The Soul Collectors dm-4

by Chris Mooney

  'Wait, you're not seriously thinking of — '

  'No. No, of course not. Confessing on live TV and killing Waters isn't going to save my family. If I knew it would for certain, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd turn the gun on myself if it would save them, but there's no way these people are going to let Taylor and Sarah go. They won't kill them — there's no fun in that.'

  His words came out sounding rote, and his face remained, as ever, expressionless.

  'They want me to suffer,' Casey said. 'They've already given my wife a transorbital lobotomy.'

  Darby felt cold all over, sitting still as she watched Casey pick up the remote from his lap and point it at the screen.

  67

  He played the video from the beginning.

  A black screen followed by a low hiss from the speakers. Then a male voice said: 'Property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, case number 489765, item number 86. This is a copy of the original video.'

  On the TV screen Sarah Casey stumbled around her cell, her nine remaining fingers feeling their way through pitch-black darkness. The spiders, Darby noticed, weren't visible on camera — not yet — but she could hear their soft thumping sounds as they bumped into the walls of their cage. Casey's daughter had heard the sounds too. She paused every few seconds to glance up and listen carefully, alert to the danger waiting several feet above her head.

  The camera lens didn't waver. Must be set up on a tripod, Darby thought, switching her attention past Sarah Casey to the stone walls beyond the young girl's clear cell. Ancient and craggy, they reminded Darby of the ones she had seen in historical churches in Paris — walls that had never seen sunlight, dusty and smooth. The colouring, though, was uneven. Splotches of black and lighter colours covered the walls.

  Now the camera lens panned back and the spiders were visible to the viewer but not to Sarah Casey. She bumped into one of the smooth walls and screamed. Darby watched the grimy hand grip the lever for the bottom of the spider cage and the green glow of night vision disappeared, giving way to a steady bright spotlight shining from somewhere on top of the video camera.

  Sarah Casey held her hand up to the sudden burst of light. Her cheeks were swollen and shiny with tears, her breathing so fast and sharp she seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. Her hand moved away from her face and, blinking, she saw whoever was standing behind the camera and screamed. She bumped into the back wall and heard the sounds above her head and looked up and saw what was up there and screamed again.

  Now came the part Darby had already seen: the young girl pounding on the translucent barrier of her prison cell and screaming for her father. The girl sinking into a corner, wailing, her gaze darting between the spiders crawling above her head, the person holding the lever and the person or persons standing behind the video camera. A flapping sound came over the speakers and Sarah Casey turned to the camera. She blinked several times, wiping away the tears from her vision, and when her eyes focused they widened for a moment and she choked out a single word:

  'Daddy.'

  Sarah Casey disappeared as the camera cut to a new shot, this one also in night vision but from a different angle, the lens pointed down at another person, a middle-aged and almost model-perfect woman with prominent cheekbones, long blonde hair and long legs strapped down to a crude-looking operating table. Darby saw leather straps biting into the woman's ankles and wrists and thought about the abrasions she'd found on Mark Rizzo's body and wondered if he had been strapped down to the same table.

  'My wife,' Casey said in a dead voice. 'Taylor.'

  His wife's shoes and socks had been removed but not her shorts or tank top. A thick leather strap had been placed across her forehead to keep her head steady. Her eyes, wide and frightened, searched vainly through the darkness.

  Seconds passed and nothing happened. Darby looked at these walls and found them to be nearly identical to the ones she'd seen surrounding Sarah Casey's cell — the same dry round stones, the same blotchy colouring, the same cracks and fissures in the mortar. Only here Darby found a black shadow to the far left. Maybe part of a doorway. Darby could see only the bottom quarter of it.

  Then she saw a black-robed figure step over to the table. His head wasn't visible and the woman didn't seem to hear him, and she couldn't see the man's hand as it came up from underneath the table, the fingers gripping a long, slender metal instrument shaped like a nail.

