Down to where a child stood before them, lit by a circle of light that seemed to come from nowhere but within himself. While couples moved close by, and groups of men walked through the crowds carrying trays of beer, the child still held a space to itself and no one came close or broke the shell of light surrounding him. It lit his blonde hair, brought up the colour of his purple rompers, made the nails of his tiny hands shine as he raised his left hand and pointed into the shadows.
‘Donnie?’ I heard myself whisper.
And from the darkness at the far side of the bar, a white shape appeared. Stritch’s mouth was open in a smile, the thick, soft lips splitting his face from side to side, and his bald head gleamed in the dim light. He turned in the direction of Lorna Jennings, looked back at me, and drew his right index finger across his neck as he moved through the crowd towards her.
‘Stritch,’ I hissed, springing from my seat. Louis scanned the crowd, already rising, his hand reaching for his SIG.
‘I don’t see him. You sure?’
‘He’s on the other side of the bar. He’s after Lorna.’
Louis went right, his hand inside his black jacket, his fingers on his gun. I moved left, but the crowd was thick and unyielding. I pushed my way through, people stepping back and yelling as their beer spilled. (‘Buddy, hey buddy, where’s the fire?’) I tried to keep Lorna’s red sweater in view, but I lost it as people passed into my line of vision. To my right, I could just make out Louis moving through the couples at the edge of the dance floor, his progress attracting curious glances. To my left, Angel was making his way around the bar in a wide arc.
As I neared the counter, the men and women were packed tightly, calling for drinks, waving money, laughing, caressing. I pushed through, spilling a tray of drinks and sending a thin, acned young man tumbling to his knees. Hands reached for me and angry voices were raised, but I ignored them. A barman, a fat, dark-skinned man with a thick beard, raised a hand as I climbed onto the bar, my feet slipping on the wet floor.
‘Hey, get down from there,’ he called, then stopped as he saw the Smith & Wesson in my hand. He backed off, making for a phone by the register.
Now I could see Lorna clearly. Her head turned as I rose above her, other heads turning too, their eyes wide. I spun to see Louis fighting his way through the pack at the bar, scanning the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of that white, domed head.
I saw him first. He was maybe twenty people back from Lorna, still moving in her direction. Once or twice people looked his way, but they were distracted by the sight of me on the bar, the gun hanging from my right hand. Stritch smiled at me again, and something flashed in his hand: a short, curved blade, its point wickedly sharp. I made a jump from the bar to the central section where the cash register and bottles stood, then a second jump, which put me almost beside Lorna, glasses flying from my feet and shattering on the floor. People moved away from me and I heard screaming. I stepped from the bar and pushed my way to her.
‘Move back,’ I said. ‘You’re in danger here.’
She was almost smiling, her brow furrowed, until she saw the gun in my hand. ‘What? What do you mean?’
I looked past her to where I had last seen Stritch, but he was receding from sight, losing himself once again in the crowd. Then a head appeared as Louis stood on a table, trying to keep low enough to avoid making himself a target for a shot. He turned to me and gestured to the centre exit. On the stage, the band kept playing, but I could see them exchanging worried looks.
To my left, burly men in T-shirts were moving towards us. I grabbed Lorna by the shoulders. ‘Take your friends and stay close to the bar. I mean it. I’ll explain later.’ She nodded once, the smile no longer on her face. I think I knew why. I think she had caught a glimpse of Stritch and had seen in his eyes what he had intended to do to her.
