The Burning Man Read online

  A stand of normal, green trees would be whizzing by outside the van and then suddenly a single tree would appear, ablaze with crimson and orange foliage that seemed too gaudy to be natural.

  “This is Westley,” Mrs. Gilbert said as they got off the highway and drove though a quaint storybook village. “The town closest to the school. There’s a shuttle to take you into town on weekends, but you have to bring a chaperone. One adult for every five students. At least, until you’re a senior. Then you can have a car and go wherever you like, as long as you have a driver’s license, and as long as you’re back by curfew.”

  “Does a car come with my scholarship, too?” Olivia asked, deadpan, but smiling inside. “A Corvette, maybe?”

  Mrs. Gilbert laughed, hearty and genuine.

  “You wish!” she said.

  The Deerborn Academy had its own private driveway that seemed a hundred miles long. Then, finally, the trees parted and the school was revealed.

  It looked the way Olivia pictured an Ivy League college might look. Venerable brick and stone buildings from the turn of the century. Well-kept lawns and winding, leaf-strewn walkways. There was a rippling, steel-blue lake visible between two buildings on the right, and down a hill to the left was a cluster of more modern structures along with an athletic field. It seemed like the kind of place where privileged, old-money kids played polo and dabbled in art for a few years before heading off to cushy jobs at daddy’s brokerage firm or mother’s fashion magazine.

  In other words, it wasn’t the kind of place a girl from the wrong side of Jacksonville ever imagined she would end up. Never in a million years.

  Yet, there she was.

  The van pulled up to a building and stopped. She got out and went to help Rachel with her bags.

  5

  December 1995

  Tony sat for the last time in Doctor Chalmers’ office. Director Bloom was there too, along with a stern, shapeless woman in her sixties who Tony didn’t recognize. She had a steely bob and a mouth shaped like a staple.

  The room was stuffy and cramped and felt overcrowded with the four of them sitting way too close together. Tony was wracked with anxiety, but couldn’t let it show. He was nearly free.

  “Tell me, Tony,” Doctor Chalmers said. “How do you feel about transitioning back into a more independent life?”

  Doctor Chalmers really wasn’t a bad guy—he was just trying to do his job. He was blond and earnest and looked way younger than the fifty years he said he was. He was a vegetarian and into fitness in that annoying, almost religious kind of way that made Tony feel like a fat slob, even though he was in pretty good shape for a guy with one arm. It was just that his psych meds made him retain water and kept him from getting real lean.

  He couldn’t wait to get off them.

  Wouldn’t be much longer now.

  “Well,” he said. He had a whole speech prepared in advance, and had been practicing it in his head for weeks. “I’m excited and a little bit nervous, too, naturally. It’s a big change, but I feel as though I’ve gained the cognitive tools I need to manage my symptoms and start really living life again.”

  “And what about Olivia Dunham?” Doctor Chalmers asked. “Are you finally willing to let go of your obsession with her, and accept that the loss of your arm was nothing but an unfortunate accident?”

  This was it. His big Oscar-winning moment. He couldn’t afford to screw it up.

  “It’s been a challenge,” he said, allowing a little emotional quiver into his voice. It wasn’t hard to fake. He always got emotional when he thought of the girl. “It seemed so real to me at the time. But I know now that I was suffering from delusions caused by my substance abuse and the underlying chemical imbalance in my brain. I realize that those obsessive thoughts may never go away completely, but I no longer feel any compulsion to act on those thoughts. I feel like I’m well on my way to becoming a whole person again.”

  There. That should do it.

  Doctor Chalmers didn’t reply, he just scribbled some notes on his little pad. The director was frowning, unmoving as a stone idol. The woman was checking over several papers in an extremely thick file. Tony could feel his heart trying to climb up his throat and make a run for it. This had to work. If his release was denied again, he really would go crazy.

  “You’ve taught me so much, Doctor Chalmers,” Tony added, breaking the silence. It wasn’t a lie, either. The doc had taught him a lot, specifically what to say to make his doctors happy. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all your help.”

  Doctor Chalmers looked up at him and then back down at his pad, and Tony wondered if he’d pushed it too hard with that last bit. The doc wasn’t some crackhead hooker who’d never made it through the ninth grade. He was a smart, educated guy. Bullshitting a man like that took real finesse.

  “I’d like to go on record,” the woman said, “and state that I personally don’t feel this patient should be released. His overall demeanor while in a lucid, non-agitated state remains shallow, manipulative and insincere, consistent with his diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. While the active delusions, psychosis, and paranoia which inspired the initial offense may be effectively controlled with medication at this time, his underlying pathology does not bode well for successful integration into the community.

  “There is a very high probability that this patient will reoffend within three to six months of release,” she concluded.

  It took every ounce of effort Tony could muster not to let the sour-faced bitch have it. He hated being talked about like he wasn’t even in the room.

  “Duly noted,” Director Bloom said, with a tone that made it clear that he couldn’t have cared less.

  “In Tony’s defense,” Doctor Chalmers said. “He’s been doing extremely well since we last tweaked his meds, and I feel that he has a genuine desire to make positive changes in his life.”

