The Burial Society Read online

  I close the door and turn the lock. Pull the shutters, plunging the room into darkness. I kick off my heavy platform shoes and sink gratefully onto the bed. My eyes close.

  “Cathy.” The feminine whisper tickles my ear. “Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.”

  I bolt upright, eyes raking the shadows. My heart feels like it will explode right out of my chest.

  Where is she? Can we get out in time?

  I am alone.

  Frank settles into his seat on the Eurostar. Checks the time. They are scheduled to depart in seven minutes. He has spoken only to Jake; Natalie had been sedated. Frank is worried about her, anxious to see her in person. Jake sounded deeply dazed. Shock, no doubt.

  Frank once again counts the blessings that landed him in London on business. Lucky timing in the midst of a grotesque horror.

  A sturdy, Nordic-looking woman tucks into the seat next to him, and Frank gives her a cursory nod. He hopes she’s not a talker. He wants to be left alone to pick through his memories of his brother.

  Frank had been eight, so that would have made Brian fifteen. Frank walked all by himself from the school bus stop to their house. The walk meant crossing only one street, but this was the first year Frank had been allowed to do it solo. He was proud and careful as he checked for traffic and crossed the road.

  He let himself into the house, dropping his backpack and his keys on the bench in the front hall, calling for his mother. No answer.

  He found her slumped on the tiled floor of the kitchen, her face slick with tears, a half-empty bottle of frozen vodka spilling its icy contents onto her blouse. She became enraged when she saw him, and although Frank now understands that she had been deeply ashamed, at the time all he’d felt was fear and panic. She’d scrambled unsteadily to her feet, brandishing the bottle, slopping vodka as she shrieked at him to go to his room.

  Frank was stunned; he’d done nothing wrong! He refused. His mother grabbed him by his arm and dragged him to the front door, throwing him out into the street.

  “You can just stay there, then!” she’d snarled, slamming the door shut and turning the lock.

  Locked out of his house and terrified by this monster that had taken control of his mother, but still pricked by the righteous belief in his own innocence, Frank had pounded on the door yelling to be let in. His mother didn’t come. She wouldn’t come.

  Brian found him huddled there four hours later when he came back from baseball practice. Frank’s tears had long since dried. The hem of his T-shirt was striated with snot. Brian brought Frank inside and told him to take a shower. When Frank emerged from the bathroom, their mother was tucked into bed, asleep, a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water on her bedside table. Brian was in the kitchen making sandwiches.

  “Let’s not tell Dad,” Brian offered. “He doesn’t need to know.” Their father was at a convention in Hilton Head, due back in two days.

  Frank was silent. He had yelled and cried for hours, he had no words left.

  “You know about Laurie?” Brian asked. Frank managed a shake of the head.

  Brian sighed. “There was another baby between you and me. A girl. Laurie. Today’s her birthday. She would have been twelve. Usually Dad is here, you know, but…”

  Frank had a thick, gummy bite of PB&J in his mouth; he couldn’t swallow so instead spit it into his hand. “What happened to her? Laurie?”

  “That thing where babies just don’t wake up. SIDS? I was too young to remember, but, you gotta understand, Frank, some days are just harder than others for Mom.”

  Frank couldn’t sleep that night.

  But inevitably, the rhythm of their family life normalized. Frank went to school and Little League, out on the family sailboat, away to summer camp.

  And even though his mother went back to being the mother he always knew, this incident marked the first time he understood that things, and people, could change on a dime.

  And so they have again.

  The sweet little outdoor café in the 1st arrondissement is three-quarters full. Marble and brass tables. Cocky green umbrellas provide shade while promoting pastis. A balmy breeze, the warming sun. A spectacular Parisian day.

  I fall in love with this city all over again; it’s impossible not to. I wear old boyfriend jeans, a man’s button-down knotted at the waist, sneakers. Perfect clothes to move fast.

