13 1/2 Read online

  13 1/2

  Nevada Barr

  In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the 'Butcher Boy' incident, as coverage of a family brutally murdered by one of their own swept across newspapers and television screens nationwide.

  Now, in present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life. No stranger to tragedy, Polly was a runaway at the age of fifteen, escaping a nightmarish Mississippi childhood.

  Lonely, that is, until she encounters architect Marshall Marchand. Polly is immediately smitten. She finds him attractive, charming, and intelligent. Marshall, a lifelong bachelor, spends most of his time with his brother Danny. When Polly's two young daughters from her previous marriage are likewise taken with Marshall, she marries him. However, as Polly begins to settle into her new life, she becomes uneasy about her husband's increasing dark moods, fearing that Danny may be influencing Marshall in ways she cannot understand.

  But what of the ominous prediction by a New Orleans tarot card reader, who proclaims that Polly will murder her husband? What, if any, is the Marchands' connection to the infamous 'Butcher Boy' multiple homicide? And could Marshall and his eccentric brother be keeping a dark secret from Polly, one that will shatter the happiness she has forever prayed for?

  Nevada Barr

  13 1/2

  © 2009

  For Barbara Peters, who moves mountains without breaking a sweat.

  PROLOGUE

  “By the Month or by the Night” read the sign over the entrance to the trailer park.

  Wind, cold for April, chased dirt and beer cans up the gravel street. Clutching her geometry book to her chest, Polly stood on the wooden step outside the door of her mother’s trailer, her ear pressed against the aluminum. The icy bite of metal against her skin brought on a memory so sharp all she felt was its teeth. She’d been almost nine years old.

  A nightmare was what she thought. Nightmares had ripped apart her dreams since she could remember. Something heavy pressed on her back, pinning her to the mattress, mashing her face into the pillow so she couldn’t breathe. The smell of whisky and cigarettes came into the dream, and Polly knew it was real life. In her dreams, she never smelled things.

  It was Bernie. He’d been looking at her all hot-eyed and smarmy until Hilda got pissed and made her go to bed early. Though Polly’s ninth birthday wasn’t for a couple weeks, she already knew what it meant when men’s eyes went gooey and nasty.

  Hot as an iron, his hand pushed down on the middle of her back, burning through her thin pajama top. Like a bug pinned to a board, she thrashed, arms and legs scrabbling against the tangle of sheets.

  Easy as shucking an ear of corn, Bernie stripped off her pajama bottoms.

  Hilda had told her what would happen if Bernie ever came into her room at night. She’d cut his balls off and make Polly eat them.

  With a wrench that made her neck hurt, Polly got her face free of the pillow and screamed.

  His hand left her back, grabbed her hair and pulled her head up. His other huge stinking paw slapped over her nose and mouth.

  “Shut up. Your mom’s so fuckin’ drunk, she ain’t gonna hear. You stay quiet and we’ll have a fine old time. Fun. We’ll have us some fun. Bernie knows how to make a little girl sing like a bird. Tweet, tweet. Now, you gonna stay quiet?”

  Polly managed a fraction of a nod between the slabs of flesh imprisoning her head.

  “Tweet, tweet,” he said again. Bernie was such an incredible asshole.

  He took his hand away, and Polly screamed with every bit of air left in her lungs. She twisted and bucked. Hair was yanked out, but the pain made her stronger, and she clawed at any part of Bernie she could find.

  Her room was never real dark, not like in-the-woods-at-night dark. The trailer park had big security lights everywhere, and the light leaked in around the curtains-when she’d had curtains. Since the sun had rotted them off, the room’s single high window was her own private moon, always full and stupidly square.

  Bernie was naked and his thing was poking up like a big old dead stick sticking out of a swamp. It made her scream even louder.

  “God damn it!” Bernie hissed and grabbed her face to cover her mouth again. She was yelling and a thick finger went into her mouth. Polly bit down and bit and bit and bit and now Bernie was screaming. He shook her and she felt herself lifted clean off the bed, but she didn’t stop biting. Then he threw her so hard her teeth came free; blood and a chunk of flesh came away. The stuff went down her throat. She was a cannibal now.