  Darby felt beads of sweat pop out along her hairline and from the corner of her eye she looked at Casey. The green light glowed across his weathered face, and his eyes were steady as they watched the screen, his lips parting not to speak but to take another drink.

  The robed man on the screen moved to the top of the table. Taylor Casey didn't see him. The camera zoomed in on her face and then she screamed and bucked against her restraints as the man's thumb shoved back her upper eyelid.

  Darby's stomach dropped and she forced herself to watch but the screen went black. Then the woman's screams exploded over the speakers.

  She wasn't aware that a phone was ringing until she saw Casey leaping out of his chair.

  Darby rewound the DVD to the black spot she'd seen on the far left of the screen. She still couldn't see anything, then rewound the DVD again, this time pausing on the black spot. She stood, feeling cold and more than a little shaken, and moved closer to the TV screen.

  She couldn't make out much, just the faint outlines of several shapes that could be nothing more than grainy marks left over from the DVD transfer.

  'Sergey wants to talk to us,' Casey said. 'He told me you think I should be removed from this case.'

  Darby opened her mouth to speak but Casey cut her off.

  'I don't blame you for thinking it,' he said. 'You're right. I'm too close to this, obviously.'

  'If you find one or more of these people, what are you planning on doing?'

  'Arresting them, of course.'

  'That's too bad.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Because I plan on killing them,' Darby said. 'Every last one.'

  68

  Darby summarized her conversation with Ronald Ross as she followed Casey into another dimly lit room, this one an area of bunk beds that reminded her of an army barracks, only these beds unfolded from the walls and came with seatbelts. She trailed behind the man as he made his way down a set of stairs. Casey got off on the next floor and opened the door to a room lit by soft and elegant lighting.

  The long cabin seemed as wide and as long as a football field and had both the look and feel of downtown Boston's Harvard Club — dark wood panelling on the walls, worn brown leather club chairs and small mahogany tables. A well-worn oriental rug of deep burgundy, forest green and dark brown hues covered the entire floor. Despite being inside a plane, this space was as regal and luxurious as the Four Seasons' banquet hall; only this space was being used to host the missing and the dead.

  Darby gaped at all the young faces captured in black and white and colour — the faces of children, hundreds of them, each one staring at her from the photographs tacked to the wall-mounted corkboards that filled almost both sides of the plane.

  The photographs had been arranged by year. To her right, a corkboard with a label at the top that read: '1945 to 1972?' Filling almost every square inch of that space were old and fraying Polaroids and black and white pictures. Each child had a name. Each one had a question mark written next to it. These kids had been abducted from Washington. The next board, this one labelled '1973 to 1975', had photographs of abducted and missing children from Oregon. The next one was dedicated to California. She read the years printed on the label: '1976 to 1981'.

  The time Casey got involved, she thought. Then, on the heels of it, came another one: Washington, then Oregon and California. The West Coast.

  She swung her head around to her left, to the area near the door, and saw two tall and wide corkboards filled with colour photographs of more recent victims — 2009 and 2010.

  She moved forward, slowly, taki
ng in the photographs of more missing children from the previous years and thinking, It's like the Traveler case all over again, hundreds and hundreds of photographs of missing victims spanning decades.

  But Traveler had predominately hunted women. Teenagers, women in their twenties and thirties — there had even been a handful in their late forties or early fifties. The women, she had discovered later, hadn't been carefully selected; they were victims of opportunity, snatched from the streets while walking to their home or car, and each one had been killed inside Traveler's underground dungeon of horrors.

  But these bulletin boards and these pictures contained pictures of young children — both boys and girls from different races and backgrounds. What had Sergey told her? In each case Casey had discovered the abducted child was the youngest member of the family. There was a careful selection process at work here, a singular reason that united all of the hundreds of gap-toothed smiling kids staring at her in this grisly shrine.

  She counted the pictures underneath the boards labelled 2009 and 2010. Three victims — two boys and one girl — abducted from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont.