  Tucked in a corner, my back to the wall, I scribble in a notebook, broad-brimmed hat tugged low over my forehead. Pick at a slice of chocolate cake.

  The image of Brian Burrows’s bloodied body ricochets through my mind, unbidden, unwanted.

  The coagulated blood. His splayed palms, open, beseeching.

  I have a job to do. When it’s finished I can think about discovering Brian Burrows’s corpse. Not until then. I let a creamy morsel of decadent chocolate icing melt against my tongue. Sip my bitterly rich espresso.

  The object of my interest sits with two pals. He chain-smokes and coughs, gulps red wine. When he throws back his head and laughs, I suppress a frown. That’s not the behavior of a man whose beloved wife’s been kidnapped. This whole scheme is predicated on a series of assumptions, one leading to the next with researched certainty. There is no room for me to have made a mistake.

  There she is, right on schedule. Delphine.

  She looks magnificent. I knew she would; she’s come quite a long way since we first met, and even then she had mad raw skills.

  I chance a quick glance at him. His thick lips and nose would be ugly on another man, but the broad planes of his cheekbones and jaw anchor these features with an unexpected grace. He has a thick mane of hair about which he is vain; I can tell from the way he strokes it. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes reassure me that maybe the laugh was just a stress release.

  It’s go time.

  Delphine sashays by him. Her navy sheath dress at first appears chaste, but skims close enough to reveal every sinuous undulation of her exquisite body. High heels pitch her ass up, her tits forward. Prada sunglasses shield her face. The wig she wears bounces a mane of shiny blond curls down her back. We know he likes blondes.

  It unfolds just like I planned. His eyes follow her. He grunts something in Russian. His buddies laugh, then turn to stare at her. A dusky-skinned teen in waiter’s garb (Jumah, a friend of mine, you’ll meet him later) glides past their table, drops the thick ivory-colored envelope onto my Russian’s lap, and exits the café without anyone taking notice.

  Casually, I tuck my notebook into my purse. Lay down twenty euros for my cake and coffee. I saunter out of the café. Join the ebb and flow of the pedestrians savoring this glorious summer afternoon.

  I hear it: the shout of excited rage. I smile. The note has been read. The note itself is old school, formed of letters cut from Russian newspapers bought in Finland, glued to a piece of stiff vellum purchased at an art supply shop in Madrid, all touched only while wearing gloves.

  The payment methodology is new school: bitcoin.

  Nothing like mixing it up when making a ransom demand.

  Jake had insisted she get some fresh air; when she’d resisted he’d explained that when Uncle Frank got there it would be necessary to go over some “details” that it might be best for Natalie to miss. She would have fought harder but she was lethargic, a combination of shock and the sedatives the doctor had prescribed, so she slouched out here into Parc Monceau. It’s now a hateful place. The last space in the world that held Natalie’s before.

  The problem is, her brain shrieks with gruesome imaginings about the “details” she’s supposedly been spared. What could be worse than seeing her father’s slit throat?

  She takes some comfort from the bloody shred of cuticle worried between her teeth, from the hidden burn of the tiny cuts she’s incised along her inner thigh.

  A young cop with a weight-lifter’s build is positioned where he can observe her. She glares back at him with laser eyes, imagining his eruption into flame, cinder, and powdery ash.

  Be grateful
for every day? Fuck that shit. Natalie shivers despite the humid warmth of the afternoon. Then she sees them: Jake and Uncle Frank.

  Thank god. Uncle Frank will know what to do.

  She is over to greet him in a flash. The three of them form a spontaneous circle. Arms around shoulders, foreheads meeting; an insular curtain of shared love and grief.

  Natalie is startled to learn they have to move to a hotel. But of course they do. The apartment’s a crime scene. It’s a relief, in a way.

  They have a police escort to a functional, modern, all-suite hotel. Through the window of the sedan, Natalie watches as the streets of Paris drift by. Cafés and shops and bicyclists. Restaurants and monuments and tourist traps. Paris is a city that has reclaimed and reinvented itself from war, occupation, terrorism. She envies that resilience, although she doesn’t share it. She would like to die, she thinks. Just curl up and die.

