Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

He put one arm lightly around her shoulders. “I want you all to know that she’s a hero,” he announced to everyone standing around. “Saved that little boy’s life, and mine, too. Went through hell to do it.”

The words didn’t seem to unlock any warmth in her. She stayed passive, neither responding nor resisting, not even looking at him. Monks let her go. The gesture had been clumsy, but he wanted her to know that he was on her side-that in his mind the good that she had done far outweighed the bad. He hoped she would absorb that in time.

The other woman watched anxiously, but she seemed relieved at Monks’s goodwill. She was older, mid-forties, and had the same black hair and olive skin as Marguerite. He guessed that this was her mother, or maybe an aunt.

Agar said, “Lia, before our men start spreading out, you got any ideas which way those folks might have gone?”

He was looking at Marguerite as he spoke, and Monks was puzzled for a few seconds. Then he remembered that it was Freeboot who had given her the name Marguerite. Apparently, her real one was Lia.

“There’s a hidden road,” she said, still with almost trancelike somberness.

“Where?”

“It starts over by the security station. The men connected it to logging roads.” She pointed at the big Cat in the smoldering barn. “They’d work at night, then scatter brush around to cover up.”

“Where’s it lead, do you know?” Agar asked.

“Where the highway starts, near Elk Creek.”

“Christ, all the way down there?”

“They had ATVs. They’d radio ahead for people to meet them with cars.”

There was much pushing back of smokey-bear hats and shuffling of booted feet among the deputies. The maquis had probably gotten out of the forest yesterday afternoon before the fire had even been discovered.

Looking aggravated, Agar asked, “Lia, why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

“I was too freaked, okay?” She lashed out the words, suddenly animated, wet-eyed with anger-or panic. “You got any fucking idea what this is like?” She walked away quickly, hugging herself. The other woman hurried after her.

Monks said nothing. But her real reason had come clear to him-the same reason why she hadn’t called immediately for help. She had wanted to give Freeboot plenty of time to escape.

Agar sighed and hiked up his gun belt. “Let’s get somebody to check it out,” he said. “And hold off the search. If she’s right, there’s no point in sending those boys out.”

The older woman had caught up with Lia and was talking to her quietly but sternly. Monks walked over to them.

“You’ve got to quit trying to shield Freeboot, Lia,” Monks said. “This has gone way past that.”

Her flat affect had returned, but there was a hint of resentment when she spoke-maybe at his use of her real name.

“He let us go,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Astonishment, then anger flared in Monks-that after all this, she was still clinging to the image of Freeboot as superhuman.

“He let us go because I had an assault rifle leveled at him,” Monks said.

Her eyes went uncertain, but then quickly cool, even pitying, as if he couldn’t possibly understand the deeper truth. She turned and walked away again. This time, the older woman stayed with Monks. She looked almost lost in a big raglan turtleneck sweater. Like Lia, she was attractive without being pretty. Her eyes were large, a little sloed, and very dark. Her face was drawn and anxious.

“I’m her mom,” she said. “I was afraid you’d hate her.”

Monks shook his head. He was all out of hate.

“She helped,” he said. “My own son refused to.”

“It’s that man Freeboot,” she said with sudden heat. “He turned them into zombies.”

“Maybe. But they let him.”

She sagged a little, and nodded. “I did try to talk to her. Probably not very well. She sure didn’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t I know,” Monks said.

There seemed to be a strange mutual comfort in that. They stood without speaking again for a moment longer, until Agar called to him.

“Dr. Monks, you ready to show us what happened to you?”

Monks joined the deputies and started telling his story, while a technician with a camcorder followed. For the next half-hour, they moved around the fire’s fringes, while he described everything he could remember.

He had just finished recounting being assaulted and getting his hair hacked off when the moment came that he had been dreading.

“Over here!” a man yelled. It was one of the firefighters, in the part of the smoking field where the small cabins had stood. He had set his rake aside and was bent over something, brushing it off with his glove.

When he stepped back, Monks got a glimpse of greasy, charred bones, lying like wreckage in the ashes.

Agar glanced quickly at Monks, no doubt with the same thought.

This could be Glenn.

“You better stay here, sir,” Agar said.

Monks watched from the sidelines while the firefighters and deputies conferred. He felt disembodied, as if something deep within him had grabbed hold of his already raw emotions and shoved them into a locked compartment, not daring to leave them near the surface.

Then Agar came hesitantly toward him. He had put on firefighter’s protective boots and carried another pair.

“Doctor, I hate like hell to ask you this,” he said. “But we’d appreciate it if-you know, if there’s anything you could identify.”

“I don’t know anything about forensics,” Monks objected. Then he sat abruptly on the ground and pulled on the boots.

The ashes were hot around his sore feet and calves. When he got close to the corpse, the smell of roasted meat blended with the woodsmoke and flame retardant. It was lying prone with arms outstretched, turned slightly onto the left side, as if sleeping. There was no evidence of contortion from pain, or of an attempt to escape. Whoever it was might already have been dead when the fire reached here.

Monks hoped so.

It appeared to be of medium height, maybe a little more. That eliminated Hammerhead, but left most of the others that Monks had seen. There were no obvious injuries or identifying marks. Jewelry would have been destroyed, and dental fillings melted. Only remnants of charred flesh clung to the bones. Skin and hair were gone entirely.

He glanced at the firefighter who had found the corpse and said, “Give me your glove. I’ll be careful.”

Monks crouched and very gently swept the film of ashes off the skeleton’s pelvis. Its heart-shaped cavity was wide, and rounded on the insides of the ilial bones between the sacrum and the pubic symphysis.

He closed his eyes, knowing that he could be tricking himself. He counted to ten, then looked again. His impression was the same.

“I think it’s a woman,” Monks said. “That’s all I can tell you, and I’m not at all sure about it. You’d better get an expert.”

He handed the glove back to the deputy and waded out of the ashes-somber with guilt because his pity for the victim was overcome by the ugly wash of relief that it was not his son.

“Doctor, are those human remains?” someone shouted. It was a newswoman, shoving a microphone past the restraining tape, while a man beside her focused a camcorder on Monks.

He thrust his hand out at them, palm flat, and walked on past.

NEW MURDERS INCREASE PANIC

Wendy Reicher

Tribune staff reporter

Published March 10, 2004

Chicago-The latest in a series of more than a dozen multiple murders tentatively linked to the “Calamity Jane” killings was discovered early this morning near Lake Forest.

Walter R. Krieger and his wife, Nancy, were found shot dead in their home in the exclusive gated community of Avalon Greens. Krieger was an executive who sat on several major corporate boards and an influential industry lobbyist. His status in the business world, along with the killers’ penetration of heavy security and the lack of any apparent motive, fit the pattern of previous crimes.