  “Give it a rest, David,” Bloom said. “You can’t save every mutt in the pound.”

  “My own personal reservations notwithstanding,” the woman continued while Tony fumed silently, smile plastered across his frozen face. “According to our records, this patient maxed out his court-mandated sentence as of last Tuesday. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the financial resources or insurance to cover extended in-patient treatment.”

  The smile on Tony’s face thawed and spread. He won. He’d outlasted the bastards, and there was nothing they could do to keep him. He was free. He could have kissed the staple-mouthed woman, but didn’t want to push his luck.

  “So what,” Doctor Chalmers said. “We just dump him out on the street with no assistance or aftercare of any kind?”

  “All we can do at this point,” the staple-mouthed woman said, still shuffling her papers, “is provide two weeks worth of medication and a list of agencies where the patient can apply for follow-up services and other public assistance.”

  “Well, that’s that then,” Doctor Chalmers said, a deep flush creeping up from under his starched collar. “I’m sorry, Tony, but it looks like there’s nothing more I can do.”

  He stood and extended his hand.

  Tony looked down at the split-hook device at the end of his cheap prosthetic right arm, swiftly stuffing down the wave of toxic rage that welled up inside him. The urge to smash in all of their smug, judgmental faces was back with a vengeance, but he was so close to getting out of there. Nearly free.

  No, this was all part of the test. He had to stay calm. Act like it didn’t matter.

  He forced a smile and took Doctor Chalmers’ offered right hand with his left. Acknowledging his disability, but not making a big deal about it. Just a regular guy offering a normal, friendly goodbye.

  “Take my number,” Doctor Chalmers said, offering a business card. “You can still call me if you need someone to talk to, okay?”

  “Thanks, Doc,” he replied. “I will.”

  “Good luck out there, Tony.”

  Tony smiled. He didn’t need luck. He j
ust needed will.

  6

  Tony checked the address of Saint Fillan House, the transitional residence in Gainesville to which he’d been assigned.

  He’d almost tossed the address in the bus station trash barrel, along with the two weeks worth of meds he didn’t need. But he figured he could use a place to flop for a few days while he reconnoitered and organized and fomented a plan to enact the sacred duty that had been postponed by his unfortunate incarceration.

  The halfway house was in a rundown, primarily industrial neighborhood east of Main Street. It was one of the few actual houses left on a block populated mostly by cheap aluminum Quonset huts and weedy parking lots, cowering between the waste water reclamation station and a massive, thrumming power plant.

  The house’s exterior had been freshly painted a sad, drab grayish blue with thick white trim. There was a plastic Christmas wreath on the door and a chipped plaster nativity scene on the patchy lawn. A scrawny black man was sitting on a folding chair on the sagging porch, seeming lost inside an oversized Joe Camel T-shirt that fit him like a dress. He couldn’t have been older than thirty, but had no front teeth.

  “Hello!” he called out to Tony, rocking gently back and forth. “Hello, mmmm-hmm. Hello!”

  Tony cranked up his smile and nodded, telling himself this was only going to be for a night or two. Just until he was able to find Olivia Dunham.

  The door opened before he could knock and a heavyset strawberry blonde in her late forties greeted him. She looked like an aging biker mama with faded tattoos on her meaty arms and mannish hands. She had some of the biggest natural breasts Tony had ever seen, so big that they made her look like she was about to topple forward from the weight of them, but her hard gray eyes and no-nonsense Saint Fillan polo shirt let you know up front not to even bother looking.

  “Don’t need no doorbell with Shawn on duty,” she said. Her voice was deep, full of nails and gravel. “Ain’t that right, Shawn?”

  “That’s right, mmmm-hmm,” the scrawny guy said, still rocking. “That’s right.”

  “You must be Tony Orsini,” she said to Tony. “I’m Maggie.”

  She was about to extend a welcoming hand, but noticed his prosthetic at the last second and clenched her fist, keeping it at her side.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tony made himself say, keeping his expression pleasant.

  “Around here,” she said. “You’ll answer to God first and me second. Got a problem with that?”

  “No, ma’am,” Tony said.

  “Then come on in.”

  She stepped aside and motioned for him to enter.

  The interior of the house was overly lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, and smelled like moldy carpet and roach spray. The front door opened into a large common room with several mismatched couches and a small, snowy television.

  There were several men there. A motley mix of ethnicities and ages with varying degrees of hygiene and social skills. They included a very young looking blond kid with thick ladders of scar up both freckled arms. An obese, light-skinned black guy with a shaved head and a lazy eye. A gray-bearded little gnome of a man who might have been Hispanic, or maybe not.

  “Gentlemen,” Maggie said. “Say hi to our new resident, Tony.”

  Some of the men waved or greeted him verbally, but more than half did not. Tony didn’t care. He wasn’t planning to be there long enough to bother with making friends, but he knew it was in his best interest to appear friendly. And it was much easier to act friendly if he pictured shooting them one by one, execution style.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said instead of shooting them.

