“He was skeptical, but he admitted there was no way to remove brains in that way. She killed him when she realized too many people might find out about her. I’m the only one left. That’s why I came to tell you.”
Reddy took a deep breath and shook his head. “If true, then it’s such a shitty little talent. You sure she can’t do more? Something so obvious we could all see it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she’s trying to find out exactly how much she can do.”
“Now you’ve got me talking like you. It just can’t be true, Benek.”
“Look, she’s not expecting a lot of police to show up. I think she went to that old building hoping I would follow, so she could kill me. She’s expecting that I won’t be able to convince anyone—in the way we’re talking right now.”
“Really?” He was silent for a few moments. “Hell, this just doesn’t make sense of any kind. You’re telling me that if I’m not convinced, then that’s proof?”
“I don’t want you convinced by seeing someone struck down brainless in front of you.”
“What would I see? A body falling over?”
“That, and a brain popping out near the body.”
“It lands nearby?” Reddy said, smiling.
“Yes. Maybe farther with a small animal, like a cat or a rat.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“She cored a rat when I was in the basement. And when I first went out to check the wino by the river, scraps of his brain were stuck to the railing, but we didn’t understand what we were seeing. Same thing at the church. Would Gibney’s empty skull convince you, Captain?”
“I’m getting a copy of his death report, but I don’t think there was any more reason to do an autopsy on him than there was for the priest.”
“There was no autopsy on the priest?” Benek asked.
“No, the parish didn’t want one.”
“And what about Gibney’s opinion?”
“He never filed his report.”
Benek realized that Gibney had thought he was doing him a favor.
“Captain, everything depends on there being a complete autopsy on the priest and Gibney, and comparing them to the wino’s.”
“There’s no reason to.”
“There would be if you did them! What about the restaurant? You’ve had a report by now.”
“No, and they don’t want to talk to us. Bad for business. Said they handled the disturbance.”
“How about the hospitals? What about the bodies carted out of that restaurant?”
“We haven’t heard anything yet.”
“But the brains on the floor and table,” Benek said anxiously. “People died.”
“So you say. Could be the food went bad. We’ve yet to hear.”
The restaurant had cleaned up the mess, Benek realized, fearing for their business. Dierdre had been right. Doing it in the open still wouldn’t prove what was happening; you had to know what you were seeing, and then you wouldn’t need convincing. Maybe you would, even then.
“The story in the paper,” Benek said, “about the brain found in the street. Gibney told me about that.”
“I’m hearing it from you for the first time.”
“Then go check!”
“There has to be more to go on,” Reddy answered as if to a stubborn child. “It would be hard to convince the parish, for example, to let us have the priest’s body and I don’t know Gibney’s family. You weren’t around to ask for autopsies. Look, why don’t we both go and talk to this woman right now? Maybe that’ll straighten things out. I can agree to that much.”
Benek shuddered. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t much care for the South Bronx myself,” Reddy said, “but I was thinking of going to her place here. Maybe she’s back there by now. Maybe she never went to the South Bronx at all. Maybe some part of you just doesn’t want to find out anything that would destroy your delusion. I might go over to her apartment and find out that you’re the one who’s been bothering her, that you’re the one we should restrain.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw her dungeon,” Benek said.
“Tell me again what she does—exactly,” Reddy said.
“I really don’t know,” Benek answered. “No one can know right now. It can’t be supernatural, of course.”
“Why not?” Reddy asked. “You’ve asked me to believe as much.”
“All I can do is give you an accurate description.” Benek took a deep breath. “She moves brains suddenly from one place to another, in a kind of wild jump. Either they simply disappear from one place and appear in another, or they simply... flow out from the skull.”
“You mean they get ghostly?” Reddy asked.
“I think it’s more a discontinuous jump.”
“Excuse me,” Reddy said, “but you must realize that’s against all reason.”
“I know, I know,” Benek said. “That’s why she’s so safe. No one can believe it unless they see it, and perhaps not even then. They must know in advance what they’re looking at. It has to be a physical principle of some kind at work, nothing supernatural.”
“Of course,” Reddy said.
“A lot of what once passed for supernatural,” Benek said, “were only real phenomena, poorly observed, and understood much later.”
“You’re seriously deluded, Benek,” Reddy said.
“She does it.”
“You say she does it.”
“I’ve seen it, and I’m a competent witness, Captain. I’m fully aware of how impossible it seems, but she does it.”
“You really believe this?”
“I don’t have to believe it. I’ve seen her do it.”
“But you’re asking me to believe you.”
Benek took another deep breath. “If you don’t help me prove it to you, you’ll find out for yourself, if you’re lucky and get to see someone else cored, or in the instant before it happens to you. I’m trying to save lives, Captain, maybe even yours and mine.”
Reddy stared at him blankly.
Benek said, “I don’t really blame you. I see what’s coming and I can’t stop it.” He wanted to weep, to relieve the tension that had stiffened his neck and back muscles. He put his hands up to his face, but there were no tears. He shook a little.
