Blue Twilight (20 page)

Simmons was right. Anyone who would push a species to the brink of extinction for ego gratification and profit
was
gripped by a sickness. I would have gladly slapped Big Daddy behind bars right now if only that were possible. Instead, I tried hard not to show my disgust.

“The problem began when I started to identify more with the butterflies than I did with my clients. I became so good at finding rare specimens, that I actually began to think like one while out in the field.” Big Daddy sadly grunted and shook his head. “That’s when I knew I had to make amends for my actions. So I joined the Franciscan order. I presume you already know about that?”

I nodded, not wanting to interrupt Simmons while he was on a roll. Big Daddy folded his hands across his stomach, and stretched out his arms and legs. It made him look more like Paul Bunyan than Friar Tuck.

“I felt it was the ultimate penance I could pay for my role in disrupting the order of nature. What better way to redress such wrongs than devote a few years of my life to St. Francis of Assisi?”

“Maybe so. But I also happen to know that you didn’t totally clean up your act.”

“What do you mean by that?” Simmons coldly responded.

“Oh, come on. What about the complaint that was lodged against you by a runaway girl? Or don’t you count that on your list of transgressions?”

Big Daddy’s face turned beet red. “It was a boy, not a girl,” he blurted out, and then realized what he’d said. “Look, that complaint came after I’d left the Franciscan order, and the accuser wasn’t a runaway, but my foster son. He was angry at the time and it was his way of getting back at me. The charges were investigated and dropped. You can check it out if you like.”

This was the first I’d heard that Simmons had a child.

“Why would he do something like that? What was your foster son so mad about?” I asked, figuring where there was that kind of smoke, there had to be one hell of a large fire.

“His mother had recently died and he was upset. He felt that I was in some way responsible.”

Oh, boy. Simmons was turning out to be an even murkier character than I had anticipated.

“Was he right?” I questioned, not really expecting an answer.

Simmons took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, bringing his hands to his lips as if in prayer.

“Do you believe in God?”

“I believe in a higher power,” I cautiously replied, not sure where this was heading. I’d dealt with religious zealots before, and had learned to be wary.

“There’s an excerpt from
The Canticle of the Creatures
by St. Francis that’s touched my life in a way I’d have never imagined. It’s taught me to view those tragedies that befall us in a positive light. St. Francis was right. I’ve been through the fire, and it’s made me all that much stronger.”

I gripped my purse tighter, not knowing what to expect, ready to go for my gun if necessary as Simmons began to quote from the canticle.

Big Daddy smiled, and I wondered what he was talking about.

“I came to the Bay Area after leaving the Franciscan order. I was going through a meltdown at the time, wondering if I’d done the right thing, questioning if I should have stayed. I received my answer one day while driving along Highway 101. An accident occurred, and a car caught on fire. I pulled off the road and ran over to help. I managed to rescue the child, but couldn’t reach the mother. The poor woman perished in the flames. I found out later that the boy had no other family, and so he became my foster son. After all, we had a bond. We’d both been branded by the fire.

“Then you were also burned?” I queried.

“All the way down my arms, chest, and back. I decided that if people were going to gawk, they might as well stare at something good. So I went to a tattoo parlor and had my scars covered over. I was so blown away by the results that I became a tattoo artist, myself,” Simmons explained. “Now I’m the instrument through which people express themselves, whether it be tattooing symbolic wings on a woman’s
back so that she can soar, or helping others who have been scarred. It’s how I turned the flames into a positive experience. Care to view the results?”

I nodded, finding I’d become morbidly curious.

Big Daddy unbuttoned his shirt and slid an arm free. Slinking down his shoulder was a jaguar with a multitude of spots. Every whisker was intricately detailed, as well as the coarse nap of the cat’s fur. It took a moment before I realized that the texture was actually scar tissue. Simmons next opened the front of his shirt to display a Noah’s Ark filled with a multitude of animals. There were monkeys, giraffes, and lions, along with sheep, cows, and goats. Each was so realistic that I was tempted to run my fingers over them.

Big Daddy grinned in delight at my response. “This is my way of telling a story without talking to you.”

He then turned and bared his back to reveal the Grim Reaper. The skeleton stared menacingly at me, his bony frame wrapped in a deep purple robe. Engraved in its folds was what I took to be another quote from
The Canticle of the Creatures.

Each letter was misshapen and squiggly, having been tattooed on a canvas of scars with a pattern like that of chicken skin.

“I like to think of life as a series of doors. Death is simply the last one we pass through,” Big Daddy intoned, while turning and dropping his shirt to the floor.

I gasped aloud, feeling as though the very breath had been ripped from my body. Simmons’s right arm was totally covered in butterflies.

Big Daddy stared at me in surprise. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like butterflies? Most women do. You’d be amazed at the number who specifically request them for tattoos.”

But the image conjured something far different for me—a childhood memory that had remained locked away until this very moment. I remembered it now, as surely as I remembered sneaking barefoot from my bedroom and eavesdropping on a conversation that was meant to be private. I’d never told anyone before, though it had shaken me to the core and tainted my adolescent nightmares. However, I now found myself compelled to share it with Big Daddy.

“My grandmother once told a story about the concentration camp in which she was held prisoner,” I began. “She snuck into the children’s barracks one day, curious to see how they lived. What she discovered preyed upon her for the rest of her life. The walls inside were covered with hundreds and hundreds of butterflies. The children had carved them into the wooden planks using their fingernails, pebbles, and whatever else they could find. My grandmother stood there transfixed by the sight, when something even more amazing happened. She swore that all those butterflies suddenly came alive, filling the room with the sound of their beating wings,” I revealed.

“From then on, the butterflies haunted her dreams every night. She felt the children must have known they were going to die, and dealt with it by imagining they’d leave their bodies and become beautiful butterflies. My grandmother was never able to look at butterflies the same way again after that.”

