The Soul Collectors dm-4

by Chris Mooney

  'Was Rizzo born here?'

  He thought about it as he took another sip of his drink.

  'I think so,' he said.

  'I don't remember him having a Boston accent.'

  'That doesn't mean anything. I know plenty of people who don't — people who've lived here their whole lives. Like you. You don't have one, and you grew up in Belham, right?'

  Darby nodded. 'Where'd you hear that?'

  'Didn't hear it, I read it. Online.'

  'What about Mark Rizzo's extended family? Any brothers or sisters?'

  'No. He was an only child. His parents died when he was seventeen. Some sort of car crash. I don't remember where or when.'

  'Who raised him?'

  'Haven't the foggiest. I can't even say I asked him the question. I don't know if the guy had any uncles or aunts either. And his wife, Judith? I don't remember anything about her except that she was a die-hard Catholic. Kept a pair of rosary beads in her hands at all times. That's the only thing that sticks out.'

  He shrugged, showed her his empty hands. 'I don't know what else to tell you. The guy was as clean as a whistle — at least that's how he looked at the time.'

  'Did the feds get involved in the case?'

  Smith took another healthy slug of whiskey. 'They usually do with missing kids.'

  'Only if they believe someone's been transported over state lines.'

  'News got out fast that Charlie Rizzo had been abducted — that was the way it looked since we found his abandoned bike — and that's when the calls started coming. You know the ones I'm talking about. "I have Charlie and if you want to see him again put unmarked bills in a brown-paper bag on such and such a day." "I have Charlie and he's in a lot of pain." Shit like that. One call came in from someplace in the Midwest — Wisconsin, I think — and that's when the feds got involved. They helped us run down all the leads. They had the manpower and the resources.

  'Almost every call came from a payphone, and they were all cranks. None of 'em knew specifics about the kid or how and where he was abducted. But we had to run them down. We got a shitload more when the Rizzos went to the press — you know, try to appeal to the kidnapper. Like I said, they were all cranks. Can I ask you a personal question?'

  'Go for it.'

  'You married?'

  'No.'

  'Kids?'

  'Don't have the maternal drive. That, and the fact that I'm forty now, I'm pretty sure the factory's shut down.'

  'You serious with anyone?'

  Darby opened her mouth, then shut it, unsure of how to answer the question. Yes, I'm in love with a guy I've known for fifteen years. There's always been an attraction between us, but I never acted on it because I didn't want the friendship to change. And just when I realized I couldn't ignore this attraction any more, he relocated to London. I haven't been over there to visit him because I'm afraid nothing more will come of it or, even worse, it will end our friendship, and, as much as I love him, I can't bear to lose that.

  'There's someone in my life,' she said. 'Someone serious.'

  'Good. Spend as much time with him as you can. Get married and have babies. If you can't have them, be like Angelina Jolie and adopt a whole Rainbow Coalition or whatever. That's the shit that matters. That's what haunts you at my age, all the opportunities you ignored because of the job, because the job don't mean anything in the end.'

  'It matters to me.'

  'Your choice. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go spend some time with my wife. At my age, I don't have much time left.'

  Smith got to his feet, his knees cracking. She was staring at the wrinkles on his face, about to get up, when his head exploded.

  39

  It was the worst pain he had ever experienced.

  They shoved him down on the chair and Mark Rizzo felt the metal spikes stab through his flesh and muscle, shattering bones. He screamed and they strapped his wrists and ankles to keep him pinned and he kept screaming until his throat was raw. As bad as the pain was — and it was excruciating, never ending waves riding up his spine like bullets and tearing through the soft meat of his brain — he dug his fingernails into the wood and willed himself to keep still, because if he moved the razor-sharp spikes would move and they would tear and shred and break.

