The Soul Collectors dm-4

by Chris Mooney

  'So you didn't find out Levin was behind the abduction until '99.'

  'Correct. We don't have prints for every missing kid. We got lucky with Levin because the police had lifted prints from his bedroom after he was abducted.'

  'Was Levin one of the California abductions Casey investigated?'

  Sergey shook his head. 'Levin was born and raised in Oregon. Jack had Behavioral Sciences pull up every missing person case where the vic was either an only child or the youngest child in the family, and the entire West Coast lit up like a Christmas tree.'

  'How many kids?'

  'Eighty-six,' Sergey said.

  Coop mumbled, 'Jesus.'

  'And that's just the West Coast,' Sergey said. 'This group or cult — I still have no idea what to call them — they've been travelling across the country all this time, snatching the youngest child of families.'

  'How many?' Darby asked again.

  'The last time I checked,' Sergey said, 'the number was just over three hundred.'

  51

  Darby's gaze dropped from Sergey's face to the tops of the man's polished black Oxfords, her head dizzy with calculations.

  Francis Levin disappears in '54 and shows up in '81 when he snatches this kid named Zuckerman and Levin's prints are found on a syringe. That's twenty-seven years. And now Casey is here and he's saying the same group is responsible and that's fifty-six years, they've been snatching kids for at least fifty-six years.

  Sergey was saying something to her.

  'I'm sorry, can you repeat that?'

  'I said the only thing we know with any degree of certainty is that they abduct the youngest child of the family. For example, Charlie Rizzo. We know he was the youngest member of his family, so when he was abducted, we made sure his prints were entered into the IAFIS system. Now, I'm not suggesting all of these missing kids who are the youngest family members can be attributed to this group, so that three hundred number could be lower.'

  'Or much, much larger,' Darby said. 'There's collateral damage, the people they killed, like John Smith and his wife.'

  And your wife, she added to herself.

  'Yes,' Sergey said, 'you're correct. But I'm focusing on just the missing children. The fact is we don't know anything about this group. Who they are or what they do. Why they snatch the youngest kid from the family.'

  Darby was thinking of what Charlie Rizzo had said to his father — Tell her, Daddy. Tell her what you did — and said: 'The parents of these missing kids, you mean to tell me you found absolutely nothing in their backgrounds?'

  'Nothing that can tell us why their kids were taken, no.'

  'I find that hard to swallow.'

  'I do too. But, still, it remains that these could simply be random abductions. You're more than welcome to take a look at the case files.'

  'What about bodies?'

  'Not one. Whatever happened to them, we don't know. The cases are unsolved.'

  'Casey — Jack — told me he was called back when Darren Waters was found.'

  'You mean when he reappeared,' Sergey said. 'We asked Jack to come in and consult, since Waters was one of those cases that lit up on the West Coast — only child, snatched from home, etcetera. So we took Waters into custody, brought him to what we thought was a secured location — '

  'Where this group somehow managed to find him.'

  'Yes.'

  'How?'

  'Followed would be my guess.'

  'How, though?'

  'You don't think they knew this guy escaped?' Then, as if reading her mind, he said, 'I see. No, I don't think it was an inside job. Nevada police, they didn't know who Waters was, so they ran his prints, and we had all of those coded. Techs operating the IAFIS computers didn't have security access for that particular code, and neither did the guy who ran the department at the time. So the prints got bounced upstairs, and that's when I got called. And if you think I had something to do with my son's abduction, you're wrong. These bastards tried to kill me when Jack and I had Waters at the safe house.'

  He pulled up a trouser leg. A chunk of his calf muscle was gone, as if a shark had got hold of it and ripped the flesh free.

  'Hollow point,' Sergey said. 'Shattered my tibia and the exit wound blew out most of my calf muscle. Almost bled to death. I don't walk with a limp any more, but I can't run, and anytime it rains or snows, the leg throbs like a mad bastard.'

  He let go of the fabric. 'We investigated the inside angle and couldn't find anything.'

  'How secure is your fingerprint database?'

  'Very secure,' he said. 'We checked into that. No break-ins.'

