The Burial Society Read online

  As she nears her building, a woman emerges. Light brown hair in a high ponytail, a tightly belted khaki trench coat, a black bag under one arm. She radiates that effortless chic French women achieve so easily. The woman pulls her coat collar up and dashes through the downpour, away from Natalie. The woman’s not someone Natalie’s seen before, but Natalie is oddly drawn to her. She makes a mental note. Find out if that woman lives in our building. Befriend her. Learn her stylish secrets.

  Natalie pauses in the meager shelter the doorway provides, sliding her backpack from her shoulders. Black umbrellas pop open on the sidewalk. Pedestrians caught in the sudden shower squeal and curse. One fuchsia umbrella unfurls across the street and as it does, a rainbow streaks the sky.

  Remember to be grateful, Natalie thinks. For every single day.

  Well. She can’t stand out here in the rain like an asshat. She’ll text Jake, tell him to say he stopped to do an errand on the way back to the apartment. Then they can plead exhaustion and have a chance to compare notes before they debrief Brian in the morning. Natalie fires off the text before she inserts her key into the front door.

  She bounds up the stairs, backpack be damned. Unlocks their front door and opens it.

  History resounds in their summer apartment. In its gracious rooms, high ceilings, and crisp white walls iced with crown moldings, its chevron-patterned wood floors and leaded French doors, its paintings (mostly dour portraits clasped by ornate and heavy frames), its built-in bookcases, graceful antiques, and thick cream-colored curtains. Countless lives breathed in these very spaces. Natalie loves conjuring stories about the apartment’s past residents; her sketchbook is full of imagined scenes set within the apartment’s gracious walls.

  “Brian,” she calls. “I’m home!”

  No answer. Hmm. Dad had said he would be sure to be here when they got back. Maybe he got delayed at work. That at least solves the problem of Jake being late.

  Natalie kicks off her wet sneakers. She dumps her backpack and dripping windbreaker. She pads toward her bedroom in her damp socks, stripping off her T-shirt as she goes. She catches sight of her half-naked body in the gilt-framed mirror on the wall. I am super hot, she decides, the mirror reflecting back the same desirous gaze she had directed toward Derek the Brit.

  She studies her tapering waist, delicate shoulders, and perky breasts. B cup. Not too small and not too large. Her ribs are faintly visible under the caress of her soft skin, as are the bones of her spine when she twists to examine the rear view. Turning back toward the mirror, she studies her face. It’s a good face overall. She got the best of her mother—full mouth, widely set gray eyes, sharply arched eyebrows—and the best of Brian too—defined aquiline nose and a squarish chin that gives her a look of happy determination.

  It’s a pity that look is frequently deceptive.

  Is that a lump of fat over her left hip? Natalie pinches at the skin, weighing, testing. Her eyes drop from the girl in the mirror. She kneads at her flesh until it darkens with a bruise.

  Sickened, Natalie examines the damage she’s inflicted. She gives the mottled skin over her hip one last sharp pinch. Certainly not the worst she’s done to herself. She raises her eyes defiantly back to her reflection. I can stop this. I can.

  Remember to be grateful. For every single day.

  We’ve driven for seven hours. Delphine pilots us smoothly in the direction of the Old Port. I peer out the windows only to see indistinct shapes muffled by the soot-black night; still, I can imagine what we’re passing. Tenements housing the city’s countless immigrants. Synagogues and mosques and Greek Orthodox churches. Expansive “urban renewal” projects, grim even before completion. And then, more optimistically, the opera house, public gardens, and burgeoning industrial parks.

  I close my eyes briefly, fighting the exhaustion that threatens to overwhelm. As soon as I hand off my target, I will check in to a hotel and sleep the sleep of the just. Or at least the sleep of the justified.

  A low moan pulls me back from the brink of slumber. I open my eyes. My target is stirring. An elegant hand flutters up to touch her forehead. She moans again.