  He sat there for hours, days, he didn't know. He had a clear memory of the two big men coming back into the room, the ones with the alabaster skin and ghoul faces, and in the flickering candlelight he could see that they weren't wearing any clothes or shoes and that their genitals were missing. They moved off to the sides, near the walls, and as he lost sight of them the Archon loomed into view and spoke in a whisper: 'What is your name?' And Mark heard another voice, this one in his head, and it was screaming Don't give it to them: if you do they'll kill you, don't say it, and he had hesitated, thinking over the pain, and the two ghouls with the scarred faces and bodies raised their whips.

  The first strap hit him and he thrashed around on the chair and his voice came back and he howled, the sound loud enough to pulverize stone. They kept whipping him, the straps tearing out strips of flesh, and then one of them raked something hard across his shins and he vomited until his stomach was stripped and then, through the mercy of God, he passed out.

  Delirious and drifting in and out of consciousness, he would sometimes open his eyes and see nothing but the awful darkness and wonder if the whips had blinded him. Now he opened them again and through his pain-soaked haze he could see candlelight flickering across a grey-stoned ceiling. They had removed him from the chair and placed him on his back on something cold and hard and wet.

  The pain came back, roaring through his body, and his limbs shook and he felt straps biting into his wrists and ankles, his throat. His head bobbed slightly to the left and he saw a dark leather strap pinning the wrist of his broken hand against the edge of a long metal table. Blood — his blood — covered his naked body and pooled across the table's stainless-steel surface. He heard a dripping sound on the floor as he bled out and he wept, thinking, I'm going to die.

  The Archon's voice echoed over the cold and dusty stones: 'What is your name?'

  Mark Rizzo shut his eye, weeping. They were going to kill him and it didn't matter if he said his real name or not because they -

  A bolt of electricity slammed through his head and across his limbs, his vision exploding in white, and he couldn't see anything and his body bucked against the leather straps binding him to the table.

  Then he fell back to the table and the pain was swept under a tingling numbness that fluttered back and forth across his limbs.

  'Electroshock therapy,' the voice said. 'That was fifteen seconds. The next time it will be thirty.'

  'Why are you doing this?'

  'What is your name?'

  He didn't answer and the electricity came again. When it was over, he couldn't move, felt his heart sputtering. Leaking.

  'Thomas,' he screamed. 'My name is Thomas!'

  'Thomas what?'

  'Thomas Howland.'

  'Where were you born?'

  'Tulsa, Oklahoma. My mother's name was Janice and she died of breast cancer and I went to live with my father, Duncan. His name was Duncan but everyone called him Chris. He was a painter. Painted houses.'

  'You told me you prayed for him to die.'

  'I told a priest.'

  'And God. God was there with you in the confessional, Thomas. I heard your prayers, and I killed your father. I caused his ladder to fall, and I let him die. To punish him for what he did to you. And when you were living in a foster home, being abused, I heard your prayers and I sent an angel to bring you to a new family, to a mother and father who were kind to you. And how did you repay my kindness? You shot my family. You killed my angels while they slept and then you fled like a coward.'

  His mind was spinning, flashing back to all those times he'd been inside the truck with his stepfather, a man named Ernest. Those long drives to other states and the hours spent in the truck waiting until
Ernie gave the nod and then he would get out and approach the young boy or girl, use the speech he'd been given to lure them into the truck. Riding in the truck and trying hard not to cry because he knew the boy or girl sitting wedged between the two of them would disappear into thin air and then the time would come to move on to another state, move on to the next boy or girl, more states, more victims, always more victims.

  'I'm not a murderer,' he said.

  'You were a liberator,' the Archon said. 'My angel. I gave you the mark.'

  He felt it rise up in him, the decades-old guilt over what he'd done. He had told no one, but his guilt had turned into the ulcers, high blood pressure and heart palpitations that eventually led to his first heart attack. The drinking that wouldn't take away the ghosts but reduced their voices to whispers.

  'It took me a long, long time to find you the first time,' the voice said softly. 'Imprisoned in this body, I had to use man-made methods. And when I finally found you, in my kindness I gave you a chance to save your soul. I was willing to release your son, and what did you do?'

