A Twisted Ladder (62 page)

NEW ORLEANS, 2009

S
EVERIN HAD HELPED HER
to picture the face of the man she was about to kill. The child had laid a corridor of bramble that wound from Magazine, past grand houses, out to where the structures became shabbier. Madeleine hadn’t even had to think. Along with Carlo, Severin had repeated images of Daddy Blank dying alone amid garbage in the condemned building. Madeleine let the acid of it etch her resolve.

She could have taken the truck, but she hadn’t. Too difficult to drive like this. She’d walked the entire way, primed and ready to commit murder. She turned into Iberville, where people lingered in the streets and on stoops despite the chill, sipping from paper bags. Children playing games. Neighbors gossiping.

She found the street where Carlo conducted his trade. She could see his watchman at the top of the exterior stairwell of a decrepit building. He paid little notice to Madeleine. His duty was to watch for police.

On a nearby porch, a little boy was playing alone. A breeze blew Madeleine’s coat open, exposing the weapon, and she tucked it back inside. She looked over at the little boy and knew he had seen the shotgun. He watched with round, dark eyes, but made no effort to move from the porch or alert anyone. Madeleine steeled herself.

She stood for a moment, looking for Carlo.

Severin was calling for him: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Madeleine held the weapon tightly between her arm and torso, the steel barrel warm with her body heat. The little boy was watching.

She stepped onto the sidewalk and saw Carlo standing on a far corner where he conducted his dealing.

A car pulled up. A Lexus hybrid. Ethan’s car. Madeleine stared at it, bewildered. It looked out-of-place in this neighborhood, and severely out-of-place in her mindset.

Severin was saying something. She repeated the final exchange between Daddy Blank and Carlo, speaking in their voices.

Ethan stepped out of the car. “What are you doing here, Maddy?”

She didn’t answer. She took a firm hold on the gun with both hands, pulling it out from under her coat.

The watchman was looking directly at them now from atop the stairwell. His eyes grew wide and his posture taut, but he took no action. The little boy had both hands wrapped around the metal spindles under the porch rail, watching as if from behind the bars of a jail cell.

Ethan said, “Maddy, would you please put that thing away, and go for a drive with me?”

“Can you cover him?” she asked.

Ethan said, “What?”

But Severin pulled on the thorns, and Ethan disappeared behind a wall of bramble. Madeleine drew closer to Carlo until she knew he would be an easy mark, then raised the shotgun and sighted down the long, gleaming barrel. She fixed her aim on the son of a bitch, right between the eyes.

An unspoken alarm erupted in the neighborhood around her. Children were snatched off porches and stuffed behind doors. As if she and Carlo were in a stadium, all around them people were watching. Creatures watched from the thorns, too.

Someone shouted, “Do it! Get him!”

She had a clean shot. She could see his face clearly under the courtyard lights. The man was a parasite. He was not worth the oxygen he breathed.

Somewhere behind her, Ethan was speaking, but he was beautifully hidden. Severin demonstrated the next few seconds. She coaxed them forth with a barrage of sensations. She showed Madeleine what it could look like. God, what it was going to
feel
like. The intense satisfaction. The taste. Vengeance.

And yet deep inside, Madeleine was sensing something else. Something broader than the outer world and even the strange world beyond it, deeper than her own mind. A question arose from that space:

Is this me?

A simple question. One that was so small and subtle that it should not have survived through the bombardment of senses that Severin had created for her. It certainly shouldn’t have been able to sprout amidst the hatred. But the question was there, all the same. And when it arose, it sabotaged her hatred. It caused it to shrivel like salt on a slug. She recognized that stillness as part of what had helped her to thwart Zenon.

She lowered the gun.

ETHAN PULLED HER QUICKLY
into his car and they drove away. Severin was raging. She was crouched on the floorboards by Madeleine’s legs. She screamed and clawed at her face, drawing blood. But Madeleine herself felt strangely calm. She watched the little girl as though she were observing any patient at the psych ward. Perhaps because the combination of grief and rage had been so intense she no longer felt any emotion. At least not for the moment. And in her calm, the bramble seemed to recede. She realized, then, that Severin’s presence was not necessarily related to the presence of the bramble.

Shots rang out behind them.

“Get down,” Ethan said.

Madeleine looked over her shoulder, dazed, and saw flashes of light from the landing above. From where Carlo’s lookout was camped.

Madeleine felt Ethan’s hand on her shoulder, pushing her down. She crouched over as they sped away.

She thought of the little boy who’d watched her through the metal bars along the porch rail, and she made a silent vow to never again contribute to the chaos. Any chaos.

They turned a corner and she rose back up. “Thank you.”

Ethan shot her a sideways look. She caught the heat in his face and started to tell him—

But what could she say? She turned her face and stared out the window.

But he reached over and rubbed her neck. She pressed her cheek to his hand. They turned right, and Madeleine realized they were heading in the opposite direction from Magazine.

