Burn- pigeon 16 (33 page)

FORTY-THREE

The rats were deserting what Clare hoped was a rapidly sinking ship. She watched with cold eyes as sick men, with money and evil in equal proportions, streamed from the three-story mansion. Close in the ferns and the leaves of the subtropical garden, Clare held on to her daughter and wondered what had caused this exodus. Had the pigeon survived? Or had her death scared the whoremongers?

Two gunshots, close together, snapped her from her thoughts, and she ducked, wrapping herself over her daughter. The shots probably marked the end of the ranger. A law enforcement pigeon, but she hadn't found Vee, and now she'd gone and gotten herself killed before Dana was out of danger, Clare thought sourly. A faint pang of guilt left over from when she was civilized nudged her.

If she and Dana survived, she'd put flowers on the woman's grave. If they didn't, no flowers for Anna Pigeon.

When Clare again found the nerve to peek out of their tiny woods, little girls and boys in the hateful trappings of their slavery, some fully dressed, others with bits or pieces of the costumes still on, some dragging a ripped skirt or a wig fallen half off, were pouring out through the French doors. Most were not crying or running but moved with a stoicism that should never be seen on such baby faces.

Clare didn't move. She searched for the one face she needed to see. If Vee was not here, then she'd been shipped overseas or secreted away in some man's basement. Or she had died. Clare prayed for the last.

In a remarkably short time, the garden was free of perverted clientele. The only sound was the soft rustling of the children on the brick patio. This momentary hush was broken by the chief of police. In Edwardian trousers and bedroom slippers, he roared from the house, "Load up the jewels. And find that goddam photographer."

The black suits began herding the children to the door where the perverts had swarmed out of the courtyard. The children, the jewels, diamonds beyond price, and they were being prodded ahead like cattle to be taken to another "fancy house" and another set of "clients."

The one the chief called Barrett had run by carrying gasoline to burn the place down, with its evidence. There would be traces left, but, without Anna or the children or Clare, the arson investigators might not know what they were finding evidence of. They might think it was done to cover the theft of the presumed city property that was supposedly stored in this imaginary warehouse. The police would push that theory, for sure.

Moving slowly so she wouldn't trip and cause Dana to cry out or the chief to decide the goddam photographer--it had to be her--was hiding in the bushes, she began folding herself through the wide fronds toward the door where the children had been taken. If it led to the outside, there was a possibility that in either confusion or darkness she could carry Dana to safety.

A howl of rage and pain from the direction of the house stopped her. Had it not, she would have stepped out onto the brick and run right into the man rushing back from wherever the black maw of the door in the brick led to.

Downs, the chief had called this man. Downs was compact and fast, probably in his early forties. His head was shaped like a bullet from working out his neck muscles and covered with close-cropped dark hair. As another roar of pain and rage came from the house, Downs faltered. He stopped several steps from where Clare stood in the shadows and, hands shaking, began fumbling for his pistol.

Downs was only used to facing down frightened children, Clare thought. The chief's shriek was from a larger predator. Coolness coalesced around her like the still, cold air of a walk-in freezer. The smell of gardenias was gone. The sorrow of her lost baby girl was muted. The rush of blood in her ears was silenced. Lifting the brick from where it was cradled in the crook of the arm that held Dana, she stepped lightly into the chill and the silence behind Downs and brought it down hard on the back of his skull.

With an "oomph" that sounded like the noise a bear might make, he fell to hands and knees. In one graceful movement Clare brought the brick down a second time. He didn't move again.

Dana, the coat pulled up over her head, pushed her face deeper in the hollow of her mother's shoulder. Clare was glad her daughter hadn't witnessed the violence. Like good dry wine, revenge was an acquired taste, and one too bitter for the palate of a child.

Dana clinging tightly to her neck, Clare leaned down and took the pistol the officer had managed to get out of his holster just as she struck him. It was a sleek semiautomatic. What make, Clare didn't know, but she recognized the feel from the gun she'd been given by props for the small part of an CIA agent she'd gotten in a movie shooting in Vancouver. That gun had been rendered harmless, but it had been a real weapon at one time in its life. So the character she played could handle it with confidence, Clare had taken lessons at a shooting range in Seattle.

Downs's gun felt good in her hand. She thumbed off the safety and dropped her hand to her side, the barrel pointed down the line of her leg to the ground. Torn between walking into the darkness where the children had been taken or going back toward the house, she remained motionless. Minutes before, she'd written the ranger off, but there was no doubt in her mind that Anna had been the cause of the chief's anguish. The icy calm did not abate. She turned toward the house, following the winding brick walk with sure and silent steps.

