The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  That was it, thought Kozelek. The man didn’t care. His reputation and career were on the line. He had blood on his hands. When the circumstances of the killings began to emerge, the press would be baying for his blood, and there would be those within the department who might be prepared to throw Will Parker to the dogs as a sacrifice, a way of showing that the department wouldn’t tolerate killers on the force. Already, Kozelek knew, that discussion was taking place, as men with reputations to protect balanced the advisability of weathering the storm and standing by their officer against the possibility that to do so might further tarnish the reputation of a department that was already unloved and still reeling from a series of corruption investigations.

  ‘You say that you didn’t know these kids?’ said Kozelek. The question had been asked more than once already in that room, but Kozelek had caught a flicker of uncertainty in Parker’s face each time he had denied any knowledge of them, and he saw it again now.

  ‘The boy looked familiar, but I don’t think I’d ever met him.’

  ‘His name was Joe Dryden. Native of Birmingham, Alabama. Arrived here a couple of months ago. He already had a record: nickel-and-dime stuff, mostly, but he was on his way to greater things.’

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t know him personally.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘Never saw her before.’

  ‘Missy Gaines. Came from a nice family in Jersey. Her parents reported her missing a week ago. Any idea how she might have come to be with Dryden in Pearl River?’

  ‘You asked me these questions already. I told you: I don’t know.’

  ‘Who visited your house yesterday evening?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘We have a witness who says he saw a man enter your house last night. He stayed for some time. The witness seems to be under the impression that the man had a gun in his hand.’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but your witness must be mistaken.’

  ‘I think the witness is reliable.’

  ‘Why didn’t he call the cops?’

  ‘Because your wife answered the door and allowed the man to enter. It appears that she knew him.’

  Will shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  Kozelek took a final drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the cracked ashtray.

  ‘Why’d you turn off the tape?’ asked Will.

  ‘Because IAD doesn’t know about the armed man,’ said Kozelek. ‘I was hoping you might tell me why you thought they were sufficiently at risk that you needed to protect them, and how that might connect to the two kids you shot.’

  But Will didn’t answer and Kozelek, realizing that the situation was unlikely to change, gave up for the time being.

  ‘If IAD does find out, they’ll question your wife. You need to get your story straight. Jesus, why couldn’t you just have thrown down a gun? A gun in the car, and all of this would be unnecessary.’

  ‘Because I don’t have a throwdown,’ said Will, and for the first time he showed some real animation. ‘I’m not that kind of cop.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kozelek, ‘I have news for you: there are two dead kids in a car, both of them unarmed. So, as of now, you are that kind of cop . . .’

  24

  We were coming to the end.

  ‘I picked your father up from the Orangetown PD before noon,’ said Jimmy. ‘There were reporters outside, so they put a cop who’d just come off duty in the backseat of an unmarked sedan with a coat over his head, and then they drove him out in an explosion of flashbulbs while I waited at the back of the station house for your father. We drove to a place called Creeley’s in Orangetown. It’s not there anymore. There’s a gas station where it used to be. Back then, it was the kind of bar that did a good burger, kept the lights low, and nobody asked anybody anything beyond “Another one?” or “You want fries with that?” I used to go there with my nephew and my sister sometimes. We don’t talk so much anymore, my sister and me. She lives out in Chicago now. She thought I put my nephew at risk by asking him to do what he did for you and your mother, but we’d been growing apart from each other long before that.’

  I didn’t interrupt him. He was circling the awfulness of what was to come, like a dog fearful of taking tainted meat from a stranger’s hand.

  ‘As it happened, there was nobody in the place when we got there, apart from the bartender. I knew him, and he knew me. I guess he might have recognized your father too, but if he did, he didn’t say anything either way. We had coffee, we talked.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Jimmy shrugged, as if it were a matter of no consequence. ‘He said what Epstein had said: they were the same people. They looked different, but he saw it in their eyes, and the girl’s words and the marking on the boy just confirmed it. That threat of returning. I think of it all the time.’