“Take it easy,” Reddy said as he stood up. “Let’s go over to her place. I can do that much for you.”
One of Dierdre’s tenants, a young business type, ran into them on the stairs outside the brownstone. After finding out that Benek and Reddy were cops, the man told them that he had been trying to get hold of the landlady about a leaky faucet and had left several messages on her machine besides knocking on her door at least three times without an answer. This wasn’t like her, so what the hell was going on with her anyway? Reddy said he would try to find out.
Benek led the captain inside. The door to Dierdre’s apartment was closed. Reddy knocked, then tried the doorknob; the door opened. An unlocked door, a woman not responding to phone calls, a worried tenant—they had probable cause to enter and search, Reddy said.
They entered with their guns in their hands, then holstered them when they were inside. Benek quickly led Reddy downstairs to the basement, and described how the rat’s brain had struck the now broken bed, then pointed to the filled-in hole in the wall. The captain nodded solemnly but took a deep breath when Benek showed him the half-dug grave in the back room.
As they went upstairs, Reddy said, “It’s certain you and she didn’t get along well, did you? You must really hate her... to think the things you’ve told me.”
“I didn’t know her very long. There wasn’t time for hatred. I told you what she wanted from me. Now she’s simply afraid of being discovered. When I’m gone, no one will know, and you’ll be next if you start to believe me then.”
Reddy did not laugh, and did not answer.
Frustrated, Benek went back up into the apartment and stumbled against a bowling ball bag in the hall. He kicked the bag aside, went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He saw himself through Reddy’s eyes, and it seemed impossible suddenly that Dierdre was the monstrosity that he had encountered, and that he would not be able to stop her. More people would die because he had not been able to shoot her. He did not blame Reddy. It had been a mistake to attempt convincing him. Better to have gone out and killed Dierdre himself. Maybe there was still a chance that he could do it.
Benek became aware of Reddy standing in the hallway, watching him, as if listening to his thoughts.
“What is it?” Benek asked.
“Something smells in here,” Reddy said, pointing to the bag at his feet. He knelt down and opened the bag. “Like some kind of cleanser.”
Benek came over and bent down for a look. The bag was empty, but he knew suddenly what it had contained. “I want this checked for human blood and tissue.”
“Why?” Reddy demanded, standing up.
“I think she used this bag to carry away Gibney’s brains, then cleaned it out.”
“Think so?” Reddy asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “You never stop, do you? You’re witch hunting. That went out in the middle ages. How complete is this delusion of yours anyway?”
“So complete that it’s real,” Benek said.
Reddy frowned, then kicked the bag away. “There’s nothing here, and maybe we shouldn’t be inside. Go home, Benek,” he said in a low voice. “Rest up.” He gave Benek an agonized look and added, “That’s the best I can do for you right now.”
“But the grave in the basement,” Benek said.
Reddy smiled at him. “Go and rest up for a day or two, Bill.”
And for a moment Reddy’s show of concern moved him to consider that it all was a delusion, a nightmare from which he had just awakened, and he felt like the boy coming out of confession with all his sins absolved by the priest, uncaring of the penance in prayers he would still have to say or the good deeds that were necessary, the priest had reminded him, to amend his life. They never checked up; it was a given that new sins were always incoming, but lack of amends should have been the first sin in the next confessional.
18
She came upstairs to the front door the next morning and peered out through the dirty glass. The sun was a cool white glow in the overcast sky. Pools of dirty water shook like gelatinous mirrors amid the debris of the razed block. The lot around the house was deserted, but beyond the chain link fence, on the far side of the street, she saw a parked car. It pulled away after a moment, its muffler coughing blue smoke. She tensed as the engine backfired with a flash and the car swung around the corner.
She pushed the door open and stepped outside for some air, feeling bloated and achy, both sure signs that her period was imminent. Benek had failed her. She would have no child, not yet; they had not spent enough time together.
She took a deeper breath and it brought back her nightmare. Benek was telling her that she shouldn’t want a child, by him or anyone else, that mothers and sons all had problems, daughters and mothers even worse sometimes. She had only to remember. “And if they have your skill,” he had said, “they’ll come against you. There may be others like you,” he had reminded her, “and they won’t be your children. They’ll come against you, and you won’t be able to stop them all. That war will end with a mystery of dead brains.”
She tensed as the dream warned her again, but she told herself that her kind would cooperate and rule the world. She had told Benek that in her sleep. “Fat chance,” he had said. “Look at the rest of us around you. There’s always a war and always will be.”
In that case, the best of all possible worlds will have only one of her kind, her waking self insisted, where no one would ever know, where no one must ever know. Her life would be her own.
She felt the menstrual flow threatening within her, and was glad not to be pregnant. She would be unique, born of a blindly generous quirk that had let her into the world to do as she pleased.