  I study the planes of her face. She’d been a model before her marriage, having traveled from her hometown of Vologda, Russia, to an open casting call in Moscow at only fourteen. Even then, she was a willowy blond beauty, with a gravity in her cobalt blue eyes that reflected an old soul. I know from my research that both the flight to Moscow and her somber smile were caused by her stepfather, a government official who strenuously denied her assertion that he’d begun molesting her at age eleven.

  Signed by an international modeling agency, she spent the next seven years crossing the globe for fashion shows and photo shoots. She walked the runways in Paris, Milan, New York, São Paulo, and Tokyo. She appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and on the cover of Vogue twice. She took a stab at acting, playing a version of herself in a Hollywood action film. She made money and she spent it lavishly. She was hounded by the paparazzi, her romances (some of them disastrous) dissected for the prurient delight of tabloid readers around the world. She never lost the wariness in her eyes.

  She met her husband while vacationing in Ibiza. He was a fellow Russian, older, extremely rich, charming, intelligent. He told her he manufactured engines. It was the first of many lies.

  After a whirlwind courtship, they married in a lavish celebration in London. Tabloids reported the reception cost more than a million pounds. Exclusive photographs were sold to OK! magazine for hundreds of thousands. The three dresses she wore over the course of the evening were favorably scrutinized by fashion bloggers who admired her politic choice to honor three of her favorite designers: Monique Lhuillier for the ceremony, Stella McCartney for the cocktail hour, and Reem Acra for the dinner and dancing.

  The couple honeymooned on the groom’s yacht, a leisurely six-week tour of the Greek islands, mostly notable for the photograph that later emerged of the bride sunbathing completely naked (in what she had presumed was total privacy).

  Do you see now why I worry about making this woman disappear? She possesses one of the best-known faces and bodies on the planet.

  The shower is glorious, hot and steamy. Natalie emerges, fragrant with jasmine-scented body wash and shampoo, and bundles up in her plush rose-pink bathrobe. She wipes the steam from the bathroom mirror and brushes her teeth. It’s lovely to feel so clean. Muffled in the huge robe, she looks all she wants to be: petite, almost elfin. She cinches the belt of her robe tighter.

  Where is Jake? And where is her dad? Natalie starts to feel a little anxious. She exits the bathroom calling for them. Maybe they came in while she was in the shower?

  Passing the door to her father’s bedroom, Natalie catches a glimpse of her dad’s briefcase. “Brian?” she inquires as she pushes open the door.

  Rain-filtered light passes through the skylight, washing the room in shades of gray. Brian is splayed across the bed. His face is strange, empty, ashen. His eyes stare blankly. His head hangs at an odd tilt.

  Blood, dried to a dull rust color, is caked onto the cream-colored coverlet.

  Natalie sinks to the floor as an agonized howl escapes her mouth.

  My target’s eyes flutter. She licks her dry lips.

  I reach into the case tucked by my feet and extract a mask that I pull over my head. It’s a glow-in-the-dark alien head, slanted almond-shaped eyes, a slit of a mouth, mere suggestions of nostrils. It’s silly, I know, and uncomfortably warm, but has the benefit of obscuring my voice as well as my features. This close to the target I can’t be invisible, so I must be obscured.

  “Elena,” I growl low in my throat. “Are you awake?” My Russian is serviceable.

  Elena’s eyes peel open. She’s dazed and blinks to focus. When she catches sight of me, she recoils.

  “Have some water,” I order in Russian, as I hand her a bottle. She chugs it obediently.

  “Don’t be scared,” I continue. “Everything should work out just f
ine as long as the ransom is paid.”

  I see the panic flare in her eyes. She glances toward the door of the taxi; I know she’s gauging the speed of the car, the possibility of escape. I grip her wrist tightly.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I mutter as I plunge another syringe into her neck. She doesn’t know it yet, but I am her salvation.

  This is what I do. I am the Burial Society.

  Natalie’s frail body curls into a corner of her bed, her breathing finally rhythmic but shallow. The doctor had given her a sedative.

  Jake watches her sleep, knowing her drug-induced peace is only temporary.

  Brian’s corpse has been removed, his bedroom examined and sealed. Two gendarmes wait for Jake in the salon. He’s not even really sure why they are still here; he’s told them all he knows. He came home, found his sister hysterical and his father dead.