  Natalie feels poisoned. Or maybe like she is poison. She’s not sure which.

  They check in and are asked by the officer in charge to stay put for a while. The weight-lifter gendarme is stationed in the hallway outside their suite, just to be sure.

  Finally, they are alone in their suite with its functional, modern furniture and orange and brown décor. There’s a dining table that seats four and Uncle Frank gestures that they should all take a seat.

  No one says anything. Natalie thinks ruefully that they are beyond the platitudes of grief. It’s unbearable, this weight of loss and sorrow. Unbearable.

  She’s relieved when Uncle Frank begins with logistics. Obviously they will cooperate with the police. He has also made an appointment for them at the American embassy first thing in the morning. From those two statements he goes on to order a meal for them from room service. Natalie is struck by a sickening sense of déjà vu. She had thought Uncle Frank taking charge would bring the same reassurance it had when Mom disappeared. Instead its familiarity is making her ill.

  Silent tears spill down Natalie’s cheeks. She drops her face onto her crossed arms. Uncle Frank rubs her back. Murmurs those very platitudes about everything being all right that Natalie hates, having heard them too many times before when nothing was all right at all.

  A crash makes her jump. She lifts her head to see Jake hoisting a chair over his head. He smashes it again into the already shattered full-length mirror. Shards of mirror shower soundlessly to the carpeted floor.

  Uncle Frank is on his feet, his face white. “Jake. Stop that. It’s not going to help a thing.”

  “Fuck him!” Jake screams hoarsely. “Fuck that asshole!” His face is mottled with rage; his body bristles with aggression.

  Natalie huddles into herself, making her body as small as possible. She doesn’t know whom Jake is cursing: Their father? His killer? God?

  She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. She just wants the violence to stop.

  It was fifteen days before I extracted Elena from Paris that I first saw the Burrows family in the Marais. I saw the girl first. She looked familiar, not in a vague, where-have-I-seen-her-before kind of way, but in a punch-to-the-gut kind of way. My eye was caught by that particular shade of auburn hair, by a glimpse of those wide gray eyes.

  She looked older now, of course, more womanly under her oversized shirt and loosely slung jeans, still almost painfully thin. But it was Natalie Burrows. My eyes scanned the two men with her. Yes, that was her brother, Jake. And her father. Brian.

  What the hell were they doing in Paris?

  I shuddered and forced myself to breathe slowly. I’d thought I would never see any of them again. They are why I fled to Paris in the first place. My failure to save Mallory Burrows after she reached out to the Burial Society is a splinter in my heart. My greatest failure. I’ve always felt I owe Mallory, owe her family.

  But I couldn’t afford this distraction, not with Elena’s abduction looming. I had just met with Delphine and given instructions for a nondescript van and an equally anonymous taxi. My other plans for the day included a rendezvous with Gerard, my lover, before he headed home to his understanding wife, and then confirmation of the shipping route out of the port of Marseille.

  I had an hour before I was to meet Gerard. It was against my better judgment, but also a scratch I had to itch. I followed the three Burrowses through the cobblestone streets.

  They were shopping for their supper. A stop at the fromagerie, the patisserie, the boucherie. Watching, I examined them for the telltale, ashy residue of tragedy.

  Brian pointed out selections to his children. Natalie was the one who responded to him, asking questions, acquiescing, or making alternate suggestions. Jake stayed sullen and slouched, his hands buried in his pockets, his neck and shoulders a vulture’s hunch.

  It would be easy enough for me to find out where they were staying and for how long. I offered up a little prayer that they were in Paris only briefly. Seeing them had sent my stomach roiling, set my brain spinning.

  I was due to see Gerard in eighteen minutes. He can be so pouty when I’m late.

  I hurried into my apartment on rue des Archives. Dropped my keys into the china dish on the console table near the door.