  “You’re in bunk number four,” Maggie told him. “Through here.”

  Tony followed her down a narrow, claustrophobic hallway and into one of two back bedrooms.

  “That’s you on the bottom,” she said, pointing to a cheap bunk bed on the right side of the cramped room. “There’s fresh sheets, a blanket, and a towel. Bathroom’s at the other end of the hall, across from the chapel.”

  “Thanks,” Tony said.

  “Just so you know,” she said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for drug and alcohol use in this house. Fail your piss test, and you’re out, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling hard enough to crack his teeth while picturing driving a fork into her eye.

  “Dinner’s at six,” she said. “Get settled in and cleaned up, and we’ll see you then.”

  7

  Tony lay in the narrow, lumpy bunk, going over his plans for the day, when he felt a sudden spike of resonant energy inside his brain. The neurons that Olivia had transformed with her unholy demon power were humming, singing to their mistress.

  He knew that, wherever she was, she must be experiencing a rush of intense emotion, and he could feel his own rage welling up in psychic harmony. He felt her ebb and flow inside him all the time, even though her dark energy had been blunted by the thick cotton candy spun inside his skull by all his medications.

  Despite this chemical interference, he had still been able to feel her emotions growing stronger and more complex than ever over the past three years. His precious little monster was a big girl now, and the flush of teenage hormones was clearly intensifying her power.

  Now that the mind-numbing cocktail was starting to cycle out of Tony’s system, Olivia’s emotional waves hit him even harder, like a narcotic rush. It was both euphoric and terrifying. She was becoming more and more dangerous with every passing day. Tony had to stop her before she blossomed into her full adult potential.

  Because once that happened, there would be no limits to her evil power.

  He got himself showered and dressed, humming to himself like a man in love. He showed up in the dining room for a lousy breakfast of instant coffee, burnt eggs, and cheap white bread, chewing with his mouth closed and being personable and polite toward Maggie and the other residents. It was essential for Tony to appear easygoing and low-maintenance. There were plenty of problem children at St Fillan’s to hog all the attention. Which was the way Tony liked it.

  He had more important things to do.

  * * *

  Tony’s first stop was the library at the University of Florida. He’d been able to talk Maggie into giving him a lift over to the nearby campus under the pretense of looking into some adult education programs. The library was a massive glass-fronted, red brick building that seemed like an uneasy marriage between the old and the new.

  The students who filled the building reflected that conflict. Many were still sporting the familiar bright colors and big hair that Tony remembered from before his incarceration, but then he’d spot someone with a ring in their nose like an Indian broad, or someone dressed like a homeless lumberjack. He’d see girls with big clunky Frankenstein boots and boys sporting what looked like ice-skates with wheels.

  He was still the same, but the outside world had gone on without him. It was time for him to play catch up.

  He went straight to the periodicals room, fully intending to concentrate on his search for Olivia, but he found himself distracted by all the intriguing new current events and pop culture. War in the Balkans. The Human Genome Project. The Spice Girls.

  No. He had to be disciplined and stay focused.

  Sifting methodically through a variety of public records, Tony soon found the address of an apartment where Olivia and her family had lived from the time of the fire up until September of 1995. He was surprised to find an obituary for Denise Dunham, but was unable to find any information at all about what had happened to the daughters after their mother’s death.

  He found the name of a case worker from the Department of Children and Families, who had initially been assigned to Olivia and Rachel Dunham, but no follow-up information whatsoever. No foster home, no orphanage, nothing. If worse came to worst, he could head down to Jacksonville and pay a personal visit to Mrs. Leona Byers, but he wasn’t willing to give up searching just yet.

  A tall,
slender girl with a long blond ponytail walked into the room pushing a cart full of magazines, and his heart clenched like a fist in his chest. It wasn’t Olivia— it couldn’t be her—but just for a moment, he’d felt irrationally sure it would be. Then when the girl turned toward him, she revealed a plain forgettable face with a large, narrow nose and thin lips that didn’t quite cover her long, horsey teeth. She left the cart beside the librarian’s desk and sat down, tapping away at a keyboard.

  She looked up and caught Tony staring at her. Instead of being angry, she got up and came over to the table where he had been poring over old records.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked.

  “An old dear friend of mine passed away from cancer back in September,” he said. “I was serving in the military, in Bosnia at the time, and lost my arm in combat.” He raised his prosthetic. She stared for a moment, then turned back to his face. He put the hook down and continued. “I only just found out about Denise’s death when I got released from the veterans hospital, two days ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” the young librarian said, purposefully not looking at his arm.

  “She didn’t have any family,” he said, allowing himself to tear up a little. “Other than her two beautiful little daughters. I can’t find any information about what happened to those girls, and it just breaks my heart to think of them in some crummy orphanage somewhere. I was hoping, well, maybe I could find them and see about adopting them myself. I know that’s what Denise would have wanted.”

  “That’s so good of you,” the librarian said, all dewy-eyed. “Especially after everything you’ve been through. Let me see if I can help you.”

  Tony had to force himself not to smile.

  “Here,” the librarian said. “Come with me.”