The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  But All Saints is not as it might seem from the outside, for it is in fact two structures. The first, the chapel, is aboveground; the second, known as Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives, lies below. While what is above is a monument to the prospect of a better life beyond this one, what lies beneath is a testament to the transience of all things mortal. It is a strange place, a buried place, and none who spend time among its wonders can ever forget it.

  Legend tells that Jindrich, an abbot of Sedlec, brought back with him from the Holy Land a sack of soil that he scattered over the cemetery. It came to be regarded as an outpost of the Holy Land itself, and people from all across Europe were buried there, alongside plague victims and those who had fallen in the many conflicts waged in its surrounding fields. These bones at last became so plenteous that something had to be done with them, and in 1511 the task of disposing of them was reputedly entrusted to a half-blind monk. He arranged an accumulation of skulls into pyramids, and so began the great work that would become the ossuary at Sedlec. In the aftermath of Emperor Joseph II’s reforms, the monastery was purchased by the Orlik line of the Schwarzenberg family, but development of the ossuary continued. A woodcarver named Frantisek Rint was brought in, and his imagination was allowed free rein. From the remains of forty thousand people, Rint created a monument to death.

  A great chandelier of skulls hangs from the ossuary ceiling. Skulls form the base for its candleholders, each resting on pelvic arches, with a humerus clasped beneath its upper jaw. Where delicate crystals should hang, bones dangle vertically, connecting the skulls to the central support via a system of vertebrae. There are more bones here, small and large, forming the support itself and adorning the chains that anchor the skulls to the ceiling. Great lines of skulls, each clasping a bone beneath its jaw, line the arches of the ossuary at each side of the chandelier. They hang in loops, and form four narrow pyramids in the center of the floor, creating a square beneath the chandelier, each skull facing a single candle.

  There are other wonders too: a monstrance made of bone, with a skull at its center where the host should be, six femurs radiating from behind, smaller bones and vertebrae interwoven with them. Bones mask the wooden support around which the monstrance has been constructed and its base is a U ending at either side in another skull. There are wreaths and vases and goblets, all made of bone; even the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms is formed of bone, with a crown of skulls and pelvises at its peak. Those bones that have not found a practical use are stored in great piles beneath stone arches.

  Here, the dead sleep.

  Here are treasures, seen and unseen.

  Here is temptation.

  And here is evil.

  9

  The windows in the room were covered with sheets of metal riveted to the walls, preventing any natural light from entering. There were pieces of bone on a workbench: ribs, a radius and ulna, sections of skull. A smell of urine added a sharp, unpleasant character to the stale air in the room. Beneath the bench were four or five wooden packing crates containing straw and paper. Against the far wall, to the right of the blacked-out windows, was a console table. At each end rested more skulls, all missing their lower jaw, with what appeared to be a bone from the upper arm clasped beneath the upper mandible. A hole had been made in the tops of the skulls, into which candles had been inserted. They flickered, illuminating the figure that hovered behind them.

  It was black, about two feet in height, and appeared to be made from a combination of human and animal remains. The wing of a large bird had been carefully stripped of its skin and feathers, and the bones skillfully fixed in place so that the wing stood outstretched, as though the creature to which it belonged were about to take flight. The wing was fixed to a section of spine from which a small rib cage also curled. It might have belonged to a child or a monkey, but I couldn’t tell. To the left of the spine there was, instead of a second wing, a skeletal arm, with all of the bones in place, right down to the tiny fingers. The arm was raised, the fingers grasping. They ended in small sharp nails. The right leg looked like the back leg of a cat or dog, judging by the angle of the joint. The left was clearly closer to that of a human, but was unfinished, the wire frame visible from the ankle down.

  The fusion of animal and man was clearest, though, in the head, which was slightly out of proportion to the rest of the figure. Whoever had crafted it possessed an artistry to match his disturbed vision. A multiplicity of different creatures had been used to create it, and I had to look closely to find the lines where one ended and another began: half of a primate’s jaw was carefully attached to that of a child, while the upper part of the facial area between jaws and forehead had been formed using sections of white bone and bird heads. Finally, horns emerged from the top of a human skull, one barely visible and resembling that of the nodes on the head of an immature deer, the other ramlike and curling around the back of the skull, almost touching the statue’s small clavicle.

  “If this guy is subletting, he’s in a shitload of trouble,” said Angel.

  Louis was examining one of the skulls upon the workbench, his face barely inches from its empty sockets.

  “They look old,” I said, answering a question that had not been asked.

  He nodded, then left the room. I heard him moving boxes around, searching for some clue as to the whereabouts of Alice.

  I followed the smell of urine to the bathroom. The tub contained more bones, all soaking in yellow liquid.

  The stink of ammonia made my eyes water. I made a cursory search of the cabinets, a handkerchief pressed to my nose and mouth, then closed the door behind me. Angel was still examining the bone statue, apparently fascinated by it. I wasn’t surprised. The creation looked like it belonged in an art gallery or a museum. It was repugnant, but breathtaking in its artistry and in the fluidity with which one creature’s remains flowed into the next.

