The Charlie Parker Collection 5-8: The Black Angel, The Unquiet, The Reapers, The Lovers

by John Connolly

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘We did not know then, and we still do not know for sure now. Oh, we know the name of the man who died beneath the wheels of a truck, and of the boy and girl your father killed at Pearl River, but those names ultimately proved useless. The confirmation of their identities did nothing to explain how they came to be hunting Caroline Carr, or you.’

  ‘My father believed that Missy Gaines and the woman who killed my mother were the same person,’ I said. ‘By extension, he must have believed that Peter Ackerman and the boy who died with Missy Gaines were also the same. How is that possible?’

  ‘We have both witnessed strange things in the years since we first met,’ Epstein replied. ‘Who knows what we should believe, and what we should discount? Nevertheless, let us look at the most logical, or plausible, explanation first: over a period of more than forty years, someone has repeatedly dispatched a pair of killers, a man and a woman, on a series of assassinations aimed at you, or those close to you, including the woman who was your birth mother. When one couple died, another eventually replaced them. These killers were distinguished by marks on their arms, one for the man and another for the woman, just here.’ He indicated a point halfway between his wrist and his elbow on his left forearm. ‘There is no reason that we can find for why a succession of couples have been chosen to do this.

  ‘The investigations into Missy Gaines, Joseph Dryden, and Peter Ackerman revealed that all led entirely normal existences for most of their lives. Ackerman was a family man, Missy Gaines a model teenager, Dryden already a tearaway, but no worse than many others. Then, at some point, their behavior changed. They cut themselves off from family and friends. They found a member of the opposite sex previously unknown to them, formed a bond, and went hunting, apparently first for Caroline Carr, and then, in the cases of Gaines and Dryden, for you. So that is the logical explanation: disparate couples, linked only by their intent to do harm to you and your family, either of their own volition or acting on the will of another.’

  ‘But you don’t believe the logical explanation.’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  Epstein reached behind him and rummaged in the pocket of his overcoat, emerging with a piece of photocopied paper that he unfolded on the table. It was a copy of a scientific article, and it showed an insect in flight: a wasp.

  ‘So, what do you know of wasps, Mr. Parker?’

  ‘They sting.’

  ‘True. Some, the largest group in Hymenoptera, are also parasitic. They target host insects – caterpillars, spiders – either by laying eggs externally that attack the host from outside, or by inserting eggs into the host body. Eventually, the larvae emerge and consume the host. Such behavior is relatively common in nature, and not just among wasps. The ichneumon fly, for example, uses spiders and aphids to host its young. When it injects its eggs, it also injects a toxin that paralyzes the host. The young then consume the host from the inside out, starting with the organs least necessary for survival, such as fat and entrails, in order to keep the host alive for as long as possible before finally progressing to the essential organs. Eventually, all that is left behind is an empty shell. The manner of consumption does display a certain instinctive understanding that a live host is better than a dead one, but otherwise it’s all rather primitive, if undeniably nasty.’

  He leaned forward, tapping the picture of the wasp.

  ‘Now, there is a variety of orb spider known as Plesiometa argyra, found in Costa Rica. It too is preyed upon by a wasp, but in an interesting way. The wasp attacks the spider, temporarily paralyzing it while it lays its eggs in the tip of the spider’s abdomen. Then it leaves, and the spider’s ability to move is restored. It continues to function as it has always done, building its webs, trapping insects, even as the wasp larvae cling to its abdomen and feed on its juices through small punctures. This continues for perhaps two weeks, and then something very odd occurs: the spider’s behavior changes. Somehow, by means unknown, the larvae, using chemical secretions, compel the spider to alter its web construction. Instead of a round web, the spider builds a smaller, reinforced platform. Once that is complete, the larvae kill their host and cocoon themselves in the new web, safe from wind, rain, and predatory ants, and the next stage of their development begins.’

  He relaxed slightly. ‘Suppose we were to substitute wandering spirits for wasps, and humans for spiders, then, perhaps, we might begin to have some understanding of how seemingly ordinary men and women could, at some point, change utterly, slowly dying inside while remaining unchanged without. An interesting theory, don’t you think?’

  ‘Interesting enough to get a man banned from the local cultural center.’

  ‘Or committed, if he were unwise enough to speak such thoughts too loudly, but this is not the first time that you have heard of such things: spirits flitting from body to body, and people who apparently live beyond their allotted span, slowly rotting yet never dying. Is that not right?’

  And I thought of Kittim, trapped in his cell, retreating into himself like an insect hibernating even as his body withered; and of a creature named Brightwell glimpsed in a centuries-old painting, in a photograph from the Second World War and, finally, in this time as he hunted for a being like himself, human in form but not in nature. Yes, I knew of what Epstein was speaking.

  ‘The difference between a spider and a human, though, is the matter of consciousness, of awareness,’ said Epstein. ‘Since we must assume that the spider has no awareness of its own identity as a spider, then, the pain of its own consumption aside, it has no understanding of what is happening to it as its behavior alters and, ultimately, it begins to die. But a human being would become aware of the changes in its physiology or, more correctly, its psychology, its behavior. It would be troubling, at the very least. The host might even consult a doctor, or a psychiatrist. Tests could be carried out. An effort would be made to discover the source of the imbalance.’