  He seemed to shiver slightly, still water brushed by a cold breeze.

  ‘And then, just before he fired the first shot, he said he could have sworn that their faces changed.’

  ‘Changed?’

  ‘Yeah, changed, just like the woman I killed at Gerritsen Beach, I guess. Best he could explain it, he said it was like a pair of masks that they wore became transparent for an instant, and he saw the things behind them. That was when he pulled the trigger on the boy. He couldn’t even remember killing the girl. He knew that he’d done it; he just couldn’t recall how it had happened.

  ‘After an hour, he asked me to drive him back home, but when we left Creeley’s there were two IAD guys waiting for us. They told me that they’d take Will to the house. They said they were worried about reporters, but I think they just wanted a few more minutes alone with him in the hope that I might have convinced him to come clean. I mean, they knew what he had told them didn’t add up. They were just having trouble finding the cracks in his version. I don’t think he said anything more, though. Later, after he died, they tried to sweat me, but I didn’t tell them anything either. After that, I was pretty much done as a cop. I served out my time at the Ninth, just so I could claim my full benefits and pension.

  ‘So that was the last time I saw Will, as the IAD guys were taking him away. He thanked me for all that I’d done, and he shook my hand. I should have known what was coming then, but I wasn’t looking out for it. We had never shaken hands before, not since the first day we met at the academy. It just wasn’t a thing for us. I watched him go, and then I came back here. The call came through before I’d even had a chance to take off my shoes. It was my nephew who told me. The thing of it was, if you’d asked me then if I was surprised, I’d have said “no.” Twenty-four hours earlier, I’d have told you it could never happen, Will Parker eating his gun, but, looking back, when we were sitting in Creeley’s I could tell that he wasn’t the same man. He looked old, and beaten. I don’t think he could believe what he had seen, and what he had done. It was just too much for him.

  ‘The funeral was a strange one. I don’t know what you remember of it, but there were people who should have been there but weren’t. The commissioner didn’t show, and that wasn’t a surprise, not for what was being tagged as a murder-suicide. But there were others – brass, mainly, suits from the Puzzle Palace – who stayed away when usually they’d have made an appearance. There was a bad smell around what happened, and they knew it. The papers were all over them, and they didn’t like it. In a way, and you’ll forgive me for saying it, your old man dying was the best thing that could have happened for them. If an inquiry had vindicated him, the press would have hauled them over the fires of hell for it. If the shootings were found to be unjustified, then there would have been a court case, and the cops on the street, and the union, they’d all have been spitting nails. When Will killed himself, they got to bury the whole mess along with him. The investigation into what happened was always set to be inconclusive once he was gone. The only people who knew the truth of what took place on that patch of waste
ground were all dead.

  ‘Will got an inspector’s funeral, though, the whole deal. The band played, and there were white gloves and black ribbons, and a folded flag for your mother. Because of the way he went, his benefits were in doubt. You may not know this, but an inspector from Police Plaza, a guy named Jack Stepp, he had a quiet word with your mother as she was walking back to the funeral car. Stepp was the commissioner’s fixer, the guy who cleaned up behind the scenes. He told her that she’d be taken care of, and she was. They paid the benefits under the table. Somebody made sure that she was done right by, that you were both looked after.

  ‘Epstein contacted me after the funeral. He didn’t attend. I think it was too high profile for him, and he’s not a high-profile guy. He came here, to this house, and he sat in the chair that you’re sitting in now, and he asked me what I knew about the killings, and I told him the same thing that I’ve told you, all of it. Then he went away, and I never saw him again. I didn’t even speak to him until you came along asking questions, and then Wallace turned up after you, and I felt that I had to inform Epstein. Wallace I wasn’t worried about so much: there are ways that these things can be handled, and I figured he could be frightened off if the need arose. But you: I knew you’d keep coming back, that once you’d gotten it into your head to go nosing around in the dirt then you wouldn’t stop until you came up with bones. Epstein told me that his people were already working on stopping Wallace, and that I should tell you what I knew.’

