The Soul Collectors dm-4

by Chris Mooney

  When he didn't, she said, 'Why are you a special case?'

  'They've tried to kill me,' he said. 'Twice.'

  'When?'

  'First time was in late 2001. Darren Waters was at a private treatment facility, but I had found one more suitable for his… condition. We moved him to a safe house while we made arrangements, setting up an alias for him, and this group found us and tried a stunt like the one they pulled at the Rizzo house. Waters survived. I did too, along with Sergey.'

  Casey placed two fingers underneath the edge of the desk.

  'Second time was about five months after the Sandman case,' he said. 'I had moved away and remarried under a different name. Somehow they found us. We made it out of that one okay, but I reached out to the Bureau for help — my wife was pregnant — and they offered to put us into sort of a… I guess you could call it a special witness-protection programme. Only a handful of people know about it.'

  'People you know and trust?'

  'I know where you're heading, and no, I don't know these people, nor can I say with any confidence that I trust them. Could this group have people on the inside? Maybe.'

  'Probably,' she said.

  'Computers are a more likely bet. Everything's stored on them now. You know your way around them, you can sit somewhere halfway across the world and find people's lives like this.' He snapped his fingers. 'Get in and out without leaving a trace, usually.'

  'You know they're good with computers?'

  'No, I don't. That's what's infuriating about this group. We don't know much of anything. They snatch kids and they disappear — the kids and the group.' He lifted the corner of the desk with his fingers. 'We know they've been doing it for at least four decades, maybe even longer, but we don't know why they're doing it.' The desk legs hung two inches above the floor. 'One of them escaped, and for all practical purposes he's a vegetable. Oh, and the best part is that anyone who gets close to these people winds up dead.'

  He let go of the desk. The legs slapped against the floor as he turned to her.

  'Now I hope you understand the reasoning behind all this subterfuge,' he said. 'I wanted to keep you far away from this. Now you're in the middle of it and you can't go back to an ordinary life. You realize that, don't you?'

  'I'll go to the former Rizzo home,' she said. 'I've been in there, I know my way around.'

  'Didn't you just tell me that one or more of these people would be watching to — '

  'I can get inside the house without being seen.'

  'And how, exactly, are you going to do that?'

  'Simple architecture,' Darby said. 'They won't see me coming, I guarantee it.'

  49

  Darby started with the most important part — how she was going to get into the house undetected — when Sergey snapped his phone shut.

  'Plane touched down,' Sergey said, and then went on to explain how federal lab technicians were now riding inside a van, on their way to the safe house in Sarasota. The tech Casey liked, Drake, had already set up the equipment needed for the video feed.

  'You know those small lights you can wear on your forehead?' Sergey said. 'The one attached to the straps, looks like a miner's light? Drake's going to be wearing something like that, only instead of a light it'll have a video camera. We just tested it out, got a crystal-clear picture. What he sees, you'll see. What he hears, you'll hear. It'll be like you're walking in there — '

  'How many?'

  'Just Drake. Nobody else — '

  'The agents you had guarding my family,' Casey said. 'There were eight of them, right?'

  Sergey nodded.

  'And?' Casey prompted.

  'All dead,' Sergey said. 'I don't know what went wrong yet, Jack, but I swear we'll — '

  'Is the video feed set up?'

  'In about an hour.'

  'Van out front?'

  Sergey nodded. 'Now, about the Rizzo house, I'm thinking — '

  'Talk to her, she's already got a plan, a solid one.'

  Then Casey whisked past them, and Darby saw the ghosts of his dead wife and unborn daughter hanging in the man's frightened eyes. She watched him open the door and push his way past the bodies, wondering how much violence and suffering a person's mind could take before it broke him.

  The door shut and Darby looked at Sergey, expecting to see some of that brash cockiness she'd witnessed at the BU Lab when the man had played the role of the army officer, Billy Fitzgerald, the second-in-command of the facility. She didn't see any, but he straightened, puffing up his chest as he took in a deep breath. With Casey no longer in the room, Sergey was going now to give her the lay of the land, take this moment to lecture her about who was in charge around here. He came up to her and she was surprised to find what looked like compassion swimming in his tired brown eyes.

