3 Angel of Darkness

by Chaz McGee

  Colin Gunn shook his head. ‘This world can be a tough place.’

  ‘Could the husband have done it?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘I suppose,’ Colin admitted. ‘But no one really thought so. He seemed pretty broken up and she had been suffering from depression, and the whole thing was so awful that we all just wanted to close the file on it. I remember that I didn’t like the husband. He was a bully and he didn’t ask about his son once, at least not in front of me, and I think he was hitting the sauce pretty hard. But if I suspected every person in this town who was a drunken bully, there wouldn’t be enough room down at the station to hold them all.’

  ‘Could the kid have done it?’ Calvano asked.

  Colin looked startled. ‘Son, if you had seen what finding his mother did to that kid, you would not be asking me that question. No, he could not have done it.’

  ‘How old was Adam Mullins at the time his mother died?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘He was still in elementary school, as I recall. I believe in fifth grade. The principal pulled me aside to say that he wanted to make sure Adam got some help to deal with it, that he was not convinced the father could look after the kid. In fact, the principal is why we called in Social Services.’

  ‘Did you have anything to do with the Otis Parker case?’ Calvano asked him. ‘You remember the one?’

  ‘Of course I remember it,’ Colin said. ‘Fahey and Bonaventura caught it, but the Chief asked me to keep an eye on what they were doing to make sure they didn’t screw it up.’ Ouch. No one had ever told me that. ‘In the end, the Feds took over anyway once we figured out some of the murders took place over the line in New Jersey. But I still made sure Fahey and Bonaventura got some of the credit. They needed it at that point.’

  Another self-delusion bites the dust.

  ‘But it was a solid case, right?’ Calvano asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Colin said emphatically. ‘As solid as they get. It was right before we started routinely testing DNA, it still cost a boatload back then and the Chief wouldn’t spring for it. We didn’t really need it anyway. There was plenty of trace evidence and some credible eyewitnesses. Parker did it, all right. Of course, it didn’t matter in the end since he pulled his bat-shit act and the jury believed him.’

  Maggie and Calvano were silent, absorbing this information.

  ‘Why are you asking me about Otis Parker?’ Colin asked them.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Calvano mumbled. ‘It’s just a stupid idea we had.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Colin said. ‘Darcy Swan was murdered in a way very similar to how Otis Parker killed his victims?’

  Maggie looked surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Don’t ever underestimate Otis Parker,’ Colin warned them. ‘You have to meet him to understand how truly dangerous he is. People who have never met him have no idea. You have to feel him to get it.’

  ‘We have,’ Maggie and Calvano answered, almost simultaneously.

  ‘Then you know that he’ll act like he’s some dumb-ass country cracker, or the victim of a lousy childhood, or he can be as crazy as a loon if it suits his purpose,’ Colin said. ‘But underneath all that, he is one devious son of a bitch. He is smart. If that girl’s death seems connected to him, it is. I’d bet all the money I have in the bank on it.’

  ‘That’s what we think,’ Maggie said. ‘But we’re not getting a lot of support on it.’

  ‘Gonzales thinks we’re wasting time,’ Calvano explained. ‘He acknowledges the murders might be connected, but he thinks it all connects back to Holloway and some kind of a drug ring. He thinks the Otis Parker similarity is just a coincidence. He’s pissed off the press keeps reporting Parker is involved.’

  ‘That’s because Gonzales doesn’t want to deal with the possibility,’ Colin said. ‘It’s bad press and, believe me, press coverage is the defining factor in most of his decisions since he rose up in the command. Sometimes he lets it get in the way of the facts.’

  ‘The trouble is that I don’t have that good of a theory as to why Otis Parker would want to orchestrate Darcy Swan’s murder,’ Maggie admitted. ‘Other than to screw with us. Maybe he likes us knowing he had something to do with it, and he likes to taunt us with that because we can’t do anything about it. It pisses me off.’

