'Soon,' he said.
'You're looking for them, aren't you, the ones who did this to him?'
'Yes.'
'Nobody ever got this close to him before. Nobody ever hurt him so badly. If he dies . . .'
'Don't say that. Remember what your daughter told you: he's still deciding, and he has a reason to come back. He loves Sam, and he loves you, even if you are fucking an asshole like Jeff.'
'Go away,' said Rachel. 'Do something useful.'
'Yes, ma'am,' said Angel.
He hung up. Louis stood beside him, waiting. He handed Angel a Beretta 21 ftted with a suppressor that was barely longer than the pistol itself. The Beretta could now be fred in a restaurant and would make a sound only slightly louder than a spoon striking against the side of a cup. Louis carried a similar weapon in the pocket of his Belstaff jacket.
They were off to do something useful.
They were going to meet and, if necessary, kill the Collector.
48
Ronald Straydeer sat in the living room of his home near
the Scarborough Downs racetrack. He held in his hands a photograph of himself as a younger man in uniform, his left arm encircling the neck of a massive German Shepherd dog. Ronald was smiling in the picture, and he liked to think that Elsa was smiling, too.
He wished that he still smoked pot. He wished that he still drank. It would have been easy to return to doing one or the other, or even both. Under the circumstances, it would not have been surprising or blameworthy. Instead he spoke to the picture, and to the ghost of the dog within it.
He was often asked, by those who did not know any better, why he had not found himself another dog in the intervening years. He knew there were some who said that those who kept dogs had to resign themselves to their eventual loss because of the animals' relatively short lives. The trick – if trick was the right word – was to learn to love the spirit of the animal, and to recognize that it transferred itself from dog to dog, with each one representing the same life force. Ronald believed that there might be some sense in this, but he felt, too, that men might equally say the same thing about women, and vice versa. He had known plenty of women, and had even loved one or two of them, so he had some experience in the matter. But some men and women lost a partner early in life and never managed to give themselves again to another, and Ronald thought there might have been something of that catastrophic sense of loss to his feelings for his lost dog. He was not a sentimental man – although, again, some mistook his grieving for a dead animal as sentimentality. Ronald Straydeer had simply loved the dog, and Elsa had saved his life and the lives of his brother soldiers on more than one occasion. In the end he was forced to abandon and betray her, and the sight of her, caged and scratching at the wire as she was taken from him, had torn at him every day since then. His only hope was that he might eventually be reunited with his dog in a world beyond this one.
Now he told the ghost of the dog about the church and the girl and the shadows that had encircled her before she was dragged beneath the ground. He could have gone to the police, but there was a policeman involved. And what could he have told them: that he saw a girl kneel by a hole in the earth and then disappear? All he had was a fragment of pale material. Could they extract DNA from it? Ronald did not know. It depended, he supposed, on whether it had touched the girl's skin for long enough, if it had touched her at all. He had placed the material in one of the resealable bags that he used for food and waste. It was before him now. He held it up to the light, but he could see no traces of blood on it, and it seemed to him to be stained only by dirt. He did not know her name, and he was not sure if he could have identifed her from the glimpse that he caught of her in the greenish light of his night vision lens. He knew only that she was not Jude's daughter. He had seen photographs of Annie. Jude had shared them with him, and Ronald retained an uncanny recall for faces and names. The girl swallowed by the churchyard was younger than Jude's daughter. Ronald wondered if Annie, too, lay somewhere in that cemetery, if her fate had been the same as that poor girl's. If so, how many others slept beneath the church, embraced by roots? (For they were not shadows that had wrapped themselves around the girl as she was taken, oh no . . .)
But Ronald also understood instinctively that, even if people were to believe him and a search was eventually conducted, men could dig long and deep in that churchyard without fnding any trace of the girl. As he worked at the collapsed earth with his bare hands, hoping to reveal some sign of her, he had felt the presence of a perfect and profound hostility, a malevolent hunger given form. It was this, more than any inability to keep digging, that had caused him to abandon his efforts to fnd a body. Even now, he was glad that he had used the water in the Fulcis' truck to clean his hands of the soil from that place, and one of their towels to dry them, and had then disposed of the towel in a Dumpster so that it would not be used again. He was grateful not to have contaminated his home with even a fragment of that cursed earth, and he kept sealed the bag containing the piece of material lest some minute particle of grit should fall from it and pollute all.
The detective would have known what to do, but he was dying. He had friends, though: clever men, dangerous men. Right now, those men would be looking for the ones responsible for shooting him. Ronald didn't fnd it hard to make a connection between the detective's inquiries into the disappearance of Annie Broyer and the sight of an unknown girl being dragged beneath the ground while a group of men and women stood by and watched. It wasn't much of a stretch from there to imagine a set of circumstances in which those same people might have seen ft to try and take the detective's life.
And if he was wrong? Well, the men who stood by the detective were more like him than perhaps even they knew, and they had wrath to spare. Ronald would fnd a way to contact them, and together they would avenge those trapped in uneasy rest beneath the dirt of Prosperous.