As she crossed from the patio onto the marble of the entryway, she saw blood on the tiles. The tail of the governess's dress was peeking from beneath a bench between the potted palms in the crook of the curving banister; the bench Clare had shared with the girls and their dollies.

Above, leaning over the banister, .357 pointed at the plush velvet cushion, the chief stood on one leg. His skin was pasty. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped from his jaw. The hand that held the gun was trembling, but at that distance he would have no trouble shooting through the bench and hitting Anna.

Clare raised Downs's gun and fired two shots into the chief's center mass. Watching him crumple, his hands groping like blind things trying to find the holes where she'd let his life out, she felt nothing but a mild sense of relief at a dirty chore completed satisfactorily.

Barrett, gas can in hand, appeared behind the fallen chief, shouting, "It's burning good--" When he saw Clare he snapped his mouth shut. Clare did not move or blink or breathe. Barrett dropped the gasoline can and pulled his gun. Clare shot him twice.

"The last scene of
Hamlet,
" she said softly. "Hamlet is dead, Ophelia is dead, the king is dead, the queen is dead, Laertes is dead--"

"But everybody else lived happily ever after," came the ranger's voice. Clare switched her gaze to the pile of gray muslin boiling from beneath the bench.

"Wendy Darling's bedtime story.
Peter Pan,
" Clare said. "Mr. Nye said I learned to fly faster than Mary Martin."

"Bully for you," Anna said. With growls and curses, she got herself right way around and out from under the bench. Using the nearest palm tree, she pulled herself to a standing position. "Jesus!" she said as she took in the carnage. "Holy smoke. Good job."

"They've set fire to the place," Clare said.

"So I heard," Anna replied. One hand was clamped tightly over her side. What color remained in her face was made by blood worn outside the skin, not inside.

"You're hurt," Clare said.

"Smart and pretty, too," Anna mocked her.

A crash sounded from above. A choking gout of smoke gushed down the stairs, burning their eyes and lungs.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Anna gasped. She stepped from the support of the little tree and would have fallen if Clare hadn't dropped the gun to steady her.

"I'm good," Anna said. She pulled her arm away, took two steps, and fell headlong onto the floor.

Clare squatted down as Anna pushed herself to her elbows. "Anna, I'm saving your life again, but if you don't stop making it so hard you can just die." Taking Anna's arm, she stood, pulling the ranger with her. Clare tried to walk her toward the courtyard, but Anna stayed rooted in the burning house.

"Listen," she said.

Clare listened. Faintly, through the increasing cracks and hisses of the fire devouring the building from the roof down, Clare heard it: a tiny sweet howl.

"Mackie," she whispered.

FORTY-FOUR

Anna sat on a bench holding Dana on her lap. Clare had gone back into the burning house to find Mackie. For a pathetic minute, Anna had tried to go with her but had trouble standing upright long enough to make her point. Dana shifted, and the pressure of childish knees against her side hurt. The comfort Anna derived from the feel of a live and wriggling child more than made up for it. As she rocked Dana gently, Anna's mind drifted like the smoke reaching out from the upstairs windows.

This time, she hadn't killed anyone. That had to count in her favor. There was a small matter of crippling the police chief, but since Clare had subsequently shot him to death, Anna's damage was a mere footnote. The scariest thought was of the sticky bit about why she didn't report Clare Sullivan to the FBI as soon as she realized the woman was on their wanted list for murder and escaping across state lines.

Telling them it was necessary to save the lives of children wouldn't hold water. It was tantamount to telling a judge the perjury was necessary because the legal system was not to be trusted. She could lie. Then again, lying to the FBI was never a good idea. The punishment for the lie was often more severe than the punishment for the crime would have been.

When she'd first been drawn into Clare's search for the girls, she'd given it some thought, but not nearly enough. Aiding and abetting a fugitive wanted for a capital offense wasn't a casual crime. It was a stint-behind-bars kind of crime. Like the proverbial frog, Anna'd boiled herself to death one teensy illegal act at a time.

Jail terrified her. Falling into the machinery of the legal system terrified her. Being at the mercy of lawyers terrified her. The thought of being incarcerated poured panic into her until her bones felt soft with it.

Maybe she could tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and damn little of that--as an old cowboy she'd known growing up had been fond of saying. She could tell them that she'd met a man named Jordan who shared a courtyard with her, that she had gone to Bonne Chance with him because she was curious about what went on inside, that he had led her down the stairs to the whorehouse and she'd decided she'd be safer if she dressed as a worker. Then mayhem ensued.

Sure, seasoned law enforcement officials would buy that without asking any embarrassing questions. Without realizing she did so, she buried her nose in Dana's soft hair and took some comfort from the sweet smell of a child.

