A Twisted Ladder (76 page)

Zenon crossed his arm under one elbow. “My turn. How long you been having conversations with your secret friend?”

She was startled. Somehow she never anticipated that he might want information from her, too.

“It started, I guess, that night on the bayou. When I found Anita Salazar.” She swallowed. “And you? Have you had conversations with . . . unusual people or things?”

“My lawyer would probably object to the direction this conversation’s taken. He didn’t want me to meet with you alone in the first place.”

“Tell me the truth, Zenon,” she said aloud, and in her mind she made certain he would.

Zenon did not speak again immediately, but instead fixed his gaze on her.

“You fuckin with my head, ain’t you, baby?”

Her breath caught in her throat, and they stared at each other while prisoners and guards milled nearby.

“That’s all right,” Zenon said, his voice just above a whisper, and then he continued with an almost casual air: “Tell you what. I’ll answer you because I see fit to do so, and not because you trying to pull some shit on me. That might work with my lawyer, but you think you can use it on me, you wrong.”

Her face and hands grew hot, but she said nothing.

“There’s someone that I see,” Zenon began carefully, letting his gaze drift.

Madeleine waited.

“He’s a . . .” he shrugged. “I don’t know. Seem like just another good ole boy. But no one can see him but me. I call him Josh.”

She nodded.

He paused, checking her face. “Well, maybe he’ll go away. Since I’ve been in here I’ve been seeing a shrink, and he keeps me pretty medicated.”

Madeleine narrowed her eyes. Zenon was sharp, alert. “You haven’t been taking meds.”

Zenon leaned in and lowered his voice, as if that might hinder any eavesdropping by the authorities. Madeleine knew their conversation was probably being monitored, and it made her uncomfortable.

“Why no, Madeleine, you got me. I have not been taking them. Why should I take pills from somebody who don’t know nothing about me? You know me better than anyone else on this planet, now, don’t you?” His voice was intimate, and she shifted in her seat. “Yes ma’am. We know each other real well, you and me.”

He took a long drag from his cigarette. “Well anyway, yeah, maybe I been hangin out with old Josh some. We got this little game goin. I ask Josh about some of the other prisoners, and he shows me what crime they committed—or ain’t committed; some of’m’re actually innocent, can you believe that?” He shrugged. “Passes the time. Like watchin TV. That’s how I come to know about your new boyfriend here.” He gestured toward the prisoner in the next booth. “Kind of funny, him goin down for stealing cars after he did all that rapin and killin.”

Madeleine looked away. As she held the phone to her ear, she noticed a strange prattle in the background. A radio. But the language was unfamiliar.

“Is there a radio there with you?”

Zenon motioned his head toward the guard. “He carries it around for me. Don’t really need it here while I’m talking to you, but it’s best to keep them guards in practice. They practice listening for you inside their heads, and they don’t even know it. I keep’m exercising. You let’m go too long they get rusty.”

Madeleine felt sick, knowing she’d been one of his pigeons. “What language is that on the radio?”

“Hungarian.”

“Why do you listen to languages you don’t understand?”

“Well that’s my own exercise. Jiujitsu for the brain.”

She looked at the shortwave. The sound of the announcer’s voice sounded eerie somehow, if only because it didn’t match. But at the same time, because she didn’t speak the language, it wasn’t as distracting as an English-speaking program. It almost soothed her, and her mind danced across the plane of words with gentle oblivion, pausing to collect the odd intonation that sounded familiar.
Ház
sounded like “house.” And she thought she caught the word “carton.”

The radio snapped off. Nobody had touched it.

He was watching her with a leer. “Enough radio. Maybe I’m sharing a little too much, yeah. Gettin hypnotized by those devil blue eyes.”

She lowered them, afraid to look at him, but then steeled herself and returned his gaze. “What about Anita Salazar? And Angel Frey?”

His face grew hard and he leaned in close. “Listen to you, bringing that up. Kind of personal, don’t you think? But hell, what can I say, baby, it’s in my genes. That’s what Joe Whitney thinks. This new trial, I’m pleading not guilty by reason of mental defect.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Bad genes, baby. Predisposed to kill. Ain’t nothing you can do if it’s in your genes.”

She sat dumbfounded. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Got it on both sides of the family. My mama killed my step-daddy. Didn’t you know that? Made me help get rid of the body. She never thought twice about doin what had to be done in that sense. And Daddy Blank, hell, you know what I got runnin around in my genes from that side.”

She was mute. She could only stare at him.

“Daddy Blank used to smack you and Marc around when he was out of his senses. He was a violent bastard. And Marc was too. Hell, I remember when Marc went after Daddy Blank with a two-by-four. Worked him over good, didn’t he, yeah? And what was that shit about Marc frying that electrician worked for him? You and I both know that weren’t no accident. And then Marc killed his own self.”

He leaned back in satisfaction. “Predisposed, baby. And you, hell, I don’t need to bring up the thing with Carlo, do I? We can’t help it, it’s in our genes. We’re violent people. One big happy family.”

She swallowed hard. It sounded like he was rehearsing for the new trial.

“You’ll never pull this off, Zenon. People don’t just get away with murder on a ‘bad genes’ defense. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in the real world.”

“Yeah, it’s a long shot, ain’t it? Joe Whitney says it’ll be a landmark case. Josh seems to think so too. Josh also thinks I can persuade a jury to do anything I want them to do.”

She deliberately kept her voice soft. “But what’s the real reason you did it? Why did you go after Angel Frey?”

He shrugged. “What do you want from me? I was under orders. Josh is a bossy fucker. I didn’t have no choice.”

“You didn’t have to follow any orders.”

