The Shaktra (20 page)

Rose worked for Sheri Smith, taking care of Nira
.

Patricia used to work for Sheri Smith, taking care of Nira
.

Hector used to date Patricia
.

Hector used to see Nira
.

Hector used to date Lucy
.

Lucy and Sheri Smith had been in the plant together when it blew. According to Rose, but not according to Hector
.

Hector’s two girlfriends had died in Toule
.

Freddy Degear had died in Toule, but only Rose knew him
.

Freddy Degear was the reason they had gotten to know Nira
.

Yeah, Steve thought, it was all interesting, but how did it add up?

“We’ll get to that in a second,” Cindy said, unaware of how annoyed Hector was getting. “But we need to ask you a couple of questions about Lucy, and what happened to her the year before the electrical plant blew. We understand she was in a car accident, and that she got badly burned?”

“Who told you that?” Hector demanded.

Cindy lowered her voice. “Ms. Treacher.”

Hector shook his head, he had reached his limit. “It’s your turn to talk. You tell me what you know about Patricia’s death and I’ll decide what to tell you about Lucy.”

They had reached an impasse. Steve decided it was time for a little honesty.

“We went to your local library,” Steve said. “We were there this morning, but we went back again after we had lunch with Rose and Nira. A lot of stuff was bothering us about Rose, that we’ll get into in a minute, and we wanted to check it out. But from talking to people around town, we knew about your connection to Patricia and Lucy and Nira. That inspired us to look up all the old articles on Patricia’s death, and we saw that she had been hit with a black SUV.” Steve added, “Some witnesses said it was a Ford Expedition.”

“So?” Hector said.

“We were there when Freddy Degear got run over yesterday,” Steve said. “He was hit by a black Ford Expedition.”

Hector sat up, interested. “Have you told the police this?”

“Not yet,” Steve said.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re still confused about Rose, Nira’s nanny,” Cindy said. “It’s one of the reasons we came to see you. We thought you could tell us more about her.”

“I’ve never even met the woman,” Hector said.

Steve saw their problem. They kept swinging from Rose to Patricia to Lucy. He apologized and asked Hector if they could focus on Rose for a second. Hector nodded, reluctantly. He was beginning to look like he wished he had never invited them inside.

“At first we liked Rose,” Steve explained. “It seemed like she really loved Nira, and took good care of her. But when we went for lunch this afternoon, she wouldn’t let Nira join us. She kept her in her room the whole time. And this room was like a jail cell. It has no toys in it, no TV, nothing on the walls. Rose wouldn’t even let us take Nira out for ice cream.”

“All this sounds like the mother’s fault,” Hector interrupted.

“Maybe,” Steve said. “But as we left the house, Cindy and I felt uneasy about Rose, and we started thinking about something Ms. Treacher had told us. She said she’d never heard of Freddy Degear—the guy who had just died—when Rose had told us that Freddy was a neighbor of hers. So Cindy and I checked it out. We went to all the houses in that area, and we couldn’t find anyone who knew Freddy Degear. And you never heard of him. That’s because he’s not from Toule.”

Steve had recaptured Hector’s interest. “Why would the woman lie?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “But talking to you right now, we discover Rose told us another lie. She said Ms. Smith went to school with you guys. You say she didn’t.”

“I have my old yearbook. You can see it if you want. You won’t find her inside.”

“You don’t have to show us, we believe you,” Steve said.

“Rose said Ms. Smith was in the plant when it blew up,” Cindy added.

Hector snorted. “Lucy and I were the only ones inside that plant.”

“Another lie on her part,” Steve said.

Hector struggled to keep up. “It sounds to me like Sheri Smith is behind the lies. That I can believe. Smith lied to Patricia all the time. It was second nature to her.”

Steve shook his head. “I might buy that if Rose had not lied to us about Freddy just
a few seconds
after he got ran over. Think about it: The poor guy is lying there in the street bleeding to death and she’s acting like he’s an old buddy of hers.”

“That’s cold,” Hector agreed.

“I said the same thing,” Cindy said.

“And this is the woman who is taking care of Nira?” Hector asked.

“She’s her only nanny,” Steve said.