  'Ever had one?'

  'If we did, I don't know about it.'

  'And Darren Waters was never able to shed any light on these people or how he escaped?'

  Sergey shook his head. 'He can't speak or write. Well, he can write now, but on a first-grade level.'

  'Jack mentioned something happened to Waters but didn't tell me specifics.'

  'This group gave Waters a transorbital lobotomy — a rather crude one. You familiar with the procedure?'

  Darby nodded, wishing she didn't know the details about the barbaric operation popularized in the US by Dr Walter Freeman, who, through the mid fifties, had used the 'ice pick' procedure on thousands of schizophrenic inmates and, later, on depressed housewives and 'unruly' children. The patient was given 'electroconvulsive therapy' — shocked with electricity until unconscious — and then an ice pick was inserted into the upper eyelid. A hammer tapped the tip past the nasal cavity bone and into the brain's frontal lobe, where the pick severed neural pathways. Some patients survived, but a good majority died or were left with severe disabilities. And almost every one had been reduced to a childlike state devoid of any personality.

  'Darren Waters,' Sergey said, 'is severely handicapped — mentally and physically. He lives in a constant state of fear. He's medicated most of the time.'

  'With what?'

  'Thorazine.'

  'Why? He a danger to other patients?'

  'Sometimes,' Sergey said. 'Mostly the poor son of a bitch screams about the monsters coming through the walls to eat him.'

  A voice echoed over a speaker: 'Arrival in five minutes.'

  Sergey gripped the armrests. 'We better get you dressed and ready.'

  52

  The van came to a stop a few minutes later. Sergey opened the back doors and Darby saw a cracked parking lot; a dumpster and trees that shook in the wind were on its edges. He shut the doors just as quickly to give her some privacy to get dressed.

  Coop had stayed behind. He sat hunched forward on the bench with his elbows resting on his knees and rubbing his hands. He stared at his fingers.

  She had stripped down into her Hanes bra and boy shorts when he said, 'You ever get tired of it?'

  Darby slipped into the pair of black trousers Sergey had laid out for her. 'Tired of what?'

  'Rushing in where angels fear to tread.'

  She put on a long-sleeved Nomex shirt to keep in her body heat. Tucked it into her trousers and, smiling, said, 'Someone's got to do it.'

  Coop didn't return the smile. 'Why you, though?'

  She shrugged, tying her hair behind her head. 'Because I'm good at it.'

  'At violence.'

  'At doing what's right,' she said. 'What's eating at you? You pissed at me for bringing you into this?'

  'Par for the course.'

  'So what's eating you?'

  He didn't answer. She worked a black polypropylene thermal balaclava over her head.

  'Charlie,' she said.

  Coop looked up at her.

  'He wanted to expose these people,' she said. 'You heard what Sergey said about all those missing kids?'

  He nodded, like he agreed with the point but not the method.

  Darby tossed him her key ring. 'Tell Sergey to go and search my place for the listening devices. And tell him to take my machine and listen to the voicemail where I'm talking to one of these people from
the Rizzo house, the one I tied to the tree who later escaped. He'll know what I'm talking about.'

  'Sure. Anything else?'

  'Yeah, one last thing. The other night, at the blast site, one of these… things cut itself inside the basement. I collected a blood sample. It's in a Band-Aid box in my bike trunk… What's wrong now?'

  'I'm worried about you, Darby. At some point, your lucky streak is going to run out, and when it does, I don't want to be there to see what's left.' Darby opened the back doors and Coop's parting words drifted away in the bright, warm sunlight flooding the back parking lot behind a police station.

  Virginia Cavanaugh, a thin-boned, grey-haired woman who could have passed as a Catholic school nun — severe-looking and dressed in bland cashmere sweater, blue polyester slacks and black orthopedic shoes with Velcro straps — stood next to her sensible tan-coloured Buick LeSabre, the trunk already popped open. Darby looked at the woman and saw a home with plastic-covered furniture, bed sheets folded in tight hospital corners.

