The Library at Mount Char

  “I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue,” Erwin said. “My first thought was meth, but I don’t think that’s it. She looks too sleepy.”

  “Plus she still has all her teeth,” Dorn agreed. “Could be LSD, though.”

  Erwin and Steve looked at him.

  Dorn shrugged. “About half the people who get booked tripping on acid are wearing bathrobes. It’s, like, a thing.”

  They considered this for a few moments, then Erwin nodded back at the laptop. “It’s about to get good.” The woman in the bathrobe was speaking to Amrita Krishnamurti. Carolyn handed her a blue duffel bag, like one you’d use to take stuff to the gym. Ms. Krishnamurti motioned to the other two tellers and they gathered round to listen. The bathrobe woman spoke for a few more seconds, then touched each of them on the cheek.

  Then the tellers split up and started filling bags of money. They worked quickly, slowing only to toss out dye packs and the occasional bill.

  “Are those the marked bills?” Dorn asked.

  Erwin nodded.

  The video ran for just under three minutes. When it was over Steve handed the computer back.

  “They all helped,” Dorn said.

  “Yeah.” Erwin bit back the urge to salute Captain Obvious. He needed Dorn. “They did. That Krishnamurti lady was the, whatchacallit, branch manager. She worked there about twelve years. The other two had been there about a year each. None of them was fixing to go bankrupt or any shit like that. And they couldn’t have got the job in the first place if they had criminal records. But they was just awful eager to fill up that bag, don’t you think?”

  Dorn nodded. “It’s weird.”

  Erwin thought, but did not say, Maybe a little bit like a guy who’d kept his nose clean for ten years all of a sudden deciding to commit burglary and kill a cop? Or maybe not. But he’d bring that up later. “Yeah, I thought so too. So I went and talked to them a little bit. They seemed nice enough. They all remembered where the alarm buttons were, didn’t panic or anything like that, but not a one of them pushed one.”

  “Did they say why?”

  “Not at first. They lawyered up. But once I convinced them they weren’t going to jail, one of the younger ones talked to me. She said she didn’t set off any of the alarms ‘because I was just too busy hunting for dye packs and radio transmitters.’ Real matter-of-fact, see? I asked her why she’d do such a thing, and she said she had no idea. I’m pretty sure I believe her.” Erwin gave a wry smile. “I’ll be honest, I’m fucking stumped. That’s why I came here.”

  “How do you mean?” Steve asked.

  “I was hoping you might have some bright ideas.”

  “Me?”

  Erwin nodded. “You spent more time with her than anybody. Anything about that video jump out at you? Jog your memory, like?” Erwin gave him a minute to think about it. His eye drifted once again to that fucked-up painting. The shapes in the darkness were black on black, but you could almost—

  “You don’t think the tellers are in on it?”

  “Nah,” Erwin said. “I don’t. I did what I could for them. They lost their jobs, but I don’t think there’s going to be a trial.”

  “And you’re sure the woman in the video was Carolyn?”

  “The prints match.”

  “How did you get her name? Matching prints would give you a connection between the two cases, but for the name you’d need something else.”

  Smart kid. “Birth records,” Erwin said. “Hospital.”

  Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know that was technically possible.”

  Erwin shrugged. “Learn something every day, dontcha? I’m Big Brother, more or less. I’ve got access to all sorts of shit you wouldn’t think. We couldn’t find much on her, though, and our computer guys are pretty good. Whadda they call it, data mining?” Erwin said, playing dumb. He’d published papers on data mining.

  “I’ve heard of it,” Dorn said. Erwin was pretty sure he was lying.

  “Whatever. Point is, them nerds just about always come back with something. Not this time, though. I’m about convinced they came up dry because past a certain age there’s just nothing out there to find on Miz Sopaski.”

  “What do you mean, ‘past a certain age’?” Steve asked.

  “Well, up until she turned eight or so, she shows up in the record about like any other kid. Birth records, shots, school…” He rummaged around in his folder and dug out an 8×10, slid it across the table. “That’s Mrs. Gillespie’s second-grade class. Carolyn’s on the back row.”

  Steve examined the picture.

  Erwin waited for a lightbulb to go on, but it didn’t. “You notice anything else in that picture?”

