Nocturnes (2004)

by John Connolly

  I drove to Two Mile Lake as the afternoon light began to dim, Angel and Louis following behind. It was dark by the time we arrived, and the bare trees slept over us as we passed the Grady house and took the next turning on the right. The road led up to a run-down, single-storey farmhouse. Like the Grady house itself, it had been bought by Matheson after his daughter’s disappearance. It seemed to me that he wanted to seal off the whole area from the possible depredations of strangers, as though his loss were inextricably tied up with the very fabric of the Grady house, with its surrounding fields and with the buildings that had silently borne witness to the events that had occurred in their purview. Perhaps he envisaged her, lost and alone, desperately trying to seek a doorway back into the world that she knew, and felt that any change to the place from which she had vanished would make it impossible for her to return; or maybe this was all simply one great monument, an ornate offering upon which her name and the names of the other children were deeply inscribed yet never seen.

  I opened the door to the farmhouse and led Angel and Louis inside. It had been cleaned recently, for there was little dust on any of the surfaces. Most of the rooms remained empty, apart from the kitchen, where there was a table and four chairs, and the sitting room, which contained a sofa bed and a radiator. In one of the bedrooms there were some ladders and tins of varnish and paint. An envelope on the table, addressed to me, contained a set of keys to the Grady house for Angel and Louis, and a single key with a note from Matheson identifying it as the one for the basement.

  “Nice,” said Angel, as he took in his surroundings. “Very minimalist.”

  “Who knows that we’re here?” asked Louis.

  “We do, and so does Matheson.”

  “The cops?”

  “No. Anyone asks, you tell them you’re here to do some work on the house and Matheson will back you up, but this place is pretty much invisible from the road so we shouldn’t be bothered. You two will take the lion’s share of the duty—twenty-four on, twelve off. There’s a motel about three miles out of town. I’ve rented a room there for the next week. This place has no hot water, and we can’t risk too many lights. There are blackout shades in the kitchen, so if you want to read, then that’s the place. There’s a radio and TV in there too.”

  I led them to the back bedroom. There, a single window looked down upon the Grady house, framed by a gap in the trees. It would be hard for anyone to approach it from north, south, or east without being seen, and the west side of the house had no point of entry.

  “There it is,” I said.

  “You been in there?” asked Angel.

  “Yes. Do you want to check it out?”

  Among the items left by Matheson was a plan of the house. Louis spread it out on the floor and examined it.

  “Is this accurate?”

  I looked it over.

  “Looks like it. There’s not much to add. Mirrors on the walls. Some old furniture, but most of it is stacked away, so the floors are clear.”

  Louis shrugged. “Maybe we’ll take a look in daylight if we get bored.”

  We watched the shape of the house, darker yet against the night sky.

  “So we wait,” he said.

  “We wait.”

  Nothing happened that night. I drove home to Rachel after a couple of hours, then returned the following evening. It set the pattern for the week that followed. Sometimes I would stay with them for a couple of hours after they arrived to relieve me, sitting at the window and talking with Angel while Louis rested or read, the Grady house before us like a dark hand raised against the sky.

  Conversations with Angel were not always a good idea.

  “Are me and Louis the only gay men you know?” he asked, on the second night.

  “You’re certainly the most irritating gay men I know.”

  “We bring color into your life. Seriously, you got any other gay friends?”

  I considered the question.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like you all wear lavender loon pants and Village People T-shirts, or introduce yourselves with ‘Hey, I’m Dan and I’ll be your token homosexual for the evening.’ Just like I don’t walk up to people, shake their hands, and tell them, ‘I’m Charlie, and I’m proud to be a heterosexual.’ It worries people.”

  “It would sure worry me.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be my target market.”

  “You have a target market? What is it: the needy? Needy heterosexuals. ‘The Needy Heterosexuals.’ It sounds like a band.”

  “Anyway, in answer to your question, I don’t know how many of my acquaintances are gay men. Maybe a couple. Plus I don’t have ‘gaydar.’ I think that’s a gay preserve.”