  Sergey had already explained to the woman what she needed to do. Cavanaugh didn't ask any questions because there wasn't any need. Her part was simple. All she had to do was drive back to the house, go back to watching the TV or reading or whatever she did to pass her days.

  Darby lifted the trunk lid and found that Virginia Cavanaugh had some compassion in her. The woman had placed a pillow and blanket inside her clean and tidy trunk.

  Darby climbed inside. Sergey handed over a rucksack containing the equipment and tools she had asked for and then shut the lid. A moment later the car started, and the Cavanaugh woman drove smoothly back to her home.

  53

  Darby kept track of time in her head. Twenty seconds shy of ten minutes, she heard a garage door open. A moment later the car came to a stop and then the motor shut off. The garage door came down, and under the grinding sound she heard the latch for the trunk pop free.

  She climbed out with the rucksack and followed the woman up a set of stairs and inside a house with tall, white-painted walls and furniture covered in plastic, the uncomfortably warm air smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and burned bacon.

  The basement was cavernous and cool, the walls lined with the kind of dark wood panelling made popular in the early seventies. All that was missing was a shag rug and a lava lamp. Darby turned the corner and saw a rolled-up oriental rug and, just beyond it, in the middle of the floor, a big square trapdoor made of ancient wood. The ladder was made of wood too, and descended maybe ten or twelve feet to a dirt floor.

  'They'd pull their booze barrels up by ropes,' Virginia Cavanaugh said with a shake of the head. 'Obviously there's no electricity down there. I'm assuming you have a flashlight stored in one of those big pockets of yours.'

  Darby ripped open the middle pouch of the tactical vest and came back with a small but sturdy MagLite.

  'Are you expecting trouble over there? You look like you're dressed to go to war, and that foreign gentleman Searchy — '

  'Sergey,' Darby said.

  'My Lord, you're a woman.'

  Darby suddenly realized the woman couldn't see her face, just her eyes.

  'Remember what he told you. Stay here inside the house in case he calls — and if someone else calls, remember not to say what's going on. We don't need any sightseers, okay?'

  A nod, and then the woman said, 'The door on the other side is similar to this one, but there's no ladder, just a dirt ramp. They'd roll the barrels right down from the basement, from what I was told. As I told Mr Sergey, I have no idea if the new owners carpeted over the area or bolted it down or whatnot. The previous family, the Rizzos, I know they just had a rug over it like I do, but they didn't allow the children to play down there, obviously.' She smoothed the ends of her sweater. 'Poor thing what happened to that boy. Charlie. He was taken, you know.'

  'I know.' Darby swung her legs over the edge.

  'Disappeared into thin air, and they never found him. Gave me the shivers for a long time, thinking about that happening in such a nice neighbourhood as this.'

  Darby made her way down the ladder, feeling the wooden slats straining underneath the weight of her boots.

  'I'll be upstairs,' the woman said. 'In the living room watching my TV shows in case you should require my assistance. Just don't sneak up on me, please. I don't hear so well, and I scare easily.'

  'Will do.' Darby reached the soft, dirt bottom. 'Thanks again for your help, Mrs Cavanaugh.'

  She turned on her flashlight.

  The tunnel was maybe five feet high and just as wide and very, very long. There wasn't enough room to stand down there, but then it hadn't been created for that purpose. She imagined the men — and possibly women and children — hunched forward as they rolled barrel after barrel of illegal moonshine and beer underneath the now-rotting sheets of plywood covering the ceiling, the barrels' edges bumping against the wooden support slats lining the dirt walls every eight to ten feet. They hadn't done it in the dark. Nailed into the wood slats she saw old, rusted hooks for kerosene lamps.

  Darby adjusted the mike hovering near her mouth and said, 'Can you hear me?'

  'So far, so good,' came Sergey's reply over her earpiece.

  'You'll probably lose me once I start moving. I'll contact you once I'm inside the basement.'

  Hunched forward, Darby moved across the bumpy dirt floor, breathing in the odours of rotting wood and must and dampness, her breath steaming slightly in the cold air. She had dressed in full assault gear: boots, a bulletproof vest underneath the tactical vest that was loaded down with equipment and a gas mask. With the rucksack gripped in her gloved hand weighing another twenty or so pounds, she was sweating heavily by the time she reached the end of the tunnel.

