The Mexican lay amid the ruins of the trestle table, the discarded sheets tangled around his feet like the remains of a shroud. One of the paint cans had opened, showering his lower body with white. Blood pumped rhythmically from the hole in his chest and into the paint, propelled by the beating of his slowly failing heart. His right hand clutched at the wall, crawling spiderlike across the brickwork as he tried to touch the skull on the altar.
“Muertecita,” he said once more, but now the words were whispered. “Reza por mi.”
Louis and Angel appeared in the doorway.
“Shit,” said Louis. “I told you not to kill him.”
Dust still clouded the room, and the contents of the hole in the wall were not yet visible to him. He knelt beside the dying man. His right hand clasped the Mexican’s face, turning it toward him.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me where she is.”
The Mexican’s eyes remained fixed upon a distant spot. His lips continued to move, repeating his mantra. He smiled, as though he had glimpsed something that was invisible to the rest of us, a rip in the fabric of existence that permitted him to see at last the reward, or the punishment, that was his and his alone. I thought I saw wonder in his gaze, and fear, even as his eyes began to lose their brightness, his eyelids drooping.
Louis slapped him hard on the cheek. He held a small photograph of Alice in his right hand. I had not seen it before. I wondered if his aunt had given it to him, or if it were his own possession, a relic of a life left behind but not forgotten.
“Where is she?” said Louis.
The dying man coughed up blood. His teeth were red as his lips tried to form the imprecation one final time, then he shuddered, and his hand fell and splashed in the paint as he died.
Louis lowered his head and covered his face with his hand, the picture of Alice now pressed to his skin.
“Louis,” I said.
He looked up, and for a second I didn’t know how to continue.
“I think I’ve found her.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The Emergency Service Unit was the first on the scene, responding to the “shots fired” alert from the dispatcher. Soon, I was looking down the barrels of Ruger Mini-14s and H&K nine-millimeter submachine guns, trying to identify surnames and serial numbers in the confusion of lights and shouts that accompanied their arrival. The ESU cops took in the killing room, the dead Mexican, the bones arrayed in the apartment, then, once they realized that the action was over for the evening, retreated and let their colleagues from the Nine-Six take control. I tried to answer their questions as best I could at the start, but soon lapsed into silence. It was, in part, to protect both me and my friends—I did not want to give away too much until I had a chance to compose my thoughts and get my story straight—but it was also a consequence of the image that I could not shake. I saw, over and over, Louis standing before the gap in the bricks, staring into the skeletal face of a girl that he had once known, his hands poised before her, wanting to touch all that remained but unable to do so. I watched him as he drifted back to another time and another place: a houseful of women, his days among them drawing to a close, even as another was added to their number.
I remember her. I remember her as a little baby, watching her when the women were cooking or cleaning. I was the only man who held her, because her daddy, Deeber, was dead. I killed him. He was the first. He took my momma from me, and so I erased him from the world in retaliation. I didn’t know then that my momma’s sister was pregnant by him. I just knew, although there was no proof, that he had hurt my momma so badly that she had died and that he would hurt me in the same way when his chance came. So I killed him, and his daughter grew up without a father. He was a base man with base appetites, hungers that he might have sated on her as the years went on, but she never got to see him or to understand the kind of man that he was. There were always questions for her, lingering doubts, and once she began to guess the truth of what had happened, I was far from her. I disappeared into the forest one day when she was still a child, and chose my own path. I drifted away from her, and from the others, and I did not know of what had befallen her until it was too late.
That is what I tell myself: I did not know.
Then our paths crossed in this city, and I tried to make up for my failings, but I could not. They were too grievous, and they could not be undone. And now she is dead, and I find myself wondering: Did I do this? Did I set this in motion by quietly, calmly deciding to take the life of her father before she was born? In a sense, were we not both father to the woman she became? Do I not bear responsibility for her life, and for her death? She was blood to me, and she is gone, and I am lessened by her passing from this world.
I am sorry. I am so sorry.
