A Game of Ghosts

by John Connolly

  If anyone had been charged with the crime, Eklund had not recorded it, but a quick glance at the shelves revealed a thick file related to the case. It was the same with the rest: the details on the wall, the pins on the map, appeared to function as a kind of aide-mémoire for Eklund, with the substance of each atrocity contained in the carefully assembled files on his shelves.

  The Huygens Family: murdered April 1962 in Grinnell, Iowa. Chained together and burned alive. Eklund’s file on them was easily an inch thick.

  Alicia Muny: abducted from her home in Farmville, Virginia, in June 1969. Remains found outside Emporia, Virginia, in November 1969, with all bones, major and minor, broken in her arms and legs. A smaller file, but this one containing a copy of a handwritten letter from her mother to a named detective in the Prince Edward County Sheriff’s Office denying that her daughter was a prostitute.

  Robert Damiani: murdered February 1975 in Cross City, Florida. Cause of death: strangulation. Barely a handful of pages here, among them a copy of an internal FBI report speculating that Damiani may have been killed due to his older brother Jeffrey’s links to the Colombo crime family in New York.

  But the atrocities themselves were not the strangest aspect of Eklund’s work, for bundled with each assemblage of factual documents – newspaper articles, coroners’ reports, crime scene records – was a separate file concerning descriptions of hauntings: testimonies from clairvoyants, telepaths, and psychics; letters, both copies and originals, from ordinary individuals recounting experiences that were far from ordinary, and for which they could find no rational explanation; photocopied extracts from books and journals; even carefully preserved reports from the kind of publications that made the National Enquirer look like the New York Times. Parker flicked through three of the case files, but these cursory examinations alone revealed similarities among the accounts. Two contained illustrations depicting what was clearly the same old man drawn by two different hands: the clothing, the hair, the eyes, the slightly flattened profile – all matched.

  ‘What is Eklund, some kind of amateur parapsychologist?’ asked Angel.

  ‘A serious one, from the look of things.’

  ‘Jesus, the guy must live for Halloween.’

  ‘He lived for this,’ said Parker, indicating the walls around them. The basement contained many years of work. ‘How much time have we got on that alarm?’

  ‘I can find an outlet for the jammer. You have as long as you need.’

  Parker had no desire to spend longer than was necessary in Eklund’s house. While he didn’t doubt Angel’s word on the alarm, it made no sense to linger illegally on the property. He also wanted time and space to work his way through this material in an effort to figure out precisely what had attracted Eklund to these crimes, and what had caused him to bundle them with paranormal investigations. It was possible, of course, that Eklund’s absence had no connection to the contents of his basement, but the man’s obvious obsession seemed like the most promising starting point.

  ‘I saw a couple of suitcases in the bedroom at the front of the house,’ he told Angel. ‘Bring them down, and we’ll use them to remove these files.’

  Angel left. What they were doing was highly illegal, whether Eklund was alive or not, but particularly so if something bad had befallen him. Parker had no sense of the house as a crime scene – there was none of the disturbance associated with an attack or abduction – but what they were about to take from it might well be germane to any investigation. Then again, Parker had no intention of allowing Ross to hang him or his colleagues out to dry. If it came down to it, he’d use Ross’s name, and let the FBI agent sort out any mess Parker might have left behind.

  He went to Eklund’s desk. He hadn’t seen a computer in the house, which suggested that Eklund was either a Luddite or, based on the similar absence of a computer from his office, only used a laptop. The desk had a couple of drawers, but they contained nothing more interesting than spare pens and paper clips. Parker flicked through the papers and photographs on the desktop, and saw that most of them related to the disappearance of Mike MacKinnon, the most recent of the mysteries catalogued by Eklund.

  Beneath them was a blue folder, which immediately stood out because all the others in the room were either brown or green. Parker opened it and found a copy of a pro bono contract between Eklund and a client named Oscar Sansom from Natick, Massachusetts, signed about a year earlier. The name was familiar to Parker, but he couldn’t quite place it until he saw the newspaper clipping and a woman’s picture under the agreement.