  In 2007 and 2008, eleven kids had been snatched from Tennessee and North and South Carolina. Before that, from 2004 to 2006, this group had focused on Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

  Something itched in the back of her mind, something about the states, how they -

  They surround each other, she thought. New Hampshire and Vermont bordered Massachusetts. In the 2007 and 2008 abductions… she could see the map of the US in her mind's eye now, the states drilled into her memory courtesy of the nuns at St Stephens School. Tennessee… the right-hand portion of the state bordered both North and South Carolina. Same with the abduction cases from 2004 to 2006: Alabama was the central state, bordering Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia. This group (another difference between the Traveler case: there was a group of people at work here, not a pair of serial killers), this group worked in a tight cluster.

  She turned to Casey, saw that he wasn't standing next to her. He was behind her, his hand gripping a doorknob.

  'Clusters,' she called out to him. 'They work in a tight cluster of states.'

  'I know.'

  'So the state that borders all the others must work as their base of operations.'

  'That's the theory,' he said, motioning for her to hurry along.

  She whisked past him, through the open door, and stepped into a private conference room decorated with the same rich wood. All of the eight leather chairs arranged around the table had seatbelts.

  Special Agent Sergey Martynovich sat at the far end, a phone tucked against his ear, his other hand holding the edge of a computer screen. It had been bolted down to the table so it wouldn't fall, as had the other device sitting in the table's centre — a wireless conference phone made of black and silver and shaped like some sort of sinister-looking spaceship.

  He hung up and said, 'Tom Geary from Langley's calling. They're setting up the video-conference stuff on his end right now. Jack, did Darby tell you about her conversation with a Harvard professor named — she did. Okay, good. Now let me bring you both up to speed with what we have so far.'

  Sergey looked at her and said, 'The recording of that person from the Rizzo house you had on your voicemail? After you left, they came and untied him. You can hear their footsteps and one of them says, Vos es tutus, custodio.' He glanced down at his notes. 'Its loose translation is "No harm will come to you, guard." The blood swab from the crater has been loaded into CODIS. We're not hoping for miracles there, just an ID. That's all I've got.'

  Casey said, 'What about the GPS implants?'

  'Still silent.'

  'They were operating fine when I left Florida.'

  'I know. It's… the technology is still somewhat new, Jack. It's not perfect.'

  The silence grew in the room. Sergey glanced at her with a grim smile.

  'Your friend Coop is on his way back home. First class,' he said. 'We had him booked under another name. We have an agent who will meet him at Heathrow and escort him home.'

  'Thank you.'

  More silence. Sergey seemed relieved when he heard a knock on the door. It opened and a woman dressed in a professional navy-blue suit came inside and with both hands placed a bulky case on the table. Big and square and made of black plastic, it looked like something used to house a power tool.

  The woman undid the hinges and flipped the top open. Lying in the foam was an aluminium gun with a fine metal tip. She looked at Darby and said, 'Right or left arm?'

  Sergey waved his hands. 'Sorry, I forgot to tell her. Darby, we're going to put a chip in your arm. It's very small, sits right below the skin.'

  'I don't see the point,' Darby said, 'as it doesn't seem to be working.'

  Sergey placed his hands together as if in prayer. 'I'd feel better if you did it. It'll only last a week and then we'll take it out.'

  Darby shrugged. She took off her leather jacket and shirt, glad that she had worn a tank top underneath. A swab of alcohol and then a slight sting and it was over. The woman placed a Band-Aid on her arm, collected her stuff and left.

  Casey said, 'This guy from Cryptography, you tell him what's going on with me?'

  'I gave him the background stuff,' Sergey said. 'No specifics.'

  'When he calls, tell him I'm not in the room. That way he won't be inclined to hold anything back. I'll listen from the corner.'

  Ten minutes passed.

  Darby said, 'I want to examine the USB drive.'

  'We have people doing that right now,' Sergey said. 'Computer geeks. They're looking for what they called "digital fingerprints". Every computer leaves them behind, they said, so we're going to see if we can track down these people that way.'