Tears sprang up in Big Daddy’s eyes and he nodded, as if understanding all too well what the children had meant.

“We’re keepers of the images that define us, whether they be tattooed on our bodies, seared on our souls, or burned into our minds. I wear them on my skin. You wear yours in
side. But butterflies have many different meanings. Come. I want to show you something.”

Big Daddy walked across the floor, opened an antique desk drawer and pulled out a handful of Polaroids. I headed over to join him, only to pass an open door along the way. I nonchalantly glanced inside and immediately came to a dead stop, unable to believe my eyes.

Hanging on the walls were charcoal portraits of teenage girls exactly like those I’d seen in Mendocino, right down to their haunted expressions. However, one in particular stood out from the rest, prompting me to step inside for a closer inspection. There was no question but that the drawing bore an uncanny resemblance to Lily. All except for one thing. The girl in this portrait had no scars on her neck.

Every nerve in my body quivered as Big Daddy entered the room and came to stand close beside me.

“Who’s that?” I asked, never removing my eyes from the drawing.

“A girl by the name of Buffy Xander. Why do you ask?”

Buffy
. Of course. The TV character that Lily so idolized.

“Her real name is Lily Holt.”

Simmons folded his arms across his chest so that the tattoos merged together on his body. “Ahh, yes. The runaway that you’ve been trying to find. I remember now.”

Right
, I caustically thought.
As if he’d ever forgotten.

“In that case, it seems you were correct. Buffy, or Lily as you call her,
is
a runaway,” Big Daddy matter-of-factly informed me.

“Is she staying here with you?” I curtly asked, not in the mood for games.

A case of the willies began to set in as the portrait stared back at me with knowing eyes.

“She was,” Simmons acknowledged.

“What do you mean, ‘was’? Where is she now?” I impatiently questioned.

“She’s gone.” Simmons walked up to the drawing and caressed the girl’s face with his hands. “It’s strange. She must have caught wind that you were looking for her, because she left only yesterday.”

The son of a bitch. Big Daddy had probably been the one to tip her off. I studied the man, watching to see if he nervously shifted his weight, or if his eyes darted back and forth—any little physical movement to reveal that he was lying.

“Evidently, Lily has an uncanny sense of timing,” I dryly commented. “Who are these other girls?” I motioned to the remaining portraits.

“They’re some of the teenage runaways that I’ve tried to help over the years.”

My hands grew clammy, wondering if the man standing next to me might possibly be a psychopath. I thought again of Charles Manson and his propensity for malleable young girls. Then I glanced back at the portraits and realized there wasn’t a teenage boy among the lot.

“Are any runaways staying with you now?” I casually inquired, careful to keep my tone neutral.

“Not at the moment. They leave when they’re ready to move on. Hopefully some return to their families and try to make a go of it. God knows, I do what I can to make them realize that it’s the right thing to do.”

I’d pretty much had it with Big Daddy’s righteous line of bullshit.

“If you really believe that, why not just contact the police immediately rather than play guru to a bunch of confused and lonely kids?” I verbally attacked.

“As you pointed out, I don’t even know their real names,” Simmons fired back. “Besides, I might be resigning them to
hellish situations from which they’d only run away again, and what good would that do? At least by offering them sanctuary, I help to keep a few kids off the street, or possibly even worse.”

Sanctuary
. The word set off a firestorm in my brain. “Then it’s true. You own the old Baker place, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Simmons warily answered.

“Did you also do these drawings of the girls?” I asked, no longer able to fend off a growing feeling of dread.

“No. They were done by a friend of mine. I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of talent,” Big Daddy wistfully responded.

I stared again at Lily’s portrait, and this time discerned a lascivious smile about her lips that no fifteen-year-old girl should have had. But there was something else about the picture that bothered me even more.

“Why are there no scars on this drawing?” I questioned.

“Aah, you noticed,” Big Daddy replied with a smile. “That’s the artist’s vision. It’s a statement of sorts. He likes to idealize all the girls, and show how they’d look without any physical deformities.”

All the girls?
Jeepers creepers grew eight legs and came alive, crawling up my backbone and embedding itself deep inside my body. I glanced down, caught sight of the photos in Simmons’s hands, and grabbed the pile.

Each snapshot was that of a teenage girl posing coyly for the camera. One flaunted spiky green hair and wore a wooden cross around her neck. Another brandished ladybug earrings and a little pink camisole top. Still a third girl had a bunch of cheap bangle bracelets dangling on her arm. She stood next to a young Madonna look-alike who boasted a ring on each finger and one in her nose.

I was barely able to contain myself by the time I’d finished flipping through the more than two dozen snapshots. The fact that Big Daddy had reminded me of Charles Man
son now began to seem like child’s play. My eyes remained glued to the photos, trying to bend my mind around what it was that I saw. The similarities contained in each image were definitely unnerving. All of the girls had two distinct characteristics in common: a Lotis blue butterfly tattoo and a physical scar.

“Just what in the hell is going on here?” I demanded, my hands shaking in a lethal combination of confusion, anger, and fear.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Big Daddy coldly responded.

“I thought you were out of the butterfly trade,” I countered, still unable to put exactly what I was feeling into words.

“I am,” Simmons fumed, as if insulted that I would doubt him.

“Then tell me why all these girls have been branded with a Lotis blue butterfly,” I retorted, frustrated that so many unexplained coincidences were piling up.

Big Daddy arched a surprised eyebrow. “Well, well. It seems you know your butterflies.”

“What I want are answers,” I furiously replied.

Simmons gave me one of his understanding nods, and I was sorely tempted to smack the man.

“Being that you know about the Lotis blue, you must also be aware of its history. Fascinating, isn’t it?”