And I turned away from him as he lowered his head, because I did not want to see him this way.
∗ ∗ ∗
I spent the rest of the night, and a good part of the morning, being interviewed by the NYPD in the Nine-Six over on Meserole Avenue. As an ex-cop, even one with some unanswered questions surrounding him, my stock had some value. I told them that I was given a lead on the Mexican’s apartment by a source, and had found the door to the warehouse open. I entered, saw what the apartment contained, and was about to call the police when I was attacked. In defending myself, I had killed my attacker.
Two detectives interviewed me, a blond woman named Bayard and her partner, a big red-haired cop named Entwistle. They were scrupulously polite to start with, due in no small part to the fact that seated to my right was Frances Neagley. Before I arrived in New York, Louis had arranged for a nominal fee to be paid into my account by the firm of Early, Chaplin & Cohen, with whom Frances was a senior partner. Officially, I was in her employ, and therefore could claim privilege if any awkward questions were asked. Frances was tall, impeccably groomed even after my early call, and superficially charming, but she hung out in the kinds of bars where blood dried on the floor at weekends and had a reputation for stonewalling so hard that she made titanium seem pliable by comparison. She had already done a good job of simultaneously distracting and frightening most of the cops with whom she was coming into contact.
“Who tipped you off on Garcia?” asked Entwistle.
“Was that his name?”
“Seems so. He’s not in a position to confirm it right now.”
“I’d prefer not to say.”
Bayard glanced at her notes.
“It wouldn’t be a pimp named Tyrone Baylee, would it, aka G-Mack?”
I didn’t reply.
“The woman you were hired to find was part of his stable, right? I assume you spoke to him. I mean, it would make no sense not to speak to him if you were looking for her, right?”
“I spoke to a lot of people,” I said.
Frances intervened. “Where are you going with this, Detective?”
“I’d just like to know when Mr. Parker here last spoke to Tyrone Baylee.”
“Mr. Parker has neither confirmed nor denied that he ever spoke to this man, so the question is irrelevant.”
“Not to Mr. Baylee,” said Entwistle. He had yellowed fingers, and his voice rumbled with catarrh. “He was admitted to Woodhull early this morning with gunshot wounds to his right hand and right foot. He had to crawl to get there. Any hopes he ever had of pitching for the Yankees are pretty much gone.”
I closed my eyes. Louis hadn’t seen fit to mention the fact that he had visited a little retribution on G-Mack.
“I spoke to Baylee around midnight, 1 A.M.,” I said. “He gave me the address in Williamsburg.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“Did he tell you that I shot him?”
“He’s all doped up. We’re waiting to hear what he has to say.”
“I didn’t shoot him.”
“You wouldn’t know who did?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Again, Frances interjected.
“Detective? Can we move on?”
“Sorry, but your client, or your employee, or whatever you choose to call him, seems to be bad for the health of the people he meets.”
“So,” said Frances, her tone one of perfect reasonableness, “either slap a health warning on him and let him go, or charge him.”
I had to admire Frances’s fighting talk, but goading these cops didn’t seem like a great idea with Garcia’s body still cooling, G-Mack recovering from bullet wounds, and the shadow of the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center looming over my future sleeping arrangements.
“Mr. Parker killed a man,” said Entwistle.
“A man who was trying to kill him.”
“So he says.”
“Come on, Detective, we’re going around in circles here. Let’s be adult about this. You have a room torn up by shotgun blasts; a crumbling warehouse filled with bones, some of which may prove to be the remains of the woman Mr. Parker was hired to find; and two VCR tapes that appear to contain images of at least one woman being killed, and probably others. My client has indicated that he will cooperate with the investigation in any way that he can, and you’re spending your time trying to trip him up with questions about an individual who suffered injuries subsequent to his meeting with my client. Mr. Parker is available for further questions at any time, or to answer any charges that may be pressed at a future date. So what’s it going to be?”