  I saved myself, Mark thought. It was true. He had saved himself, yes, but he also knew that if he had done what was asked of him — if he had agreed to meet with them and go back to living in that dark, underground hell — they wouldn't have released Charlie. Charlie had seen too much. They would have kept Charlie, tortured him as a way to punish me. If I had gone back, nothing would have changed. Nothing.

  But at least you would have been with him, another voice added. Charlie wouldn't have been left alone with these people. You abandoned your son.

  'You wouldn't have released him,' he said.

  The voice moved closer to his ear. 'You, a coward and monster, are calling me a liar?'

  His eye flew open and he saw shadows on the wall, shapes coming together.

  'You let him suffer,' the voice said. 'Your child. Your son. You let him suffer for your sins.'

  'I've seen what you do here.'

  'And what is that, Thomas?'

  'You torture and kill people.'

  'We prepare sinners for a good death, Thomas. They are here for the same reason as you. You are here to atone. To ask for forgiveness.'

  'No.'

  'Then you have much to think about.'

  'You're going to kill me.'

  'We want to save you, Thomas. Do you value your soul?'

  He swallowed rapidly, deciding to go with it. Tell them anything they wanted to hear and then find a way out of this dungeon of horrors.

  'Yes,' he said, licking his lips. 'Yes, I do.'

  'Are you ready to confess?'

  'Yes.'

  They gathered around him, the black robes and faces shielded by hoods, and he confessed to everything.

  'Thank you, Thomas.'

  A soft kiss on his forehead. Real lips. The Archon had taken off the mask.

  His eye automatically slammed shut, not wanting to see the face, and he shivered all over.

  'You are forgiven.'

  The electricity shot through him again. When it stopped, he was barely conscious, vaguely aware of his mouth being opened and a clear tube coated with Vaseline being shoved down his throat.

  40

  Darby stood in the late John Smith's living room with her cold hands buried deep in her jeans pockets. She had glass shards in her hair. Blood was smeared on her clothes, and she caught its coppery reek under the pervasive odour of cordite. Her face and hands and joints throbbed. She had been cut but not too badly. The paramedic had used tweezers to remove the glass shards from her face, then cleaned her wounds and applied some sort of antibacterial ointment but no bandages. She stood in front of one of the two floor-to-ceiling windows that hadn't been blown out by the gunshots and she could see her reflection, the crisscrossed network of fine red cuts and scratches along the right side of her face.

  The adrenalin rush had long since dissipated, leaving her with a familiar but still strange hollow feeling. Numb, as if her organs had been shot full of Novocain. Her mind kept replaying what had happened in slow motion. Here it came again, the first part, and again she didn't turn away from it.

  Smith sitting to her right and getting to his feet and then, a split second later, his craggy face exploded. Skin and blood blew across her face and she thought exit wound. She hadn't heard the gunshot and her mind registered two facts at once: silencer and sniper. The exit wound — Smith's face — meant the contact shot had hit him in the back of the head. Meant the trajectory of the bullet had come from behind him, from somewhere across the street and from someplace high, like the trees or a roof. Meant that she had been followed here.

  Darby was already on her feet, turning away and scrambling for the sliding glass door. She had to get inside the house, the only safe place to hide. She heard a panicked voice calling out from the backyard: 'Smitty? Smitty, are you okay?' Smith's wife, Mavis. Darby yelled gunshot over the wind as she ran, yelled at the woman to get inside the house.

  The second shot took out one of the windows. Glass exploded across her face. Darby put her hand on the sliding glass door, threw it open and tumbled inside as the next shot took out the glass door. It hit the far wall. She had the phone in her hand and, standing near the kitchen, called 911. Told the operator shots were being fired, shouted for back-up and an ambulance, gave the address and dropped the phone. Unzipped her jacket and reached for her sidearm and saw Smith lying on his stomach, the severed arteries in his neck spraying blood in fine mists while the large, gaping wound pumped blood in great spurts on to the balcony floor as his dying body thrashed and thrashed. She turned away, stumbling blindly through the large maze of rooms, looking for the staircase that would lead her downstairs and into the backyard.