“Yeah, I did. This shit’s still new to you. But for me, Josh been coming around almost ten years now. You can’t hold out forever.”

“Ten years,” she murmured. “There were others then, weren’t there? These two girls weren’t the first ones.”

“Don’t get all high and mighty. You follow orders and that’s that.” He shrugged, and looked genuinely puzzled. “Don’t you know? Hasn’t your little parasite friend been working you? They start you off slow, I guess, but you’ll catch up. You ask me, they’re threatened by certain kinds of people. And those people are a threat to us, too.”

“How can people like Angel Frey possibly be a threat to us?”

Instead of answering, he said, “She was golden inside. Just like all the others. You seen it yet?”

“Golden? I don’t know.”

“Oh, you’d know. Lumens, they’re called. It’s contagious, too. You and me, we’re already paired up. And we’re paired with the wrong kind.”

“I’m paired with Severin. And you’re paired with Josh.”

Zenon’s gaze traveled elsewhere, just over her shoulder to a blank zone where he probably saw the shapes in his mind more clearly than those around him. “I don’t think people like Angel Frey even know what they are. Just like you and I didn’t know. Till it’s too late.”

He said, “Least that’s as much as I can make out from the mile-deep pile of grass turds Josh keeps feeding me. It’s the culling, yeah. When you cull, you shape what’s left.”

He took a drag from his cigarette, gaze still diverted. “You think you got a choice, baby? You ain’t got no choice. And it dudn’t make a difference anyway once you got blood on your hands. You’re just a damn mouse in a maze. Your little parasite friend gonna tell you how to get where you’re supposed to go, and you’re just fuckin yourself if you don’t listen. Take it from me.”

Madeleine didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she could ever become a killer like Zenon. But then she had come very, very close to killing Carlo. And when Severin led her through a labyrinth of swampland on a stormy night, Madeleine had felt an awful lot like a mouse in a maze.

Zenon took a deep breath, and for a moment, he looked like the boy she remembered. Vulnerable. Maybe even frightened. “We should have had this conversation a long time ago, I guess. I wanted to. But you kept avoiding me. Chloe’s right, you know. About you and me.”

She drew in her breath, shaking her head. Beyond unthinkable. “Zenon, that’s just wrong. That will never happen.”

His stare crystallized to ice. “Oh, that’s right. You’re too busy wrapping your legs around that gimp of yours. Faithless, that’s what you are. No loyalty at all.”

Madeleine lowered her voice and spoke through her teeth. “Why in God’s name would you ever want to lay your hands on your own sister? You knew about all that but you still . . .”

“You want the long answer, you go see Miss Chloe. But here’s the short answer: I wanted to touch you ever since we were kids, before I ever even knew anything about Daddy Blank and his dirty secrets. I kept my hands off out of respect. I loved you and Marc both, even then. Before any of it. Before I found out respect was just another little trick people use to manipulate other people. But I have learned my lesson, sister-baby. You’re a faithless fucking whore and that’s how you’re gonna get treated.”

He cocked his head, and suddenly Madeleine felt the urge to unbutton her blouse and reveal her bra. The force of the thought was overwhelming, stronger than Chloe’s trick. Strong as she remembered.

“Stop it,” she said through a clenched jaw.

He laughed. “Oh, come on, baby, it’s what you’re made for. It’s how you end. You ain’t got a shred of loyalty to you, not even for your own blood. You’d just as soon see me fry.”

“This isn’t doing either one of us any good.”

He puffed, a single expulsion of air. “Maybe not for you, but I’d just as soon watch you go home to meet your maker. You think they’d take you in up there at the pearly gates? With a devil on your back? Or maybe they send you down below where your daddy and other brother gone, yeah?”

Her hands began to shake, but she held the receiver fast to her ear.

“I can’t really do much while I’m sitting in here, but this one,” he nodded at the prisoner who’d been leering at her, and lowered his voice. “I bet you he can pull it off, yeah. What you think, baby?”

The prisoner with the scarred cheek paid no attention to them now, but instead continued to chat on the phone with his visitor. Zenon was watching Madeleine’s face.

“Yeah baby, he’s a wild one. They gonna let him out in a few days, I expect.”

She tried to steady her voice. “I thought you said they convicted him for grand theft auto.”

“No, baby, he ain’t convicted yet. This here’s just a holding facility. Looks like he’s gonna be free as a bird. Prosecutor doesn’t have a case.”

Perhaps the prisoner overheard Zenon talking, because now he looked at Madeleine and winked again.

Zenon grimaced. “He’s one that doesn’t even need any encouragement. He already got his eye on you. I s’pose you best start lookin over your shoulder once he gets out.”

She’d heard enough. She hung up the phone under the leering gaze of that awful prisoner. Zenon rose and swaggered toward the door, and the guard offered him a fresh cigarette and a light. She supposed that he probably had them tending his every need. They were his pigeons, just like the prisoner he was dispatching to come after her. Just like the twelve jurors he would eventually have at his new trial. All of them part of Zenon’s pigeon games. “Not guilty,” the jurors would surely say. Zenon would go free. Free to kill and cull for as long as he lived.

Zenon blew her a kiss as he disappeared through the heavy metal door.

She stood to leave, and realized the pigeon-prisoner was massaging his crotch as his gaze followed her.

No way was she going to let Zenon get away with this.

She turned and stared directly into the prisoner’s face. She formed her mind into one single thought.

His expression changed ever so slightly, and he removed his hand from his lap. His gaze drifted back toward the door where Zenon had exited.

Madeleine repeated the idea in her mind once more. Allowing for the violence to stir in her imagination.

And she knew she had gotten through to him.