Everything but the Squeal

was Aimee and maybe she wasn't, but there was no way to find out without opening the door.

My hand was shaking so badly that I had to pull it back and flex it before I turned the knob.

The room on the other side of the door was bigger than a closet, but just barely. It was also dark. I slapped at the wall to the right of the door and finally hit the switch. That was when I saw the cage.

When you want to ship a dog on an airline, they give you a cage. If you don't have a very big dog, the cage is large enough to let it sit down without scraping its head against the top. Or maybe not. The cage I was looking at was of the latter variety. Woofers might have found it spacious.

Actually, I smelled it before I saw it. Even before the light flooded the little room I smelled the stench of abandonment and desolation. My eyes adjusted to the light and I found myself staring through wire mesh at the crouched figure of Aimee Sorrell.

Her mother wouldn't have recognized her. Bent double on knees and elbows, she wore a diaper that was fastened with an oversize safety pin, a final humiliation. Her knotted hair obscured her face even though she was looking up at me. There were three bright orange dog dishes in the cage. One held what looked like dog food, one held water, and the third was overflowing with human waste. Aimee obviously hadn't been a good girl by Mrs. Brussels' standards, and my heart overflowed with a jumbled mixture of grief and pride.

“Aimee,” I said to the yellow-haired thing on its hands and knees, “we're going home.”

Aimee narrowed her eyes and yelped in panic. I remembered what I looked like. Aimee's eyes through the bleared tangle of yellow hair were as blue as a summer sky and as empty. She backed away into the far corner of the cage, her hands clawing at her face, at her eyes, trying to banish me to the land of nightmares.

“I’m your friend,” I said. “I’m going to take you home.” I got down on my hands and knees so I wouldn't be taller than she was: it's a trick you do with dogs. Very slowly, so as not to frighten her further, I unfastened the catch on the outside of the cage and pulled the door open. “Come on out,” I said very softly.

Instead of coming out, she squeezed herself more tightly into the corner. Her mouth was wide and open, and a high, sustained tone came from it, like an organ with a dead man's nose pressed against the highest key in the treble clef. There was no vibrato in the tone at all.

“Aimee,” I pleaded into the horrid, unwavering sound, “I'm your friend.” I reached a hand into the cage, opened it, and turned it to show her that it was empty. “Come out,” I pleaded, “come out. We'll go home to Kansas City.”

She swiped at my hand with claws I hadn't known she possessed, and my wrist began to bleed. “Good girl,” I said, resisting the urge to yank my arm back. “Come on. Please, please, come on. Aurora's waiting.”

For the first time something happened inside the blue eyes that might have passed for understanding. She looked rapidly from my bleeding hand to my eyes and then back again. The glance she gave me drilled holes through the back of my head.

“You're such a good girl,” I said, babbling on automatic pilot. “No one else has been so good. That's why they had to put you into the cage. Come on, Aimee. Aimee, let's go-”

I extended the raked, bleeding hand toward her. She looked at my face and then back down at the hand and then at my face again.

“Take it,” I said, turning the hand palm-up. “Take my hand, and get out of the cage.”

She hissed like a snake, but she didn't claw at me. I was smelling fuel again, and some clear, rational square inch of my brain was thinking about an explosion. “Please, darling,” I said, “Mrs. Brussels is dead. Birdie is dead. Max is dead. They can't hurt you now.”

She had stopped shrilling. “SaSaSaSa,” she said. In her mind it might have been a sentence. She saw the blood on the back of my hand and recoiled and then looked from my open hand to my eyes again and realized that she had done it. “No,” she said. She locked her eyes onto mine and reached up very slowly with one hand, took her hand in mine, and pressed the place where I was bleeding against her cheek.

“Come,” I said, drawing my hand away, but keeping hers in it. The blood was a bright smear on her pale cheek. “Come. They're dead. We're leaving.” The smell of fuel was growing stronger.