  “Should I?”

  “Maybe not. I’ve had a lot longer to look at it than you. And I might be seeing things. But take a look at the girl in the second row, third from the right. She remind you of anybody?”

  It took Steve another couple of seconds. “Is it…the kid looks like the other lady from the bank robbery. The one who did all the talking. Same nose, same shape of her face…”

  “Yeah,” Erwin said. “I thought so too. The kid’s name is Lisa Garza. We’re trying to find out what she’s been up to for the last quarter century or so.” He gave them a level gaze. “Haven’t found anything on her, either. Ab-so-lutely nothing.”

  Dorn let out a low whistle.

  Seeing that they were ready, Erwin dug out the pièce de résistance. It was a photograph from a newspaper. The caption underneath it said “Beating the Summer Heat! Carolyn Sopaski, 7, takes her turn on the water slide.” A grinning girl with a missing front tooth was sliding down a long piece of plastic, haloed by a sparkling spray of water. In the background a small crowd of kids milled around, waiting their turn.

  “What about that one?” he asked. “You notice anything—” He broke off. He sniffed the air. He couldn’t identify the smell at first, and then he could. Blood. All of a sudden he was back in Afghanistan. He reached out for an M16 that wasn’t there.

  In the distance he heard a woman scream, then a gunshot. Then two more gunshots and a deep, booming laugh.

  Then, screaming.

  V

  Thirty seconds later Erwin heard keys clattering in the lock. “Aw fuck.”

  The door swung open on Sergeant Rogers’s brother kneeling on the floor, head hung low, cheeks streaked with tears. He pointed at Steve with his left hand. His right, Erwin saw, was broken in at least two places. “That’s him,” he said. “Please. I got a baby…”

  Erwin just had time to register the words when Rogers’s head exploded. He crumpled the rest of the way to the floor, his short, dumb life mercifully over. Then the craziest looking asshole Erwin had ever seen stepped over the body into the chapel.

  He was a white guy, tall and muscular, a “healthy specimen” as they had said back in the day. Erwin’s first thought was that the guy had done himself up in red body paint like one of those tribes in Colombia. No. Not body paint. Blood. He was covered in blood from head to toe. Here and there bits of meat were stuck to him as well. A couple of feet of someone’s small intestine dangled from his shoulder.

  The big guy was spinning a pyramid-shaped weight on the end of a long chain. At the other end of the chain was a machete-sized knife mounted on a yellow metal shaft. Is that bronze? Also—What the fuck? At first Erwin refused to believe what his eyes were telling him, but the guy was, in fact, wearing a tutu. Hmm, Erwin thought. There’s something you don’t see every day.

  “Eshteeeeve?” the big guy said. His eyes tracked back and forth between Erwin, Steve, and Dorn, reminding Erwin of the forward-mounted gun on an Apache. He had a strange accent, one Erwin couldn’t place. The s sounded more like “esh” and he dragged his e out too long.

  “Uh…Steve?” said Dorn. “You’re looking for Steve?”

  “Don’t, Counselor,” Erwin said.

  The big guy’s eyes locked onto Dorn. “Eshteeve?”

  “That’s him!” Dorn said,
pointing at Steve.

  The guy gave Dorn a big smile. His teeth were brown. “Eshteeeve?”

  Dorn nodded his head with comical enthusiasm, looking for a moment more like a headbanger than an attorney. “Yeah,” he said, jabbing his finger into the air in Steve’s direction, “that’s him!”

  “Counselor, I don’t think—”

  Quick as a panther, the big guy was at Steve’s side. He put an arm around him, stroked his cheek with the blade of the knife. Erwin’s professional eye noted that the blade was hand-forged. Don’t see that much either. It looked very sharp.

  “Eshteeeve?”

  “Um…yeah,” Steve said. “That’s me.”

  The big guy continued running the knife up and down Steve’s cheek, not quite hard enough to draw blood. Then, with a movement so fast that Erwin’s eye could not track it, the weighted end of the chain smashed out and obliterated Dorn’s lower jaw. It literally disappeared. Probably part of it was mashed back into his throat, but other bits scattered hither and yon.

  “Gubboy,” the big guy said to Steve. “You come.”