Entwistle and Bayard exchanged a look, then excused themselves. They were gone for a long time. Frances and I sat in silence until they returned.
“You can go,” said Entwistle. “For now. If it’s not too much trouble, we’d appreciate it if you let us know if you plan on leaving the state.”
Frances began gathering her notes.
“Oh,” added Entwistle. “And try not to shoot anyone for a while, huh? See how you like it. It might even take.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Frances dropped me back at my car. She didn’t ask me anything further about the events of the night before, and I didn’t offer. We both seemed happier that way.
“I think you’re okay,” she said, as we pulled up close by the warehouse. There were still cops outside, and curious onlookers kept vigil with the TV crews and assorted other reporters. “The man you killed got off three or four rounds for your one, and if the bones in the warehouse are tied in to him, then nobody is going to come chasing you in connection with his death, especially if the remains you found in the wall turn out to be those of Alice. They may decide to go after you for discharging a weapon, but when it comes to PIs, that’s a judgment call. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I had retained a license to carry concealed in New York ever since I left the force, and it was probably the best $170 I spent every two years. The license was issued at the discretion of the commissioner, and in theory he could have denied my application for renewal, but nobody had ever raised an objection. I suppose that it was a lot to ask for them to let me go around shooting the gun as well.
I thanked Frances and got out of the car.
“Tell Louis I’m sorry,” she said.
∗ ∗ ∗
I called Rachel once I was back at my hotel. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything’s fine,” she said.
Her voice was flat.
“Is Sam all right?”
“She’s good. She slept through till seven. I’ve just fed her. I’ll put her down again for an hour or two now.”
The line went quiet for about five seconds.
“How are you doing?” she said.
“There was some trouble earlier,” I said. “A man died.”
Again, there was only silence.
“And I think we found Alice,” I said, “or something of her.”
“Tell me.”
She sounded suddenly weary.
“There were human remains in a tub. Bones, mostly. I found more behind a wall. Her locket was with them.”
“And the man who died? Was he responsible?”
“I don’t know for sure. It looks like it.”
I waited for the next question, knowing that it had to come.
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. I could hear Sam starting to cry. Rachel hushed her.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“It’s over, right?” she said. “You know what happened to Alice, and the man who killed her is dead. What more can you do? Come home. Just—come home, okay?”
“I will. I love you, Rachel.”
“I know.” I thought I could hear something catch in her voice as she prepared to hang up the phone. “I know you do.”
∗ ∗ ∗
I slept until past midday, when I was awoken by the ringing of the telephone. It was Walter Cole.
“Seems like you had a busy night,” he said.
“How much do you know?”
“A little. You can fill me in on the rest. There’s a Starbucks over by Daffy’s. I’ll see you there in thirty minutes.”
I made it in forty-five, and even then I was pushing it. On my way across town, I thought about what I had done, and about what Rachel had said when we spoke. In one sense, it was over. I felt certain that dental records and DNA tests, if necessary using Martha’s DNA for comparison, would confirm that the remains found in Garcia’s apartment were those of Alice. So Garcia was involved, and may even have been directly responsible for her death. But that didn’t explain why Alice had gone missing to begin with, or why Eddie Tager had paid her bond. Then there was the antique dealer Neddo and his talk of “Believers,” and the FBI agent Philip Bosworth, who appeared to be engaged in an investigation that mirrored, at least in some way, my own. Finally, I was aware of a deep unease, the sense that there was something else moving beneath the surface details of the case, weaving through the hidden, hollow caverns of the past.
My hair was still wet from a hasty shower when I sat down across from Walter at a corner table. He wasn’t alone. Dunne, the detective from the coffee shop, was with him.
“Your partner know you’re seeing other people?” I asked him.
“We have an open relationship. As long as he doesn’t have to hear about it, he’s cool. He thinks you shot G-Mack, though.”
“So do the cops over at the Nine-Six. For what it’s worth, I didn’t pull the trigger on him.”
“Hey, it’s not like we really care so much. Mackey just doesn’t want it coming back to haunt him, someone hears we sicced you on him.”