  “I eat people!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you and eat you. Momma will cut off your balls, and I’ll put them on my Lucky Charms and eat them for breakfast.”

  The light came on. Hilda was standing in the doorway, still wearing what she’d had on when Polly had gone to bed, but all wrinkled, like she’d been sleeping in her clothes.

  “Momma,” Polly whispered. Hilda never let her boyfriends mess with Polly.

  “Bastard!” Hilda yelled. “You fucking bastard!”

  “Momma,” Polly cried. Scrambling to her feet, she launched herself at her mother and wrapped her skinny arms around Hilda’s waist.

  “Cunt,” her mother shrieked. “You fucking little cunt.” She slapped Polly so hard she saw red things in her eyes.

  That was the night Polly realized that what she had taken for caring in Hilda wasn’t so much looking after her daughter as having jealous rages.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Polly hit her forehead against the cold aluminum of the trailer door driving the memory out. She was fifteen, not nine-there had to be a statute of limitations on bad memories.

  “Nobody’s fucking home. Beat it!” was shouted from inside.

  Sighing, she turned her back on the racket, put her geometry book on the peeling paint of the step so she wouldn’t get her good school skirt dirty, and sat, shoulders against the scarred and dented door. Through the thin aluminum, she listened to the tide of battle ebbing and flowing.

  In European history, they had been reading about the Hundred Years’ War. England and France had nothing on Polly’s mother and stepfathers; they’d been going at it as long as she could remember. The only thing that changed was the stepfathers’ names. Used to be, they had married her mother, but the last two or three hadn’t bothered.

  Why Hilda kept dragging men home was a mystery. It wasn’t like they brought money or glamour. Stinky shoes, hairy backs, and hard fists were more like it. Polly was determined never to get married. “No men,” she yelled as somebody crashed against the door.

  Except to have kids, she amended silently. More than anything, she wanted kids to protect, love, and teach; to keep safe and happy.

  Another spate of profanity scattered her thoughts. It was getting cold. And now she had to go to the bathroom.

  A couple times when it looked like somebody was going to kill somebody, she’d called the cops, but they just hauled Hilda or the boyfriend in, and when they came back it was worse than before. “Get over it!” she yelled in the general direction of her left shoulder. “Kill each other or make up. I got to pee! God!” She slumped back against the trailer.

  This was the third time this week she’d come home to World War III. When the weather was nice it was easier to deal with. She could go sit in the woods if it wasn’t too buggy, or walk down to Prentiss’s tiny all-purpose corner store and get a milkshake if she had the money or kill time leafing through the magazines on the rack if she didn’t. Mrs. Chandler didn’t mind, as long as there were no other kids around.

  Mrs. Chandler knew why Polly couldn’t go home, but she was too nice to let on. Polly appreciated that. That changed her letting Polly hang around the store from charity to friendship.

  �
�The Farmers don’t take charity,” her mother would say when she was sober enough to be embarrassed that someone else wanted to do for her daughter what she could not.

  That was a lot of malarkey.

  They’d been on welfare off and on since the third-or maybe the fourth-stepfather had gone north to Chicago, where he was going to make a killing in the oil fields and then send for them.

  Truckloads of malarkey.

  Polly’s mom had waited by the phone until Polly told her there weren’t any oil fields in Chicago.

  A fist or a foot or a head slammed into the door. Polly pounded back angrily with the flat of her hand.

  “Would you pass out so I can go to the bathroom!” she yelled.

  Ma Danko, the old colored woman who lived two trailers down, looked up from the laundry basket she cradled in her stick-thin arms.

  “Why don’t you come on home with me and have some cookies?” Ma said.

  “I better not, but thanks,” Polly replied. “You know how it is.”

  “I do. But you come on anyway if it starts raining.”

  “I will.”

  But she wouldn’t. Of all charity, Polly’s mom hated charity from Negroes the worst. “You just remember you’re white,” her mother would say. “Niggers got no business feeling sorry for a white girl.”