  An image floated before my eyes. Radiant gray eyes under sharply curved eyebrows. Natalie’s eyes. So like her mother’s. I pushed the image away.

  “Baby,” I purred as I pulled off my shirt and slipped out of my shoes.

  Gerard sat majestically in the middle of my bed, naked. Unhooking my bra and sliding off my skirt and panties, I climbed onto the bed, just grazing his body with mine, teasing him with brushes of my flesh.

  Gerard kissed me. Then flipped me over and smacked my bottom with his open palm. “You are late,” he scolded in French as he struck. The pain was pleasure and just what I needed right now.

  “Again,” I begged in French. “Hit me again.”

  When I was satiated, I sent Gerard home. Went back to work on the plans to kidnap my Russian supermodel. Pushed the Burrows family out of my brain.

  I never dreamed that Brian Burrows would be dead by the time I got back to Paris. Or that I would be the one to discover his body.

  How do we ever really know what’s true?

  Memory is a kaleidoscope.

  History transforms with each telling.

  So believe what you will. Don’t we all?

  Let’s go back in time, just a little bit.

  There was something in the air. Even before she opened her eyes, Natalie felt it, even though she couldn’t put a label to what “it” was exactly. She snuggled deeper into her down pillows and silky comforter. Late March and there was still a chill in the mornings.

  It was the quiet. The house shouldn’t be so quiet. Deep unease settled over Natalie as she slipped away from her cloudy dreams and into the reality of this particular morning.

  Jake was just home for spring break, so no surprise he was sleeping in. But Mom should be up, making coffee, sorting the mountain of laundry Jake had brought back from school, buzzing with anticipation for the moment her older child woke so she could ply him with food and grill him about his classes, the city, his friends (and, with only slightly more veiled probing, his love life).

  Natalie’s eyes flew open.

  She glanced at the digital clock on her night table. Over half an hour until her alarm was set to go off.

  But the quiet.

  Going back to sleep seemed impossible.

  Natalie threw back her covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked around her bedroom, really taking it in as if it wasn’t the same room she had woken in for all of her fifteen years. She loved her bed, with its ruched and beribboned canopy that she knew she should have outgrown but hadn’t. She loved the deep lemon paint on the walls, her giant corkboard pinned with concert tickets and dried roses, stickers and inspirational quotes, photographs and poems. She loved her window seat with its thick yellow-and-white striped cushions, how it looked out over their backyard, which was just now budding with early spring. She loved her bookcases o
verflowing with novels, travel books, memoirs, and biographies, and her old-fashioned desk with its neat little cubbyholes for pens and rulers, pencils and paper clips.

  But the quiet.

  Mom never stayed away overnight. Mom would never not be here to make pancakes and bacon for Jake on his first morning home.

  Natalie padded out of her bedroom. The cool wood of the wide plank floors felt reassuring underneath her feet, as did the rough texture of the woven rag rug. But even as she comforted herself with their familiarity, she knew something was wrong.

  Natalie found her father downstairs, pacing in the living room, wearing the same clothes he had worn the day before. His face was ashen. Morning light glinted silver off his stubbled jaw. When had Dad’s beard gone gray? Overnight? Or had Natalie just not noticed before?

  “Daddy?”

  Brian gave her a weak smile. “Morning, pumpkin.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  Brian just looked at her.

  “Dad. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, honey. We had a bit of a fight last night and she took off.” Brian rubbed at the corner of his eye with a knuckle. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

  Natalie knew he was mistaken.

  Something terrible had happened and it was all Natalie’s fault.

  Deep navy shadows crawled away from the house and into the gathering night, even as golden light flowed from every window, unanswered beacons.

  Jake perched on the porch railing, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, shoulders hunched, staring at the suddenly unfamiliar street in front of the house he had lived in all his life. Nothing felt the same, looked the same, was the same. He checked his watch.

  It was twenty-four hours since Mom had gone missing.