  He can’t stay in here much longer. The young flic, the one with the acne-pitted face, had even wanted to come into Natalie’s bedroom with him. But Jake assured him he would be only a minute, he just wanted to be sure Natalie was finally sleeping. Now Jake wonders if the cop had been less concerned with his welfare and in fact suspicious of his actions. As if he could ever hurt Natalie! His sister is the only person on earth he loves without reservation. Natalie is the only person he has left.

  We’re orphans now, he realizes. It seems an old-fashioned word, conjuring up images of workhouses and Oliver Twist, ragged clothes and sad-eyed faces hollowed by hunger.

  —

  Is Natalie too thin again? Where her spine emerges above the butter-yellow blanket, he can see the sharp knobs of her vertebrae. He never should have let her go off with that boy in Amsterdam. Even as he chides himself, he knows it is irrelevant. The young Brit didn’t hurt Natalie; it’s this new devastation that might break her.

  Jake’s mind races. There are the practical questions: Can he and Nat stay on in the apartment? Should they? For how long? At least tonight, since Natalie is finally sleeping, but surely not beyond that. Where will they go? How much money do they have? Can they access their dad’s accounts? Oh god, will they be hounded by the press again? Shit. Should he call Uncle Frank? Do they need a lawyer? A translator? Should he contact the embassy? How will they get Brian’s body home? Did he leave a will? A burial plan? How can Jake not know these things?

  Then there are even more troubling thoughts. What will people think about him and his sister now, with both of their parents murdered? Will they pity them even more? Jake hates pity. Will people believe they are tainted? Cursed? Are they cursed? Is his whole family linked in a daisy chain of tragedy? How could this have happened? The memory of Brian’s savagely torn neck makes Jake shudder.

  He holds his hands up in front of his face. They look foreign to him, the hands of a stranger. Hands can do so many things. Build a fire, make a sandwich, paint a landscape, toss a football, fly across a keyboard. Caress a lover, soap a back, rub out a solitary orgasm. Wield a razor, swing a baseball bat, punch a heavy bag. Pull a trigger. Choke a neck until all breath is stilled.

  Slit a throat.

  Jake snorts back a rush of tears. He has wished his father dead many times. Even before Mallory disappeared, they had butted heads. Mallory was the parent who stayed, while Brian roamed the world for the sake of one commission or another. Jake became the “man of the house” while Brian was away. And his resentment only grew when Brian came home because of the angry voices that emanated from his parents’ bedroom at night, the harsh creases carved into his mother’s face in the aftermath.

  But wishing someone dead and actual death are two entirely separate things.

  Aren’t they?

  Bruised pink sky heralds the arrival of morning. The Old Port is stirring, fishermen and pleasure-boat crews readying for the day ahead. Delphine stops the taxi at the designated spot. Zahida, a moonfaced Bosnian girl, darts from the shadows.

  Z works the cleaning crew on a small cruise ship (capacity 300), and she will see that my still-unconscious target is safely deposited into an unused first-class stateroom (where she will likely sleep until the ship docks in the Ligurian port of Genoa). Z will also deliver my target to the next handler when she arrives. Z doesn’t know whom it is she’s hiding and she doesn’t care. I helped free Z from a desperate situation once upon a time (perhaps a tale for another telling). I won her gratitude and loyalty then, and now I pay her well.

  Z and I lift my target from the taxi. Delphine shoots me a smart salute and is on her way. We load the target’s limp form into a waiting dinghy. Once she is settled, Z casts off. I pause on the dock and watch them head out to open water.

  I pop on my sunglasses. Tug a slouchy hat low on my forehead. I walk away with purpose and determination, a woman with somewhere to go.

  Frank Burrows is sick to death of arguing with his ex-wife. The script of each skirmish is punishingly familiar. Bottom line: She hates his fucking guts and wishes he would die.