  ‘Fight that impulse to get angry,’ her father advised. ‘That’s his way of throwing you off balance. He knows he’ll make mistakes if you make it personal. You think he’s got something to do with all the murders?’

  ‘We do,’ Maggie said. ‘We can’t find any other connection to Darcy Swan beyond the way she was killed, but her torture matches his signature right down the line. The connections with the other victims are more clear. He had a beef with Vincent D’Amato, the orderly who was killed. The guy was always hassling him, and for Parker that would be enough to have him killed. The psychiatrist who was murdered was Parker’s shrink. According to his notes, he was going to testify against Parker’s release at a competency hearing and now he’s dead, too. Parker can’t have done any of these things himself. Someone is doing them for him. We just can’t figure out who it is or how Parker is pulling the strings.’

  ‘Plus we’ve got no proof,’ Calvano added. ‘And we’re the only ones on the squad who think Parker is involved.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you, son,’ Colin told Calvano, ‘but my daughter’s instincts are good. If you both think he’s behind it, he probably is. From what I know of Parker, if it’s benefiting him in any way, he’s behind it. He is a natural born and bred killer and he thinks of no one but himself. You couldn’t have raised a more perfect predator if you had done it in a laboratory. Parker’s mother took off as soon as she could and his father made it worse by beating the hell out of him every chance he got. You know that brand Parker burned into the skin of his victims? He learned that trick from his father, who used to whip him with a coat hanger he’d heated up in the fireplace. Parker grew up on violence and, when he got big enough, he turned that violence against anyone he could.’

  ‘They sound alike,’ Calvano pointed out. ‘Otis Parker and Adam Mullins. Both lost their mothers. Both had drunken fathers.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colin said doubtfully. ‘Otis Parker is a special breed of killer. It takes a long time to make a man as bad as that one.’ He looked worried. I was surprised. He usually hid that from Maggie.

  ‘What is it?’ Maggie asked. ‘Why are you looking at me that way? I’m not afraid. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘It’s not you I’m worried about, Maggie May,’ Colin said. ‘It’s what could happen to this town if they actually let Otis Parker out. He’ll have a long list of people he wants to get revenge against. That’s how he works. You’d be on it, but at the bottom of the list. He’ll go after everyone who put him away for what he did to those other girls first, and if they’re gone – you better believe he’ll go after their families.’

  Was it my imagination or did he glance my way?

  Maggie looked alarmed. ‘That’s a long shot, though, isn’t it? His first competency hearing has already been postponed.’

  Colin shook his head. ‘When it comes to Otis Parker, nothing is a long shot. He’s not going to stop with a competency hearing. My guess is that it’s just his first step. If the competency hearing fails, and he’s got a decent lawyer, I’d bet my badge that he is going to file to have the verdict against him vacated on the grounds that he was not competent enough at the time of the first trial to assist with his defense. He’ll ask for a whole new trial on those murders. He could win that motion, too. It’s happened before. In the meantime, he’ll be released from Holloway. And when he brings up new evidence at his second trial, he could very well walk out of that courtroom a free man forever.’

  ‘What new evidence?’ A hint of fear crept into Maggie’s voice.

  ‘He’ll argue that whoever killed Darcy Swan killed the other girls,’ Colin explained. ‘That her death is proof he didn’t do the earlier killings. Thi
nk about it – no matter what the press says, Parker has the perfect alibi. He was locked up at Holloway when the Swan girl was killed. And the death of the others just proves there’s another crazy killer on the loose.’

  ‘You really think that’s a possibility?’

  ‘I know it is. It’s probably the motive behind that poor girl’s death. Parker didn’t know the Swan girl. He just needed a convenient victim. But whoever killed her for him certainly knew her. Parker is orchestrating all of this just to get himself out of Holloway and safe from the possibility of prison once he’s out. Like I said, Parker is smart. He’s had a long time to think about this strategy. You have to be smarter.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You have good instincts. Just follow them. I know you can take care of yourself. Besides, I’ve got a feeling that you have a guardian angel watching over you.’