  From the look in his eyes, Dorn realized that something had happened but not exactly what. He reached up and probed tenderly at the bottom half of his face. About the time he realized something was missing the first drops of blood began to rain down on his shirt. His eyes widened. “OOOGH!” he said. “OOOOOOOGH!” He began bouncing up and down on the bench like a little kid who needs to use the bathroom. “OOOGH! OOOOOOGH!”

  Both Steve and the big guy were looking at Dorn, Steve in horror, the big guy with a slight, amused smile that brought out his dimples. After a moment of this he began to imitate Dorn’s bouncing. He glanced at Steve and Erwin the way a man will when he is laughing among friends. He pointed at Dorn and said, “Oogh! Oogh!”

  Steve didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the ruin of Dorn’s face. The big guy’s smile faded a bit. He turned to Erwin. He didn’t like what he saw there, either. His smile disappeared. He shrugged. A split second later the spear on the other end of the chain flashed out and buried itself to the hilt in Dorn’s eye socket. The pointy end of the blade poked out the back of Dorn’s skull, yellow and bloody. After an interval just long enough for Erwin to register the fine silver chain running from the hilt to the big guy’s hand it flashed back again. Dorn fell forward, his head hitting the concrete bench with a solid clunk. Blood and aqueous humor leaked from his eye and began puddling.

  The silence seemed very loud.

  The big guy savored the looks on their faces for a moment. He gave Erwin a wink, then began to spin the weighted end of the chain again.

  Erwin realized he was about to die. Then his mind—his clever little mind, which had been so good to him over the years—came through again. He looked at the big guy’s ridiculous dress—brown loafers with the toes cut out, purple tutu—a tutu? Da fuck?—flak jacket, probably Israeli, and red tie. He thought of the woman who had done the bank robbery in a bathrobe and a cowboy hat. “Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t happen to know a chick named Carolyn, would you?”

  The big guy raised his eyebrow in surprise. “Carolyn?” The rotation of the chain slowed, just a little.

  Erwin, whose instincts had been honed to exquisite sharpness through a decade-long association with murderous men, thought, The trick now is not to show panic. If he sees fear, it will excite him. “Yeah,” he said casually. “Carolyn. Lisa, too.”

  “Wussay Carolyn?”

  “Eh?” He put his hand to his ear. “Say again, chum?”

  “Wut…say…Carolyn.” He wiggled the knife for emphasis.

  With a knot in his stomach that reminded him of the one and only time he had gone deep-sea fishing and hooked a “big’un,” Erwin said, “Oh yeah, Carolyn and me go waaaaaay back. If she’s told me one time she’s told me a thousand, ‘Erwin, if you ever need anything, anything at all, you just have to say my name—Carolyn—and I’ll come a-running.’ We’re real good friends, me and Carolyn.’ ”

  The big guy scrunched up his face, confused. “Carolyn?”

  “Oh yeah.” Erwin nodded. “Carolyn.”

  The big guy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Nobununga?”

  “Yup. Nobunaga. Him too, yup.”

  He realized immediately that he had said the wrong thing. Not Nobu-nag-a, Nobu-nun-ga. Ah, fuck. The big guy’s eyes narrowed. He resumed spinning his pyramid. Erwin was thinking, When he throws it I’ll twist right, twist right and grab the chain if I can but he’s so fucking fast—

  The big guy blinked. He leaned forward, brow furrowed. Then his eyes flew open wide, reminding Erwin of how Rogers’s brother looked when he recognized Erwin’s name on the form. He pointed. “You…Erwin?”

  “Umm…”

  “Natanz?” The big guy held his hand to his shoulder as if it were wounded, then pantomimed working a squad automatic weapon, sweeping it back and forth, singlehandedly suppressing an attack by a vastly superior force.

  Erwin considered his answer in light of the Israeli flak jacket, the guy’s obvious insanity. Ah, fuck it, he thought. “Yeah. Natanz.”

  The big guy drew in breath. He stopped spinning the pyramid, then snapped to something almost but not quite like the US military’s version of attention—his feet were a bit too wide, his chest poked out a bit too far for the Army. Then, holding the spear perfectly vertical with his left hand—parade rest?—he raised his right fist and banged it on his chest. He said something in a language Erwin had never heard before.