Using my shoulders, I started to make my way to the centre exit. A small flight of steps led up to it and I could see a waitress at the door, a pretty girl with long, dark hair, frowning uncertainly as she watched what was happening at the bar. Then a figure appeared beside her, and the white, domed head broke into a smile. A pale hand lost itself in her hair and the blade flashed beside her head. The waitress tried to tear herself away and fell to her knees as she did so. I tried to raise my gun but people were jostling me, heads and arms obscuring my vision. Someone, a young man with a football player’s build, tried to grab my right arm, but I struck him in the face with my elbow and he moved back. Just as it seemed that we were powerless to prevent the girl from getting her throat cut, a dark object spun through the air and shattered as it struck Stritch’s head. To my left, Angel stood on a chair, his hand still raised from where he had released the bottle. I saw Stritch stumble backwards, blood already pouring from the multiple cuts in his face and head, as the waitress tore herself away and tumbled down the steps, leaving a garland of hair in her attacker’s hand. The door behind Stritch swung open and, in a blur of movement, he disappeared into the night.
Louis and I were only seconds behind him. We reached the steps at almost the same instant. Behind us, blue uniforms appeared at the main door and I could hear shouting and screams.
Outside, beer kegs stood stacked to one side of the door, a green trash can at the other. Ahead of us was the edge of the forest, illuminated by the big lamps that lit the side of the bar. Something white moved into the darkness beyond, and we moved after it.
Chapter Twenty Five
The silence of the woods was startling, as if the snow had muted nature, stifling all life. There was no wind, no night-bird sounds, only the crunch of our shoes and the soft snap of unseen twigs buried beneath our feet.
I closed my eyes hard, willing them to adjust to the dark light of the forest, my hand supporting me against a tree trunk. Around us, mostly hidden by the snowdrifts, tree roots snaked over the thin soil. Louis had already fallen once, and the front of his coat was speckled with white.
Behind us, noises and shouting came from the direction of the bar, but no one followed as yet. After all, it was still unclear what had happened: a man had waved a gun; another man had thrown a bottle and injured a third; some people thought they had seen a knife, a fact that the waitress would surely confirm. It would take them a while to find flashlights and for the police to organise a pursuit. Occasionally, a weak beam of light flashed yellow behind us, but soon the thickening trees blocked its path. Only a sickly moonlight that fell wearily through the branches over our heads provided any illumination.
Louis was close by me, close enough so that we remained in each other’s sight. I raised a hand and we stopped. There was no sound ahead of us, which meant that Stritch was either picking his steps carefully or had stopped and was waiting for us in the shadows. I thought again of that doorway in the Portland complex, that certainty I had that he was there and that, if I went after him, he would kill me. This time, I resolved, I would not back down.
Then, from my left, I heard something. It was soft, like the sound of evergreen leaves brushing against clothing, followed by the compression of snow beneath a footfall, but I had heard it. From Louis’s expression, I could tell that he had noticed it too. A second footfall came, then a third, moving not towards us, but away from us.
‘Could we have gotten ahead of him?’ I whispered.
‘Doubt it. Could be someone from the bar.’
‘No flashlight, and it’s one person, not a group.’
But there was something else about it: the noise was careless, almost deliberately so. It was as if someone wanted us to know that he or she was out there.
I heard myself swallow loudly. Beside me, Louis’s breath briefly threw a thin mist across his features. He looked at me and shrugged.
‘Keep listening, but we best get moving.’
He stepped out from behind the trunk of a fir and the sound of a shot shattered the silence of the forest, sending bark and sap shooting into the air beside his face. He dived for the ground and rolled hard to his right unti
l he was shielded by a natural depression, in front of which the blunt edge of a rock nosed its way out of the snow.
‘That was close,’ I heard him say. ‘Fuck these professionals.’
‘You’re supposed to be a professional,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s why you’re here.’
‘Keep forgetting,’ he replied, ‘what with being surrounded by amateurs and all.’
I wondered how long Stritch had been watching us, waiting to make his move. Long enough to see me with Lorna, and to understand that some kind of bond existed between us. ‘Why did he try to take her in such a public place?’ I wondered aloud.
Louis risked a look round the edge of the stone, but no shots came. ‘He wanted to hurt the woman, and for you to know it was him. More than that, he wanted to draw us out.’
‘And we followed him?’