  “I just can’t figure out what the hell this is supposed to be,” he asked. “It looks like a man changing into a bird, or a bird changing into a man.”

  “You see a lot of birds with horns?” I said.

  Angel reached out a finger to touch the protuberances on the skull, then thought better of it.

  “I guess it’s not a bird, then.”

  “I guess not.”

  I took a piece of newspaper from the floor and used it to lift one of the skull candlesticks from the table, then shined my mini Maglite inside. There were serial numbers of some kind etched into the bone. I examined the others and all had similar markings, except for one that was adorned with the symbol of a two-pronged fork and rested on a pelvic bone. I took one of the numbered skulls and placed it in a tea chest, then carefully added the forked skull and the statue. I took the box into the next room, where Louis was kneeling on the floor. Before him stood an open suitcase. It contained tools, among them scalpels, files and small bone saws, all carefully packed away in canvas pockets, and a pair of video cassettes. Each was labeled along the side with a long line of initials, and dates.

  “He was getting ready to leave,” said Louis.

  “Looks like it.”

  He gestured at the chest in my hands.

  “You found something?”

  “Maybe. There are marks on these skulls. I’d like someone to take a look at them, perhaps at the statue too.”

  Louis removed one of the cassettes from the case, placed it in the VCR, then turned on the TV. There was nothing to be seen for a time except static, then the picture cleared. It showed an area of yellow sand and stone, across which the camera panned jerkily before coming to rest upon the partially clothed body of a young woman. She lay facedown upon the ground, and there was blood upon her back, her legs, and the once-white shorts that she wore. Her dark hair was spread across the sand like tendrils of ink in dirty water.

  The young woman stirred. A male voice spoke in what sounded like Spanish.

  “I think he said that she’s still alive,” said Louis.

  A figure appeared in f
ront of the camera. The cameraman moved slightly to get a better view. A pair of expensive black boots came into view.

  “No,” said another voice, in English.

  The camera was pushed away, preventing it from getting a clear view of the man or the girl. It picked up a sound like a coconut cracking. Someone laughed. The cameraman recovered himself and focused once again on the girl. There was blood flowing across the sand around her head.

  “Puta.” It was the first voice again.

  Whore.

  The tape went blank for a moment, then resumed. This time, the girl had yellow highlights in her dark hair, but the surroundings were similar: sand and rocks. A bug stalked across a smear of blood close by her mouth, the only part of her face that was visible beneath her hair. A hand reached out, sweeping the hair back so that the cameraman could get a better view of her, then that section ended, and a new one began, with another dead girl, this one naked on a rock.

  Louis fast-forwarded the tape. I lost track of the number of women. When he was done, he inserted the second cassette and did the same. Once or twice, a girl with darker skin appeared and he stopped the image, examining it closely before moving on. All of the women were Hispanic.

  “I’m going to call the cops,” I told him.

  “Not yet. This guy ain’t gonna leave this shit here for just anyone to find. He’ll come back for it, and soon. If you’re right about being watched in the alley, then whoever lives here could be outside right now. I say we wait.”

  I thought about what I was going to say to him before I opened my mouth. Rachel, had she been present to witness it, might have considered this progress on my part.

  “Louis, we don’t have time to wait around. The cops can do surveillance better than we can. This guy is a link, but maybe we can pick up the chain further on. The longer we stay still, the more the chances diminish of finding Alice before something bad happens to her.”

  I’ve seen people, even experienced cops, fall into the trap of using the past tense when talking about a missing person. That’s why, sometimes, it pays to work out in your head what you’re planning to say before the words start spilling out of your mouth.

  I gently lifted the box I was holding. “Stay here for a while longer, see what else you can find. If I can’t get back here first, I’ll call you and give you time to get out before I talk to the cops.”

  Garcia sat in his car and watched the men enter his apartment. He guessed that the pimp was smarter than he had appeared to be, because there was no other way that they could have found his base so quickly. The pimp had followed someone to Garcia, probably in an effort to gain some room for maneuver in case his betrayal of the girl rebounded on him. Garcia was furious. A day or two later and the apartment would have been empty, its occupant gone. There was much in those rooms that was valuable to Garcia. He wanted it back. Yet Brightwell’s instructions had been clear: follow them and find out where they go, but don’t hurt them or attempt to engage them. If they separated, he was to stay with the man in the leather jacket, the one who had lingered in the alleyway as though aware of their presence. The fat man had appeared distracted as he left Garcia, but also strangely excited. Garcia knew better than to ask him why.

  Don’t hurt them.

