The Butterfly Sister (23 page)

“My pants?” Mark huffed. “Ruby, what is she talking about? Beth? Beth? What is she talking about?”

“He said he was sorry,” Beth pleaded.

Professor Barnard tightened her grip on the gun and kept her eyes on me. “Ruby, do it.”

I knelt before him, and a loose nail head in the floorboard dug into my kneecap.

“What are you doing?” Mark yelled. “You're not . . . oh, God, you're not going to . . .”

“Don't fight it, Mark. Or it will hurt even more,” the professor said.

I looked into Beth's panic-filled eyes and saw she was on the verge of tears. Will she be able to overtake Professor Barnard? I wondered. How far will I have to go? How far will I have to take it?

Though he wriggled in the chair, I held Mark's leg firmly and cut into his khakis, just above the knee. Then I pulled the small tear I created, splitting his pants all the way up until I saw his underwear under the shredded ends of fabric. When the outside air hit the tender skin of his inner thigh, Mark sucked in a breath.

“Ruby,” he screamed. “Don't!”

“Keep going,” the professor commanded. “Cut his underwear.”

Looking at Mark's crotch, at the fine hair lining the inside of his thighs, I felt like I was going to vomit. At one time, the sight of Mark undressed was alluring and intimate. Now, it was repulsive.

“Faster,” the professor charged.

Mark flinched when I brought the knife back to his crotch, and he writhed in the chair again, enough to jostle my arm and prick the inside of his thigh with the knife. I held my breath as I pulled the front of his underwear away from him with my thumb and index finger and worked the knife through it enough to make a hole. I ripped the rest like I did his pants. The flap of underwear lay over him like a loincloth. My hands began to sweat.

The professor took the knife from me then and replaced it with a long strand of kitchen twine, the kind I imagined she used to truss the legs of the chicken. My hands felt suddenly empty, and I regretted not acting when I had the knife. It was a weapon, the only weapon she would willingly give me, and I hadn't used it against her. I knew I had to do something before it was too late, but I couldn't seem to cross the line between thought and action. I assumed Beth felt the same.

“Now tie it,” the professor said.

My hands shook. “I can't.”

She pointed the gun at Beth. “Do it, or I'll shoot her.”

“You wouldn't do that.”

Professor Barnard fired the gun into the rafters. The sudden bang of the gun jolted me into tears. I covered my head as sawdust sprinkled us like snowfall.

“Tie it,” the professor ordered. “And it has to be tight to cut off the blood flow.”

“Oh, fuck,” Mark cried. “Fuck. Ruby, don't do it.”

The professor stuffed a cloth napkin into Mark's mouth to quiet him. “Do it,” she said.

I heard Mark's muffled cries as I lifted the twine and dragged it under the flap of underwear, but my hands shook uncontrollably, and I didn't have the dexterity to make a knot. I tried three times before I got the twine looped, but I didn't pull the ends.

“Pull it,” the professor ordered. “Tight! Tight!”

“I can't,” I cried again.

“Let me do it,” she hissed. She shoved me away to take my position, and I slammed into the wood floor, my cheek burned by the jagged wood. I heard Mark's stifled wail as the professor pulled the knot tight. But a second later, I heard a body thump to the floor, and the gun skid across the cabin. I turned to see Beth holding a fire poker. She'd obviously hit the professor with it.

“Ruby, grab the gun,” Beth yelled as the professor bolted from the floor.

As I ran to retrieve it, the professor lunged at Mark, and Beth tried to stop her again with the poker. The two wrestled, their movements jerky and erratic, and I saw Mark's chair tip over and land beside the fire. He was still bound to the chair, and his screams—sharp, screeching wails—told me the fire had begun singeing his skin.

I grabbed the gun and prepared to shoot but Professor Barnard was already on the floor—Beth had whacked her again with the poker—and I stood above her, ready to pull the trigger. Meanwhile, Beth pulled Mark's chair from the fire and began slapping at the flames on his face and hair and chest with the napkin that had been in his mouth.

“Mark,” Beth yelled, once she'd patted away all the flames. “Where are your keys?”

Professor Barnard let out a cackle then, even though she lay perfectly still on the floor. “Go ahead and look,” she said. “You won't find them.”

“Then we'll call 911,” I said. “Mark, do you have your cell phone?”

Mark motioned to his pants pocket, the lining still visible via the exposed crotch of his pants. Beth pulled the phone out and read the words on the screen.
NO SERVICE
.