  A scudding wind picked up leaves and litter and threw them at Polly in cold mockery. “It’s getting downright chilly,” Ma said. “It’s gonna be a bitter rain. Cookies is still warm from the oven.”

  “It won’t be long now,” Polly assured her. The banging inside the trailer was growing sluggish. Nodding, Ma Danko walked on.

  Polly pulled up the backside of her full skirt and pinched it around her shoulders to keep warm. Ten minutes passed, fifteen. Finally the noise stopped. She stood and smoothed her skirt back into place. Turning the knob slowly so it wouldn’t make noise, she opened the door a couple of inches and peeked in.

  Her mom was on the couch crying. Tom, the most recent stepfather, wasn’t anywhere in the kitchen-cum-living-room. American Bandstand was on the TV. Girls in fringed dresses were twisting in spotlights.

  Polly slipped in and closed the door. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes. A Miller’s can lay on its side weeping beer onto the linoleum, but the lamps were still upright and none of the dishes looked broken.

  All’s well that ends well, Polly thought. It was the title of a play they were reading in sophomore English. She set the geometry book on the kitchen counter and went to the couch to see if her mother was bleeding.

  “What’re you lookin’ at,” Hilda Farmer snapped.

  “Nothing,” Polly said. No blood, no swelling: Tom hadn’t hit her. Tom wasn’t so bad. He yelled a lot but he kept his hands to himself and never hit unless Hilda stayed in his face too long. Two of Hilda’s front teeth were missing, but that wasn’t Tom’s fault. It was nobody’s fault. They’d just rotted and the dentist had to pull them. The bridge with the false teeth was on the counter near the toaster. When Hilda started into fighting mode, she always took them out so they wouldn’t get broken.

  “What’re you doin’ home?” Hilda demanded, slurring her words.

  Drunker than a skunk. Hilda didn’t slur until she’d gone through at least a couple of six-packs.

  “School’s out. It’s nearly four.”

  “Big deal high school girl,” Hilda sneered. “You think you’re so damned smart.”

  Polly’s mother never made it to high school. At thirteen, she’d gotten knocked up. When she was on a toot, she’d tell this to whoever would listen, as if Polly had intentionally interfered with the higher education of Miss Hilda Farmer by intruding in a womb that did not want her.

  “So damn smart.”

  “That’s right, Momma,” Polly said.

  “None of your lip.”

  Hilda forgot she was crying. Reaching out blindly, she felt around until her hand closed on a beer can on the end table.

  Drinking deeply, she stared at the television. “They think that’s dancing,” she said sullenly. “Wiggling their behinds and shaking their topsides. When I was young we danced.”

  When I was young.

  Hilda was twenty-eight. When she was Polly’s age she’d had a two-year-old daughter.

  “Miss High and Mighty Sophomore, just you wait,” Hilda said, never taking her eyes from the television. “One day it’ll be you sitting here, and some snot-nosed kid looking down on you, and there ain’t one thing you can do about it, not one damn thing. No high school dip-low-maaah is going to get you there.” She pointed at the black-and-white figures frugging on the screen. TV-land was akin to heaven in Hilda’s mind.

  “Dancing!” she snarled. “What a load of crap.”

  Polly left her to her beer and bellyaching and went to her room. It was so small, if she lay crosswise on the bed, she could put the soles of her feet on one wall and the palms of her hands on the other.

  She hung her school clothes carefully in the closet, then pulled on her dungarees and an old sweater left behind by the truck driver her mom had taken up with before Tom. Sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, she stared at the wall between her room and the master bedroom. The wood was so thin she could hear Tom snoring. If she squinted she could imagine the wall sucking and puffing out.

  “One day it’ll be you… ”

  The wall sucked in.

  “… a snot-nosed kid looking down… ”

  The wall puffed out.

  Polly rose, slid open the pocket door, and stepped into the narrow hallway. The door to the master bedroom was open. Flat on his back, spread-eagle on the mess of sheets and blankets, Tom snored, his whole throat collapsing between breaths. His pants were unbuttoned; he’d gotten them half off before he’d passed out.