  Darby said, 'You have a problem with me being here, let's get it out on the table right now before we get moving.'

  'I wish you weren't here, but not for the reasons you think. I'm assuming Jack told you why he wanted you kept inside the quarantine chamber.'

  She nodded.

  'He was adamant about that — about not wanting you anywhere near this,' he said. 'Truth be told, I wanted to bring you into the fold from the beginning, after we found out what had happened at the Rizzo house. I told Jack you'd seen these people up close, for one, and with your background and experience, I argued it would help to have a pair of fresh eyes. I've been working this thing far too long now.'

  'How long?'

  'Since they took my son.'

  He saw the confusion on her face and said, 'Jack didn't tell you about Arman?'

  'No.'

  'They took him when he was five,' Sergey said. 'Came into the house in broad daylight and shot my wife when she answered the door. Fifteen years ago, this happened. Arman would be twenty today.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'My fault. I should have… I was a young hotshot profiler full of drive and ego and thought I could crack this group. Maybe you can help me now. Let's hear this plan of yours.'

  She told him. The man listened to her intently, without interrupting, and when she finished, he thought it over for a moment and then nodded.

  They discussed equipment next, Darby giving him exact names and specifications.

  'I can do that,' Sergey said. 'Okay, let me make some phone calls. I'll meet you out front in a few minutes.'

  'What about the gun charges?'

  But he had already opened the door and run off. The crowd blocking the doorway had dispersed, and when she emerged into the bullpen she saw that it had gone back to normal, everyone working the phones or their computers, people flipping through case files, people moving in and out of doorways, everyone busy.

  Coop stood off to the side, waving to her.

  'Freedman here?' she asked.

  'No, he left about an hour ago. Gun charges have been dropped. Didn't take much time since it was bullshit to begin with.'

  'I've got to get my stuff from inventory.'

  The cop seated on a stool behind the grille rose slowly from his chair and then took his sweet goddamn time to collect the envelopes storing her wallet, keys, cell phone, belt and shoulder holster. She was without a sidearm. Her MK23 had been confiscated by the state's lab techs for testing.

  Two men, mountains of pale flesh poured into black suits, blocked her path to the front door. They wore earpieces and she could see the outline of their Kevlar vests underneath their shirts.

  'You need to wait here, Miss McCormick,' one of them said. 'You too, Mr Cooper.'

  Bright light poured through the glass front door leading into the warm lobby. From where she stood she could see the hard blue sky, cloudless, the sun bright and strong. She moved closer and then saw part of a black sedan parked a few feet away from the entrance, the driver's-side window down, a Secret Service man seated behind the wheel, talking into his wrist mike.

  One of the lobby's Secret Service agents held up a hand and said, 'Back up, Miss McCormick.
We'll tell you when it's safe.'

  She nodded and took a step back. Breathed deeply and smelled the coppery stench lining her nostrils. John Smith's blood, his wife's blood. Her fingernails and the callused parts of her palms and fingers were stained near-black and she saw John Smith's face exploding into bone and hair and skin. Saw Mavis Smith, remembered the feel of the woman's blood spurting out against her fingers — and then the enormity of it hit her, how she'd be forced to live her life going forward, under constant guard, her every movement scrutinized. Travelling from state to state, from safe house to safe house, switching names and identities, living on the run until this group was found. Until every one of its members was arrested or dead.

  But how many were there?

  The question swelled inside her as a fragment from her conversation with Casey rolled through her head and made her skin turn cold. These people were lurking somewhere beyond these walls, waiting. Watching and planning and sharpening their knives. Cleaning their guns.

  Coop placed a hand on her shoulder and some of the cramping tension inside her chest and shoulders loosened. He led her to the far corner and they turned their backs to the agents so they could have some privacy.

