The Blameless Dead

by Gary Haynes

  She looked nervous, he thought, her eyes scanning the immediate area and the tree line beyond. She saw him and moved off.

  He followed her under the terrace’s overhang into a red brick tunnel with a vaulted ceiling that retained some of the original Minton tiles. The tunnel was lit by enormous globe-shaped lightbulbs and had the ambiance of a Victorian grotto. He saw that the Mexican-style shawl that hung to her waist was made of cotton rather than wool, that her beautiful eyes were darting about.

  ‘Who killed Hockey?’ he said.

  ‘A Russian gang member.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A murderer with no hope of parole. It could be as simple as someone thinking the case was going bad for Hockey. The longer he was inside, the more chance there was of him cracking. He could’ve been murdered for some other, unrelated reason.’

  She looked acquiescent, he thought.

  ‘Are you OK, Carla?’

  She nodded.

  He rubbed his brow. ‘He told me he was being sent to an army base.’

  ‘A Marine base,’ she said. ‘The FBI were consulted.’

  ‘Looks like that signed his death warrant,’ he said, solemnly.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d take it so badly.’

  ‘You think I’m in this for revenge? Is that what you think?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He shook his head. ‘So, the same people could be responsible?’ he said, referring to those that had made the DVD.

  ‘It’s a high possibility, yes.’

  She told him what Dubois had said about the old serial killer in Berlin nicknamed Snow Lion and his stomach tensed. She told him about the capture of the Chechen. She said that he couldn’t repeat that to anyone, that she would lose her badge if he did. He told her the information was safe with him.

  ‘Think back,’ she said, leaning towards him. ‘What happened in 1989?’

  Gabriel didn’t know what to make of the question, but guessed it wasn’t something random.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Think about what I just told you.’

  He racked his brain. He got it. ‘The Berlin Wall came down.’

  ‘Exactly. And thousands streamed over the border from East Berlin. We know that Kalmyk girls went missing every couple of years in New Jersey from 1990. We checked the records with the FSB. Sometimes they’re reticent about such things, but they owe the FBI for favours I don’t need to go into, and my section chief called in one of those favours. Long and short, from 1958 to 1989, fifteen young Kalmyk females went missing in Kalmykia. All under the age of eighteen. One every couple of years. They were never found. And then it stopped. Except it didn’t. It started up again in 1990 in New Jersey.’

  He felt a chill go through him, as if the man in the demon mask had ran a long, yellowing fingernail down his spine.

  ‘Sixty years,’ he said. ‘It could be the same man. The old man. The serial killer in Berlin.’

  He felt like puking.

  ‘It could be, yes.’ She pushed the fingers of her right hand through the hair on her crown. ‘It could be a coincidence.’ She nodded, as if to herself. ‘But we checked the Berlin records too from 1990. Only a few hundred Kalmyks live there now. Three Kalmyk young women have gone missing, so it’s a pattern, I believe.’

  Gabriel’s mind was in danger of overloading with it all.

  He said, ‘The Kalmyks returned to south of the Volga, Kalmykia that is, in 1957, after Khrushchev pardoned them.’

  He told her why they’d been banished from their land and something of their history, partly to ease the worry and the pain he was experiencing, he supposed. To have a handle on it too, even a vague one.

  He said, ‘It has to be linked to something. Something at least sixty years ago.’

  She nodded. ‘There’s often a trigger.’

  ‘I’m going to see the man I mentioned,’ he said, referring to the old Jew, Bronislaw Stolarski. ‘I’ll contact you afterward.’

  ‘OK, Gabriel.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Interviewing the Chechen with my section chief.’

  ‘Let me know how it goes.’

  ‘I will.’

  Gabriel turned and left.

  Carla wanted to call out to him, to tell him that Section Chief Hester had informed her that Assistant Director Johnson had deemed the request that she shared information with a criminal defence lawyer inappropriate, especially since he’d acted for the alleged perpetrator, Johnny Hockey.