  Virginia Cavanaugh had been right about the dirt ramp. It stretched up to the same trapdoor on the opposite end of the tunnel. Darby crawled her way up it, then dropped the rucksack and leaned on her side. She placed a gloved hand on the wood and slowly pushed. It lifted about two inches before she heard the soft rattle of metal — a combination padlock.

  From the sack she took out an eyehole camera. She turned on the unit, saw a bright glow of green ambient light on the monitor before the camera lens adjusted to the darkness, and then snaked the tiny pinhole camera through the edge and examined part of the basement. Boiler and hot-water tank and boxes, lots of boxes and plastic storage containers. Mark Rizzo's wood shelving had been stripped off the walls. She found the door leading into the next part of the basement — the finished part the family had used — and was relieved to find it shut.

  Now, the lock.

  She grabbed the SWAT-grade bolt cutter, pinched the padlock between its sharp steel teeth and with a single squeeze snapped it. Rather than working on fishing it out with her hands, she snapped the other half and then collected the broken pieces and tossed them into the dirt.

  Slowly she lifted the door, hoping the old hinges wouldn't squeak. She grabbed the rucksack and lifted it slowly too, not wanting to make any noise, and set it down on the concrete floor. She snaked the pinhole camera underneath the door and checked out the basement. Clear.

  'I'm in,' Darby whispered into the mike.

  'Don't take any chances,' Sergey said. 'Use the gas mask.'

  She tucked the pinhole camera unit into one of the cargo pockets in her trousers. Secured the gas mask across her face and grabbed the final piece of equipment from her rucksack: a small, handheld device that could monitor the frequencies given off by listening devices and pinhole cameras. She strapped it underneath the forearm of her left hand.

  Sergey had given her the same sidearm as the one used by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, a fifteen-shot Glock 22 equipped with.40 S amp;W cartridges. She removed the sidearm from its holster, threaded the silencer, and held the sidearm out in front of her as she moved into the basement while stealing glances at the monitoring device. Right now the light meter was yellow. If it spiked anywhere into the green zone, that meant listening devices and/or
cameras had been installed, and then she'd have to go back through the tunnel and meet with Sergey to discuss whether or not they should risk using jamming equipment.

  Darby threaded her way through stacked boxes and plastic containers scattered haphazardly across the floor, past a couch and a TV hooked up to a video-game system, and then turned the corner and stepped over what seemed like hundreds of Lego pieces covering the Berber carpet.

  The monitoring unit stayed yellow.

  Upstairs, a steady hum of motor. It sounded like a dryer. She moved up the carpeted steps and stopped when she saw the opened door. Looked past it and into part of the kitchen with yellow-painted walls and hardwood oak floors. Moved up the final steps and checked the visible areas and didn't see anyone. She reached the doorway and over the hum of the dryer heard a steady tick tock, tick tock. Turned the corner and checked the blind spot behind the door — clear — then swivelled to her left and looked down a foyer, the hardwood glowing with slats of sunlight. The monitoring unit stayed yellow, didn't flicker once.

  She passed through the kitchen, cleared the dining room and then, turning a corner, stared down the sight of her gun into the living room and found the source of the ticking: a big grandfather clock standing proudly on the wall between two windows. The living room was clear. Five steps and she stood near the end of a stairwell. Checked the front door across from it and didn't see any wires. She had wondered if the front door might have been wired to an IED.

  The rooms felt hot — incredibly hot. She backed up into the dining room, and saw a thermostat, a digital model with the home's exact temperature displayed in black and white on the tiny LED screen: 95 degrees.

  The dryer clicked off. Back inside the kitchen now, she checked the sliding glass door standing to the left of a gas fireplace. No wires there and the monitor strapped to her wrist remained yellow. And everything she had seen was neat and orderly. No sign of a struggle, nothing disrupted, it was as if the family living here had packed up their car and gone out for the day.