  He sat back in his chair, spent.

  ‘So now you know everything.’

  ‘And you kept it hidden all this time?’

  ‘I didn’t even discuss it with your mother and, to tell you the truth, I was kind of glad when she said she was taking you up to Maine. It made me feel like I didn’t have to be responsible for you. It made me feel like I could pretend to forget everything.’

  ‘Would you ever have told me if I hadn’t come asking?’

  ‘No. What good would it have done?’ Then he seemed to reconsider. ‘Look, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve read about you, and I’ve heard the stories about the people you’ve found, and the men and women you’ve killed. All those cases have been touched by something strange. Maybe, in the last couple of years, I’ve thought that you should be told so that—’

  He was struggling to find the right words.

  ‘So that what?’

  He settled upon them, although not happily. ‘So that you’d be ready for them when they came again,’ he said.

  25

  The call came through to my cell phone shortly before midnight. Jimmy had gone to make up the bed in the spare room, and I was seated at the kitchen table, still trying to come to terms with what he had told me. The ground beneath my feet no longer seemed solid, and I did not trust myself to stand and remain upright. Perhaps I should have doubted Jimmy’s story, or at least remained skeptical of some of the details until I could investigate them further for myself, but I did not. I knew in my heart that all he had told me was true.

  I checked the caller ID before I answered, but I did not recognize the number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr. Parker? Charlie Parker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Detective Doug Santos over at the Six-Eight. Sir, I was wondering where you happen to be right now?’

  The Six-Eight covered Bay Ridge, where I had once lived with my family. Cops from that precinct, as well as Walter Cole, had been the first on the scene on the night that Susan and Jennifer died.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Please, just answer the question.’

  ‘I’m in Brooklyn. Bensonhurst.’

  His tone changed. Where at first he had merely been brusque and efficient, there was now a greater urgency to his words. I didn’t know how it had happened, but in the space of a couple of seconds I sensed that I had become a potential suspect.

  ‘Can you give me an address? I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘What’s this about, Detective? It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.’

  ‘I’d prefer to speak to you in person. That address?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Jimmy had just come back from the bathroom. He raised an eyebrow in inquiry as I covered the phone with my hand.

  ‘It’s a cop from the Six-Eight. He wants to talk to me. Is it okay with you if I meet him here? I’m getting a vibe from him that tells me I might be in need of an alibi.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jimmy ‘You get a name?’

  ‘Santos.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Don’t know him. It’s late, but, if you want, I can make some calls, find out what’s happening.’

  I gave Santos the address. He told me that he’d be there within the hour. Meanwhile, Jimmy had begun to call his own contacts, although Walter Cole remained an option if he came up short. He also disposed of the empty wine bottle while he made the first call, which turned out to be enough for him to find out something. When he hung up the phone, he was shaken.

  ‘There’s been a killing,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You won’t like it. 1219 Hobart. There’s a dead man in the kitchen of your old house. You may have mixed feelings when you hear who it is. It’s Mickey Wallace.’

  Santos arrived half an hour later. He was tall and dark, and probably not much more than thirty years of age. He had the hungry look of someone who intended to ascend the career ladder as fast as humanly possible, and wouldn’t be troubled by stomping on fingers on the way up. He looked disappointed when it emerged that I had an alibi for the entire evening, and a cop alibi at that. Still, he accepted a cup of coffee and, if he wasn’t exactly friendly, he thawed enough not to hold the fact that I was no longer a viable suspect against me.

  ‘You knew this guy?’ he asked.

  ‘He was planning to write a book about me.’

  ‘And how did you feel about that?’

  ‘Not so good. I tried to discourage him.’

  ‘You mind if I ask how?’ If Santos had been endowed with antennae, they’d have started twitching. I might not have killed Wallace myself, but I could have found someone else to do it for me.