  Erwin wasn’t going to salute him back—not this guy—but he nodded again. One of them days.

  Down the hallway he heard a clatter of bullets falling on the tile floor, a soft curse, the distinct sound of a rifle being cocked. AR-15, prolly. The cops are still trying to fight back. Both Erwin and the big guy glanced back at the door. The big guy frowned, not liking what he saw out there. Then, just like that, he punched Steve in the jaw. Steve slumped, dazed but not completely out of it. The big guy slung him over his shoulder. The two of them disappeared out into the hall.

  Erwin heard gunfire, then screams, then a deep, booming laugh. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t since Afghanistan. His veins were thrumming with energy. He got up and went looking for a gun.

  The rifle he’d heard in the hall—it was an AR-15—was all bent-up. He found a pistol in the locker room, but by then the big guy was gone. Steve was gone with him. Erwin followed a trail of bare, bloody footprints down the hall. The security door was blocked open by the fat lady with the dirty feet. A hole the size of his hand gaped in her chest. Through it he could see a big blood vessel, probably her aorta, all shredded-up.

  The skinny girl with the Skynyrd tattoo, apparently unharmed, knelt beside her, staring down with a blank expression on her face. “Bev?” she said. “Beverly?”

  Erwin thought about telling the skinny girl that Beverly was with Ronnie Van Zant and Elvis, but he wasn’t sure how that would go over. He settled for patting her on the shoulder.

  The lobby was drenched with blood. Intestines dangled from the metal chairs, the light fixtures, the counter. Thick splinters of bulletproof glass lay strewn across the floor. He had seen that stuff break before, just once, when an Iraqi limousine got hit by a depleted uranium slug from an A-10 Thunderbolt. He made his way through the lobby, checking for pulses and finding none. The older cop he’d seen smoking outside had been decapitated. If his head were still around, Erwin didn’t see it.

  He stood over the dead cop for a long minute, lips pursed, considering. Lightning flashed off in the west. Someone in the lobby was screaming. He bent over and fished around in the dead cop’s front pocket and retrieved a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Bic, then made his way back to the chapel.

  Once inside he kicked the door shut. He moved to a spot where he could look at the painting and slid down along the wall until his ass hit the floor. The buzz of the fluorescent lights reminded him of a cloud of flies around a corpse. In a few minutes there would be sirens, ambu
lances, SWAT teams, reports. He shook out a smoke, lit it, and took a deep drag, relishing the head rush from the nicotine.

  On the bench in front of him sat the newspaper picture of Carolyn on the water slide. In the background of the twenty-five-year-old photo someone who looked an awful lot like Steve Hodgson, aged about ten, waited for his turn. Shit, Erwin thought. I really wanted to ask him about that. Up on the wall Jesus—or whomever—held his hands out, keeping the dark things of creation at bay. He heard the rumble again, from the east, closer now.

  Thunder.

  Chapter 5

  The Luckiest Chicken in the World

  I

  “Wow,” Aliane said. “You weren’t kidding. You do have lions in your backyard.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “Just like in Scarface!” He grinned, exposing what Aliane judged to be about twenty thousand Brazilian reis’ worth of gold grills on his teeth.

  How much would that be in dollars? More than Aliane’s mother had made in a year of scrubbing floors, anyway. Aliane was only vaguely familiar with Scarface, but she could tell from his tone she was supposed to be impressed. “Ooooh, baby,” she said, smiling, and ran a fingernail down his forearm.

  She could still hear the party a couple hundred meters behind them—thumping bass, laughter, people splashing in the pool—but they were far enough away that she could no longer see Marcus’s mansion through the trees. They stood on a concrete walkway between two deep, lighted pits filled with fake rocks and a few bushes. Marcus faced her, standing a little bit inside of the invisible we’re-just-friends line.

  “The big male is Dresden. That one”—he pointed at the one on her left—“is called Nagasaki. Naga for short.”

  “I thought lions were supposed to have a mane?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Only the males. Don’t you watch the Discovery Channel?”

  Aliane forced a smile. Growing up she was too poor to have a TV. “She’s small, too.”

  “She’s only about half-grown. We think she’s his daughter.”