“So you’re saying Rose had something to do with this guy’s death?” Hector asked.

“Yes,” Steve said.

“And Patricia’s death?” Hector asked.

“It’s possible,” Steve said.

“It was definitely the same vehicle each time?” Hector said.

“Near as we can tell,” Steve said.

“And think, Rose benefited from the fact that Patricia died,” Cindy said.

“How so?” Hector asked.

“She got her job,” Steve said.

Steve could see the wheels finally turning inside Hector’s head.

“Do you know why Ms. Smith hired her?” Hector asked.

“Not exactly,” Steve said. “But Rose says she’s from Colombia, that she came to this country only a year ago, to take over Patricia’s job. But she doesn’t act like someone from there. She has a strong accent, but she never inserts Spanish words into her speech. And the way she talks, the rhythm of her sentences, it’s like she was raised here.”

“You think she’s faking the accent?” Hector asked.

“It feels like it,” Steve said.

“She keeps inviting us back to her house, which is kind of creepy in itself,” Cindy said.

“Why do you keep going back?” Hector asked, the question of the hour.

“We were witnesses to Freddy’s death. We feel responsible to find out why he died,” Steve said, telling a half-truth, which was another mistake. Hector was perceptive. He didn’t buy it at all.

“I know it’s fun to play detective,” Hector said, “but you have to give the police your description of the SUV. You can’t sit on it. And you have to explain to the cops the connection the SUV has to Patricia’s death. If this Rose, or Ms. Smith, has anything to do with either death, they’ll figure it out.”

“We promise to talk to the cops,” Steve said. “But we need more information.”

“About what?”

“Lucy,” Cindy said.

Hector was annoyed. “There’s nothing to say about her. She died in the blast.”

“We’re asking about the car accident,” Cindy said.

“Ms. Treacher told you about that?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “But don’t blame her, we squeezed the information out of her.”

“I doubt it, that old woman loves to gossip.” Hector added, “Lucy has nothing to do with what you’re discussing.”

“Probably,” Steve agreed. “But there’s a lot of coincidences going on here. You have to admit it. We’re just trying to sort it all out.”

“Why?” Hector persisted.

“We told you why,” Steve said.

Hector stared at him, shook his head. “You haven’t told me the half of it, but I guess 111 have to let that go for now. There’s no mystery to what happened with Lucy. That day I was at a friend’s house, and we were playing computer games. The Internet was just getting going back then. We used to play this game, Ultimatum, online with people from back east. The graphics were crude by today’s standards and so was the story. But it was the new thing, and we were addicted to it.”

“Did Lucy play with you?” Steve asked.

“Just my buddies and me. We liked to drink beer when we played, and I had a few too many. After we were done, I went to pick up Lucy. We had to go to a wedding, south of here somewhere. It was on the way there when I veered off the road and crashed into a tree. I was stupid, I didn’t have my seat belt on. But it saved me that time. I was thrown from the car, Lucy was not. The car caught fire and she got burned.” He added, “It’s as simple as that.”

“But why did you veer off the road?” Steve asked.

“I told you, I was drunk.” Hector added, “Don’t drink and drive.”

“You didn’t see anything that caused you to veer?” Steve asked.

Hector hesitated. “To tell you the truth, I remember very little about that night. I told the cops that, when they arrested me. The trauma must have caused me to block it out.”

“Did you go to jail?” Cindy asked.

“For six months. It was nothing compared to what Lucy went through.”

“But you guys got back together,” Cindy said. “You were with her a year later.”

“Sort of. I mean, we tried.
I
wanted to try, but she had lost so much skin in the fire. It was amazing she was alive. She had to keep having operations. She practically lived at the hospital. The scarring was severe. She couldn’t stand to have people see her. She used to wear a rubber mask when she went outside. She thought she was hideous.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Was she?” Cindy asked quietly.

“What can I say? She wasn’t the same Lucy I had known. The accident hadn’t just taken her face, it stole her spirit. By the night of the big blast, she was only a shell of what she used to be. I almost wish . . .” Hector didn’t finish.

“What?” Steve asked, although he knew the answer.

“That she had never been given that year,” he said.

“Because she died anyway?” Steve said.

