He needed the place to ignite quickly and cleanly. He needed to call Polly and warn her before Marshall found her.
The fire grew more voracious and began devouring the trash, half filling the bedroom. “Four million dollars in the bank, and I’m a cleaning lady,” he said. Trailing gasoline, he left the apartment.
Away from the building, where responding fire or policemen wouldn’t see him and wonder what he was doing in a bad neighborhood so late, Danny got into his car, a swift and classic BMW convertible. For a moment he sat behind the wheel listening to the grinding of the gears in his head before he realized he was grinding his teeth. He stopped the scrape of metal thoughts and tooth enamel and took his cell phone from his pocket.
For a moment, he toyed with the idea of calling Marsh, inviting him to the party.
He deserved to be there. Had he not gotten so full of himself over this marriage and family thing, Vondra would still be alive, and Polly and her kids would be safe. Polly Deschamps, not Polly Marchand.
There were only two Marchands, brothers.
He and Dylan had found the names on a crypt in a cemetery in Metairie. They’d just arrived in New Orleans. It was early spring-the dead of winter in Minnesota. Azaleas were blazing, kept from spontaneous ignition only by the intense cool green of new grass. Aboveground burials, the stuff of movies and old black-and-white photographs, lured them in from the highway.
The place was deserted but for a groundskeeper or two. Live oaks hushed the noise from I-10. They wandered in perfect harmony along the lanes, admiring the mausoleums. It was as close to peace as Richard had ever known. It was bliss. Just the two of them, safe in the city of the dead.
A mausoleum, small but exquisite in detail and design, stood between two monoliths; beside them it looked like a dollhouse. There were only two names on the tiny door, infants who had died at birth: Marshall Dillon Marchand, born and died December 1, 1872, and Daniel Richard Marchand, born and died December 1, 1872.
Identical twins.
It had been a sign and they embraced it. From that day on, they had been the Marchand brothers of New Orleans, and they had prospered. When it was just the two of them, life worked.
That Marsh had the occasional dalliance didn’t worry Danny overmuch. It was his brother’s tendency to obsess-an addiction to a cloying sort of relationship-that was dangerous.
Elaine would never know it, but Danny had saved her life. Even her rat-sized dog had survived. The incident smashed Marsh’s notions of recreating the same sort of sick family situation they’d had as kids.
Until Polly.
Danny hoped to keep Polly, Gracie, and Emma alive, but Marsh was becoming volatile. The business with the axe should have been enough to wake him up, but he was resisting the inevitable with a tenacity he’d not shown with Elaine.
He punched in his sister-in-law’s cell phone number.
“Polly, it’s Danny,” he said when she answered. “Where are you?”
She was at Fontainebleau and Broad.
“Don’t go home,” he told her. “ Marshall ’s gone berserk. I’m afraid I’m going to have to call the police, but I want to talk with you first. Maybe between the two of us we can get him to calm down. Can you meet me… ” Danny rapidly scanned the map of the city that he carried in his head. The cemetery where he and Dylan had become identical twins-the Marchand brothers-would be a fitting place but it would be closed at this hour.
Marsh said the kids were with Martha. If Danny remembered correctly, Dr. Martha Durham lived up near City Park somewhere. “Meet me in City Park,” he said. “There’s a big live oak in front of the Christian Boys’ School. Meet me there.”
“My God, Danny… ” she said, then no more, her words trailing away like a forgotten dream.
“Can you do it? We can meet someplace else if you’d like.”
“No. It’s… City Park… I can do it.” She sounded exhausted and scared.
No wonder, Danny thought. It was odd that she didn’t mention being assaulted.
Probably she didn’t want to accuse her beloved Mr. Marchand.
“I may be a few minutes,” he said. “Lock your car doors and wait for me. If you see Marsh’s truck, get out of there. Quickly. It’ll be okay,” he promised. “We’ll get through this.”
Danny hit “end” on the cell phone, punched in 411, and asked for the number of Martha Durham.
Then he asked for the address.
35
Danny kept the blinds closed regardless of the time of day. Marshall had gone to great pains to make the old sash windows functional, as he did with every building he restored, but he needn’t have bothered with Danny’s unit. His brother believed the out-of-doors should be kept out of doors.
For reasons he was unsure of-except that darkness covered more sins-he switched the lights off before he sat on Danny’s bed. He no longer wanted to see the relics of the lives in his hand but held them tightly; they gave him courage. For the first time in his life he tried, consciously and wholeheartedly, to remember the night of the killings. The night he became Butcher Boy and, along with his family, his childhood was slaughtered.
Mack the Giant had ripped him from sleep-or the dead sleep of unconsciousness. He’d been groggy from the concussion and the medicine his mom had given him. His head felt as if would break open and spill his brains out if he moved. The cop had jerked him hard. Marshall remembered the pain and the fear. He’d thought they were all going to be murdered.
The guy, the huge cop, had dragged him down the hall and forced him to look at Lena. Then he knew they were all going to be killed, that the carnage had already started. He remembered fighting hard as he could, to get away from the man in the policeman’s costume. Dylan thought it was a costume. Real police didn’t come and kill people for no reason.
Marshall tried to go beyond what he could remember, to see the time before the police had come: himself alone, crazy, a boy, pulling the gold chain from around his baby sister’s neck.
There wouldn’t have been any pulling. Her neck was severed lengthwise, a blow that had split her nearly in two from her crown to below her tiny bird-boned shoulders. The chain would have been cut. He tried to picture himself, that boy, Dylan, setting the axe down and fishing the gold cross out of the gore.
The only boy he could see was the terrified child fighting to get away from the man he thought had killed his sister. He couldn’t remember being Butcher Boy.
“Psycho fuck.” Mack had called him that.
Traumatic amnesia. Psychotic break.