“A couple of people pointed us in his direction. You can tell your partner he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
“ ‘Us?’ ”, said Dunne.
Damn. I was tired.
“Walter and me.”
“Right. Sure.”
I didn’t want to get into this with Dunne. I didn’t even know why he was here.
“So,” I said, “what are we doing here: testing muffins?”
Dunne looked to Walter for an ally.
“He’s a hard guy to help,” he said.
“He’s very self-sufficient,” said Walter. “It’s a strongman pose. I think it hides a conflicted sexuality.”
“Walter, with all due respect, I’m not in the mood for this.”
Walter raised a placating hand. “Easy. Like Dunne said, we’re trying to help.”
“Sereta, the other girl—it looks like they’ve found her too,” said Dunne.
“Where?”
“Motel just outside of Yuma.”
“The Spyhole killings?” I had watched some of the news reports on TV.
“Yeah. They’ve identified her for certain as the girl found in the trunk of the car. They kind of figured that anyway, since the car was registered to her and a section of her license survived the fire, but they were waiting for confirmation. It looks like she was still alive, and conscious, when the flames got to her. She managed to kick in the backseat before she died.”
I tried to remember the details.
“Wasn’t there a second body in the car?”
“Male. He’s a John Doe. No ID, no wallet. They’re still trying to chase him down with what they have, but it’s not like they can put a picture on milk cartons. Maybe on barbecue charcoal come the summer, but not until then. He’d been shot in the shoulder and chest. Fatal bullet was still in him. It came from a thirty-eight, same gun as they found on the Mexican who died in one of the motel rooms. They were operating on the assumption that he might have been the target of a botched hit. Guy was tied up with some pretty bad people, and the Federales down in Mexico were real anxious to speak to him. Now, with this Alice thing up here, maybe there’s another angle.”
According to G-Mack, Alice and Sereta had been present when Winston and his assistant were killed, but they hadn’t seen anything. They had taken something, though, and apparently this item was sufficiently valuable that the individuals involved were prepared to kill to get it back. They found Alice, and perhaps from her they gained some knowledge of where Sereta was hiding. I didn’t like to think of how they had acquired that information.
“Your friend G-Mack should be released from the hospital in a couple of days,” said Dunne. “From what I hear, he says he still doesn’t know anything about what happened to his hookers, and he didn’t get a look at the guy who shot him. Whoever put the bullet in his leg knew what he was doing. The ankle joint and the heel were shattered to pieces. Guy is gonna be a gimp for the rest of his life.”
I thought of Alice’s skull resting in the alcove in Garcia’s apartment. I imagined Sereta’s final minutes of life, as the heat grew in intensity, slowly roasting her before the flames took hold. By selling Alice out, G-Mack had condemned them both to death.
“That’s tough,” I said.
Dunne shrugged. “It’s a tough world. Speaking of that, Walter says he tried to talk to Ellen, the young hooker.”
I remembered the young girl in the dark clothing.
“You get anywhere with her?”
Walter shook his head.
“Hard outside, and getting harder inside. I’m going to talk to Safe Horizon about her, and I have a buddy in the Juvenile Crime Special Projects Squad. I’ll keep trying.”
Dunne stood and picked up his jacket.
“Look,” he said to me, “if I can help you out, I will. I owe Walter, and if he wants to call in that debt for you, then I’m okay with that. But I like my job, and I plan on keeping it. I don’t know who put those fucking bullets in that piece of shit, but if you happen to meet him, you tell him to take it to Jersey next time. We clear?”
“Clear,” I said.
“Oh, and one last thing. They did find something else unusual in the Spyhole. The desk clerk’s blood was smeared on his face, and they pulled foreign DNA from the samples. Weird thing was, it was all degraded.”
“Degraded?”
“Old and debased. They think the samples might have been corrupted somehow. They contained toxins, and they’re still trying to identify most of them. It’s like somebody rubbed a piece of dead meat across the kid’s face.”