  He kept his hand on her shoulder when he leaned in close and said, 'You okay?'

  She nodded. Coop's eyes searched her face. The green one was the most interesting. Flecked with tiny specks of gold you could see only when you stood this close. She felt his hand and she could smell him and thought, incredibly, under the circumstance: So this is what it's like to find your other half in this world.

  'I'm fine,' she said. 'Thanks again for coming.'

  'Anytime, Darbs.' He grinned, picked something out of her hair and tossed it to the floor. 'You could use a shower at some point. I'm just saying…'

  'How long can you stay?'

  He shrugged. 'It's open-ended. Family emergency, I told my boss. He said to take my time. The Brits are good about holidays — that's what they call vacations over there.'

  'Let me start at the beginning,' Darby said.

  50

  Darby had finished explaining last night's conversation with John Smith when word came down it was time to move.

  The Secret Service agents escorted them to an oversized black van parked a few feet away from the main doors. They stayed close, holding their arms, and in the space of a few steps, she saw a scattering of Secret Service agents guarding the area. Saw them standing on street corners. Caught a flash of one with a pair of binoculars on the roof across the street, saw another standing guard near the side door of another black van. Casey was in there, clamping down on his fear as he watched a man hundreds of miles away searching the blood-splattered walls, floors and bodies for evidence, clues to help him find his wife and daughter before they joined the dead.

  She stepped up inside the van, Coop moving right behind her, and saw Sergey sitting hunched forward at a small desk, phone pressed against his ear and his forehead resting on the heel of his palm as he listened to someone on the other end of the line.

  The side door slammed shut and the van started rolling, slowly at first, then gaining speed. The warm interior, lit from the half-dozen computer screens, blinking lights and a small desk lamp next to Sergey, had that pleasant new-carpet smell.

  This was no cheap five-and-dime surveillance rig. Looking around, she saw the new encryption packs developed by the CIA on the wall-mounted phone. The wall behind Sergey contained another desk, this one longer, with an array of forensic tools, each one bolted to the surface: dual-slide microscope, a scanning electron microscope and portable mass spectrometer. In the back, to her left, was a locked metal gun cabinet.

  Darby checked her watch. It was coming up on 10:30 a.m.

  Sergey rose halfway out of his seat and reached up to the wall to hang up the phone.

  'That was the woman you asked me to speak to, Virginia Cavanaugh,' he said, plopping back down in his bolted chair. 'You were right about the tunnels.'

  Coop said, 'Tunnels?'

  She hadn't told Coop about this part. She had run out of time when the Secret Service agents came for them.

  Sergey turned to the computer monitor on the desk, grabbed an edge and swung it around to show them the screen holding an aerial satellite photograph — a close-up roof shot of the Rizzo family's former Brookline home surrounded by dozens of trees in full autumn bloom. Darby got out of her seat and knelt, grabbing the edge of the desk for balance.

  'Here's the Rizzo house,' she said, and then traced her finger diagonally across the wooded area, stopping less than a quarter of a mile away, on the roof belonging to a sprawling three-floor mock-Tudor home. 'This belongs to a woman named Virginia Cavanaugh, the Rizzo family's old neighbour. An old Prohibition tunnel runs between the two houses.'

  Coop said, 'And you know this from, what, your old days as a bootlegger?'

  'When I worked Charlie Rizzo's case, someone, a detective or patrolman, I forget which, told me the Rizzo and Cavanaugh houses were owned by some big Irish family who made all of their money in lumber. When the Great Depression hit, the money started to dry up, and this family had something on the order of twenty kids and grandchildren.'

  'Small family by Irish standards.'

  'True. So this small but enterprising Irish clan turned to the one known commodity available to them at the time. Hint: it's not growing potatoes.'

  'Then I'd have to say bootlegging.'

  'Correct. Prohibition was in full swing, so they manufactured moonshine and beer in their basement and then rolled the big barrels across the tunnel to where the Cavanaugh home now sits. Now ask why.'

