucas rolled his eyes in frustration, one of his fists balling up; but he did not move from Marcianna’s side. “But you never told me I might get jumped on and licked all over my face!”
“Don’t sweat it, Derek,” Mike said, wisely moving to block Derek’s ability to see Marcianna, which calmed the young man. “It’s better than the alternative, I can tell you that.”
Just then, a voice drifted out of whatever room lay beyond a screen door in the back wall of the house above the low wooden patio: “Hey! What’s all this about getting your face licked by the cheetah—is she here? Don’t you two morons go getting her all tired out, I’m going to want my face licked, too!”
There was nothing remotely girlish about the timbre of the voice itself—it clearly indicated a woman—but at the same time, some of the inflections were very youthful, making it equally plain that the speaker was a young woman: which meant, almost certainly, Ambyr Kurtz.
“That’s my sister,” Lucas confirmed, his voice low. “She’s been making tea and some weird little cakes for you guys. She thinks that because you come from New York City that’s what you do every afternoon. I told her that was bullshit, but she wanted to do it.”
“You mean she’s in there working at a stove—alone?” I said, somewhat concerned and glancing up from Marcianna to the kid. “I mean, can she—well, does she need any help?”
I still had my back to the house when I heard the old steel spring of the screen door creak as it stretched; and as soon as it did, I felt a sharp slapping at my cane arm. It was an alert signal that I knew Mike to use only in certain situations: if someone was holding a gun on us, if he’d discovered a body in an unlikely place, or…
“Dude,” Mike whispered. “Trajan—dude. You’re, uh—you’re gonna want to turn the fuck around. Right the fuck now…”
I did as I was instructed; and it is no great exaggeration to say that from that moment forward, neither my own life nor the path of the investigation we had undertaken would ever be the same.
{iv.}
“Don’t worry, Dr. Jones,” the same voice said pleasantly, as its speaker let the screen door close behind her. “I can handle myself in the kitchen. It was Dr. Jones who asked that question, wasn’t it? I told Lucas to explain the differences in the sounds of your voices, so that I wouldn’t get them wrong—although, if you screwed me around on that, Lucas, you are going to pay.”
Her manner and speech were so self-possessed that at first I didn’t notice the very light white cane that she held between the fingers and thumb of her right hand. Nor did I immediately notice the very slight glaze that covered her violet eyes—and they were violet, although I’d always doubted the existence of such colori
ng. But now I observed that it was real—and, along with my partner, I observed a great deal more. Surprisingly, she was tall; I don’t know why I should have been surprised, except that I had only ever extrapolated from Lucas, forgetting his age, and somehow thought of her as about his size. But she stood a slender yet still shapely five foot eight or more, and her hair—the same sandy color as Lucas’, but falling in long, natural waves to the middle of her back—accentuated this stature. As for her face—that was where one found the subtlety that prevented the kind of outright lasciviousness that I knew Mike was just dying to embody with a knowing look or crass aside to me. Beneath that unseeing yet strangely knowing gaze sat a mischievous, diminutive nose, whereas the full-lipped, expressive mouth, like the eyes, bespoke experience and wisdom beyond her years. She was the kind of woman who, at any age, one found both very attractive but a little too perspicacious to approach forwardly. Even Mike, after his initial swatting at my arm, appeared to straighten up—almost as if Ambyr could see what he was doing.
“Yes, that was me, Miss Kurtz,” I said, stepping onto the patio and moving closer to her, after the initial shock of her appearance had taken its few seconds’ toll. “I hope you didn’t think it was intended as an insult.”
“Ha!” Lucas laughed, bounding along at my side. “ ‘Miss Kurtz,’ I like that!”
And then came the first display of how finely tuned Ambyr’s other senses had become after she’d lost her sight: with a quick movement made easier by the fact that her light cotton summer dress had little above the waist to restrict her arms, she located Lucas by sound and caught him on the upper arm with her cane—a precise shot that, while not serious, must have smarted.
“And what’s wrong with ‘Miss Kurtz,’ you?” she said, not harshly, but with sisterly purpose. “Even though—” She switched her cane to her left hand and held out her right toward me. “—you can go ahead and call me Ambyr, Doctor. Please.”