  But she didn’t tell Gabriel that Hester hadn’t given her permission to work with him. There was an upside and a downside to that, she thought. The downside was that her own conscience was troubled by it, and that it wouldn’t engender what might otherwise be a healthy degree of caution in his actions. The upside was that he might otherwise refuse to continue to feed her useful information. He might do something unpredictable and alone that would put them all in danger.

  76

  The White Mountains, the next day.

  Gabriel drove past a little wooden sugar house that was used to boil down sap to produce maple syrup. The foliage — green ash, scarlet oak and European beech — was already fading. Travelling out of the canopy, he saw a deep ravine and a thunderous waterfall, and to the right, a river canyon leading out of glacial cirque. The Whites were almost a six-hour drive from New York City. Part of the greater Appalachian range, the mountains covered a quarter of New Hampshire. It was a landscape of exceptional beauty, he thought.

  Using his sat nav, he turned left off a furrowed back road onto a mud track, a few miles from Interstate 93. It had been raining heavily a couple of hours before and the track was hard going. He knew the car’s tyres and lower bodywork would be covered in pale-brown mud by the time he arrived at his destination. He still had no idea what Bronislaw Stolarski would be like, or even if the old man would consent to talking with him.

  The sky was dough coloured and just the odd speck of rain fell. The small bungalow was surrounded by rusted vehicles, empty chicken houses, windowless outbuildings and piles of household junk. A pair of grey and white huskies snarled and barked ferociously. Gabriel was glad to see they’d been chained to a sturdy iron pole impaled in the ground. His dark-tan brogues slid on the wet grass as he stepped out of the car and he had to hold onto the bonnet to stop his sand-coloured trousers from being ruined.

  Steadying himself, he inhaled the warm air, fecund with the sweet smell of the mountains.

  ‘It’s OK,’ a man’s voice said. ‘They only bite if you get within range.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ Gabriel said.

  The black man looked about sixty years old. He was sitting on a wooden chair on an uneven porch, with a make-do plastic-sheet roof. A hunting rifle was propped up against a tin box, within an arm’s reach. He stood up as Gabriel approached the porch. He wore a knee-length raincoat and a white collarless shirt.

  Up close, the man was enormous, around six five, with thick limbs and a neck like a mule’s.

  ‘We don’t get visitors,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to neither, truth be told.’

  ‘I apologize for intruding on your peace,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’ve come to see Mr Stolarski.’

  ‘Who is it, Ned?’

  It was a wheezy voice and had come from inside the bungalow.

  Gabriel watched Ned eye him up and down.

  ‘Ned, who is it?’

  ‘Just some fella from the city.’

  ‘Well wheel him in.’

  *

  They were alone. Gabriel guessed Ned had resumed his position on the porch. Bronislaw Stolarski was sitting in an armchair, its maroon fabric dulled by sunlight and age. Stroking a large ginger cat, curled up on his lap, purring, he used a handkerchief in his other hand to dab his sallow eyes.

  ‘Throat cancer,’ he said, fingering his bandaged neck now. ‘I’ve had all the chemo they can throw at me. I go for check-ups to the Norris Cotton Center
down in Grafton County. A little place called Lebanon. Waste of time, you ask me.’

  He smiled, showing perhaps a dozen half-rotten teeth.

  Gabriel nodded, smiling back. The accent had a hint of eastern Europe, although it was obvious that he’d been in the US for long enough to pick up the vernacular.

  ‘Well, sit down.’

  The interior was as ramshackle and chaotic as the exterior. There were piles of yellowing magazines and dirty laundry, the window panes were grimy and the odour musty. The few pieces of furniture were dated and dust-ridden. Even the porcelain sink was piled high with used dishes and cutlery.

  Gabriel picked up a crumpled jumper and sat on a lime-green couch, with a pale red bedsheet draped over the back, wondering if he’d attract fleas. He felt his nose itch, his eyes too. Myriad cat hairs were visible.