“Don't you remember?” the professor said. “No cell towers for miles. You've all spent enough time at this cabin to know that.”

“Then let's start walking,” Beth said. “We'll tie her up until the police get here.”

“We can't expect Mark to walk to the main road in his condition,” I argued.

“But he can't stay here,” Beth countered. “He'll kill her.”

“Ruby can stay,” Mark muttered through his burnt lips.

“I'm not leaving Ruby here alone,” she barked. “The three of us go. That's final.”

“I'll tie her up,” I offered, giving Beth the gun. I wanted it out of my hands.

After I tied Professor Barnard's hands to the daybed, Beth and I untied Mark and pulled him up from the floor. It was hard to tell how much tissue damage had occurred, but he moved past us with a sudden burst of energy, as if to deny he'd even been hurt. Beth and I followed him a few steps before turning to look back at Professor Barnard. She should have looked vulnerable there in the dark, on the cold cabin floor. But she didn't.

She looked peaceful, as if everything were right with the world.

I
checked Mark's phone every couple of yards, so I could call the police as soon as I got service. It was a slow, dark walk to the main road. Fortunately, the display screen from Mark's phone allowed us a small amount of light, which I cast on the gravel road from time to time to ascertain whether we had drifted off course into the woods.

We walked in silence for what seemed like a long time until the road glowed in the dark, as if the moon had moved directly above us, lighting our path. We heard the stir of gravel next, and saw headlights appear in the distance. A moment later, we saw the flash of red and blue lights flicker above the car.

The police car stopped before us, and at first, I saw only black figures emerge, my eyes blinded by the lights. One of the cops—the thinner of the two—barked orders into the radio, and the other, a large ball of a man, approached us. Soon I made out his trench coat and mustache. It was Detective Pickens.

“Where's Barnard?” he asked.

I pointed behind me. “Back at the cabin. Tied to the bed.”

The other police officer talked into the radio again while Detective Pickens moved closer. “Is anyone injured?” he asked.

I gestured to Mark.

The detective's eyes shot in his direction and opened wide with alarm.

“Send
two
ambulances,” he shouted to his partner, before rushing to Beth's side. “Have you been shot?” he asked her.

Beth shook her head no, but soon, her eyes followed to where the detective's had been. And my gaze, in turn, followed to see the crotch and thighs of her pajama pants stained in a bright red blood.

Beth touched the red, as if she didn't believe it was there, then brought her shaky hands up to inspect the evidence on her fingers. She collapsed then, falling into the detective's arms.

“She's pregnant,” I blurted.

And that's when Mark dropped to his knees.

Chapter 19

U
pon arriving by ambulance at Kenosha General, Beth and Mark were whisked away to more intensive areas of the hospital, while I ended up in an ER room with only partitioned curtains. Under my mother's watchful eye—she'd announced she was a certified RN the moment she arrived—the nurses checked my blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and reflexes. In the end, I was treated for a mild case of dehydration and given an antibacterial cream for my scraped cheek.

Throughout the examination, Mom ran her palm over the top of my head, smoothing the curls on my forehead like she did when I was a kid. She asked, over and over again, if I was okay, never broaching the subject of Mark or my relationship with him, or how little I'd told her about what had happened at Tarble, the events that led me to be abducted by Professor Barnard. It was simply understood we would tackle these subjects when the time was right.

It was a quarter to midnight by the time Detective Pickens pushed open the curtain. His expression was stiff, but his eyes were soft. He brought my purse. They'd found it hidden in the cabin.

“How's Beth?” I asked.

“Stable.”

“And the baby?”

“There's a heartbeat, though considering the bleeding, it's a threatened miscarriage.” He paused. “Suter will undergo skin grafting soon. Most of his burns are second-degree, but some areas are third.”

“What about Barnard?” I asked. “Is she in custody?”

He grimaced. “Not yet. We found on the cabin floor the rope you used to tie her up. She must have taken off in Mark's car. We searched the cabin, though, and took evidence. A team is out looking for her. She'll turn up. The most important thing is that you and Beth are safe.”

“How did you find us?”

The detective took a seat then in the small chair by the bed, the one my mother had refused to sit in, preferring to stand by my side. “First of all,” he said, “I want to apologize for not responding to your concerns immediately.” His fat fingers danced in front of him, acting out his feelings, what was missing in the emotionless void of his brusque voice. “We wasted our time on Grenshaw when we should have been focusing on Barnard.”

“But how could you have known it was her? I certainly didn't, not until it was too late.”

“We could have, had I followed through.”