‘Wouldn’t want to disappoint him,’ replied Louis. ‘I tell you, Bird: I don’t think the man gives a fuck about that money anymore.’
I was getting tired of hugging the big fir. ‘I’m going to make a move, see how far I can get. You want to take another peep out of your hole and cover me?’
‘You the man. Get going.’
I took a deep breath and, staying low, began to zigzag forwards, tripping on two concealed roots but managing to keep my feet as Stritch’s gun barked twice, kicking up snow and dirt by my right heel. It was followed by a burst of fire from Louis’s SIG that shattered branches and bounced off rocks but also seemed to force Stritch to keep his head down.
‘You see him?’ I yelled, as I squatted down, my back to a spruce and my breath pluming before me in huge clouds. I was starting to warm up at last, although, even in the darkness, my fingers and hands appeared to be a raw, vivid red. Before Louis could reply, something off-white whirled in a copse of bushes ahead and I opened fire. The figure retreated into the darkness. ‘Never mind,’ I added. ‘He’s about thirty feet north-east of you, heading farther in.’
Louis was already moving. I could see his dark shape against the snow. I sighted, aimed and fired four shots into the area where I had last seen Stritch. There was no return fire and Louis was soon level with me but about ten feet away.
And then, again to my left but this time farther ahead, there came the sound of movement in the woods. Someone was moving quickly and surefootedly towards Stritch.
‘Bird?’ said Louis. I raised a hand quickly and indicated the source of the noise. He went silent, and we waited. For maybe thirty seconds nothing happened. There was no noise, not even a footstep or the falling of snow from the trees. There was nothing but the sound of my heart beating and the blood pumping in my ears.
Then two shots came in close succession followed by what sounded like two bodies impacting. Louis and I moved at the same instant, our feet freezing, our legs held high so that they would not drag in the snow. We ran hard until we burst through the copse, our hands raised to ward off the branches, and there we found Stritch.
He stood in a small, stony clearing doused in silver moonlight, his back to us, his toes barely touching the ground, his hands braced against the trunk of a big spruce. From the back of his tan raincoat, something thick and red had erupted which glistened darkly in the light. As we approached him, Stritch shuddered and seemed to grip the tree harder, as if to force himself off the sharp stump of branch on which he had been impaled. A fine spray of blood shot from his mouth and he groaned as his grip weakened. He turned his head at the sound of our footsteps and his eyes were large with shock, his thick, moist lips spread wide against gritted teeth as he tried to hold himself upright. Blood coursed from the wounds in his head, dark rivers of it flowing over his pale features.
As we were almost upon him, his mouth opened and he cried out as his body shuddered hard for the last time, his grip failing, his head falling forward and coming to rest against the bark of the tree.
And as he died, I scanned the glade, conscious that Louis was doing the same, both of us acutely aware that beyond our line of sight someone was watching us, and that there was a kind of joy in what he saw, and in what he had done.
Chapter Twenty Six
I sat in Rand Jennings’s office in the Dark Hollow police department and watched the snow falling on the windowpane against the early morning darkness. Jennings sat across from me, his hands steepled together, the fingertips resting in the small roll of fat that now hung beneath his chin. Behind me stood Ressler, while outside the office uniformed patrolmen, mostly part-timers called in for the occasion, ran back and forth down the hallway, bumping into one another like ants whose chemical signallers had been interfered with.
‘Tell me who he was,’ said Jennings.
‘I already told you,’ I said.
‘Tell me again.’
‘He called himself Stritch. He was a freelance operator – murder, torture, assassination, whatever.’
‘What’s he doing attacking waitresses in Dark Hollow, Maine?’
‘I don’t know.’ That was a he, but if I told him it was an attempt to gain revenge for the death of his partner then Jennings would have wanted to know who killed the partner and what part I had played in the whole affair. If I told him that then the chances were that I would be locked up in a cell.
