03 City of the Snakes Page 11

A bell tinkles softly as I enter. A woman in a baggy T-shirt and shorts stands up behind the reception desk and smiles welcomingly. “Help you, sir?”

  I walk over, noting the brightly painted walls and childlike drawings pinned to them. “Hi. I’m Neil Blair. I was hoping to have a few words with a patient of yours.”

  “We call them ‘guests’ here,” the woman corrects me.

  “I’d like to see a ‘guest’ then.” I grin as warmly as possible.

  “Are you a relative?” she asks, then sticks out a hand before I can answer. “My name’s Nora.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Nora,” I respond, shaking her hand. “No, the man I’d like to see is the brother of a close friend of mine. I’ve lost contact with this friend and I’m hoping Leo can help me track—”

  “Leo Casey?” she interrupts brightly.

  “Yes.” I get ready for the curtain to come crashing down but Nora isn’t the least bit suspicious.

  “Gosh, it’s been a long time since Leo had any visitors. He’ll be delighted. Have you known each other long?”

  “Actually, we’ve never met.” It always pays to stick close to the truth when spinning a lie. “I don’t even know if his brother told him about me. But I was in the neighborhood—I’m a basketball scout—and I recalled Bill telling me this was where Leo lives, so I thought—”

  “A scout!” Nora gasps. “I’m a huge fan. Ever discover anyone famous?”

  “No,” I chuckle ruefully. “I feed the smaller teams and universities.”

  “I know a guy you have to check out,” she says, scrabbling for a pen and paper. “He’s a bit on the mature side—twenty-three—but he’s brilliant. Would have turned pro years ago except for an injury.”

  “I’ll have a look at him,” I lie, taking the scrap of paper from her and squinting at the name as if genuinely interested. “Now, how about Leo? Is it possible to see him, or do I have to book an appointment or check with his doctor?”

  “Goodness no,” she laughs. “Most of our guests stay with us voluntarily. They can have all the visitors they like. Besides, Leo’s an orderly.”

  “I thought he was here for treatment.”

  “He was—is—but he likes to keep busy, and he’s utterly trustworthy. He started helping out a few months after arriving. He fit in so well, it wasn’t long before we put him on the payroll.”

  Nora has a free tongue, so I work on her some more. “What exactly was Leo treated for?”

  “Now that I can’t reveal,” she says regretfully.

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “That’s OK.” She purses her lips. “I can say that we specialize in depression. We tend not to take on those who are seriously disturbed, just those who feel confused, a little lost or sad. We make them feel part of a family.”

  “Does Leo ever talk about his real family?”

  “Yes,” she answers hesitantly. “But I probably shouldn’t speak too much about that.”

  “I understand.” A young woman with a troubled look passes through reception and waves curtly at Nora. I note gold rings and a necklace with small diamonds embedded in it. “Does it cost much to stay here?”

  “Oh yes,” Nora chuckles. “We make special arrangements for certain individuals, but by and large you don’t come to St. Augustine’s unless you’re rolling in it!”

  “Bill pays for Leo, doesn’t he?” I chance the query, expecting her to say she can’t discuss such matters.

  “No,” she surprises me. “I’m not sure who sponsored him when he arrived, but he pays his own way now, out of the money he earns. He’s one of the special cases—having been with us so long, and having served so capably, we cut him a serious discount.”

  “Has Bill ever come to visit Leo?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  “No.” She frowns. “Actually, I believe Leo told me his brother was dead. Didn’t he die in an accident some years ago?”

  “That was an uncle,” I lie smoothly. “Same name. A freak explosion.”

  “Yes, I remember the explosion. Could have sworn it was…” She shakes her head. “Never could trust this brain of mine. Do you want me to page Leo?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Nora presses a button, then stands again, peeling the folds of her T-shirt from her armpits. She’s sweating, even though the reception’s air-conditioned. I’m sweating too, but at the prospect of learning about Bill Casey.

  “All our staff wear electronic wristbands,” she says, wriggling her left wrist. “They vibrate when activated. Much more convenient than a PA system.”