  ‘Don’t worry about Ned,’ Stolarski said. He put his finger to his parched-looking lips. ‘Vietnam vet. PTSD. Like me, he’s not fond of city life. He was a recon sniper. He killed more enemy than a platoon of eager marines. He can shoot the ears of a squirrel from 100 yards.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s as strong as my knees are week. I read to him nights. He doesn’t read too good. Together, we’d make a formidable man. Ned likes me to read fairy tales. No military history for him. I suppose fairy tales speak loudly about a chasm between good and evil. One that doesn’t exist. Does it?’

  ‘I guess not,’ Gabriel said.

  Stolarski was dressed in creased jeans, a pair of scuffed brown loafers and a stained cardigan, his skin seemingly wafer thin and pallid. He was bald, but steely hairs protruded from his large nostrils. His eyes were speckled with burst veins. His body was both stooped and concave.

  The cancer, Gabriel thought. He wondered why he’d been so open with him. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t spoken with anyone else but Ned in a long time. Maybe he was just made that way. It didn’t matter, but it was a good sign.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘My name is Gabriel Hall. I’m a criminal defence attorney. I spoke recently with Boris Iliev.’

  Gabriel sneezed and apologized.

  Stolarski rubbed his chin with a thumb and forefinger. ‘I remember. Smart guy. Yale professor,’ he said, pointing a long-nailed finger before retracting it immediately, as if to emphasize the point.

  ‘A colleague of mine. He told me what you’d said about your elder brother. About the Berlin bunker at the end of World War Two. He said your brother died in the Gulag. He said you asked him to contact you if he ever saw anything like the things you described again.’

  Stolarski nodded before looking at Gabriel a little warily. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but how did your brother tell you this if he was sent to a forced labour camp and died there?’

  Stolarski’s eyes narrowed. ‘No mystery, young man. My brother was let out after he got uranium poisoning. It was common in the mine. He died two months later. The Gulag killed him. No question. To be precise, he told my mother what had happened to him and she told me. I was too young at the time.’

  ‘Again, no offence, but you didn’t give Boris Iliev any contact details. How did you expect him to find you if he had some information, as you’d requested?’

  ‘You did.’

  Gabriel couldn’t argue with that. Besides, Stolarski had moved around a lot, Sam Cartwright had said, and had no landline or smartphone, so what good would it have been anyway?

  ‘Now, you’ve proved yourself to be a lawyer, but what exactly are you doing here?’

  Gabriel wiped a bead of sweat from under his chin. It was uncomfortably warm in the bungalow. There was no fan, let alone air conditioning. The warm air was exacerbating his allergic reaction and he felt his left eye begin to close over.

  He said, ‘I told Boris Iliev that I would tell you that I saw something like your brother had seen.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Stolarski said.

  His eyes suddenly became more intense, more vital.

  Gabriel nodded.

  ‘Well, guess you’ve driven a long way. But me and Ned don’t go out much. We don’t drive now. I rely on the cancer centre for transport, in case you were wondering. Why don’t we take a drive? Grab something to eat at a place I know? I can still eat, you know. If it isn’t too chewy. Not steaks and such. Besides, if your allergy to cat hair gets any worse, you won’t be able to see shit.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘That’s settled then.’ He made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded as if he was retching. ‘We can talk there. It never gets busy. Don’t know how it survives, tell the truth.’

  Gabriel smiled a closed-mouthed smile.

  ‘I should tell you that I told you about my brother and the uranium mine because I could see right off that you are a serious man, otherwise I would’ve called to Ned and he would’ve thrown you out.’

  ‘That’s fair comment.’

  Gabriel could tell from the tone of Stolarski’s voice that he was a serious man too, and he didn’t doubt what he’d said about Ned was a fact.

  Stolarski clasped his hands as if he was about to pray. ‘You will tell me where you saw the things you speak of before we go.’