“What do you mean?”

He repositioned his large body in the small chair and threw a glance at my mom. “The book belonged to Barnard, not Beth.”

I stared back at him in confusion. “
A Room of One's Own
?”

“It wasn't Beth's handwriting,” he explained. “The name and phone number inside the front cover and those notes in the margin? About Cassie's Cabin? Beth didn't write any of that. I didn't find that out until I showed it to Janice earlier today.”

I tried to make sense of the detective's news. “So Barnard put the book inside Beth's suitcase? Before she checked it?”

“Before, or it could have been after, when she brought it to you.”

“Brought it?” I choked on the words. “To me?”

“Barnard was the delivery woman, the one who dropped the suitcase off at your house. It wasn't a legitimate service, Ruby. And I would have found that out sooner had I followed through with a phone call to the airline. Beth's luggage was never lost. Barnard simply retrieved it after her travels, then brought it to you.”

My mind traveled back to that evening over a week ago, to the woman in the brown shirt and culottes, her ponytail pulled through the back of her hat, the East Coast accent. A chill cascaded over me then like a cold rain.

“She planted the book inside the suitcase,” I said. “And the postcard about Reunion. She wanted me to come back to Tarble.”

I wondered what else Virginia Barnard had orchestrated over the weekend. Had she designed the lesson and essay about Sara Teasdale's poem specifically for me? Had it all been part of her plan? She wanted me to bring Mark to justice, to take over where Beth had left off. And I'd fallen into her trap.

“But how did you figure out
she
was the delivery woman?” I asked.

“Let me backtrack a bit. When we realized Beth might not have flown to Pittsburgh, I ordered a team to start looking through the Genereal Mitchell Airport security tapes from the day Beth disappeared. The Pittsburgh PD had already looked at the PIT tapes, but we had no reason to watch the ones from the Milwaukee airport, not until the Grenshaw case fell apart.”

“Did they see Barnard on the tapes?”

“Yes, though initially, we didn't know who she was. She was wearing another disguise.”

“She was pretending to be Meryl,” I explained. “That's who Beth thought she was.”

He nodded. “And then she doctored up her appearance to look younger, more like Beth so she could fly to Pittsburgh in her place. We're not entirely sure where she kept Beth during that time.”

“Her car,” I offered. “Beth told me she felt really drowsy all of a sudden and fell asleep in Meryl's—Virginia's—car. When Beth woke up again, she was in the cabin.”

The detective pulled a pen from his breast pocket and made a note. “Barnard must have drugged Beth pretty heavily then, considering she flew to Pennsylvania and back again. At any rate, watching the tapes verified Beth willingly walked away with this unidentified woman. Meanwhile, I was with the tech team, trying to pinpoint an origin for the suicide note Janice received in her e-mail. It was a new account, created just that day. It took some time, but we tracked it to a computer on the Tarble campus.”

“But you said the e-mail, the suicide note, was dated the day Beth disappeared,” I said. “How did Barnard manipulate the time?”

“Simple. She reset the time and date on the computer she was using. The e-mail she sent entered Janice's in-box under the time and date of the source computer, and not the receiving one. Janice just assumed it had been stuck in cyber space. Truth is, Barnard sent it just minutes before Janice received it.”

“She knew about the woman on the plane,” I explained. “She was trying to throw your investigation off track.”

“And soon after that, your mother called, saying she hadn't heard from you. She'd tried calling but couldn't get ahold of you.”

“I just knew something was wrong,” Mom added, breaking her silence.

“Then I went over everything you'd told me about Mark Suter and that book,” the detective continued. “And once Janice insisted it wasn't Beth's handwriting in the book, I checked the number on the business card from the delivery service, which I eventually traced to Barnard. By the time I got to Tarble, it was too late. She was nowhere to be found, and neither were you. Neither was Mark Suter. But I did speak to your friend Heidi. She filled me in about a few things.”

“I didn't tell her everything,” I said with remorse. “There was a lot she didn't know.”

“She knew enough. We found you, didn't we?”

“But how did you know to come to the cabin?”

“The notation in the book,
Cassie's Cabin
. Meryl Suter told me where it was,” he said. “Look, for the record, I rarely admit I'm wrong. And I was wrong. If I had listened to you, I could have saved you, your mother, Beth, and her family a lot of pain and suffering. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. But I can't.” He stood then and took my hand in his, covering it with his other. “I'm sorry, Ruby.”

It was the first time he'd ever called me by my first name.

“What if you don't find Barnard?” I asked.