  When Leo finally shows—ten minutes after his first summons, and having been paged twice more by the good-natured Nora—he takes me by surprise. He’s not much older than me but he looks like a man of eighty. An exhausted, trembling wreck, bald on top and white at the sides, gray, wrinkled skin, stooped and slow.

  “Sorry it took so long,” he apologizes. “I was with Jacqueline. She was talking about her son. I couldn’t leave in the middle.”

  “Of course not.” Nora points me out. “Leo, this is Neil Blair, a friend of your brother’s.”

  “Bill?” Leo asks, regarding me uncertainly.

  “I knew Bill years ago,” I say, offering my hand—which he takes—and lowering my voice so that Nora can’t hear. “I’ve been out of the country a long time. I only learned of his death a few months ago. I was hoping I could talk about him with you, if that’s OK?”

  “Sure,” Leo says. “I like to talk. Do you want to come through and sit out back? It’s a lovely day—be a shame to waste it indoors.”

  “I was thinking the exact same thing myself.” I turn to Nora. “Thanks for the assistance.”

  “Don’t mention it. Look in and say goodbye before you go.”

  I follow Leo to the garden. He circles around the play area to a bench in the shade of a tree. “Who are the swings and slides for?” I ask as we sit.

  “The guests,” he says. “Mrs. Kaye—she runs St. Augustine’s—is a great believer in the power of play. She thinks it’s necessary to revert to the joys of childhood if the tribulations of adulthood prove too much to take.” He smiles ruefully. “I spent a lot of time on those swings when I first came. Didn’t go on the slides too much. Never did like slides.”

  There’s a pause. Leo checks me over, no wariness in his eyes, merely curiosity. “I don’t recall Bill mentioning your name.”

  “Were you close to your brother?” I counter.

  “Yes. We didn’t see as much of each other as we’d have liked—Bill’s job kept him city-bound, while I’ve always preferred open spaces. Actually,” he coughs, “I have a phobia about that city. Not cities in general, just that one. But we kept in touch. Bill was great for writing. Sent me a couple of letters and, later, dozens of e-mails every week. I miss him terribly.”

  Leo’s grief would be hard to fake. I suspect he knows nothing of his brother’s possible survival, but I press ahead regardless. I have no room for sympathy where Bill Casey’s concerned.

  “I want to come clean with you, Leo,” I say softly, not entirely sure how best to proceed, playing it by ear. “The reason you don’t recognize my name is that it’s an alias. I didn’t want anyone knowing my real reason for being here.”

  “Oh?” His forehead crinkles. “I’m intrigued.”

  “My real name’s Al Jeery.” I watch closely for how he takes that.

  Leo scratches the dry, wrinkled skin of his chin. “That name I do recall. You were one of Bill’s best friends. He wrote about you a lot. The way he went on, you could have been his son.” He chuckles. “Bill was like that. If he developed a warm spot for someone, he loved them completely.”

  “Yeah.” I force a sick laugh, recalling the deathly pale faces of Nicola Hornyak and Ellen, how Bill calmly and coldly destroyed my life.

  “I don’t get it,” Leo says. “Why the subterfuge?”

  “Did Bill ever tell you what I did for a living?” I ask.

 
“I don’t think so. But my memory’s not the strongest.”

  “I’m a private detective.”

  “Really? How exciting. Is it glamorous, like in the films and on TV?”

  “No. Long, tedious hours and you never get seduced by beautiful femmes fatales.” Not true. I was taken for a ride by a chic bitch on my only previous case. But I’d rather not dwell on that.

  “Are you on a job now?” Leo asks.

  “Kind of,” I answer slowly. “It’s personal, and I’m sure there’s nothing to it, but…” I clear my throat and nudge closer. “I’ve heard rumors that Bill’s alive.”

  Leo blinks. “Alive? No. Bill died in an explosion. The police said terrible things, that he killed people, that it was suicide. I never believed them—he couldn’t have murdered, not after what happened to Jane—but I know he’s dead. They found his body. Bits of it. He was blown to pieces and burned. He…”

  Tears form in Leo Casey’s tired old eyes and drip down his coarse cheeks. If he’s putting on an act, he’s a master performer, even better than his brother, who played the part of my friend to perfection while all the time planning to strip me of everything that made me human in order to sic me on my father. “He can’t be alive,” Leo croaks. “He’d have come to see me. He’d have written.”