  ‘But we’re not talking about parasitic flies, or wasps.’

  ‘No, we’re talking about something that cannot be seen, but is consuming the host just as surely as the wasp larvae consume the spider, except in this case it is the identity that is being taken over, the self. And something in us would slowly become aware of this other, this thing preying upon us, and we would fight back at the darkness as it began to consume us.’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘You used the word “apparently” earlier,’ I said, ‘as in “apparently” they were targeting my birth mother. Why “apparently”?’

  ‘Well, if Caroline Carr was their primary target, why then did they return sixteen years later only to die at Pearl River? The answer, it would seem, is that they were not trying to kill Caroline Carr, but the child she was carrying.’

  ‘Again: why?’

  ‘I don’t know, except that you are a threat to them, and you have always been a threat. Perhaps even they do not know for certain the nature of the threat that you pose, but they sense it and they react to it, and their purpose is to extinguish it. They were trying to kill you, Mr. Parker, and they probably believed that they had succeeded, for a time, until they found out that they were wrong, and you had been hidden from them, so they were forced to return and rectify their mistake.’

  ‘And failed a second time.’

  ‘And failed,’ echoed Epstein. ‘But in the years since then you have begun to draw attention to yourself. You have encountered men and women who share something of their nature, if not their purpose, and it may be that whoever, or whatever, dispatched these things has begun to notice you. It’s not hard to draw the necessary conclusion, which is—’

  ‘That they’ll return to try again,’ I finished.

  ‘Not “will return,”’ said Epstein. ‘They have returned.’

  And from beneath the description of the wasp and its actions he withdrew a photograph. It showed the kitchen at Hobart Street, and the symbol that had been painted in blood upon its wall.

  ‘T
his is also the mark that was found on the body of Peter Ackerman, and on the boy, Dryden, killed by your father at Pearl River,’ he said.

  Then he added more photographs. ‘This is the mark that was found on the bodies of Missy Gaines and your birth mother’s killer. It has since been found at three more crime scenes, one of them old, two of them recent.’

  ‘How recent?’

  ‘Weeks.’

  ‘But unconnected to me.’

  ‘Yes, it would appear so.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Leaving signs. For each other and, perhaps, in the case of Hobart Street, for you.’

  He smiled, and there was pity in that smile.

  ‘You see, something has returned, and it wants you to know it.’

  V

  For the dead travel fast.

  Bram Stoker (1847–1912),

  Dracula (after Burger’s ‘Lenore’)

  28

  The drunks were out in force. A hockey game had been played that night, and the bar was a magnet for fans because one of the owners, Ken Harbaruk, had enjoyed brief spells with both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Bruins before a motorcycle accident put an end to his career. He used to say that it was the best thing that could have happened to him, under the circumstances. He was good, but he wasn’t good enough. Eventually, he knew, he would have found himself in the minors, playing for nickels and trying to pick up women who were easily impressed in bars a lot like the one he now owned. Instead, he’d been compensated well for his injuries, and had plowed the money into a half-share in a bar that seemed destined to guarantee him the kind of comfortable retirement that would have been denied him had he been able to continue playing. In addition, had he wished, he could still have picked up women who were easily impressed, or so he told himself, but more usually he found himself thinking about his quiet apartment and his soft bed as the long nights in the bar drew to a close. He had a comfortable yet casual relationship with a lawyer who was a well-preserved fifty-one. They each had homes of their own, and they alternated overnight stays from weekend to weekend, although he sometimes wished for something a little more defined. He would have liked for her to move in with him, but he knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She valued her independence. At first, he thought that she was keeping him at a remove in order to ascertain how serious he was about her. Now, after three years, he realized he was being kept at a distance because that was exactly how she wanted it, and if he desired something more then he would have to look elsewhere. He figured he was too old to look elsewhere, and he should be thankful for what he had. He was, he felt, reasonably lucky, and reasonably content.

  Yet, on nights like this, when the Bruins were playing and the bar was filled with men and women who were too young to remember him, or old enough to recall how inconsequential his career had been, Harbaruk experienced a nagging sense of regret at the path his life had taken which he hid by being even louder and more boisterous than usual.

  ‘But them’s the breaks,’ he had told Emily Kindler after he’d interviewed her for the waitress job. In fact, she’d hardly been required to say a word. All she had to do was listen and nod occasionally as he retold the story of his life, altering her expression as required to look sympathetic, interested, angry, or happy, according to the dictates of the plot. She believed that she knew his type: genial; smarter than he appeared to be, but with no illusions about his intelligence; the kind of guy who might fantasize about making a pass at her but would never act upon it, and would feel guilty for even thinking such a thing. He told her about the lawyer, and mentioned the fact that he had been married way back, but it hadn’t worked out. If he was surprised by how much he was willing to share with her, then she was not. She had found that men wanted to tell her things. They exposed their inner selves to her, and she did not know why.