We gave him a five-minute start, then left.
“So what now?” asked Walter, as we tried to avoid getting run over by a bus.
“I need to talk to some people. You think you can find out who owns that warehouse in Williamsburg?”
“Shouldn’t be too hard. The Nine-Six is probably on top of it already, but I’ll see what I can get from the city assessor’s office.”
“The cops at the Nine-Six have a name on the man I killed. I don’t imagine they’re going to share much information with me, so keep your ear to the ground, see what filters through.”
“No problem. You planning on staying at the Meridien for another night?”
I thought of Rachel.
“Maybe one more. After that, I need to go home.”
“You talk to her?”
“This morning.”
“Did you tell her what happened?”
“Most of it.”
“That sound you hear in the back of your mind? That’s thin ice cracking. You need to be with her now. Hormones, everything gets screwed up. You know that. Even little things can seem like the end of the world, and big things, well, they just really might be the end.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks.”
“For the advice?”
“No, the advice sucked. ‘Thanks’ is for stepping up to the plate on this one.”
“Hey, once a cop,” he said. “I miss it sometimes, but this helps. It reminds me of why I’m better off out of it.”
∗ ∗ ∗
My next call was to Louis. I met him at a coffee shop on Broadway, up in the Gay Nineties. He didn’t look like he’d slept much, and although he was clean-shaven, and his shirt was neatly pressed, he appeared uncomfortable in his clothes.
“Martha’s cousin is flying up today,” he said. “She’s bringing dental records, medical stuff, anything she can find. Martha was staying in some shit hole in Harlem. I made her move, so they’re both booked into the Pierre now.”
“How is she?”
“She hasn’t given up hope. Says it may not be Alice. The locket doesn’t mean nothing, except that the guy took it from her.”
“And you? What do you think?”
“It’s her. Like you, I just knew. I felt it as soon as I saw the locket.”
“The cops should have a positive ID by tomorrow, then. They’ll probably release her in a day or two, once the ME has made his report. Will you go back with the remains?”
Louis shook his head.
“I don’t think so. I won’t be welcome. Anyway, there’s history down there. Better to let it rest. I got other things to be doing.”
“Like?”
“Like finding the ones who killed her.”
I sipped my coffee. It was already going cold. I raised the cup to the waitress, then watched quietly as she warmed it up.
“You should have told me what you did to G-Mack,” I said, as soon as she was out of earshot.
“I had other things on my mind.”
“Well, in future, if we’re going to do this, you’ll have to share your thoughts some. Two detectives down over in the Nine-Six liked me for the shooting. The fact that I’d left another man dead on their patch didn’t help my case.”
“They say how that pimp asshole is doing?”
“He was still woozy when I was at the Nine-Six, but since then he’s come around. He told the cops that he didn’t see a thing.”
“He won’t talk. He knows better than to say anything.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Look,” said Louis. “I ain’t asking you to get involved in this. I didn’t ask you to begin with.”
I waited for him to say something more. He didn’t.
“You finished?” I said.
“Yeah, I’m done.” He raised his right hand in apology. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. If you shoot someone, just let me know, that’s all. I want to be sure I can say I was somewhere else. Especially if, for once, I was somewhere else.”
“The men who killed Alice are gonna find out that the pimp talked,” said Louis. “The man’s dead.”
“Well, when they come he won’t be able to run away, that’s for sure.”
“So what now?”
I told him about the death of Alice’s friend Sereta near Yuma, and the body found in the car with her.
“He wasn’t shot in the car,” I said. “Mackey told me that the cops followed a blood trail from outside the room to the door of the Buick. This guy walked to the car, then he sat in the driver’s seat with the door wide-open while he burned alive.”
“Could be someone was holding a gun on him.”
“It would have to be a pretty big gun. Even then, getting shot would be a whole lot more attractive than burning. Plus he wasn’t one of the guests registered. They’re all accounted for.”
“One of Sereta’s johns?”
