A Song of Shadows

by John Connolly

  ‘Daddy, it smelled bad.’

  He watched the Cadillac turn the corner, the silhouette of its driver just about visible as it headed north along Burgess Road, his head darker patch behind the colored glass.

  ‘If you say so. Anyway, it’s gone now.’

  He checked twice before crossing, but the road was clear. They reached the far sidewalk, and headed for the municipal parking lot where he’d left his car. As the lot came into sight, Sam let go of his hand.

  ‘I feel sick,’ she said, and with that she released a stream of milk and French toast onto the sidewalk. All that Parker could do was hold back her hair and let it come. When she was done, he found a tissue in his pocket and used it to wipe her mouth. Her face was very pale. Even her lips seemed more bloodless than before.

  ‘You want to sit down?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Where did that come from? Did you feel bad earlier?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think it was the French toast?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked down at the mess on the pavement. They weren’t far from the Blackbird Bar & Grill, and the door was open. He brought her inside and sat her down at one of the booths in the bar, which was otherwise empty. Fred Amsel appeared from a back room, and Parker told him what had happened and asked for a bucket of water to clean off the sidewalk. Fred told him that he’d take care of it. He poured a Sprite for Sam, but did not add ice.

  ‘The sugar will help,’ he said. ‘She’s probably feeling light-headed.’

  Sam sipped the soda. Fred filled a bucket, sluiced down the sidewalk, and then used a brush to wash any residue into the gutter. The color returned to Sam’s face, and she assured her father that she was happy to get in the car so they could return to the house. Parker thanked Fred for his kindness, and offered to pay for the soda, but he knew that no cash would be accepted. They got back to the car without any further incident, but he kept the windows rolled down on the ride back to Green Heron Bay.

  Parker suggested that perhaps they should leave the visit to Amanda until the next day, but Sam would hear none of it.

  ‘I’m fine, Daddy,’ she said. ‘It was the smell that made me sick. That man in the car, he smelled bad. He smelled real bad …’

  28

  Sam seemed fully recovered by the time they returned to the house at Green Heron Bay, but Parker insisted that she take it easy for an hour before he brought her to meet Amanda Winter. She did so reluctantly, her mood improved only slightly by being given relatively unlimited access to Netflix on her father’s laptop.

  While she lay on the couch watching an episode of Cow and Chicken, Parker went outside and thought about the brown Cadillac, and his daughter’s reaction to it. Her vomiting could have been a consequence of travel and excitement, he supposed, although Sam generally boasted the constitution of a young horse. He himself hadn’t felt any unease at the sight of the car, and he was sensitive to such things – acutely so. But he acknowledged that he had been left weakened by recent events, and none of his responses were as sure as before.

  He called Gordon Walsh, but the call went straight to voicemail. He left a message with details of the car and its license plate number, and asked Walsh, as a favor, to run the vehicle through the system. He was curious, and nothing more, not yet. He checked on Sam once again, then went to his room. He worked on strengthening his grip for while before reading the New York Times. He must have dozed off, for when he woke, there was a message on his phone from Cory Bloom requesting that he call her, and Sam was standing at his bedroom door.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  He didn’t bother asking her again how she was feeling. He knew that it would only annoy her. In that way, she was like her mother. As for Cory Bloom, he would return her call as soon as Sam was safely with Ruth Winter and her daughter.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ he said.

  Parker stood with Ruth and watched their respective daughters make their way across the sand toward the rock pools that now lay exposed by the outgoing tide. The girls wore loose windbreakers and brightly colored waterproof boots. The sky was clear, and the sun gave some warmth despite the seemingly ever-present breeze. Fearless little purple sandpipers hopped among the rocks at their farthest point, where the waves still broke upon them, the winter yellow of the birds’ legs now almost entirely gone.

  ‘You say she was ill?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘French toast.’

  ‘That’ll do it, you eat enough of it. I’ll keep an eye on her, though – both eyes. They won’t be out of my sight. Speaking of which …’

  She buttoned her coat to go and join Sam and Amanda.

  ‘Call me if there’s a problem,’ said Parker. ‘I won’t be far away.’

  ‘You going back to your house?’

  ‘No, I have some errands to run in town. Shouldn’t take too long.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’d like to join us for dinner later? Sixish?’

  ‘That would be great. I’ll pick up dessert.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We have enough ice cream here to start a business.’

  He had a sudden impulse to kiss her cheek in farewell, although it quickly passed. It was not a manifestation of desire. She was a good-looking woman, but he felt no particular attraction to her, and saw no evidence that she felt any differently toward him. No, it would have been a gesture almost of reassurance, or an invitation to her to share with him whatever it was that was troubling her. He watched her walk after the children, and his eyes moved on to the place on her right doorpost where the mezuzah had been. Green Heron Bay and Mason Point were similar in size and geographic features. He followed the shoreline with his gaze. If he squinted, he could almost picture a body stretched upon it, like an offering from the sea.

  There was no evidence that Boreas had been Bruno Perlman’s ultimate destination. Neither had Parker any reason to believe that, if Perlman had been on his way to the town, Ruth Winter was someone with whom he might have wished to speak. All he knew was that she cared enough about her faith to affix the mezuzah to her door, and if it was important to her to put it up in the first place, then she wouldn’t have taken it down again lightly.