“Aimee,” she said, not letting go of my hand. Her voice sounded rusty. But she'd said the word that meant “her.”

“Aimee, Aimee, Aimee, yes, Aimee,” I said. “I'm Simeon. Please, let's go. There's a fire down there. I have to get you out of here, out of here so I can take you home.”

She crawled six inches toward me, upsetting the dish with the water in it. Then she stopped cold. “Aimee’s a good girl,” she whispered fiercely.

“Aimee’s the best girl in the world,” I said. I was crying. “Aimee’s the best girl in the whole wide world.”

She watched me cry for a moment. Then, with great deliberation, she nodded. “With you,” she said, “I'll go with you.”

More quickly than I would have believed, she'd crawled out of the cage. When she stood upright, her legs trembled and gave way beneath her, and she had to grab at my waist to keep from falling. I put one hand on her head and said, “All we have to do is go down the stairs.” I dropped my hand to her shoulder and steadied myself to turn and take her with me.

Her shoulders went as rigid as iron. She pushed at the hand on her shoulder. “Eeeeeee,” she said, dropping to her knees again. I pulled my hand from her shoulder, but she wasn't paying attention to my hand or to me or to anything to do with me. She was backing into the cage on hands and knees, her eyes on something behind me, mad and wide and clear and empty as water, and the skin-splitting Eeeeeeeee sound flowed from her mouth in a rippling ribbon of anguish. I turned and saw that I'd betrayed her.

A flap of burned skin hung from Mrs. Brussels' chin, and her hair was gone. What was left clung to her head like the charred remnants of a burned-over cornfield. The left side of her face was a water balloon, a single enormous, distended blister. Her designer clothes were blackened and shriveled by the fire that had consumed Bruner, but the gun in her hand was steady and her eyes were ancient and fierce and lashless and remorseless. They were an alligator's eyes. Aimee's scream had decayed into a kind of dog-kennel whuffling.

“Sweet,” Mrs. Brussels said between blistered lips. “Very sweet. Aimee. Come out of there.”

Aimee, eyes closed, crawled out of the cage. Once out, she froze on her hands and knees, her forehead pressed to the floor in abject submission.

“Over here,” Mrs. Brussels commanded. “Come to Momma, you little bitch.” And Aimee crawled past me as though I weren't there and went to Mrs. Brussels.

“So it was Aimee,” Mrs. Brussels said. The words were slurred with pain. “That was what Max said.” She reached down and twined her fingers into the matted hair and pulled the child upright. Aimee's eyes were squeezed shut.

“We can make a deal,” I said, wondering wildly what it might be.

“You already made one, Jack,” Mrs. Brussels said, “and you won't like it.” Her free arm encircled Aimee's throat. Aimee's eyes opened and rolled toward the ceiling. She was gone again.

“You're going to go down the stairs,” Mrs. Brussels said with difficulty. “Backward. Aimee and I will follow you.” With the gun hand she pressed against the massive blister on her face and winced at the pain. The gun remained pointed at me. “Do it right, and we'll see what happens.”

All I wanted was the gun I'd lost. Or Bruner's gun. Or fucking anybody's gun. “And if I do it wrong?” I asked.

“First, she dies,” Mrs. Brussels said, meaning Aimee. “Then, you. And then, little Jewel, when I find her. And I’ll find her.”

I put my hands helplessly into the air. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Don't turn your back,” Mrs. Brussels said thickly. When she talked, the fluid in the giant blister bobbed up and down. “Keep your hands up there, and back up. Back around us. Back out of the room.”

I did as she said, bumping against the door. Mrs. Brussels made a catching sound in her throat and pushed the gun toward me. I eased myself around through the doorway. She followed me into the main office, trundling Aimee in front of her. The stench of diesel fuel was very strong, and so was the smoke. Bruner was still burning.

“This place is going to blow up, you know,” I said, backing toward the door that led to the circular stairway, my hands still in the air.