  This time, I knew he was looking my way.

  THIRTY

  I knew Colin Gunn was right about Otis Parker. I just didn’t know who he was getting to do his dirty work for him. I thought back to everything I had ever overheard about Parker, even from the patients at Holloway. The teenagers had claimed to my son that killers were loose at Holloway and attacked you at night – the usual teenage nonsense if you added in a bloody claw hanging from a car door. But Olivia had said that Lily was going around telling other patients that dark angels crawled out of the ground at night to take people away. I had been in the dark forest of Lily’s mind and I’d never seen creatures like that. Maybe she really had seen something?

  That night, I decided to keep watch out the windows of the long-term unit just as Lily liked to do, looking for dark angels. Lily was already in her room, sleeping the near catatonic sleep of the over-medicated. She looked tiny and abandoned curled up in her bed, her ghastly teddy bear peeking out from beneath the covers with its mutilated, red-rimmed eyes.

  I stood vigil in the common room, choosing a window toward the back where I’d most often seen Lily standing watch. I was kept company by Harold Babbitt and a handful of other patients waiting out the last of the evening hours in the common room together. Harold was definitely tuning up for one of his episodes. He wore his soft helmet and looked like an old-fashioned football player psyching himself up for the second half as he marched back and forth across the room behind me. I stood at the window, wondering how long it would take before anyone appeared – or if they would appear at all. Sometimes a delusion was just a delusion.

  One by one, Harold and the other patients were led to bed. I was left alone beside the window. I found myself wondering about my son. Was Michael safely asleep at home in his bed, content that his mother was near, happy to be freed from Holloway? Had his stay here been enough to encourage him to turn from the darkness? Would it keep him from following in my sorry footsteps?

  Just past midnight, I saw Lily’s dark angels. One shadow emerged from the ground, near one of the sheds close to Holloway’s back fence. The second shadow appeared on the other side of the fence, balanced on a narrow strip of grass that marked the edge of a cliff. It was too dark to tell who they were, but judging from its size, I knew that the shadow on this side of the fence was probably Otis Parker.

  He had found a way to escape his unit. He was not yet free upon the world – but he was surely free within Holloway. It would not be long before he found a way out of Holloway.

  But why had he not left yet? I thought about it. He had needed to be inside Holloway when his psychiatrist was murdered to establish his alibi. And now that he had decided to escape, the entrances were too well guarded. But he would find a way. When the time came, it would be his accomplice’s job to break Parker out of Holloway.

  The two shadows had a brief conversation at the fence before the second one disappeared down the incline and the other entered one of the sheds.

  I decided to follow, though I worried about the effect that being near Otis Parker had on me. My feeling of unease had never been stronger than when I approached the shed behind the long-term unit, hoping to pinpoint what Parker’s plan might be. My courage has seldom been tested in the afterlife. I am in no physical danger, since I am no longer a physical being, and the only real thing I fear is the unknown. But approaching the shed filled me with uncommon dread and I realized that what I was feeling was more than unease. It was more like the prickly feeling I’d had when I was still on the job and had to round a corner, gun drawn, unsure of what I was about to face but forced to take action because others on the squad were watching me.

  In short, I felt afraid for my survival.

  It was a feeling I had not experienced since my death. As the feeling of danger grew, I began to wonder if I was strong enough to withstand what might lie ahead.

  I reached the spot where one of the shadows had been standing and discovered a manhole just outside the shed’s entrance. It had a heavy metal top with handles on it, making it easy to lift up if you were above ground. But it would also be equally easy for someone inside the pipe to lift up the manhole and escape from the drainage system below or, conversely, replace the manhole cover above him after he had disappeared back into the system. No one would be the wiser. If the larger shadow had been Parker, it meant he had some way inside the maximum security unit to enter the drainage system. But his room and, indeed, the entire unit had been thoroughly searched since Darcy Swan’s murder.

  How could I find out where he was getting in and, even more important, bring someone else’s attention to it?