“If he was, he left no trace in her room. Even if that were true, what was he doing outside the Mexican’s hotel room getting shot through the door?”
“So he was one of the killers?”
“It looks that way. He screws up, gets shot, then instead of taking him with them, his buddies leave him in the car and set him on fire.”
“And he doesn’t object.”
“He doesn’t even get up from his seat.”
“So someone found out where Sereta was and came looking for her.”
“And killed her when she was found.”
He made the connections, just as I had earlier. “Alice told them.”
“Maybe. If she did, they forced it from her.”
He thought about it some more. “It’s hard for me to say this, but if I was Sereta, I wouldn’t have told Alice more than she needed to know. Maybe general things, a safe number to contact her at, but no more. That way, if they came for Alice, there wouldn’t be too much she could give away.”
“So somebody down there ratted her out, probably based on whatever Alice’s killers got out of her.”
“Which means somebody down there knows somebody up here.”
“Garcia might have been the contact. Given how close the Spyhole was to the border, the Mexican connection would make sense. It could be worth finding out some more.”
“This wouldn’t just be a way of getting me out of the city so you can pursue a, uh, more diplomatic line of inquiry?”
“That would assume that I’m cleverer than I am.”
“Not cleverer, just slicker.”
“Like I said, someone down there may have information that could help us. Whoever it is, he or she is unlikely to give it up easily. If I were you, I’d be looking to strike out at someone right about now. I’m just giving you a focus for your anger.”
Louis raised his spoon and pointed it at me. He managed to rustle up what might almost have been a smile.
“You been spending too long sleeping with psychologists.”
“Not lately, but thanks for the thought.”
Louis was right, though: I wanted him gone for a couple of days. It would save me having to keep my movements from him. I was afraid that if I gave him too much information, he would take it upon himself to try to force answers from the people involved. I wanted the first shot at the bail bondsman. I wanted to speak to whoever had rented the warehouse space to Garcia. And I wanted to track down the FBI agent, Bosworth. After all, I thought, I could always set Louis on them later.
∗ ∗ ∗
I went back to my hotel, but with one extra item in my trunk. I had entrusted the bone sculpture to Angel before he left the warehouse, and now Louis had returned it to me. If the cops found out that I had withheld it, I would be in serious trouble, but the sight of it had allowed me to gain access to Neddo, and I had a feeling that it would open other doors if necessary. Waving a photograph or a Crayola drawing wouldn’t have quite the same impact.
Angel and Louis were due to fly down to Tucson that evening, via Houston. In the meantime, Walter got back to me with a name: the warehouse was part of an estate that had become tied up in some endless legal squabble, and the only contact the cops could find was a lawyer named David Sekula with an office on Riverside Drive. The telephone number on the banner at the warehouse went straight to an automatic answering service for a leasing company called Ambassade Realty, except Ambassade Realty appeared to be a dead end. Its CEO was deceased, and all callers were directed to contact the lawyer’s office. I took down Sekula’s address and telephone number. I would call him in the morning, when I was fresh and alert.
I left three messages for Tager, the bail bondsman, but he didn’t return my calls. His office was up in the Bronx, close by Yankee Stadium. Tager, too, would be tomorrow’s work. Someone had asked him to post bail for Alice. If I found out who that person was, I would be one step closer to discovering those responsible for her death.
∗ ∗ ∗
As Angel and Louis made their way to the Delta terminal at JFK, a man who might have been able to answer some of their most pressing questions passed through immigration, collected his baggage, and entered the arrivals hall.
The cleric had arrived in New York on a BA flight from London. He was tall and in his late forties, with the build of a man who enjoyed his food. His unruly beard was lighter and redder than his head hair and gave him a vaguely piratical aspect, as though he had only recently ceased tying firecrackers to its ends in order to frighten his enemies. He carried a small black suitcase in one hand and a copy of that day’s Guardian in the other.