Try as she might, she couldn't remember just how or why she thought she would be able to get away with it. There'd been some vague notion of, should she and Clare succeed, just drifting quietly away unnoticed while Clare pretended never to have known her. Three dead policemen, a dead thug, a governess burned to death, a major structural fire, and a herd of costumed children had a way of shining the spotlight of the law on a girl.

Would Paul come to see her on visiting days?

Could she keep from killing herself long enough to get to visiting days?

Hacking coughs and rattling voices brought Anna back into the courtyard, and she watched as Clare, carrying two children, Mackie at her heels, emerged from the gray fog of smoke like the Pied Piper, seven tiny children in pajamas and two teenagers, one with an infant in her arms, clustered around her.

"Vee," she said, her smile wide and white in the sooty face. "Vee was in the nursery. Mackie found her."

Anna didn't think she had a smile left in her but noticed she was grinning back.

"This is Aisha," Clare said, indicating the second little girl in her arms, a bird-boned child with huge dark eyes.

"Aisha,
alive,
" Clare said.

From inside the house came a roar, and smoke gusted through the French doors filling the courtyard.

"The place is coming down," Anna said and struggled to her feet, Dana heavy against her side. "Help me," she ordered, and one of the older girls took Dana from her. "Hold hands," she said to the children, and, leaning heavily on the girl carrying Dana, Anna led the way toward the back of the courtyard where the men had herded the "jewels."

Through the door in the brick was a sizable parking garage. The doors to the street were open, and whatever they'd intended to use to transport the children was gone. When the fire started, the driver must have panicked and gone, leaving the children to burn to death. In a confused clot the kids in their absurd costumes milled around; some sat on the concrete, some cried, some just stood mute and still.

Together, Anna and Clare brought them out onto the sidewalk and across the street where the flames would not reach them. Sirens sounded loud in the distance. Fire trucks were coming.

Anna started to sink down to sit on the curb. "Wait!" Clare cried. A single cab was meandering down Rampart. "Up," Clare said, grabbing Anna's arm and hauling her back to her feet. "You can't be found here." With the jacket she'd used to shield Dana, she covered Anna's bloody dress, then hailed the cab and helped her into it.

Anywhere else, the cabbie would have been full of questions. In New Orleans, crowds, even of children, in costume at daybreak caused little comment.

Logic, and the searing pain in Anna's side, would have had her ordering the cabbie to the nearest emergency room, but, by law, doctors had to report gunshot wounds. Anna returned to Geneva's, let herself into the garden, and made her painful way to the guest cottage. The governess's dress was stiff with blood and beginning to adhere to her body. She found scissors in a kitchen drawer and used them to cut it off. That done, she wet a dish towel and washed the blood from her hands, face, and side.

When the wound was exposed, she was surprised to find it wasn't the black round hole left by a bullet but a deep gash. Pressing the edges gently, she could feel a foreign body lodged beneath the skin, as if a shard of glass had been broken off inside of her. The wound was still bleeding, but not copiously.

Sacrificing another of Geneva's dish towels, she folded the cloth into a square and pressed it over the gash. The trek up the stairs to her bedroom took much of her remaining energy and started the blood flowing again. Leaning against the wall for support, she pulled on a pair of old khaki shorts and a shirt. By the time she got to Geneva's French doors, the edges of her vision had turned black and the world was beginning to swim sickeningly.

"It's too early and you stink," Geneva said in welcome.

"I've been hurt," Anna said. "Could you call me a cab?"

It was after four when she came out of the anesthesia and the strange and troubled sleep that followed it. Her side was bandaged, her mouth tasted of burning plastic and bile, and she had to go to the bathroom. Clare sat in the blue plastic visitor's chair next to the curtain dividing the room. There wasn't a patient in the other bed, and three little girls, dressed in real little-girl clothes, played quietly on the white cotton blanket, a game involving the worn stuffed dog she'd seen on Clare's pillow, a metal water pitcher, and an emesis basin.

Clare was showered and dressed in a flowing skirt and top she'd probably picked up at the French Market. The light fabric did little to cover the terrible thinness the past weeks had wrought on her form. The crown of thorns had been scrubbed from her forehead, and she wore lipstick.

"You look like a girl," Anna croaked.

Clare rose, poured water into a plastic cup, put a straw into it, and held it to Anna's lips.

Anna took the cup, pulled the straw out, and drank.

"You look like shit," Clare said kindly.

"It wasn't a bullet," Anna volunteered. "It was a chunk of Dougie's rib."

"God! I hope they loaded you up with antibiotics," Clare said. "Have you called your husband?"