As Ronald Straydeer sat in contemplation and mourning, the bodies of Magnus and Dianne Madsen, and Erin Dixon, were discovered by police after Magnus failed to appear as scheduled for his hospital duties. The Maine State Police informed Lucas Morland of the Prosperous Police Department once Erin's identity was established. With both Kayley Madsen and Harry Dixon apparently missing, a patrol car was immediately dispatched to the Dixon house, but there was no sign of Harry or his niece. Their faces duly began showing up on news channels, and an auto dealer in Medway came forward to say that he'd taken a trade-in on a GMC Passenger van with Harry Dixon just a few days earlier. The van was soon found in a patch of woodland just outside of Bangor, with Harry seated at the wheel and a hole in the back of his head where the bullet from the gun in his hand had exited. On the seat beside him was a woman's shirt, stained with blood at the collar. Its size matched clothing found in Kayley Madsen's closet, and DNA tests would subsequently confrm that the blood was Kayley's, although no other trace of her was ever found.
'prosperous: maine's cursed town' read one of the more lurid newspaper headlines in the aftermath. Prosperous crawled with MSP investigators, but Morland handled them all well. He was diligent, cooperative and unassuming. He knew his place. Only once did he experience a shred of alarm, and that was when an FBI agent named Ross visited from New York. Ross sat in Morland's offce, nibbled on a cookie, and asked about the detective, Parker. Why had he come to Prosperous? What did he want to know? And then he gave Morland a possible 'out': had Parker spoken to Harry Dixon or his wife at any point? Morland didn't know, but he conceded that it might have been possible, although why Parker might have wanted to meet with the Dixons Morland couldn't say. But anything that linked Parker to the Dixons was good for Morland, and good for Prosperous. That was a dead end, and the FBI and State Police could spend decades peering into it for all Morland cared.
'Can I ask why the FBI is interested in the shooting of a private detective in Maine?' said Morland.
'Curiosity,' said Ross. Then: 'Your town seems to be having a bad time of it lately.'
'Yeah,' said Morland. 'T
hey say these things come in threes.'
'Really?' said Ross. 'I count, uh—' He worked it out on his fngers. 'Six,' he concluded. 'Or nine, if you include the Madsens and their missing daughter. Or, wow, eleven allowing for that homeless guy in Portland, and his missing daughter. That's a lot. More than three, anyway.'
It wasn't the frst time Morland had heard something of the kind. The MSP investigators had intimated as much, and now Morland replied to Ross just as he had responded to them.
'Sir, my reckoning is two killings by religious terrorists thousands of miles from here; one accidental, self-inficted gunshot wound on an elderly man; one automobile incident; and, to our shame and regret, an apparent murder-suicide involving two of our townsfolk. I can't speak to suicides in Portland, or missing girls. I just know what this town has endured. I can't say why Harry Dixon might have killed those people. I heard that he had money problems, but a lot of folk have money problems and don't take a gun to their family as a consequence. It could be that the town's troubles caused something in him to snap. I'm no psychiatrist. But if you can establish a connection between all those disparate events, then I'll never again question the amount of taxes our government ploughs into the Bureau.'
Ross fnished his cookie.
'And the attempted murder of a private investigator,' said Ross. 'I almost forgot to add that.'
Morland didn't respond. He was all done with the FBI for now.
'Can I help you with anything else today, Agent Ross?'
'No,' said Ross. 'I think that'll be all. I appreciate your time. And the cookie was very good. My compliments to the baker.'
'My wife,' said Morland.
'You're a fortunate man,' said Ross.
He stood and buttoned his coat before heading out. There was still a chill in the air.
'And this is quite a town. Quite a town indeed.'
Thirty minutes later, Morland received a call from Pastor Warraner.
Ross had been out at the church.
49
At frst Angel and Louis believed the missive from the
Collector to be little more than a taunt. It was delivered by a bike messenger, and consisted of a padded envelope containing a single fnal bearclaw from the necklace that had once belonged to their friend, the late Jackie Garner, and a business card from the Lexington Candy Shop and Luncheonette on Lexington, the old Soda-Candy store that had been in operation at that location since 1925. It was only when Louis turned over the card and saw a date – that same day – and a time – 11 AM – written on the back that they understood this might be different, although whether it would prove to be an olive branch or a trap they were not certain.
Even the Collector's choice of a location for the meeting was not without resonance: the Lexington Candy Shop was where Gabriel, Louis's late master, would hold his meetings with clients, and sometimes with the operatives for whom he acted as a middleman, Louis among them. Perhaps, thought Louis, the distance between Cambion and Gabriel was not as great as Louis might have liked to believe. Gabriel was merely Cambion with a more highly developed moral sense, but that wasn't saying a whole lot. There were things breeding in petri dishes with a more highly developed moral sense than Cambion. By extension, the distance between Louis and Cambion might well have been signifcantly less than it was comfortable to imagine. The difference was that Louis had changed while Cambion had not. Cambion did not have a man like Angel by his side, but then a man like Angel would never have allied himself to one such as Cambion to begin with. It made Louis wonder if Angel had seen the possibility of redemption in Louis long before Louis himself had recognized it. Louis found this simultaneously fattering and slightly worrying.