  'Miss McCormick?'

  The voice belonged to a black patrolman standing guard in front of the broken windows — A. DAVIS, his nameplate said. He was one of the squared-jawed first responding officers, an ebony-and-ivory pair who had immediately sectioned her off here, inside the living room. Davis had stayed with her while his partner radioed for homicide and back-up. She hadn't been allowed to assist in the search for the shooter. She knew he was long, long gone, but she wanted to go out there and find the spot, as well as the spent brass casings. She wanted to be useful, not stand here with her thumb up her ass, waiting to speak again to John Lu, the Nahant homicide detective who'd caught the case.

  'You need to use the bathroom?' Davis asked. 'Maybe get you a glass of water?'

  I want the bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey sitting on Smith's kitchen worktop.

  'Water would be good,' she said.

  'Stay right here, okay? Don't go wandering.'

  She nodded and looked past the vacancy he left, at the two forensic techs from the state lab in Springfield taking detailed pictures of the former homicide detective. John Smith's headless body lay in a pool of cooling blood that had spread across the lit balcony floor and dripped over the sides. The techs had young faces and had good equipment and were doing a decent job of bracketing the shots.

  The ocean wind blew against the house and whistled through the jagged holes left in the windows. When it died down, she could hear the murmured conversations as the techs spoke to each other. Heard the squawk of seagulls over the crackle of police radios and ringing cell phones.

  The puppies were no longer barking. She assumed they'd been corralled somewhere away from the backyard crime scene.

  'Dr McCormick.'

  Not Davis; this voice belonged to the detective, Lu. She turned around and saw the thirty-something Asian guy holding a glass of water clinking with ice.

  She took the glass and thanked him, noticing that he had called her doctor. She hadn't told the man she had a doctorate in criminal and abnormal psychology. Apparently Lu had made some phone calls. He probably knew her status with the Boston Police Department.

  'Smith's wife?' she asked.

  Lu shook his head.

  'Too much blood loss,' he said. 'She died on the way to the hospita
l.'

  The news didn't surprise her. Still, she had held out hope, and felt the loss at having it amputated twitch like a phantom limb.

  After finding the stairs that led into the basement, she saw, through the windows, the backyard lit up by floodlights. Saw the frail woman with curly grey hair wearing a North Face parka lying sideways on the grass, screaming, her arthritic hands clutching the ripped meat of her bloody thigh. The puppies barked. They had gathered around the woman, four of them, maybe more, and they barked and licked her face and cuddled close to her body. And even in her excruciating pain, in fear and shock, Mavis Smith wanted to protect them. Tried to shoo them away towards the opened basement door underneath the balcony.

  Darby found the light switch for the backyard lights and shut them off, knowing why the woman had been shot in the thigh: the sniper was using her as bait, trying to draw Darby out.

  It worked. The woman screamed again. Darby tumbled against the grass fifteen feet away and ran. When she reached the edge of the backyard she turned and started firing blindly in the direction of the shots — the trees, the sniper had to be somewhere in those trees across the street, and she hoped the muzzle flashes would blind him momentarily. They had. With one hand she grabbed the parka's hood and kept firing as she dragged the screaming woman across the grass, kept firing until the magazine clicked empty. Darby locked the basement door and in the dim light stripped off the parka as the puppies barked outside, scratching their paws against the door, and the woman kept crying, 'I've got to call Paula, I've got to call Paula.'

  Not two gunshot wounds but three. Mavis Smith had been shot in the chest, underneath her right breast. Darby used her belt as a tourniquet on the leg. Used a plastic garbage bag on the sucking chest wound, holding her fingers along three edges and keeping the fourth edge free so the chest could achieve its usual negative pressure state. She stayed with the woman, applying pressure as blood spurted through her fingers, urging the woman to stay calm. Mavis Smith whimpered 'Paula, I've got to call Paula' over and over again until the paramedics arrived.