  Claudia Sansom had disappeared three years earlier, and suspicion had long lingered among law enforcement that Sansom had killed her and disposed of the body, although nobody could ever find proof, or even a possible motive. Claudia’s family had initially sided with her husband, certain that he could not have been responsible for their daughter’s death, but gradually fractures had appeared in their relationship, possibly not entirely unconnected to the seeds of doubt sown by the police. The taint of murder stuck to him, but Sansom never left the state, even when it might have been easier on him to do so, and he became active in a number of support groups for families of missing persons. He never sought to remarry, never – as far as anyone knew – even started another relationship. He just waited, and ignored the whispering.

  In January, the remains of Oscar Sansom’s wife, Claudia, had been found buried in a shallow grave not far from Lincoln, New Hampshire, in the western White Mountains. A hunter’s dog sniffed out a skull protruding from the earth of a shallow grave, and DNA tests confirmed Claudia’s identity. The mystery of Claudia Sansom’s fate appeared to have been solved. All that remained was to confirm the manner of her death, and apprehend the individual or individuals responsible. Within hours of the results of the DNA test results being confirmed, Oscar Sansom was in a room being questioned by both the Natick PD and the New Hampshire State Police.

  Which was when it all got weird. Claudia Sansom had disappeared at the age of 36, but the body recovered from the ground was that of a woman closer to 39, at the best estimate. It was definitely Claudia Sansom – that much was certain – but where had she been for the three years between her disappearance and her burial? The initial analysis of the skeletonized remains showed no evidence of significant trauma or fractures, so there was no obvious cause of death. Forensic anthropologists were still examining Claudia Sansom’s body in an effort to establish how she had died.

  A lot of theories emerged in the aftermath. Perhaps Claudia had simply abandoned her husband and started a new life before finally coming to a bad end, because nobody who met a good one ended up buried in an unmarked shallow grave in woodlands. She could also have been abducted, but who abducts someone and then keeps her alive for three years?

  Oscar Sansom was permitted to view his wife’s remains. Some police investigators persisted in viewing him as a suspect, but most of those with detailed knowledge of the case by now believed him to be innocent, although the contamination from years of rumors and suspicion had marked him irrevocably in the public eye. After looking at the bones in silence for a time, Sansom simply returned to his home, the same home in which he had lived with his wife in the years before her disappearance, and in which he had remained ever since. He gave no statement to the media. He went about his business. If he mourned, he mourned in silence, and in private. Now it seemed that Sansom had engaged the services of Jaycob Eklund about two years after Claudia vanished, but no payment was exchanged.

  When Angel returned with the suitcases, Parker was sitting in Eklund’s chair, leafing through the Sansom file. Eklund was one of three private investigators who had assisted Sansom over the years, but he hadn’t enjoyed any more success than the others. Eklund had reinterviewed various people, consulted with the police, and followed a couple of lines of inquiry, all to dead ends.

  So what was the Sansom file doing sitting on Eklund’s desk? He might, of course, have retrieved it from his records after Claudia San
som’s remains were found, perhaps in the hope that something in it, something he had missed, could prove useful to the police, and then forgotten about it.

  Nevertheless, it was interesting.

  28

  Donn Routh was not a blunt instrument to be wielded indiscriminately; that was not how the Brethren operated. Perhaps in more distant times, when they dealt in routine savagery, such methods might have been acceptable, but not now. It was important for them to pass unnoticed, to be free to drift without fear of connections being made. That was why the appearance of Eklund had been so troubling. How long had he been working, researching, picking up on those details about the Brethren that others had ignored, accepting as a possibility – a probability, even – what most would have dismissed as absurd? Years, certainly.