A second man, slightly younger than the visitor, was waiting for him as the doors hissed closed behind him. He shook the cleric’s hand and offered to carry his case, but the offer was declined. Instead, the visitor handed the newspaper to the younger man.
“I brought you a Guardian and Le Monde,” he said. “I know you like European newspapers, and they’re expensive over here.”
“You couldn’t have brought a Telegraph instead?”
The younger man spoke with a faint Eastern European accent.
“It’s a little conservative for my liking. I’d only be encouraging them.”
His companion took the Guardian and examined the front page as he walked. What he saw there seemed to disappoint him.
“We’re not all as liberal as you are, you know.”
“I don’t know what happened to you, Paul. You used to be on the side of the good guys. They’ll have you buying shares in Halliburton next.”
“This is no longer a country for heedless liberals, Martin. It’s changed since last we were here.”
“I can tell that. There was a chap back there in immigration who just stopped short of bending me over a table and poking me in the arse with his finger.”
“He would be a braver man than I. Still, it’s good to have you here.”
They walked to the parking lot and didn’t speak of the matters that concerned them until they were out of the airport.
“Any progress?” said Martin.
“Rumors, nothing more, but the auction is in a matter of days.”
“It will be like putting blood in the water to see what it attracts, but fragments are no good to them. They need it all. If they’re as close as we think, they’ll bite.”
“It’s a risky business you’ve involved us in.”
“We were involved anyway, whether we wanted it or not. Mordant’s death ensured that. If he could find his way to Sedlec, then others could too. Better to retain a little control over what transpires than none at all.”
“It was a guess. Mordant was lucky.”
“Not that lucky,” said Martin. “He broke his neck. At least it looked like it was an accident. Now, you said there were rumors.”
“Two women disappeared from the Point. It seems that they were present when the collector Winston was killed. Our friends tell us that both have since been found dead: one in Brooklyn, the other in Arizona. It’s reasonable to suppose that whatever they took from Winston’s collection has now been secured.”
The bearded man closed his eyes briefly, and his lips moved in a silent prayer.
“More killings,” he said, when he was finished. “That’s too bad.”
“That’s not the worst of it.”
“Tell me.”
“There have been sightings: an obese man. He’s calling himself Brightwell.”
“If he has come out of hiding, it means that they believe they’re close. Jesus, Paul, don’t you have any good news for me?”
Paul Bartek smiled. It was a grim smile, but he was still worried that the next piece of news was affording him a degree of pleasure. He would have to confess it at some point. Nevertheless, it was worth a few Hail Marys to pass it on to his colleague.
“One of their people has been killed. A Mexican. The police believe he was responsible for the death of one of the prostitutes. They think her remains are among those found in his apartment.”
“Killed?”
“Shot to death.”
“Somebody did the world a favor, but he’ll pay for it. They won’t like that. Who is he?”
“His name is Parker. He’s a private detective, and it seems that he makes quite a habit of things like this.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Brightwell sat at the computer screen and waited for the printer to finish spewing out the final pages of the job. When it was done, he took the sheaf of papers and sorted through them, ordering them according to date, starting with the oldest of the cuttings. He read through the details of those first killings once again. There were pictures of the woman and child as they had been in life, but Brightwell barely glanced at them. Neither did he linger on the description of the crime, although he was aware that there was a great deal that remained unsaid in the articles. He guessed that the injuries inflicted on the man’s wife and daughter were too horrific to print, or that the police had hoped at the time to hold back such details in case they encouraged copycats. No, what interested Brightwell was the information on the husband, and he marked with a yellow highlighter those parts that were particularly noteworthy. He performed a similar exercise on each of the subsequent pages, following the man’s trail, re-creating the history of the preceding five years, noting with interest the way past and present intersected in his life, how some old ghosts were raised while others were laid to rest.
Parker. Such sadness, such pain, and all as penance for an offense against Him that you cannot even recall committing. Your faith was misplaced. There is no redemption, not for you. You were damned, and there is no salvation.
You were lost to us for so long, but now you are found.