Anna hadn't. She'd been awake between the anesthesia and the nap--the doctor had told her about the bone fragment. She'd told him she'd fallen while running along the river walk, tumbled down the rocky side toward the river, and felt something gouge into her. He didn't believe her, but he didn't seem to believe much of what his patients told him and had neither the interest nor the time to try to ferret out the truth. There'd been time to call Paul then, but she hadn't gotten up the nerve.

"You want to call him now?" Clare asked.

"In a bit," Anna said.

"Is he going to be pissed?" Clare asked.

"In a word," Anna said. "What's happening with everything?" she asked to change the subject. "I take it you aren't going to be arrested for murder."

Clare didn't laugh. "Believe it or not, it was a close thing. Cops--all cops--hate to be wrong. I was interrogated for over six hours. They stopped short of waterboarding, but just barely. You can't believe how bad they wanted to get me on something. I have to go back for another 'session' tomorrow."

"The death of the police chief and his minions?"

"It looks like I'll get a pass on that. I guess the brotherhood breaks down with corrupt locals and federal agents. They'll leave me alone if I keep my mouth shut. The statement given to the newspapers was that the girls had been kidnapped by a person or persons unknown and that I found them locked in the storage garage behind Bonne Chance. The 'unsub' "--Clare gave a wry smile at the jargon--"is suspected of setting fire to the warehouse to destroy evidence." Clare sat again. Her eyes never off the three children for long, she watched them dancing the dog around the pitcher. "The police came when the fire trucks did. They got a guy driving a van that they think was the van they were going to transport the kids in. The FBI grabbed him, and maybe he'll talk. Nobody wanted to tell me much. I know the other children were taken to a shelter. They'll try to find their parents but aren't hopeful. Most of them were probably sold rather than kidnapped, and most of them are from out of the country. The two older girls who were watching Vee and the littlest kids were graduates of the whorehouse and shouldn't face any kind of prosecution."

"The policemen and Dougie's bodies burned?"

Clare nodded. "Yes, but they'll still probably be able to identify them. The fire department got the fire out fairly fast, from what I hear. I don't know what will be said of police participation. The agents who talked with me don't want to make too much of it yet. They want the man called the Magician. Evidently he's the core of the operation, him and two others they know of. David--" At the sound of their father's name, both Vee and Dana looked up hopefully, and Anna guessed Clare hadn't told them he was dead yet.

"David was working with the FBI to find this Magician. He was doing everything he could to get Dana and Vee--and Aisha--back." This comment was for the three little girls, Anna guessed, so they would feel better about their father. After what they had suffered, it would be a comfort to know their daddy had never abandoned them.

"Was that why your house--" Anna began, but Clare shook her head fractionally and looked at the girls. She gave them a smile. They went back to their game.

Clare pulled her chair up close to the bedside and partially pulled the curtain between her and the children. Leaning her elbows on Anna's bed she said, in a voice scarcely louder than a sigh, "Yes. That's why the house was bombed. The FBI said David had told them a container holding illegal aliens was arriving in the harbor. He gave them the wrong dock number, and by the time they got there it was empty. They thought it was an honest mistake."

"You don't?" Anna asked and was shushed though she hadn't said anything alarming.

Clare went on in a faint whisper. "I think Aisha was arriving in that container. That's why David and Jalila rushed out to meet it. I think he wanted time to get her away before the FBI arrived. He lied so well the Feds didn't get there till after Dougie and Blackie had come and gone--there to harvest children. I think there were dead children in the container and Blackie and Dougie took them."

"Why?" Anna asked, genuinely confused. The obvious and odious answer clicked in her brain, and she wished she hadn't asked.

"Not that--God, at least I hope not that," Clare said, reading Anna's look of revulsion. "It's possible they switched Dana and Vee with the corpses. If the children weren't dead, I don't think they would have killed them."

"Unless they were too 'broken' to be of any value," Anna said.

"God," Clare said again. Shaking the idea from her as she might shake a spider from her hair, she went on. "The agent who talked with me did say they thought some men had followed David and Jalila to his apartment. Probably because they figured out David was exposing them. They killed Jalila and left her corpse in David's apartment so it would look like a domestic thing--David, me, and the lover. Then put David back in bed and fired the house. That's when I think they put the dead children in the house and took Dana and Vee to cover their losses."

"Why--" Anna began, but Clare held up a hand, stopping her.

"We're never going to know why they did what to whom, why they carted bodies all over hell and gone, unless Blackie tells us. My guess is Blackie and Dougie were trying to cover their tracks at the behest of their boss, who knew the Feds were closing in."