  Gabriel new he had to, otherwise it would have been a wasted journey.

  He said, ‘It was on a DVD taken from a murdered man’s apartment.’

  77

  The secret prison, the same day.

  Carla and Section Chief Hester were sitting in the back of an unmarked, metallic silver FBI SUV as it approached the secret prison that held the Chechen, with his ongoing consent. The two prostitutes that had been with him in Baton Rouge were Latvian illegals. They were being held in segregated cells in a remote detention centre prior to deportation.

  The sky was almost obscured by the overlapping branches of mature beech trees, their leaves dulling to the colour of red ochre and apricots. The single lane, asphalt road led to a chain link fence, with thousands of yards of concertina razor wire atop it, which surrounded the 100 acres of what was ostensibly a military base. Metal Department of Defense signs had been placed at twenty-five-yard intervals and warned of the consequences of unauthorized access.

  ‘They say there are snipers in the woods. They say they can release armed drones if they have a mind to,’ Hester said. ‘I know for a fact that there are people where we’re going who have one million plus on their heads. They know it. They know too that they’re not safe anywhere else.’

  Carla nodded. Hester straightened his silk tie. He looked to be wearing expensive Italian cloth on his ample frame.

  The Chechen’s whereabouts had been kept confidential, save from those few federal officials involved in his arrest and those who had given permission for his unorthodox incarceration. A lawyer from the Attorney General’s office at the Justice Department had informed the Chechen that if he waived the right to an attorney and agreed to an incommunicado existence at the secret prison, he would likely walk, if he was co-operative. The Chechen had not been charged with any federal felony, and was in truth free to leave. But he’d been told that if he did choose to leave, he would be rearrested and charged, and would have to take his chances in the regular prison system like everyone else.

  Carla had not heard of such an arrangement before, but Hester assured her that such instances had occurred in the past, especially when an individual could be crucial in an investigation into matters as serious as those they were involved in. The detection and apprehension of serial killers, especially where there was a suspected racial motive, meant the justice system could, on occasion, be flexible in the execution of its duty.

  ‘Put your badge on view,’ Hester said to Carla. ‘They’ll take your weapon. They’ll scan you. Don’t bitch about it.’

  She nodded again.

  The entrance was secured by an electronic pole, with a metal and Perspex box to the right. Two cement blockhouses were situated either side of th
e box, like relics from a different age. Here, the razor wire was exposed to the sun and it glinted and shimmered, creating a mirage effect. Three helmeted US Army Military Police in combat uniforms, with grey Velcro patches on their left arms that bore the legend ‘MP’ in black, were guarding the entrance. One was sitting inside the box and two were standing either side of the pole.

  The MP closest to the driver, a black man with the physique of a wrestler, wore shades, carried an M4 carbine and had a 9mm Beretta M9 holstered on his right thigh. The MP on the other side, another black man but with a leaner frame, held an M249 light machine gun to his chest.

  The FBI driver was ordered to turn off the ignition and did so without complaint. The MP came up to the window, which lowered without sound. He took the papers that the driver handed over and read them in a thorough manner before looking at Carla and Hester, who took off his shades and stiffened up. The man had fingers like fat cigars, although the other standing MP’s hands were gloved, Carla had noticed.

  The MP walked over to the box and brought back a grey tray, which he thrust through the front window. The driver collected their weapons and the MP took them back to the box. He returned with a hand-held metal detector and, after motioning for them to disembark, waved it over each of them in turn, checking a silver-plated pen and a car keyring when the detector had buzzed, and a red light had blinked.

  A flat-top, four-wheeled remote device about the size of a dinner plate came from around the back of the box. It was controlled by the MP in the box with a joystick, as he looked at what Carla could see was a flat screen. She knew it would be checking the wheel arches and the chassis for suspect objects, for heat and noise signatures.

  Ten seconds later, it reversed from under the SUV and moved in sharp angles back to its position.

  The MP said, ‘Return to the vehicle.’