The Collector's decision to nominate the Lexington Candy Shop as the venue for their meeting was his way of telling Louis that the Collector knew all he needed to know about Louis and his past. It added another layer of peculiarity to the Collector's invitation. This was not the action of a man laying a trap, but of a man willingly walking into one.
The only other customers at the diner when Angel and Louis entered were two male Japanese tourists excitedly taking photographs of the interior, with its gas-fred coffee urns and ancient signage. The Collector sat at the back of the diner, near the door marked no admittance. staff only. His hands lay fat on the table before him, resting on either side of a coffee cup. He was dressed as he nearly always was, in a long dark coat worn over dark pants, a dark jacket and a tieless shirt that had once been white but now, like his nicotine-stained fngertips, had more than a hint of yellow about it. His hair was slicked back from his forehead and hung over the collar of his shirt, adding touches of grease to the yellow. He was, thought Angel, even more cadaverous than when last they'd met. Being hunted will do that to a man.
Once Louis and Angel were inside, a middle-aged woman moved from behind the counter, locked the door and turned the sign to closed. She then unhurriedly poured two cups of coffee and left through the private staff door without looking at them or the man who sat waiting for them, stinking of cigarette smoke.
The two Japanese tourists laid down their cameras and turned to face the Collector. The younger of the men signaled almost imperceptibly to a pair of his countrymen watching from the southeastern corner of Lexington and 83rd. One of them now crossed the street to cover the front of the store while the other watched the side.
'You think I didn't notice them?' said the Collector. 'I spotted them before they were even aware of my presence.'
Louis sat at the table facing, but to the right of, the Collector, and Angel took a similar position to the Collector's left, forming a kind of lethal triangle. By the time they were seated the guns were in their hands, visible to the Collector but not to anyone glancing in casually from the street.
'We've been looking for you,' said Louis.
'I'm aware of that. You must be running out of houses to burn down.'
'You could have saved us a lot of gas money by just showing up here months ago.'
'And maybe I could have marked the spot on my forehead for the bullet to enter.'
'You should have been more careful about your choice of victims.'
Louis reached into his coat pocket with his left hand and withdrew Jackie Garner's bearclaw necklace. The claws rattled like bones as he fed them through his fngers. In his right he held the fnal claw, broken from the necklace and included with the Collector's invitation.
'I might say the same about your late friend,' said the Collector.
Slowly, precisely, so as not to cause the men before him to react, he picked up his cup and sipped his coffee.
'We can, if you choose, play the blame game until the sun starts to set, but none of us is that naïve,' he said. 'Mr Garner miscalculated, and someone close to me paid the price. I reacted in anger, and Mr Garner died. You'll forgive me if I refuse to allow someone like you, a man with the blood of both the innocent and the guilty on his hands, to admonish me about the appropriateness or otherwise of killing. Hypocrisy is a particularly galling vice.'
Angel inclined slightly toward Louis.
'Are we being lectured by a serial killer?'
'You know, I do believe we are.'
'It's a novel experience.'
'Yes, it is. I still won't miss him after we kill him.'
'No, me neither.'
The Collector's hands were, once again, resting on the table. He showed no sign of unease. It might have been that he was not aware of how close he was to death, or he simply might not have cared.
'I hear that your friend, the detective, is dying,' he said.
'Or still living,' said Angel. 'It's a matter of perspective.'
'He is an unusual man. I don't claim to understand him, but I would prefer it if he survived. The world is more colorful for his presence. He draws evil to him like moths to light. It makes the practitioners easier to dispose of.'
'You come here to deliver a get well soon wish?' said Louis. 'We'll be sure to pass it on. And if he does die, wel
l, you may just be in a position to express your regrets to him personally.'
The Collector stared out the window at the two Japanese men, then took in the second pair in the diner.
'Where do you fnd these people?' he asked.
'We attract them,' said Louis. 'Like moths to light,' he added, appropriating the Collector's metaphor for himself.
'Is that what you are now? The force of light?'
'In the absence of another.'
'Yes, I suspect yours is only refected light,' said the Collector. 'You're looking for the ones who shot him. I can help you.'
'How?'
'I can give you their names. I can tell you where to fnd them.'
'And why would you do that?'
'To cut a deal. Eldritch is ill. He needs rest and time to recuperate. The strain of the hunt is telling on him. As for me, it's interfering with my work. While I try to stay one step ahead of you, vicious men and women go unpunished. So I will give you the names, and as part of the bargain you will abandon the hunt. You must be tiring of it as much as I, and you know that your Mr Garner did wrong. If I had not killed him, he would be spending the rest of his days in a cell. In a way, I did him a favor. He would not have lasted long in prison. He was not as strong as we are.'