‘Ask him about the nigra,’ said Ressler. Instinctively, the muscles on my shoulders and neck tightened and I heard Ressler snicker behind me. ‘You got a problem with that word, Mr Big Shot? Don’t like to hear a man being called a buck nigra, especially if he’s your friend?’
I took a deep breath and brought my rising temper under control. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’d like to see you talk like that in Harlem.’
Jennings unsteepled his hands and jabbed an index finger at me. ‘Again, I’m calling you a liar, Parker. I got witnesses saw a coloured follow you out that door, same coloured checked into the motel with a skinny white guy in tow the day you arrived, same coloured who paid cash in advance on the room, the room he shared with the same skinny white guy who hit this man Stritch with a bottle and the same coloured . . .’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘The same fucking coloured who has now left his motel and disappeared into the fucking ether with his buddy. Do you hear me?’
I knew where Angel and Louis had gone. They were at the India Hill Motel on Route 6 outside Greenville. Angel had checked in and Louis was lying low. They would eat out of the McDonald’s nearby and wait for me to call.
‘Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was alone when I found Stritch. Maybe someone else followed me out, thought that I might need some help catching this guy but, if he did, then I didn’t see him.’
‘You’re full of shit, Parker. We got three, maybe four, sets of prints running in the direction of that clearing. Now I’m going to ask you again: why is this guy attacking waitresses in my town?’
‘I don’t know,’ I lied, again. If the conversation had been a horse, someone would have shot it by now.
‘Don’t give me that. You spotted the guy. You were moving after him before he even went for the girl.’ He paused. ‘Assuming it was Carlene Simmons he was after to begin with.’ His face took on a thoughtful expression, and his eyes never left my face. I didn’t like him. I never had, and what had passed between us gave neither of us any particular reason to mend our fences, but he wasn’t dumb. He stood and went to the window, where he stared out into the blackness for a time. ‘Sergeant,’ he said at last, ‘will you excuse us?’
Behind me, I heard Ressler shift his weight and the soft, deliberate tread of his footsteps as he walked to the door and closed it quietly behind him. Jennings turned to me then and cracked the knuckles of his right hand by crushing them in his left.
‘I took a swing at you now, not one man outside this room would try to stop me, even if he wanted to. Not one man would interfere.’ His voice was calm, but his eyes burned.
‘You take a swing at me, Rand, you better hope someone tries to interfere. You might be glad of the help.’
He sat on the edge of his desk, facing me, his right hand still cupped in his left and resting on his thighs. ‘I hear you been seen around town with my wife.’ He wasn’t looking at me now. Instead, all his attention seemed to be focused on his hands, his eyes examining every scar and wrinkle, every vein and pore. They were old man’s hands, I thought, older than they should have been. There was a tiredness about Jennings, a weariness. Being with someone who doesn’t love you just so no one else can have her takes its toll on a man. It takes its toll on the woman too.
I didn’t respond to his statement, but I could tell what he was thinking. Things come around sometimes. Call it fate, destiny, God’s will. Call it bad luck if you’re trying to keep a dying marriage frozen so that it doesn’t decay any further, like those egomaniacs who keep their bodies frozen in nitrogen after death in the hope that, centuries later, medical technology will have advanced and they can be revivified, as if somehow the world will want an old corpse from the past wandering through the present. I think Rand’s marriage had been like that, something that he willed to be the way it was, frozen in some neverworld waiting for the miracle that would bring it back to life. And then I had arrived like the April thaw and he had felt the whole construct start to melt around his ears. I had nothing to offer his wife, at least nothing that I was prepared to give. What she saw in me, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was less to do with me than with what I represented: lost opportunities, paths untaken, second chances.
‘You hear what I said?’ he asked.
‘I heard.’
‘Is it true?’ He looked at me then, and he was scared. He wouldn’t have called it that, wouldn’t even have admitted it to himself, but it was fear. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, he did still love his wife, although in such a strange way, in a manner that was so disengaged from ordinary life, that it had ceased to have any meaning for either of them.