  Frank sighs, trying to hang on to his composure as Della goes on the attack, her voice shrill through the telephone. Then he erupts. His brother has died, for god’s sake. In Paris. Jake and Natalie, his nephew and niece, are there alone. Frank is still trying to wrap his head around it all, he tells her, but any reasonable woman would understand that he has to go, that it isn’t, as Della claims, “yet another excuse” to avoid seeing his own children. She’s being outrageous! He has been looking forward to the two weeks with the girls, the reservations are made, the plane tickets booked. And, he adds (his tone growing louder and harsher, knowing that there will be no logic or compassion to be found in any conversation with Della, so really, what is the point of even trying to modulate), his brother is dead. Brian has been murdered.

  “It’s just like you to abandon your own girls to take care of another man’s children,” Della snipes.

  “How can you be so callous?” he finally shouts as he slams the phone off.

  How had he ever married that woman? That’s what comes from acting on the rebound. He had realized she was batshit crazy, but only after she was pregnant with their twin girls. Now he is shackled to the bitch for life.

  The twins, Analise and Adelaide, are eleven now, still little girls, on the brink of the roller coaster of adolescence. He loves his daughters wholly. He caught Addy wearing lip-gloss a couple of months ago. She’ll be the one to watch. Ana still loves her dolls.

  He’ll make it up to them, Frank promises himself. When this is all over, they will do something spectacular. But for now, his focus must be on Jake and Natalie.

  As he begins to plan getting to Paris, comparing flights and train schedules, notifying his office, he is conscious that he is avoiding the very thing he should have done first.

  Call his mother.

  Or at least let the nursing home know. Susan Burrows suffers from dementia. There are still some good days, but after she set a fire in the galley kitchen of her garden apartment two years ago, Brian and Frank moved her to Meadowfield, “the finest in adult care facilities.” Frank had always thought the name of the place was wack—aren’t a meadow and a field basically the same thing? It was like an ironic etymologic joke carried on the backs of those who could no longer remember their words.

  And who would pay for Meadowfield now? Brian had borne the expense without a thought, knowing that not only did he make far more than Frank, but that child support and alimony payments slivered Frank’s income.

  Frank piles clothing on the hotel room bed, carefully refolding his belongings. What a stroke of luck he was in London for the trade show. He can be with Natalie and Jake in a matter of hours.

  Maybe he won’t call the home just yet. Or his mother. Maybe a little ignorance truly is bliss, at least for the time being. Still, the American news is bound to pick up the story soon enough. And once the journalists realize that Brian is the Brian Burrows, husband of Mallory Burrows, whose disappearance three years ago sparked its own salacious headlines, they are bound to have a field day. Unable to
decide what to do, Frank pushes away the question.

  He pauses, hands filled with balled socks. Brian. Truly gone. Their relationship hadn’t always been easy. What brothers’ is? But the finality hits him hard. There will be so many things left unsaid.

  I welcome the sight of the unpretentious little hotel that is my destination. My back is sore. My legs ache. The day will be scorching. Already the cobblestones are radiating an obnoxious combination of reflected heat and pungent stink.

  The hotel is decrepit, crumbling stone, broken steps, its weather-beaten door a faded turquoise. I step inside into the cool, dim lobby, blinking to adjust my eyes.

  “Ah, mademoiselle. Welcome.” The greeting comes from Gabriel, the ancient and cantankerous proprietor. Gabriel and I have an understanding. I pay cash and he asks no questions.

  Gabriel’s hands, knotty from arthritis, move quickly enough when pocketing the wad of euros I give him. In return he hands me a key. Room 3. My favorite.

  I mount the warped and creaky stairs to the second floor and fit the key into the door of my room. An iron bedstead is made up with threadbare sheets and a faded paisley coverlet. There is one chair, with a busted rush seat. One rickety table. The robin’s-egg blue paint on the walls is cracked and peeling, the floor and baseboards scuffed, the one floor lamp, with its curling wrought-iron tendrils and fringed cobalt-colored shade, dusty.

  So why is this room my favorite?

  I stride to the window and peer out. From here I can see up and down the narrow street. The walls are thin enough that I can hear anyone coming, but the shutters are thick enough that I can block out all light. These are the reasons this room is my favorite.