  Routh felt a kind of admiration for the man’s persistence. Eklund was paying for it now, of course. He had received a confirmation long sought, and consequently understood the truth of the matter at last, but Routh was certain that Eklund might, in retrospect, have wished it otherwise. As far as Routh was concerned, all important questions ended in one final, implacable answer: death. Eklund would have been better advised not to pursue it with such avidity; it would have found him in its own time. Better not to summon it, to bring it down on oneself. Some might have said that death always comes at its appointed hour, the moment of its appearance embedded deep in the matter of every man at the time of his birth, but Routh knew this not to be true because he himself was an instrument of that very death, and was fickle in his approaches.

  He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. The patrol car had just appeared for the second time, and then departed. Moments later, the black man returned to his Lexus, confirming Routh’s concerns about him. The stranger had clearly found himself a patch of shadow from which to watch both the Lexus and the house, knowing that the cop would return and understanding that it would be better to be absent when he did.

  It would undoubtedly be useful to Routh to take him alive and determine his connection to Eklund, but like any predator Routh was attuned in turn to other predators, if only on a competitive level. He couldn’t tell for sure how old the black man was – he might have been forty or sixty, although Routh thought he could pick out a halo of gray around his mouth. He walked on the balls of his feet, and a litheness and grace to his movements suggested he would respond quickly to any potential threat. He was about as tall as Routh, but less stockily built. In an exchange of punches, brute force against brute force, Routh would prevail, but he doubted that he would be able to get close enough to land the first crucial blow before his opponent reacted. He didn’t look as though he’d respond particularly well to threats, either. He struck Routh as a man who had probably looked at his share of guns from both sides, and was still standing.

  But Routh did not know as yet if there was anyone else in the Eklund house. To find out, he would first have to confront the stranger. Once the threat represented by him was neutralized, Routh would deal with anyone inside the house before emptying it of all clues as to the nature of Eklund’s investigations.

  In an ideal world, Routh would have taken a turn around the block in his car before pulling up alongside the Lexus, driver’s side to driver’s side, hemming in the target while emptying a magazine through the window, but such an approach only suited a fast getaway, and Routh would be remaining in the area. He would have to approach on foot, but it would still be better if he could persuade the man to roll down his window before killing him. Broken glass would alert anyone passing by, and Routh wanted time to complete his tasks in Eklund’s home.

  Routh left his car, but didn’t bother to lock it. Whatever happened in the coming minutes, he’d be moving fast on his return, and didn’t want anything to delay him. Even with the suppressor attached, the H&K fit easily into the deep false pocket of his jacket.

  Routh stepped onto the sidewalk and saw a figure coming toward him on the same side. It was a male smoking a cigarette. He appeared absorbed in his own thoughts. His head was down, and his shoes were clearly unsuited to the weather, because he walked like a man afraid of falling. Routh didn’t panic. He needed the bystander to be out of sight before he could move on the Lexus. He turned back to his car and opened the passenger door, leaning in as though he had left something in the glove box. He heard footsteps drawing nearer, then the sound of someone slipping. A voice swore. Routh raised his head from the interior of his vehicle and a white object caught the moonlight, like the wings of a small bird cleaving the darkness. Routh felt pressure at his neck, followed by a line of pain that swept from left to right and became a wet burning against his skin. A great gush of red shot into the air as he slumped back, his hands gripping the body of the car. Blood filled his throat as he released his hold on the car, sliding awkwardly down so that he ended up sitting on the ground with his head leaning so far back that the crown almost touched the passenger seat. The interior light had come on, but a gloved hand reached in and switched it off.

  A face stared down at his. It had the yellowed, prematurely aged skin of a lifelong smoker, under a greasy swathe of black hair that hung in untidy curls to the neck of a filthy shirt. The man held in one hand a curved blade, like a raptor’s talon. He stank of nicotine. Even in the last seconds of his life, Routh, a fastidious person, was repelled by the stench.

  ‘Yingtai,’ said the man. ‘Remember her?’

  There were other figures behind him now, gray men and women, their eyes dark hollows against the pallor. Routh’s vision dimmed. Hands reached for him. He tasted their fingers in his mouth.

  And as he died, he finally understood why the Brethren were so afraid of the next world.