  Polly looked over her shoulder. Hilda was still absorbed in abusing Dick Clark. She tiptoed into the bedroom, though, given Tom’s condition, she could probably have roared in on a Harley and he wouldn’t have stirred.

  Slipping her hand under his half-exposed buttock, she massaged gently until his wallet poked out of the pocket, then lifted it with the dexterity of long practice.

  “Baby,” Tom muttered, and a fist hit her smack in the eye. Blinded and shocked, Polly fell back. He hadn’t struck out at her. He’d been reaching for Hilda in some drunken place they were together. The eye watered copiously. She’d get a shiner out of this for sure. After all the times she’d made up stupid stories at school to explain away bruises, this time the story was so stupid it was true. With the back of her hand, she smeared the tears away and opened his wallet. Twelve bucks. She took all but one. She also took the condom he carried.

  Maybe he’d think he spent the eleven dollars on a whore.

  Nobody’d bother to use a condom with Hilda. She’d had female troubles. No more kids.

  Dropping the wallet on the floor where it might have fallen by accident, Polly stuffed the cash into the pocket of her jeans.

  Hilda was still instructing the dance contestants. Her purse was on the counter next to her teeth. Polly felt through Hilda’s ratty faux-leather clutch until her fingers closed on the car keys.

  “I’m walking down to the little store. Want anything?”

  “Shaking their heinies like niggers,” Hilda said. The rain had started. Polly ran for the car. She wasn’t old enough to have a license but she knew how to drive. It was an important skill to a mother who needed somebody to run to the liquor store when she was “too tired” to go herself. As long as Polly said the beer was for Hilda, Mr. Cranbee had no trouble letting her buy it.

  When she’d taken the keys she’d only meant to drive around, air herself off without getting as wet as a drowned rat, listen to the radio-rock and roll out of Jackson if she could get a signal, gospel if she couldn’t. There was a gospel station in Natchez that always came in clear. If there was enough gas in the tank she might drive toward Jackson. There was an Arctic Circle in Crystal Springs and, with Tom’s money, she could get a burger
or something for dinner.

  At the junction with Highway 61 she didn’t do either; she just stopped in the middle of the road and turned the ignition off. The windshield wipers froze halfway through their arc. Rain poured down. It was as if the dusk were melting into night. Polly turned off the car’s lights. Maybe a semi would smash into her sitting there in the dark.

  To her right was the sign for New Orleans: 168 miles. She’d never been to New Orleans. Neither had Hilda. For the good people of Prentiss, New Orleans was the New World’s answer to both Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Across the highway was a sign reading “ Jackson 73 miles.” This time of day, in the rain, there wasn’t any traffic. Any time of the day, in any weather, there wasn’t much. The old Fairlane creaking as the engine cooled, Polly sat, unable to go forward or turn back. There wasn’t any place in Mississippi a girl like her could go where a trailer didn’t wait.

  … and there’s not one thing you can do about it. Not one damn thing.

  In the pouring dark of the rain Polly could see the path of her life clearly: a long tunnel growing narrower and narrower until, in the last tiny circle of light, there was a trailer park and, in a line of a dozen or more at the front gate, a mailbox with her name on it. That was death-death after murder is committed and final absolution not obtained. Hell.

  Macbeth, another play they’d read in English, came to mind. Everybody hated it. Everybody but the teacher and Polly. If ’twere done, best ’twere done quickly.

  She turned the ignition key and headed for New Orleans in a stolen car. At La Place, she ran out of gas. Polly didn’t want to spend her precious eleven dollars. She put the ignition keys in the glove box and got out of the car. Maybe the cops would find it and take it back to Hilda. Polly liked that idea. If she didn’t have the Fairlane Hilda wouldn’t try to find her.

  She walked to the side of the road and stuck out her thumb.

  The man who picked her up was going to Bourbon Street. “Bourbon ain’t no place for a kid,” was about all he said in the two hours they rode together. The rain had stopped but, with the darkness and the trees, there wasn’t anything to look at but the furrow cut by the pickup’s headlights. Polly stared at it and felt as if she were falling down a long tunnel, and she wondered if there were worse places to end up than a trailer park in Mississippi.