John Connolly - The Burning Soul

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s a sign. Your coming here, it’s a sign. Soon the others will come too, and then it will all be over. It’s already started.’

‘What others, Lonny?’

He just shook his head. His eyes were glassy, and his smile was that of a man who has glimpsed the guillotine from the window of his cell and feels the first touch of the madness that will cloud his fear and make the end easier to bear. He retreated into the living room, his hands held away from his sides, the palms upturned. His shirt was clean and neatly pressed, his tie a pale pink. I could see that he was not armed, but I put him against the wall and frisked him anyway, just to be sure. He did not object. He said only ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Who? Anna Kore?’

I stepped away from him and he turned slowly around.

‘She likes you,’ he went on, as though I had not spoken. ‘I knew it from the first time you came here. Then she came to me one last time and I thought that I understood. Did she go to you? Is that why she left me?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lonny.’

‘I think you do. Not Anna. It was never about Anna. I’m talking about Selina Day. Will you tell her that I’m sorry?’

‘I think you need to sit down, ’ I said, and he understood that he would receive no confirmation of his beliefs or his fears from me.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her myself, when she comes.’

He thought that he had always intended to kill William Lagenheimer. He’d given himself other reasons for finding him, but secretly he knew how any meeting between them would conclude. It had all been William’s fault: the years in jail, the pain inflicted upon him by others, the haunting by Selina Day that would, in time, become something else, something more complex and ineffable, although that would only be revealed to others later upon the discovery of his diary. All of it was William’s fault because he was weak and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. They had been friends, William and Lonny, and friends were supposed to look out for each other. Friends didn’t tell. They kept their secrets. He’d warned William about that, just before they closed in on Selina Day and began putting their hands on her body.

‘You mustn’t tell, William. Whatever happens, you mustn’t tell.’ Sometimes he would annoy William by calling him Billy, but not this time. It was too serious for that. They were about to do something Very Bad.

‘I won’t tell,’ said William, and Lonny had wanted to believe him. He had wanted to believe him so badly that he swallowed his doubts and ignored the way William’s eyes couldn’t quite meet his. His mouth was dry and the blood was pounding in his head. He could almost feel the girl beneath him, the warmth of her, the smell of her. He needed William there to help him, to make it happen.

They’d both wanted to do it. Of course, that wasn’t the way William told it once they’d made him cry by telling him that they’d lock him away from his mommy for years and years, lock him away and put him in with the big men, and you didn’t want to know what the big men would do to you. Remember what you wanted to do to Selina Day, Billy? Well, they’ll do that to you, except it’ll hurt more. They’ll do it over and over until the pain gets so bad that you’ll want to die. You’ll call for your mommy, but she won’t be there to help you. Right now, we’re the only ones who can help you, Billy, so you’d better start telling us the truth, because not far from here your friend Lonny is being offered the same deal, and the first one who comes clean wins the teddy bear. He gets looked after, and there’ll be doctors who will try to help him be a better person, and the big men won’t get to lay their hands on him. The other one, the one who doesn’t talk in time, he’ll get thrown to the wolves. That’s the deal. That’s the way these things work. So you’d better start talking before your friend does.

Except Lonny wouldn’t talk. Lonny would never tell. He kept his arms folded and he didn’t cry, not even when one of the policemen hit him so hard across the back of the head that his vision went funny and he bit the inside of his cheek and had to spit the blood from his mouth. Every time they asked him why he’d killed the girl he just shook his head, and the only words he spoke were to tell them that he hadn’t done anything at all, that he didn’t know what they were talking about. And even as he spoke he knew they were asking William the same questions in another room, and he prayed and prayed that William would be strong just this once, that he’d remain true to his promise and keep their secret. He refused to countenance any other possibility, as though by sheer force of will he could hold William together just as he was holding himself together.

But William had broken, and that was why they blamed Lonny for everything that happened. Poor little William Lagenheimer was led astray by the bad boy. William was really sorry for his part in what had happened to Selina Day; he’d tried to make Lonny stop, but Lonny was too strong for him.

But William didn’t tell the police that he’d touched the girl too, and that when she started bucking and kicking it had been he who pinned her legs so she couldn’t throw Lonny off. Oh, he’d been crying when he did it, but Lonny didn’t have to tell him to hold her down. He just knew. Still, it had been Lonny who suffocated her, and it was Lonny who was portrayed as the leader, the instigator, the ‘alpha’ as one of the psychiatrists termed him, and so it was that the big man got to play with Lonny, just as they’d promised, although he didn’t get to play with him for long. The girl had seen to that.

It hadn’t been difficult to find out where William was staying after his release. After all, his mother didn’t try too hard to hide her tracks. She always had been a dumb bitch, doting on her little boy. All she cared about was looking after him again: cooking for him, washing his clothes, ensuring that he had a clean bed and a safe place to stay once they let him out. She trusted people to send on her mail to a post-office box in Berlin, as though ten miles between the box and her home would make any difference, and she’d never considered how she might be in danger of undoing all the good work that had been put into giving the boys new identities. Even the Negroes no longer spoke of the killing of Selina Day, or of what they were going to do to the two boys who murdered her. She was gone to a better place, and forgotten by most.

Except that part of Selina Day had stayed – the angry part, the vengeful part – and she wouldn’t let Lonny forget her. It was she who had whispered to Lonny that there was unfinished business with his old friend, and maybe he ought to look him up once he was a free man again. So Lonny had made some calls, including one to his brother, Jerry, and Jerry told him what he knew about Mrs. Lagenheimer, because Jerry had been forced to make trips to Drake Creek to settle their mother’s affairs, and people had talked, the way people will talk. Lonny didn’t tell Jerry what he was planning to do, and he didn’t know if Jerry suspected anything. If he did, Jerry was too smart to ask. They never spoke again, but that was Lonny’s decision. It was easier that way.

Both he and William had been released within a couple of months of each other – William first, Lonny later – and Lonny had been worried that William and his mother might already have moved on by the time he got to New Hampshire, but William was in the throes of a deep depression, and the medication prescribed to combat it meant that he was even less resistant to his mother’s suffocating love than he might otherwise have been. Lonny had found William walking in the woods near the shitty little trailer home that his mother had bought – bought! She was so dumb that she hadn’t even rented, as if a guy being released from jail in a strange state would want to stay living within a few miles of his final prison. But William was too battered and acquiescent to strike out for himself when he was released, and had they been left to their own devices they might have remained there on a dirt road beside a stinking pond until one or both of them passed away.