“Where are we going?”

“To a hospital, Maddy. We need to get you some help.”

“Ethan, I’d rather just go home.”

“I understand why you’d feel that way. But it’s just too risky right now.”

She shook her head. “Ethan, I’m not going to check myself in.”

He glanced at her, lower face framed in the reflected headlights of the rearview mirror, and his jaw was set. “Madeleine, you are a danger to yourself and to others.”

She closed her eyes. Her pulse was quickening, alarms ringing. She would not give in to emotion, no, because that would allow Severin to beckon the thorns, and Madeleine wouldn’t have the cognizance to avoid going to the hospital. As it was, Severin was carrying on in an endless stream; a myriad of overlapping voices:

Danger to yourself—

The only witness is a paranoid schizophrenic—

Too weak to make your first kill—

. . .
not enough evidence to hold him—

Trying to concentrate across all of Severin’s blathering was like trying to count raindrops. And yet she had to hold on.

Ethan said, “Now we can go to whichever facility you like. Doesn’t have to be Tulane. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to go there.”

She opened her eyes.

He said, “Hell, it doesn’t even have to be New Orleans. I’ll take you to Baton Rouge, honey, if you want. No one knows you there. You wanna go to Baton Rouge? I’ll take you on over and get a hotel right next door.”

Madeleine said, “It’s not that. Listen. I understand your fear. But I need you to hear me when I say that I am absolutely not going to seek treatment right now.”

“You’re a danger—”

“Honey, Zenon’s the danger.” She pulled her hair back from her face. “Zenon’s the danger.”

As they wound through the neighborhood, the little houses were decorated in electrical snowflakes and wire reindeer. She’d forgotten that it was going to be Christmas.

She said, “You have every right to be angry.”

“It’s not about me being angry. OK, I’m a little angry. But I’m mostly worried.”

“I know I didn’t inspire confidence just now. If the circumstances were different, I’d say I need treatment too. But I need to avoid that because it’s literally a matter of life and death.”

He was silent.

She said, “You got a first-hand sense of Zenon’s ability. Put that with the fact that he’s a murderer. He’s killed before, Ethan, and he’ll kill again.”

“This isn’t about him.”

“I wish it weren’t. Yes, I’m in a terrible position to try to stop him, but the truth is I’m the only one who can.”

“Madeleine, you nearly shot a man just now!”

“Nearly. There’s a whole lot of difference between nearly and actually. Yeah, I was tempted. Carlo Jefferson killed my father. I felt the most intense hatred I’ve ever known. But I did stop myself. You didn’t stop me, the police didn’t stop me, no one stopped me but me. And now I’ve got to stop Zenon.”

“We can’t just pretend everything’s fine! What are you supposed to do until the trial? Hide?”

Madeleine was silent for a moment, thinking, and then she said, “Well, to use one of your words: neuroplasticity.”

“What?”

“Neuroplasticity. I’ll change my brain. When I’m calm, things seem to be more manageable. So I’ll practice keeping my emotions even, reinforce that, and build up the neurons that send calming signals to my body.”

“And if it doesn’t work? If things get dangerous?”

“I’ll give it up and go straight to a hospital. But I need you to help me to try and make it work, at least until the trial.”

NEW ORLEANS, 1927

C
HLOE WATCHED JACOB AS
he regarded the satin-lined valise that lay agape before him, stuffed to absurdity with money. Large denomination notes that collectively totaled a small fortune.

“I told you before I want none of this,” Jacob said.

“For your services,” Chloe replied.

The soft evening light shone through the window of the small sitting area off the master quarters. In it, her skin glowed amber; his was scarlet. Chloe would ordinarily never dream of allowing Jacob into her private rooms, but her mistrust of the servants compelled her to conduct this transaction away from their prying eyes.

“It is only fair that you enjoy your share of the bounty in this business venture,” she said.

“I got my own damned money!”

He flung his arm across the valise, sending bank notes fluttering into the air and across the small table. “Do you hate me so much, Chloe? Do you really believe you can just own me like one of your brutes?”

Chloe’s eyes widened in surprise.

Jacob leaned toward her. “I might as well be Bruce Dempsey, your paid dog!”

“I do not see it as that.”

“Don’t you?” He was clenching his fist. “I think you do, Chloe. You can’t stand that I’ve helped you out. You want to pay me off and own me like you own everyone else.”

For a moment, Chloe thought he was going to strike her. She watched him warily, holding her stance, saying nothing.

“If I’m wrong, say so,” Jacob said. “It’s true, ain’t it? You think I’m one of your goddamned servants. Ain’t that true?” He grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Ain’t it true?”

Chloe stood tall, going rigid in Jacob’s grip. He relaxed, but still held her shoulders with his right hand and his stump. Slowly she turned her head once from side to side.