  29

  The couple, Kirk and Sally Buckner, arrived in Turning Leaf, West Virginia, in 2009, at a time when the Turning Leaf Primitive Baptist Church was in severe difficulties. As one senior member of the congregation commented at the time, with some bitter amusement, ‘our hard shell has cracked.’ Their deacon, Elder Danny, had briefly left his wife for the spouse of Thomas Hooven, the illicit entanglement only becoming common knowledge when, during the ritual foot washing, Thomas Hooven upended an entire basin of water over Elder Danny’s head, and then proceeded to beat the shit out of him with the basin in full view of the rest of the congregation.

  The Primitives were already suffering a drain of members to the Bright Paradise Missionary Baptists on the other side of town, in part due to Elder Danny’s unpopularity with many of his flock, Elisabeth Hooven being the obvious exception, but the whole business of the affair, and the embarrassing basin assault, put the kibosh on his time in office. Elder Danny did make one last attempt to save himself in a rambling sermon that invoked the doctrine of limited atonement in what could best be described as an innovative way, and followed a particular logical path: Jesus died to save his elect, who can never be lost; Elder Danny was one of those elect, and could not be lost; hence his affair with another man’s wife did not affect this status, or render him any less able to carry out his duties as deacon. Finally, Elder Danny pointed out that he hadn’t enjoyed the sex anyway, so he had endured guilt without pleasure. Elisabeth Hooven wasn’t present to witness this last act of betrayal, although certain male congregants later whispered of how she had always seemed like a cold woman to them, and therefore they weren’t particularly surprised to hear that part.

  None of this was enough to save Elder Danny, who went to live in Hoboken and was last known to be working in a liquor store. His removal from office resulted in a split in the congregation between those who believed that the cuckolded Thomas Hooven had, in his use of the basin as a weapon, displayed the same kind of fiery zeal that Christ himself had shown in chasing the moneylenders from the temple, and was therefore a suitable candidate for deacon, and those who believed that being cuckolded by Elder Danny meant that Hooven was little better than a fool, and they would be even greater fools to reward him for his inability to keep his own wife under control.

&n
bsp; It was the newly arrived Kirk Buckner, calm and quiet, and with no loyalty or obligation to either side, who acted as mediator in the dispute, with his wife beside him to offer counsel and work behind the scenes with the female members of the faithful to force their spouses to see reason. While a groundswell of opinion held that Kirk would make an ideal deacon, he graciously declined the honor, and instead pointed the congregation in the direction of Perry Garris, a man so unassuming, so unostentatious in his godliness, that he had been overlooked in the search for a more imposing figure. Only behind closed doors, and in the comfort and security of certain homes, were whispers of discontent to be heard, as the more worldly of the Primitives noted that, in a very short space of time, the Buckners had accrued a great deal of influence unto themselves and, in the person of Perry Garris, had found an individual who might easily be manipulated by them, although to what end none could say.

  But it also had to be admitted that, church commitments excepted, the Buckners, while not exactly reclusive, kept to themselves and showed no signs of vanity or ambition. They behaved modestly and were generally liked, even admired. Sure, maybe they could have mixed a little more, but most of those in the community – both the Primitives and the larger township – were content to let folks be, as long as they didn’t stir things up for others.

  So the Buckners were now settled in Turning Leaf, and few even bothered to recall that no stones in the local cemetery bore their family name, or took it amiss that the Buckners continued to carefully guard their privacy, and permitted no one to trespass farther than their front porch. It was Thomas Hooven, of all people, who spoke loudest among the naysayers when it came to the Buckners. Hooven had since divorced his first wife and was now happily remarried, having been assured by greater theological minds than his own that he was on sound biblical ground in the reasons for the separation, and the remarriage of the innocent party was never depicted in Scripture as adultery, bigamy, or polygamy. He had also since abandoned the Primitives for the Missionary Baptists, and something of the resulting distance probably enabled him to look upon the Buckners with a cold eye.