  'I want to hold it in my hands.'

  Sergey thought it over for a moment, then shrugged and picked up the phone.

  'Can I ask why?' he said as he punched in numbers.

  'It feels… off. Wrong. The finger, the USB drive — they're risking exposure,' Darby said. 'They're too clever for that.'

  The USB drive arrived ten minutes later. Darby held it, twirling it around in her fingers when the conference-room phone started ringing.

  69

  Sergey picked up the phone and listened, looking at the web-type cam set up on top of the computer monitor. A moment later, he glanced at Casey and nodded, and Casey got out of his chair.

  Sergey hung up and pressed a button on the alien-spacecraft speakerphone. 'Tom?'

  'I'm here,' replied a deep, baritone voice.

  Casey moved away as Sergey swivelled the monitor around to her.

  On the screen she saw a freckle-faced older man with pale skin and shocking bright red hair that, for some strange reason, he decided to wear long, like he was stuck in the seventies. The boyish face didn't match the deep voice.

  Sergey pulled out the chair next to her.

  'Tom,' he said, sitting, 'this is Darby McCormick, the one who found the symbol tattooed to the victim's lip. She's got security clearance, so there's no need to hold anything back.'

  'I don't see Mr Casey,' Geary said.

  'He's not here.'

  'Okay. Probably better this way. The news isn't good.'

  Darby glanced to the corner where Casey stood and saw the defeat reach his face. Casey had been hoping the symbol would lead to something solid — the proverbial needle in the haystack.

  Geary said, 'I just got off the phone with the Harvard professor, Ross. He informed me he spoke to both of you individually and gave you the background information he has on the symbol and how it relates to this Gnosticism business.'

  Darby nodded. Sergey said, 'Correct. What did Cryptography uncover on the symbol?'

  'Nothing,' Geary said. 'We've never come across it — this is the first time anyone here has seen it. Good call bringing Ross in on this. If it wasn't for him, we'd still be looking.'

  Darby looked at the USB drive. It was encased in
plastic, and, as she moved it around in her fingers underneath the light, she saw several small scratches and scuff marks.

  Sergey said, 'What about connecting this symbol to a group or church that practises Gnosticism? Any luck there?'

  'I'm afraid not. Like I said, nobody here has come across this symbol, and since it's not listed in any of our computer systems, we don't have any way to connect it to an individual church, group or radical cult. I'd rule out churches, though.'

  'Why?'

  'Gnosticism — the actual religion — isn't something that's hidden in the shadows. There are thousands of Gnostic churches in the US alone. The religious aspect is, in many ways, no different to Catholicism.'

  'Small difference,' Sergey said. 'The Catholic Church isn't going around the country abducting kids.'

  'True,' Geary said. 'They're too busy molesting them.'

  Darby reached into her jacket pocket for her pen knife.

  'Given what you've told me about the case,' Geary said, 'I'm thinking you're dealing with some underground movement or splinter cell.'

  'Or cult.'

  'Possibly. The tattoo on the lip gives it that whole secret society vibe.'

  'What about these Archons Ross mentioned? Has that word come across your radar screen?'

  'No. This is the first time anyone here has heard it.'

  Darby worked the blade into the USB's plastic seam to prise the case apart.

  Geary said, 'As for what Ross told me regarding Archons — and I'm reading his words here — they want the world to bend to their will, their law, their order. They achieve that result through inflicting both physical and psychological pain and suffering — in this case, on Jack Casey. You said he has a history with this group.'

  'He does. A long history. They've been looking for Jack for a long time.'

  'Then if you believe Ross's historical literature on Archons and how they fit into Gnostic doctrine — that they are the servants of a divine being, hell bent on acquiring power through human pain and suffering — then this group, cult, splinter cell or whatever they call themselves or whoever they think they are, I think it's safe to say they won't release Casey's wife or daughter. I think — and Ross agrees with me on this — I think they'll deliver on their promise of mailing pieces of his family to you.'