  The manhole had been left open. I peered into the darkness and saw a metal ladder that led down to a massive pipe extending back toward Parker’s building at a slight upwards slope. But a wrought-iron grid blocked the mouth of the pipe in the other direction, probably to capture debris for easier cleaning. I suspected that it was this underground gate that had forced Parker to exit the drainage system behind the long-term unit and had motivated Parker to enter the shed. Curious, I stepped inside it.

  The shed was barely ten feet square. An assortment of breaker boxes and tools had been mounted along three of its walls, along with some sort of suction device that looked like a giant vacuum cleaner hose. The center of the room was dominated by a second manhole with a cover that could be swung to the side to open it, eliminating the need to lift the heavy top at all. The cover had a metal sliding bar six inches wide embedded into its design, making it easy to lock the manhole shut by sliding the bar over the cover and securing it in a steel slot on the other side. At the moment, the cover was swung open, revealing a black hole that led into absolute darkness. A metal ladder was permanently affixed to one side of the opening so that workmen could access the pipe to perform maintenance. It was the same drainage pipe that led to Parker’s unit, but this opening allowed you to access it on the other side of the metal grid that trapped debris for removal.

  I ventured down the ladder and into the pipe, wondering if I had somehow stumbled upon the entrance to Hell itself. Certainly, when you are dead and still wandering the earth, the idea of Hell is much more than an abstraction.

  The pipe was made of heavy iron. Mineral deposits clung to its sides, and the floor held several inches of run-off. Scurrying and skittering sounds, followed by splashing, told me that the rats living in Holloway’s drainage system could sense my presence. As I wandered through the pipe, I discovered smaller pipes feeding into it at various intervals. Clearly, I was in the main pipe of a master drainage system. I followed the tunnel toward the outer fence of Holloway, knowing that before long I would reach the end of the pipe where it protruded out over the cliff’s drop-off. A few days before, when I was standing near Darcy Swan’s body and looking back up at Holloway, the mouth of the pipe had gaped open like a huge black eye in the center of the cliff behind Holloway. But I also recalled that the opening had been blocked by another iron grid. I wondered how Parker intended to break through it. If he had gotten this far, all he really needed to do was cut through the iron bars. A short jump and a roll down the incline later, he wo
uld be free and running.

  I needed to know what Parker was doing in the pipe. I was sure I was close to the edge of the cliff, but as I rounded a curve in the passageway, I was hit with a feeling of dread so profound I could go no further. It was as if the pipe had filled with a malevolent force so powerful it had sucked all oxygen out of the air, replacing it with a heavy darkness that pressed in on me and filled me with the fear that I might somehow disappear into that darkness.

  It was the same feeling I had experienced near the pedestrian overpass the night someone had stalked Connie. I knew then that it had been Otis Parker following her, and that Parker had probably killed Vincent D’Amato, too. He had been loose within Holloway for days, including when my own son had been there within his reach. The possibilities of what might have happened ran through my mind with unspeakable clarity, like a horror movie playing the same scene over and over. I was filled with pure unadulterated terror.

  I heard Parker up ahead whispering to someone on the other side of the bars that marked the end of the pipe, but I could not bear to go any closer. Tendrils of despair had insinuated their way into my core, reminding me of every failure and sorrow I’d had in my life. The cumulative weight of these memories was paralysing. I felt myself falling into blackness and thought it. I feared what might happen if the feeling reached the center of my being.

  I turned around and left.

  I reached the shed again and emerged into the night air. I sat down against one wall of the shed and waited, unsure of what I was waiting for or what I could do. If Otis Parker did not escape tonight, he would simply return to try again.

  Several hours before dawn, before bed checks were conducted, when the sky had barely turned to a deep gray, Parker poked his head out of the manhole opening and crept up the ladder, hopping on to the dirt floor and darting outside so quickly that he was already climbing down into the pipe on the other side of the dividing grate by the time I could react. I thought about going into the pipe after him, but the crushing despair I had felt earlier stopped me. I didn’t have the courage.