  “Easy,” I soothe him, taking his hands and massaging them. His fingers are like a witch’s, long, thin, bony. “It’s just a rumor, but I had to check it out.”

  “Who’s saying such things?” Leo snarls, anger getting the better of his sorrow. “Who’s making up lies about my brother?”

  “A dirtbag. You don’t know him. He’s scum, but as I said, I had to check, to be certain. Now I can go back and deal with him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Leo moans, his anger fading as swiftly as it rose. “Why would anyone make up something like that?”

  “Bill had enemies. They’re trying to pin the blame for more deaths on him. I’m determined to expose their lies, stop them insulting Bill’s memory.”

  “Bastards!” Leo spits, then looks contrite for having sworn. I don’t like playing this broken man—I’d feel more comfortable if he weren’t so trusting—but I’ve come too far to back off. I’m sure he doesn’t know where Bill is, but he mentioned their sister and I want to find out what he meant by “he couldn’t have murdered, not after what happened to Jane.”

  “Bill didn’t talk much about his past,” I say as Leo dabs at his eyes with a large handkerchief. “Barely mentioned you and Jane—she was your sister, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Leo sighs miserably. “I’m not surprised he didn’t talk about it. None of us liked remembering those horrible days. Our mother—God rest her soul—made us swear never to talk of it in her presence.”

  “Could you tell me what happened?” I ask gently, buzzing with curiosity.

  Leo’s face darkens. “I don’t want to.”

  I bite down on a furious grimace. “I understand.”

  “My doctors encouraged me to talk about it when I first arrived,” he says, “but when they saw how much it pained me, they taught me how to deal with it without confronting it head-on. That’s where a lot of my troubles lay, either running from those memories or dwelling on them too much. They still haunt me, but nowhere near as much as they used to.”

  I nod, then clear my throat, hating myself for opening old wounds, but needing to know. “I was with Bill at the end.”

  Leo stares at me oddly. Then his eyes light up. “Of course! God, how could I be so dense? Al Jeery. You were with Bill when…” His eyes go dull again.

  “He was in so much pain,” I murmur. “Death was a relief.”

  “Do you…” Leo gulps. “Do you have any idea why he did it? The police said he killed people and blew himself up, but I don’t… I never believed…”

  I could destroy him with the truth. Part of me wants to—to hurt Bill as he hurt me—but I came here to learn, not to harm. “The police got it wrong,” I mutter, the lie bitter on my lips. “Bill had been tracking a killer. He found and executed him. One of the killer’s partners framed and butchered Bill in retaliation. I tried telling the cops but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “I knew it!” Leo gasps, crying again, but with relief this time. “I knew there was more to it than they said. Bill wasn’t evil. He didn’t take his own life.”

  “Of course not,” I agree with a wan smile, then frown. “The last person he mentioned was Jane. He said he was sorry for what happened, that he was looking forward to seeing her in the next world. I tried asking him about her but it was too late. He…” I leave the rest unsaid and keep a sly eye on Leo, hoping he’ll take the bait.

  Leo wrestles with it in silence, then his features relax. “It was the summer of the riots,” he says in a soft voice, referring to a time when the city endured several months of race-related violence. More than a hundred people died, and much of the city—especially in the east—was burned to the ground. “It was hot then, like now. Jane was nine. She loved the sun. Couldn’t wait for vacation, so she could go swimming every day. Then she went missing. She was kidnapped.”

  I start to smile, feeling the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, but quickly hide it before Leo sees. “Go on,” I say encouragingly.

  “Another girl went missing at the same time—Margaret Crowe. She turned up a few days later, shaken and afraid, but alive. Jane didn’t.”

  Leo stops, his eyes twin pools of pain. I wait for him to continue. When he doesn’t, my prodding is somewhat sharper than intended. “And?”