“We will.”

“I don't know. She's . . .” I paused. After learning she'd not only tricked Beth into thinking she was Meryl, but also me into thinking she was a delivery woman, I couldn't find the right word to describe her. No wonder she'd looked familiar. After all, I'd unknowingly seen her twice before that, the first time at Café Du Monde.

“Cunning?” the detective offered.

“Resourceful,” I said.

The detective nodded. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Check your purse. Make sure everything's there. Barnard may have stolen a credit card.”

“It doesn't look like anyone's been in here,” I said, after unzipping it. My wallet was there. Driver's license, credit card, library card, cell phone. Twenty bucks cash.

“Anything missing?” he asked.

I shook my head as I checked the side pockets. One was empty but the other still held the photo of Beth and Mark. “I have a confession to make,” I told the detective. “I took this from Beth's bedroom.”

“You can return it to her,” he said.

I studied the picture like I had the day I found it; but this time, my eyes zeroed in on the woman in the background, the one wearing the wide-brimmed hat and draped scarf, the one I'd initially taken to be a stage performer.

“It's her.” I tapped the picture. “Barnard. In the background.”

The detective snatched the photo to inspect it. “
That's
her?”

I remembered the photo of Sara Teasdale tacked to the corkboard in Professor's Barnard's office, the wide brim hat and scarf.

“I better take this with me,” the detective said.

Too dumbfounded to speak, I closed my eyes as an epiphany bubbled up inside me and prepared to explode. And I willed the police to find Professor Barnard, wherever she was hiding.

She had some explaining to do.

A
n hour later, Mom stepped out to see if I could be released, and I fell asleep. I had the miniature television on, but the volume was so low, it might as well have been off. And I shut my eyes for a moment, lulled by the inaudible television noise, the sound of a cart rolling, the beeping of a machine.

When I heard the curtain slide, I opened my eyes to a new shift nurse in off-pink scrubs—more salmon colored than those of the other staff—and large tortoiseshell glasses. Her blond hair, flat and dull, was pulled back into a tight bun, which minimized her forehead wrinkles and made her look ten years younger. Despite her disguise—apparently one clever enough to fool the police officers in the waiting room—I recognized Virginia Barnard by the browns of her eyes. And I immediately pawed at my white blanket, searching for the power cord with the important buttons, especially the one that alerts the nurses' station in an emergency. But it was buried in the folds.

“Please. Don't. I'm not going to hurt you,” she said.

I finally found the button under another blanket crease and rested my finger on the switch like the trigger of a gun. “Then why are you here?”

“To check on you. Both of you.” She sighed. “I hope Beth doesn't lose the baby.”

I was surprised she knew about Beth's threatened miscarriage. “Did you go see her?”

“No, but the nurses talk. They also said Mark lost a lot of skin. He may be permanently disfigured. That's so unfortunate.” She smirked. “He was so handsome.”

“There's no way you're getting out of here a free woman,” I said.

“I'll take my chances.”

“All I have to do is press this button.”

“But you won't,” she said, removing the phony glasses as she neared me.

I held the power cord tighter, took a deep breath, and said, “It was you.”

“Yes,” she said. “I brought you the suitcase. Just like seeing Mark at the café, it was all a matter of fate. I looked down at Beth's suitcase and there you were—your name and address on the tag—begging me to find you, to inspire you to come back. And so I put the postcard and book in there for you. It was my sister's copy.”

It made sense to me then. Jenny Barnard had written
Like Cassie's Cabin
in the margin. It was her affection for Mark I had sensed from the notation, not Beth's. I remembered my discussion with Mark that afternoon in the coffee shop. He'd drawn a comparison between his mother's cabin and Woolf's book. Had he stolen the idea from Jenny, or had she gotten it from him?

“I'm not talking about the suitcase,” I said. “I'm talking about Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman in New Orleans, and Sylvia Plath here on the beach.”

She shook her head. “I never pretended to be Plath.”

“Don't lie to me. You were on campus for the English Department interviews then. You said my name. It was you.”

“Yes, it was me on the beach. But I wasn't pretending to be Plath, Ruby. I was just dressed as myself that night. I said your name because I wanted to talk to you.”

“But I thought . . .” I recalled the 1950s-style clothing the professor had worn all weekend and considered the woman on the beach, her camel-colored peacoat and blond hair. Could it have been Professor Barnard I saw? Had I morphed her into being Plath because I'd been predisposed to do so?

“But Woolf and Gilman?” I argued. “That was you, right?”