  ‘Never was able to talk much to women,’ Harbaruk told her, as the interview drew to a close. ‘Might not seem that way now, but it’s true.’

  The girl was unusual, he thought. She looked like she could do with a little fattening up, and her arms were so thin that he was pretty sure he could encircle the widest point of her biceps with one hand, but she was undeniably pretty, and what he had first taken for fragility, to the extent that he had almost dismissed the possibility of hiring her as soon as he set eyes on her, was revealing itself to be something more complex and ineffable. There was strength there. Maybe not physical, although he was starting to believe that she was not as weak as she looked, because one thing Ken Harbaruk had always been good at was judging the strength of an opponent, but an inner steeliness. Harbaruk sensed that the girl had been through some hard times, but they hadn’t broken her.

  ‘Well, you talked okay to me,’ she said.

  She smiled. She wanted the job.

  Harbaruk shook his head, knowing that he was being played, but he still found that he was blushing slightly. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

  ‘It’s nice of you to say,’ he replied. ‘It’s just a shame that everything in life can’t be handled with an interview over a soda.’

  He stood, and extended his hand. She took it, and they shook.

  ‘You seem like a good kid. Talk to Shelley over there. She’s the bar manager. She’ll fix you up with some shifts and we’ll see how you get along.’

  She thanked him, and that was how she came to be waitressing in Ken Harbaruk’s Sports Bar and Restaurant – Local Home of the NHL, as the sign above the door announced in big black-on-white letters. Beside it, a neon hockey player shot a puck then raised his hands in the air in triumph. The hockey player was dressed in red and white, a nod to Ken’s Polish ancestry. He was always being asked if he was related to Nick Harbaruk, who had enjoyed a career spanning sixteen years, from 1961 to 1977, including four seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1970s. He wasn’t, but it didn’t bother him to be asked. He was proud of his fellow Poles who had succeeded on the ice: Nick, Pete Stemkowski, John Miszuk, Eddie Leier among the old-timers, and Czerkawski, Oliwa, and Sidorkiewicz among the new boys. There were photographs of them on the wall below one of the TVs, part of a little shrine dedicated to Poland.

  The shrine was close to where the girl was now picking up glasses and taking last orders. It had been a long night, and she had earned every lousy dollar in tips. Her shirt smelled of spilled beer and fried food, and the soles of her feet were aching. She just wanted to finish up, go home, and sleep. She had a day off tomorrow, the first day since she had arrived here that would not involve working at either the coffee shop, or the bar, or both. She intended to sleep late, and do her laundry. Chad, the young man who had been circling her, had asked her out on a date, and she had tentatively agreed to go to a movie with him, even though her thoughts were still filled with memories of Bobby Faraday and what had befallen him. Still, she was lonely, and she figured a movie couldn’t hurt too much.

  Ken killed the post-match commentary in an effort to move folks more quickly along, and replaced it with the news. The girl liked the fact that life didn’t begin and end with sports for Ken. He read some, and he knew about what was going on in the world. He had opinions on politics, history, art. According to Shelley, he had too many damn opinions, and he was too willing to share them with others. Shelley was in her fifties, and married to an amiable slob who thought that the sun rose when Shelley awoke and that nightfall was the world’s way of mourning the fact that soon it would be deprived of the sound of Shelley’s voice while she slept. He was already seated at the bar, sipping a light beer as he waited to drive her home. Shelley was fair and worked hard, but as a consequence she didn’t like to see any of her ‘girls’ working less hard than she did. She worked three nights behind the bar, sometimes overlapping with Ken if there was a game on. The girl had so far worked for her five times, and after the first night she had been grateful for the comparative peace of the third night when Ken had taken charge and everything had been a little more relaxed, if also a little less efficient and a
little less profitable.

  There were only two men left in her section, and they had reached that point of near intoxication where, had the bar not been about to close, she would have been obliged to cut them off. She could tell that they were about to progress from melancholy to mean, and she would be relieved when they were gone. Now, as she cleared away the glasses and empty chicken wing baskets from the table to their right, she felt a pair of taps on her back.

  ‘Hey,’ said one of the men. ‘Hey, honey. Hit us again.’

  She ignored him. She didn’t like men touching her like that.

  The other one giggled, and sang a snatch of a Britney lyric.

  ‘Hey.’

  The tap was harder this time. She turned.

  ‘We’re closing,’ she said.

  ‘No, you ain’t.’ He ostentatiously examined his watch. ‘We got another five minutes yet. You can see us right for two more beers.’

  ‘I’m sorry, guys. I can’t serve you any more.’

  Above their heads, the news story on the TV changed. She glanced at it. There were flashbulbs and police cars. Photographs were superimposed upon the scene: a man, a woman, and a child. She wondered what had happened to them. She tried to figure out if it was someplace local, then saw NYPD on the side of one of the cars and knew that it was not. Still, it couldn’t be anything good, not if they were showing photographs. That woman and the little girl were either missing or dead, maybe the man too.