  He went to her front door to check if the mezuzah had been restored, but it had not. The hole left by the nail was still there. He lifted his right index finger and touched the space where the little vessel had once been. Epstein had once recited to him the blessing required upon fixing a mezuzah, when he was explaining to Parker the importance of such matters. His brief Internet search, after he noticed Ruth Winter had taken the mezuzah down, reminded him of it: ‘Blessed are You, Lord Our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with His mitzvot, and commanded us to affix a mezuzah.’

  Why would someone consciously choose to disobey something that she appeared to regard as a mitzvah, a commandment? It was possible, even likely, that some prosaic explanation might offer itself. The mezuzah could have fallen off or become damaged, in which case a scribe would have been required to make the necessary repairs. He could almost hear Ruth Winter’s previous hollow excuse for its absence: ‘I didn’t much care for it …’

  He felt that she would lie to him again if confronted about it, and he realized that he had already convinced himself she was hiding knowledge. No, not hiding, but lying by omission, by silence. And she was frightened. He had a sense for it. It was this fear that made him want to reach out to her, as much for her daughter’s sake as for her own.

  Parker left the porch and descended to the sand. Ruth had joined Sam and Amanda over at the rocks, sending the sandpipers fleeing. They stood out darkly against the sky, and he had the urge to go to them, to take his daughter by the hand and lead her away from this woman and her child.

  But he did not. Instead he headed for his car. He had decided not to call Cory Bloom, but to visit her in person, since he was going to be in town anyway. He had not yet made up his mind whether to men
tion his concerns about Ruth Winter. By the time he reached his car, he had decided to hold his peace for now. Perhaps he would talk to Ruth after dinner.

  Perhaps.

  Despite her message, Cory Bloom didn’t seem particularly pleased to see Parker appear at the door of her office. He supposed that he ought to have kept a lower profile with her, but then he was used to that kind of reaction to his presence. It came with the territory, and if he started worrying about it, then he’d never have left the house. Officer Preston came out of a small kitchen carrying a cup and a muffin. She didn’t look pleased to see him either, but then her default expression was one of pained displeasure, as though someone had recently forced her to lick a succession of batteries.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked Bloom. ‘Or should I just loiter outside with intent?’

  Bloom relented. Preston didn’t. He didn’t much care either way.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Bloom, indicating a chair in front of her desk. ‘I’ll be right with you.’

  He took the chair, but was conscious that Preston hadn’t moved from her position by the kitchen door. Bloom noticed her too, and shot a ‘Yeah, what?’ look over Parker’s shoulder, combined with spread arms. Just to amuse himself, Parker turned to Preston and mimicked the gesture and the expression. He saw himself burning in Preston’s eyes, and made a mental note not to go over thirty within the town limits for the duration of his time there. When he faced Bloom again, she was staring exasperatedly at him.

  ‘I can see why someone tried to shoot you,’ she said.

  ‘They didn’t just try. They did shoot me.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got names, I think Officer Preston would like to shake their hand.’

  She returned to the paperwork on her desk, signing her name at the bottom of series of forms and requisition orders.

  ‘I hope she doesn’t mind digging first,’ said Parker, and the pen froze for a moment before resuming its movements. He didn’t interrupt her, but kept his left hand down by his side, slowly clenching and unclenching his fist. He’d noticed some improvement that afternoon: he’d been able to hold the grip strengthener at full tension for longer than he’d yet managed since the shooting.

  She finished writing, put the papers to one side, then leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk before her.

  ‘Do you want coffee?’

  ‘Will Officer Preston be making it?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then I’ll pass.’

  Parker waited.

  ‘It looks like whatever favors you called in worked,’ said Bloom. ‘The chief medical examiner and her deputy are still tied up with the Oran Wilde business, but Bruno Perlman’s body was transferred yesterday evening to the ME’s office in Augusta, and an autopsy was performed this morning by Dr Robert Drummond, who is first on call when the ME or her deputy is tied up or on leave. I spoke to him on Skype. He looks about twelve years old, but he’s good.’

  ‘How good?’

  ‘Very, if his lectures are anything to go by. I got one on drowning. Apparently determining if someone has died by drowning is more complicated than I’d really like it to be, and he gave me ten minutes on the tests that should be done in order to establish, and I quote, “with any degree of medico-legal confidence,” that drowning was involved. Then he lost me at “intravascular fat globules”, to be honest. But it’s enough to know that, under normal circumstances, we’d be waiting on the results of full toxicological screening, histologic analyses of all organs, and something called a diatom test before any pronouncement could be made.’

  ‘Algae,’ said Parker.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Diatoms are algae. Little unicellular plants. They’re found in water, and their concentrations vary according to, I guess, temperature, mineral content, acidity, and whatever else affects water. So you can tie a body to a particular area of water, and a particular time, through analysis of the diatom concentrations in tissue.’

  Bloom was staring at him. He shrugged.

  ‘Call it gene memory.’