Hector nodded. “Twice the fire came for her. The second time it got her.”

The hills went up and down, no rise too high, no valley too low. There was a path, and soon grass, a few trees, and quiet streams. The way was not difficult. Except for the green sun in the sky, and her odd collection of traveling companions, Ali could have been hiking in her own world. The trees, although varied for a single area, were little different than at home. The clean water in the occasional brook was a delight to drink. It tasted a bit like honey.

Yet it was best not to pretend. Her relief over having escaped the scabs was tempered with caution. The creature had gotten to Paddy because she had relaxed her guard. It was not a mistake she would repeat.

They came across neither fairies nor leprechauns, and Paddy was puzzled.

“Should have seen some of me own folk by now,” he said.

“Could they have moved further north, into Karolee?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said, but he was doubtful.

“Do leprechauns have cities like elves and dwarves and fairies?”

“No, Missy. Leprechauns go their own way, in private. No one sees much of them.”

“But did you live in a cave? In a tree?” she asked.

He was offended. “I had me own place. It was not much, but it was clean.”

She tried to explain that she had not been trying to purposely insult him, and he seemed to drop the matter quick enough. Yet she never did get a clear idea how they lived. Two things were obvious, though: Leprechauns did not build big structures and they did not farm. They were hiking through the heart of leprechaun land—Plantar, he called it—and it was as if the land had never been occupied.

Although the landscape was similar to home, there were differences. On the whole the trees were taller, and some appeared ancient with massive rippling branches, leaves as large as wooden plates, and thick trunks that could have swallowed a house. There was a dignity to the old trees, as if they had seen many battles, many times of peace, and lost neither their silence nor their beauty. There were so many types: maples, oaks, elms, and pines—all could be found huddled together. And while the maple leaves showed signs of autumn, orange and red, the oaks were still green. As a result the woods were richly colored.

The grass itself was taller, the blades more round than flat. Ali saw a type of daisy with a purple center and yellow petals. Then there were other flowers that had no earthly parallels. One was a single tall blue petal that arched its spine like a swan on a lake. There were lots of them all over the place, and they gave off a wonderful fragrance. The farther they walked, the stronger the scents in the air grew, and the odors both enlivened her and lulled her into a waking dream.

It seemed fitting to her that a fairy should stumble into a fairy tale.

As they hiked, however, they began to see disturbing signs. Approximately every half mile they came across a roughly circular area about two hundred feet wide where the trees had been
pulverized
. It was as if asteroids had fallen from the sky and crushed the trees, only there were no piles of rocks around, although deep indentations surrounded the splintered wood. She did not know what to make of it, and was worried when Paddy looked dismayed.

“Never seen this before, Missy,” he said.

“All this damage occurred in the last month?” she asked.

“Aye.”

Ali searched the skies. There was an unusual cluster of clouds in the north—they had a bluish tinge—but she saw nothing threatening.

“Could this damage have driven the leprechauns away?” she asked.

“Aye. Anyone would run from this.”

Ali turned to Ra. “What do you think?” she said.

“You mentioned this Shaktra creature, and the possibility of a war. This area feels like a battle just swept over it.”

“But there are no bodies,” Ali protested.

“As long as you’re not a tree,” Ra said.

Yet she knew what he meant. The area felt like it had been . . . brutalized.

They continued on their way, with Ali and Ra leading the way and Paddy and Farble directly behind them, walking closer together than they had since they had met. When they had hiked through the cave in Tutor, Ra had tried to question her about how she had come to be a fairy, and she had evaded most of his questions. Now it struck her that she knew almost nothing about
him
. She tried asking about his life in Tanzania, and he looked over at her and smiled.

“It’s boring,” he said.

“Don’t say that, you don’t mean it.”

He shrugged. “I live in a small town near the base of Kilimanjaro called Fiera. My people, the Kutu, grow a lot of corn and soybeans. We live off the grains and feed them to our livestock, our cattle, which we mostly trade. But Fiera is unique to that region of Africa because it also survives by taking care of tourists that come to see the mountain. Many of the men in the village act as guides for those who want to climb the peak. I’ve done it myself a few times—helped you fat Americans up to the top.”