  ‘I told him that I wouldn’t cooperate. I made sure that nobody else I was close to would cooperate with him either.’

  ‘Looks like he didn’t take the hint.’ Santos sipped his coffee. He seemed pleasantly surprised at the taste. ‘It’s good coffee,’ he said to Jimmy.

  ‘Blue Mountain,’ said Jimmy. ‘Only the best.’

  ‘You say you worked the Ninth?’ said Santos.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Santos turned his attention back to me. ‘Your father worked the Ninth too, didn’t he?’

  I almost admired Santos’s ability to come up to speed so quickly. Unless he’d been keeping tabs before now, someone must have read the salient details of my file over the phone to him as he’d driven to Bensonhurst.

  ‘Right again,’ I said.

  ‘Catching up on old times?’

  ‘Is that relevant to the case at hand?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

  ‘Look, detective,’ I said, ‘I wanted Wallace to stop nosing around in my life, but I didn’t want him dead. And if I was going to have him killed, I wouldn’t have had it done in the room where my wife and daughter died, and I’d have made sure that I was far away when it happened.’

  Santos nodded. ‘Guess you’re right. I know who you are. Whatever else people say about you, you’re not dumb.’

  ‘Nice to hear,’ I said.

  ‘Ain’t it, though?’ He sighed. ‘I talked to some people before I came here. They said it wasn’t your style.’

  ‘They tell you what was my style?’

  ‘They told me I didn’t want to know, and I trusted them on it, but they confirmed that it wasn’t what was done to Mickey Wallace.’

  I waited.

  ‘He was tortured with a blade,’ said Santos. ‘It wasn’t
sophisticated, but it was effective. My guess is that someone wanted him to talk. Once he’d told what he knew, his throat was cut.’

  ‘Nobody heard anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How was he found?’

  ‘Patrol saw that the side gate to the house was open. The uniform went around back, saw a light in the kitchen: a small flashlight, probably Wallace’s, but we’ll have it checked for prints just in case.’

  ‘So what next?’

  ‘You free?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘No, later this week, for a date. The hell do you think?’

  ‘I’m done here,’ I said. I wasn’t, of course. Had there been no other distractions, I would have stayed with Jimmy in the hope of squeezing every last detail out of him early the next morning, once I’d had a chance to absorb all that I had been told. I might have made him go through everything again, just to be certain that there was nothing he had omitted, but Jimmy was tired. He was a man who had spent an evening confessing not only his own sins, but the sins of others. He needed to sleep.

  I knew what Santos was about to ask, and I knew that I would have to say yes, no matter how much it pained me.

  ‘I’d like you to take a look at the house,’ said Santos. ‘The body’s gone, but there’s something I want you to see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just take a look, okay?’

  I agreed. I told Jimmy that I would probably return to speak to him over the next few days, and he said that he would be there. I should have thanked him, but I did not. He had held too much back for too long. As we left, he stood on the porch and watched us go. He raised a hand in farewell, but I did not respond.

  I had not been back at Hobart Street for years, not since I had removed the last of my family’s possessions from the house, sorting them into those that I would keep and those I would discard. I think that it was one of the hardest tasks I’ve ever performed, that service for the dead. With each item that I put aside – a dress, a hat, a doll, a toy – it seemed that I was betraying their memory. I should have kept it all, for these were things that they had touched and held, and something of them resided in these familiar objects, now rendered strange by loss. It took me three days. Even now, I can recall sitting for an hour on the edge of our bed with Susan’s hairbrush in my hand, stroking the hairs that had tangled on its bristles. Was this too to be discarded, or should I keep it along with the lipstick that had molded itself to the shape of her, the blusher that retained the imprint of her finger upon it, the unwashed wineglass marked by her hands and her mouth? What was to be kept, and what was to be forgotten? In the end, perhaps I kept too much; that, or not enough. Too much to truly let go, and too little to lose myself entirely in their memory.