  ‘So …’ she continued, after a suitable pause, ‘we would have been waiting for those results if it wasn’t for this.’

  She pulled a sheet of paper from a file and passed it to Parker. It was a pretty good quality print of a skull X-ray. He’d have spotted the mark even if it hadn’t been circled. It stood out as a small dark vertical against the pallor of the skull, just above the socket of the right eye.

  ‘That’s the supraorbital foramen,’ said Bloom. ‘See, I know stuff too.’

  ‘Did Dr Drummond tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, but at least I was listening.’

  ‘What does he think it is?’

  ‘I got another lecture when I asked,’ said Bloom. ‘Did I mention that Dr Drummond, in addition to being good, is also cautious?’

  ‘I took it as given. Let me guess: after he’d prevaricated for a while, he told you that a blade could have made it. But you’d probably already established that yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t want to show off. He found other marks inside the orbital fissure – not as pronounced as that one, but still visible. They don’t show up as well on the copies.’

  Parker returned the print to her. He didn’t need to be given any more photos, and he didn’t need Bloom, Drummond, or anyone else to tell him what had happened to Bruno Perlman, probably before he died.

  ‘What kind of blade was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Drummond thinks it was surgical: a scalpel of some kind.’

  ‘Did it kill him?’

  ‘No. Drummond believes Perlman was still alive when he went into the water, but there probably wouldn’t have been much left of his eye. Drummond’s report has gone to the state police. I’m expecting them here within the hour. I just thought you’d like to hear it from me first.’

  He thanked her, and stood to leave. Bloom returned the print of the skull to her file.

  ‘I appreciate your advice and your help,’ she said. ‘It was—’

  But when she looked up again, Parker was already gone.

  29

  Parker drove to Green Heron Bay, walked to his bedroom, and reached behind the big closet that faced his bed. His fingers found the butt of the gun taped to the wood, and wrenched it free. The weapon was already loaded, although without a bullet in the chamber. He had hidden the gun away when he first arrived at the house, although he could not say why. It was a licensed firearm, and he had more cause than most to feel that a gun might be necessary for his protection. Those who had shot him were themselves dead, as were the ones who had sent them to dispatch him, but such acts of vengeance left trailing tendrils, and their stings could hold their potency for lifetimes, generations.

  Yet still he had not wanted to look upon the gun, and had rarely touched it since coming to Boreas. Now he held it in his right hand, and the grip and weight were instantly familiar. He went back downstairs, unearthed the cleaning kit from the storage area beneath the stairs, disassembled the weapon, cleaned and oiled its component parts, then ressembled it. And in putting it together again, it felt to him that he was also piecing back something deep inside himself, an element of his being that had been mislaid, but not lost. When he was finished, he tucked the gun into the waistband of his trousers. They fitted him more loosely than before, and he had gone down two notches on his belt. Two was comfortable, if slightly less snug than he might have wished, while three was too tight. With the gun in place, his trousers now sat perfectly. He wondered if he should take it as a sign.

  He changed into a clean shirt. Like his trousers, his shirts didn’t fit as well, but in this case the looseness served to hide the gun. He walked outside, closed the front door behind him, and looked upon the waves. The tide was coming in again, and while the sky remained clear, the sea appeared to have taken on a darker tone. He had always loved the sea, had loved it ever since his first memory of his mother and father taking him north to Scarborough to meet his grandfather. He recalled walking o
n Ferry Beach with the old man – for his grandfather had always appeared old to him but not, strangely, as old as his wife, a strange, near-silent woman who simmered with disappointment and regret. Parker had never spoken his feelings about her aloud, but he remembered being secretly, shamefully glad when she died and, as he grew older, he believed that his grandfather, although bereaved, might have felt her passing as a kind of blessing, an easing of the burden on both of them.

  Parker felt the sand beneath his feet, and for a moment he was a boy again, his grandfather beside him. And so convinced was he of the old man’s presence that he closed his eyes, and his right hand reached out and tested the air, and he experienced a twinge of disappointment when it made no contact with his shade. Yet still he walked with him in his memory, and heard his grandfather’s voice telling tales of Scarborough, and of the violence of its origins. Parker had been fascinated as a boy by tales of cowboys and the Old West, and it delighted him that he could walk in places where natives and settlers had fought and died, their blood leaching into the ground so that the memory of it was retained in the very atoms of the earth. Scarborough even boasted a Massacre Pond, where Richard Hunnewell and eighteen other men were slaughtered in 1703, and a Garrison Lane, after the fortress built at Prout’s Neck at the start of the eighteenth century. Curiously, these seemed more real to Parker than Old Fort Western in Augusta, the oldest surviving wooden fort in New England. Oh, he had been entranced by it, and had loved to visit – the fort was a compulsory stop during their family vacations in Maine – yet the images he had recreated in his head of the Scarborough settlements were more visceral, more immediate. Old Fort Western had to be shared with others, but the shadow-Scarborough was his alone. It lived in him and he, when he walked through the physicality of its present incarnation, lived in it.

  He opened his eyes again. To his left was the Winter house. Lights burned in its downstairs windows. He began walking toward it. Already he had ceased to notice the gun at his back.