  But that was before Brightwell knew where they were going. Now they were in Garcia’s place, and close to what they were seeking, although they might not recognize it if they saw it. Nevertheless, if they called the police, then Garcia would become a marked man in this country just as he was back home, and he might also be at risk from the very people who were sheltering him if his exposure threatened to bring down trouble on their heads. Garcia tried to recall if there was any way of connecting Brightwell to him through whatever remained in the apartment. He didn’t believe so, but he had watched some of the cop shows on TV and sometimes it seemed like they could perform miracles using only dust and dirt. Then he considered all of his hard work in recent months, the great effort of construction for which he had been brought to the city. This too was threatened by the presence of the visitors. If they discovered it, or decided to report whatever they found in Garcia’s apartment, then all would be undone. Garcia was proud of what had been built; it was worthy to stand alongside the Capuchin church in Rome, the church behind the Farnese Palace, even Sedlec itself.

  Garcia took out his cell. Brightwell’s number was to be called only in an emergency, but Garcia figured that this qualified. He entered the digits and waited.

  “They’re at my place,” he said, once the fat man answered.

  “What remains?”

  “Tools,” said Garcia. “Materials.”

  “Anything that I should be concerned about?”

  Garcia considered his options, then made his decision.

  “No,” he lied.

  “Then walk away.”

  “I will,” Garcia lied again.

  When I’m done.

  He touched his fingers to the small relic that hung from a silver chain amid the hairs of his chest. It was a shard of bone, taken from the body of the woman for whom these men were searching, these trespassers on Garcia’s sacred place. Garcia had dedicated the relic to his guardian, to Santa Muerte, and now it was imbued with her spirit, her essence.

  “Muertecita,” he whispered, as his anger grew. “Reza por mi.”

  Sarah Yeates was one of those people you needed in your life. Apart from being smart and funny, she was also a treasure trove of esoteric information, a status that was due at least in part to her work in the library of the Museum of Natural History. She was dark haired, looked about ten years younger than her age, and had the kind of personality that scared off dumb men and forced the smart ones to think fast on their feet. I wasn’t sure which category I fell into where Sarah was concerned. I hoped I was in the second group, but I sometimes suspected that I might be included by default and Sarah was just waiting for a vacancy to open up in the first group so she could file me there instead.

  I called her at home. It took her a few rings to answer, and when she did her voice was foggy with sleep.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Hello to you too.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Charlie Parker. Am I calling at a bad time?”

  “You are if you’re trying to be funny. You do know what time it is, right?”

  “Late.”

  “Yeah, which is what you’ll be if you don’t have a good reason for calling me.”

  “It’s important. I need to pick your brain about something.”

  I heard her sigh and sink back into her pillow.

  “Go on.”

  “I have some items that I’ve found in an apartment. They’re human bones. Some have been made into candlesticks. There’s also a statue of some kind, constructed from human and animal remains mixed together. I found a bath of urine with bones in it, and I think they may have been ‘harvested’ quite recently. Pretty soon I’m going to have to call the cops and tell them what I’ve found, so I don’t have long. You’re the first person I’ve woken over this, but I expect to wake others before the night is through. Is there anyone in the museum, or even outside it, who might be able to tell me something I can use?”

  Sarah was quiet for so long that I thought she’d fallen asleep again.

  “Sarah?” I said.

  “Jeez, you’re impatient,” she said. “Give a girl time to think.”

  There were noises from the other end of the line as she got out of bed, told me to hold on, then put the phone down. I waited, hearing drawers opening and closing in the background. Eventually she came back.

  “I’m not going to give you the name of anyone at the museum, because I’d kind of like to keep my job. It pays my rent, you know, and enables me to keep a telephone so dipshits who don’t even remember to send a Christmas card can call me in the dead of night asking for my help.”

  “I didn’t know you were religious.”

  “That’s not the point. I like present
s.”

  “I’ll make it up to you this year.”

  “You’d better. Okay, if this runs dry I’ll arrange for you to talk to some people in the morning, but this is the guy you need to meet anyway. You got a pen? Right, well you also have a namesake. His name is Neddo, Charles Neddo. He’s got a place down in Cortlandt Alley. The plate beside his door says he’s an antique dealer, but the front of the store is full of junk. He wouldn’t make enough out of it to feed flies if it weren’t for his sidelines.”

  “Which are?”

  “He deals in what collectors term ‘esoterica’. Occult stuff, mainly, but he’s been known to sell artifacts that you don’t generally find outside of museum basements. He keeps that merchandise in a locked room behind a curtain at the back of the store. I’ve been in there, once or twice, so I know what I’m talking about. I seem to recall seeing items similar to the ones you’re referring to, although Neddo’s equivalents would be pretty old. He’s the place to start, though. He lives above the store. Go wake him up, and let me get back to sleep.”

  “Will he cooperate with a stranger?”

  “He will if the stranger offers him something in return. Just be sure to bring along your finds. If they’re interesting to him, then you’ll learn something.”

  “Thanks, Sarah.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I hear you found a girlfriend. How’d that happen?”

  “Good luck.”

  “Yours, I think, not hers. Don’t forget my present.”

  Then she hung up.

  Louis moved through the unfinished floor, framed by doorways and lit by moonlight, until he came at last to the window. The window did not look onto the street. Instead, it showed Louis the dimly lit interior of a white-tiled room. In the center of the room, over a drain in the sloped floor, a chair had been fixed. There were leather restraints on the arms and the legs.