  'Why?'

  Darby grinned slightly, enjoying the easy banter she had with him, missing it. For a moment it took the grief and severity of her previous conversation with Casey and Sergey and muted it.

  She returned to her seat. 'The Cavanaugh home used to be the site for this Irish family's lumber company. They used the house as an office and sold their lumber there, so it was a perfect spot to pick up the illegal booze. Trucks pull into a lumberyard all the time, right? But in the driveway of a home, not so much.'

  Coop raised his hand. 'Question. How do you know this tunnel is still in service?'

  Darby turned to Sergey.

  'Virginia Cavanaugh,' Sergey said. 'Woman's in her eighties and told me her home — the aforementioned site of the lumberyard — has stayed in her family for the past three generations. They will it free and clear to the surviving family members, the only stipulation is that it can't be sold.'

  'Clever,' Coop said.

  'Cavanaugh told me her uncle took her through the tunnel once, you know, part of a history lesson or something,' Sergey said. 'As far as she knows, you can still walk through it, but you won't know until you're actually there.'

  Darby said, 'So she agreed to let us in.'

  Sergey nodded.

  'What about the other part?' she asked.

  'No problem there,' Sergey said. 'I think it gave the old bird a thrill, getting a call from the FBI to help assist an investigation. That plus I don't think she's real fond of her neighbours.'

  'What gave you that impression?'

  'She called them "chinks".'

  Coop said, 'That's one clue, sure.'

  Darby leaned forward and with her eyes on Sergey said, 'Tell me the rest of it. How Casey found this group.'

  'The short version is this,' Sergey said. 'When Casey was working as a profiler, he was sent to consult on a series of abductions that occurred in and around Los Angeles over a seven-year time period. This was back in '81. Eleven victims, all kids. The youngest was six, the oldest twelve. They came from different backgrounds — poor parents, rich ones, middle class — and the racial backgrounds were different. Black, white, you name it. Each boy or girl was snatched somewhere outside their home, and each abduction was quick and clean, no witnesses.

  'Reviewing the cases, Jack discovered that each vic was the youngest family member. Eleven victims, many o
f whom had older siblings, and each vic was the youngest. What were the odds? That was the only unifying thread he found.'

  The wall phone rang. Sergey took the call, listened for a moment then said 'Okay' and hung up.

  'On the ninth abduction,' he said, 'the one near Chino Hill Park, a witness saw a van pull up next to a kid riding his bike. Kid's name was Mathew Zuckerman. He's ten, pretty good-sized boy for his age, lots of weight, and the van pulls up to him and pauses just a moment and then speeds away, leaving the bike bouncing across the dirt road.'

  'So you're talking two people,' Darby said. 'The driver and whoever was in the back of the van.'

  'At least two people. The boy wasn't light, so you'd need at least two to pull and lift the kid from the bike that fast.'

  'And that's when Casey came to the conclusion this was a group rather than a single serial killer.'

  Sergey nodded. 'That was his theory, yes. Now the detective who caught the Zuckerman case, he was this young guy probably looking to make a name for himself because he forced the forensic guys to collect and bag into evidence every piece of trash along the entire stretch of road. We're talking about a good mile before you can turn. Thank God this guy was that thorough; otherwise he wouldn't have found the empty syringe tube.

  'The state lab did a good job with the people and resources they had, and Jack convinced them to send everything to our lab, including the bike. We managed to lift a print off the tube and got lucky. The print, we later discovered, belonged to a ten-year-old boy named Francis Levin who disappeared on his way home from school in '54.'

  'Wait,' Darby said. 'Your fingerprint database wasn't operational until '99. How did Levin's prints get into the system?'

  'When Casey stopped working the original cases, a different task force took over before it was finally blended into CASMIRC. Any only or youngest child who was either abducted or who disappeared under mysterious circumstances — the task force made sure that hard copies of their prints were on file. When the IAFIS database went operational, the task force simply loaded and coded their prints.'