Mallory turned on the faucet, then leaned over the sink and splashed her face with cold water. She sat down at the kitchen table. Her coffee cooled in the cup. Her eyes closed, and down came the curtain between waking and sleeping dreams. Though she had never had the smoker’s habit, one hand went up to her mouth as she lit a cigarette that was not there. She was ten years old again. Sparrow was bleeding, saying, ‘Don’t cry, baby.’
But Kathy could not stop crying. The frantic child shook Sparrow to keep her from drifting into sleep and death. ‘I’ll get help!’
‘Don’t leave me,’ said Sparrow. ‘Not yet.’ The prostitute nodded toward the shadows where the rats were fighting over the corpse of Frankie Delight. ‘Keep ‘em off me – till it’s over.’
‘You can’t die.’
Sparrow gently touched the child’s face. ‘Baby, I’m always telling you stories. Read me a story – that’s all I hear from you. Suppose you tell me one. But mind you, don’t make it a long story.’ Sparrow’s eyes were closing as she smiled at her own little joke.
‘You need a doctor!’ Kathy shook Sparrow until the blue eyes opened. The child put her hands over the open wound, trying to keep the prostitute’s blood from leaking out.
‘Don’t leave me for the rats,’ said Sparrow. ‘Tell me, how did that book end? The Longest Road, yeah, that one. The Wichita Kid decided he was goin’ home. Did he ever say why?’
‘It ends when he’s on the trail.’ Kathy emptied Sparrow’s purse on the floor, straining to see by the daylight streaming in from the street door. ‘Wichita stops his horse in front of the sign for Franktown.’ The room was growing darker; the day was ending; Sparrow was dying. The child found a handkerchief. ‘He just stares at that sign for a while.’ She used the square of white linen to cover the stab wound. The cloth was soaked with blood the moment she pressed it to Sparrow’s side. ‘Then there’s these lines near the end. But I don’t – ’ Though the little girl knew all the books by heart, her panic was overwhelming her. Sparrow could not die.
‘What lines, baby?’
Kathy bit her lip until it bled into her mouth. She needed this pain to concentrate, and now the passage came into her mind, clear as the spoken word, and she recited, ‘ „It was more than the call of home. He was riding toward his redemption.“ ‘
‘You know what that means, baby?’
‘No.’ And she did not care. Kathy undipped a long strap from Sparrow’s purse and used it to hold the red handkerchief in place. ‘I’m going for help. I’ll come right back.’
‘No, baby. Stay with me.’ Sparrow’s next word was hardly more than a whisper, a sigh. ‘Redemption.’ Her voice was stronger when she said, ‘How can I put that so a little thief can understand?’
The rats were coming. The child stamped one foot and screamed at them, ‘You stay away! She’s not dead! She’s not!’
‘That’s right, baby. You tell ‘em.’ Sparrow’s voice was failing. ‘Redemption – that’s when you buy back all your bad karma – so you can steal heaven.’
What was karma?
The prostitute closed her eyes again, and this time Kathy could not wake her. The child’s head snapped toward the shadows and the sound of a rat’s feet. She waved her arms, but the creatures had no fear of her anymore. The lure of blood was strong. And now another rat appeared at the edge of the failing light from the street door.
‘Stay away!’ Kathy pulled out her pellet gun and fired on the rat, missing her mark. She was crying, vision blurring, yelling, ‘She’s not dead! Not yet!'
The child reached down to the debris from the prostitute’s purse and found something hard, a missile to throw. It was a silver lighter she had stolen for Sparrow. She held it tight, then picked up one of the cigarettes that had spilled on the floor alongside a can of hair-spray. Kathy hunkered down beside the purse, smiling – inspired.
Once, Sparrow had nearly set her hair on fire, smoking a cigarette while waving the hairspray can.
Kathy lit the cigarette, puffing and coughing until it burned. She stared at the glowing ember and waited, fighting down the panic until the rat was close to her feet. She pointed the aerosol can at the animal, then pressed down on the nozzle, wetting the rat through and through. It squealed with the pain of hairspray in its eyes. The child dropped the cigarette on its fur and stood back as the animal burst into flames and screamed.
Another rat came out of the shadows, drawn by the smell of live cooking meat. Hunched over, Kathy crept forward to meet the creature. Holding the cigarette lighter low to the ground, she pressed the nozzle of the hairspray, aiming it at the tiny flame, and the chemical spray became a blowtorch. The second rat was burning, running in circles, streaking fire round and round. It was crying in a human way and drawing cannibals from the corpse of Frankie Delight.
Kathy was numb, too stunned to care what the rats were doing to one another. Working by slow inches, the child struggled with her burden, dragging Sparrow out of the dark building and into the waning daylight where more rats awaited them, scrabbling out from between the garbage cans on the sidewalk.
In the kitchen of Butler and Company, Mallory lurched to one side. Chair and woman crashed to the floor. Her face was pressed to the tiles, and she lay there for a few seconds of absolute stillness, quietly seeking her true place in time and space. Then she rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the counter for support. Her hands were shaking when she splashed more water on her face. If she could not stay awake, Stella Small would die.
‘It’ll never work.’ Riker turned his back on Mallory’s computers. ‘There’s gotta be ten million people in Wisconsin.’
‘Closer to four and a half.’ Charles could quote the atlas statistic to the last individual, but that would be showboating. ‘And we’re only looking at one small county where the boy went into foster care.’
Riker shook his head. ‘We’re running out of time. Stella Small could be hanging by her neck right now – still alive.’
Mallory looked up from her monitor. ‘What do you want me to do, Riker? Go door to door with those worthless cartoons?’ She nodded toward the cork wall where he had pinned up the hooker sketches.
Indeed, Charles thought the images were more of a guide to what the man did not look like. He was not thin or fat, not African or Asian descent, and his hair was neither long nor short.
Mallory turned back to her computer monitor. She was also showing signs of strain. ‘I’m checking every newspaper with a database. If anything jumps out – ’
‘It’ll take forever,’ said Riker.
‘And thank you for your support,’ said Mallory.
Charles watched the screen over her shoulder, scanning text as fast as she could scroll down the columns of newspaper archives, and in another compartment of his brain, he addressed Riker’s concerns. ‘You have two possibilities. Some recent event triggered these hangings, or the scarecrow started acting out antisocial behavior with early juvenile offenses.’
‘Then we’re still screwed,’ said Riker. ‘The criminal records of juveniles are sealed.’
‘But not newspaper archives. The county is mostly small towns. Any sort of stand-out behavior would be worth a mention in a local newspaper.’ Charles could see that Riker was unconvinced. The man was looking at his watch, a reminder that Stella Small was running out of time, and now he left the room. A moment later, the door to the reception area slammed shut.
Mallory handed a cell phone to Charles. ‘I’ve got a Wisconsin detective on the line. She works in Juvenile. Can you give her a profile for the scarecrow?’