  “Nothing,” he whispers. “She stayed lost. The police searched for a long time. We searched too—my stepfather hired private detectives—but she was never seen or heard from again. For a long time we believed—hoped—she was alive, but a year after she was taken, we received something in the mail…”

  His expression is so dreadful, I’m not sure I want him to carry on. I almost ask him to stop but he blurts out the rest before I can. “It was her hair. Tied with her favorite ribbon. There was a note. ‘Hair today, gone tomorrow. Ho ho ho.’ ”

  My eyes close comprehendingly. There’s no mistaking my father’s sick sense of humor. I see now how Bill ended up so twisted with hate. At the peak of his taunting of Bill, Wami must have kidnapped the girls. He probably told Bill to kill Margaret Crowe or he’d kill Jane. Bill wasn’t able to do it, so Wami released the Crowe girl and killed young Jane Casey.

  The mystery has eaten away at me for ten years. I still don’t understand why Bill sought such a warped form of revenge—setting me after Wami in the hope that I’d kill him—but I now know what lay behind it. In a strange way, knowledge of the tragedy is a relief. At the back of my mind I nursed the suspicion that Bill had been lying when he said he ruined my life to get even with Wami. I thought he might have been truly evil, and had simply toyed with me for kicks. At least now I know his claim to revenge was genuine, that I suffered for a heartfelt reason, not because some inhuman psycho was in search of a thrill.

  “The family fell apart,” Leo says hollowly. “The hair confirmed that she was dead. Paul, my stepfather, collapsed with a stroke a few days later. He lived another three years, paralyzed and speechless. He had to be spoon-fed. My mother blamed herself for the death and took to self-torment, physically punishing herself with flames and knives. We had to commit her. Some months later, shortly before Paul died, she took her own life. In many ways it was a blessing.”

  “And Bill?” I ask quietly. “How did he take it?”

  “I don’t know,” Leo says. “Bill cut himself off emotionally from the rest of us, long before we got proof that she’d been killed. He wouldn’t join in the search. He never gave any sign that he thought she was alive. He detached himself and went into private mourning.”

  Because he knew about Paucar Wami. He knew there was no hope. I can see it from Bill’s viewpoint—Jane’s life was his to spare, but his humanity stayed his hand. He hadn’t been able to kill Margaret Crowe, so his sist
er died in her place. What a terrible burden. No wonder he threw himself into revenge so thoroughly—it must have been the only way he could continue, the one way he could stave off madness and function as an ordinary human being. Without revenge to occupy him, he’d have crumbled completely.

  (Part of me tries to comment on the similarity between Bill’s situation and my own, but I silence that voice instantly.)

  “Did Bill ever mention someone called Paucar Wami?” I ask, knowing it’s a pointless question. Leo wouldn’t be sitting here quietly if he knew the name of his sister’s killer.

  “Yes,” Leo says, startling me. “How strange that you should know about that. He often moaned the name in his sleep, and once I found him scratching it on a wall in our garage. He was using his fingernails. His fingers were torn and bloody, but he went on, even after I tried pulling him away.”

  “This was when you were still a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment I’m confused—why hasn’t Leo forgotten about the Ayuamarcan? Then it hits me. Only the memories of the people in the city were wiped clean by the villacs’ mystical green fog. Those living outside weren’t affected.

  “Did you ever ask Bill about Wami?” I inquire.

  “Once. He said Paucar Wami was the devil, and if he ever heard the name on my lips again, he’d slice out my tongue.” He looks up, his eyes bloodshot and wet with tears. “Do you know who Paucar Wami was?”

  “A killer. I think he murdered your sister.”

  Leo nods weakly. “I guessed as much. He’s the man Bill killed, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I lie, maybe the kindest word I’ll ever speak.

  “I’m glad,” Leo says firmly. “A murderer like that deserved to die.”

  I rub the muscles at the back of my neck and let out a tired but satisfied groan. “I hope I haven’t stirred up too many unpleasant memories.”

  “No,” Leo smiles. “I’m glad you came. I feel better knowing the truth. It’s like you’ve given Bill back to me after those other people tried to take him away with lies.”

  I study Leo’s eyes and see a peace in them that wasn’t there when I arrived. His life will never be perfect—it can’t be, not with all that he’s suffered—but it won’t be quite as grim as it was. Part of me envies him that peace, but for the most part I’m pleased for him.