  “I think gaydar’s a myth. It’s all kind of confusing, now that straight men are dressing nice and using skin care products. Kind of muddies the waters.”

  I looked at him.

  “But you’re a gay man and you don’t dress nice. Plus, if you use skin care products you’re using them on a part of your body that I can’t see, and you have no idea how happy I am to be able to say that.”

  “You telling me I look straight? If I look straight, how come straight women never hit on me?”

  “You’re lucky anybody ever hit on you, looking the way you do. Don’t blame straight women for keeping their distance.”

  Angel grinned.

  “But still, you’re happy to call me ‘friend.’ ” He reached over and patted my arm.

  “I didn’t say I was happy about it, and get your hands off me. I have a suspicion about where they’ve been.”

  He backed off.

  “You and Rachel okay?” he asked.

  “We had a scare the other night. She had pains. The doctors took a look at her and told her she was fine.”

  “She was kind of funny with us. Distant.”

  “It was a long night.”

  “You sure that’s all it was?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Pretty sure.”

  When I was alone, I kept myself alert with a radio and caffeine, or cleared my head a little by taking a walk around the property when I was certain everything was quiet. Once or twice I saw Officer O’Donnell make a cursory check of the Grady house, but he didn’t even glance up at the farmhouse on the slope above.

  On the seventh day, as I was heading home, I got a call from Detective Jeff Weis, the cop who had given me Voodoo Ray’s new bachelor address.

  “Bet you didn’t have any luck finding Ray Czabo,” he said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because they just found him.”

  I pulled over to the side of the road.

  “Something tells me that he’s not about to be talking to me anytime soon.”

  “Not unless you’re psychic. Somerset County Sheriff called it in about an hour ago. His body was buried over by Little Ferguson Brook, mile or two east of Harmony. Looks like he’s been there for a while, so you’re probably off the hook.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was on the hook.”

  “There you go. You were innocent and you didn’t even know it.”

  I thanked Weis for the tip, then got back on the road and headed for Harmony. It wasn’t too hard to find the location of the discovery. I just followed a state police patrol car until I came to a cluster of vehicles by a small metal bridge off Main Stream Road. I tried to pick out someone I might know, but they were all unfamiliar faces. Instead, I settled for showing my license to the Somerset County deputy who was trying to move me on, and asked to speak to the detective in charge. After a couple of minutes, a balding man in a blue Wind-breaker broke away from the group standing by the riverbank and came over to talk to me.

  “Help you?” he said.

  “Charlie Parker,” I said.

  He nodded. One thing about gaining a reputation in Maine, for better or worse, was that most of the cops at least knew my name.

  “Bert Jansen,” he said. “You’re off your turf.”

  “I get around.”
>
  I gestured toward the riverbank.

  “I hear you may have found Ray Czabo.”

  Jansen didn’t respond immediately, then seemed to decide “What the hell?” and echoed Ray’s name.

  “What’s your interest in Czabo?”

  “I went looking for him about a week ago. His wife said he’d moved out, but when I called by his new place there was no reply. I left my card. You’ll find it underneath his door when you search his apartment.”

  “Why were you looking for him to begin with?”

  I decided there was no percentage in not being open with Jansen.

  “I’m working for a man named Matheson. His daughter died in the Grady house. Matheson thinks someone may be developing an unhealthy interest in the house, and the local cops told me that they’d rousted Ray from the property a couple of times. I wanted to ask him what he was doing, or what he might have seen when he was there.”

  Jansen took out his notebook and began writing. “And this was when?”

  “A week ago Wednesday.”

  He made some more notes, then asked me if I minded hanging around for a while. I told him I had no problem with that.

  “You have any idea how long he’s been down there?” I asked.

  “Nope. My guess would be a week or more. He’s pretty bloated up.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Shot in the head. Three close entry wounds, no exits. Scoop his brains out and you could use his head for a bowling ball. Probably a two-two.”

  I’d never cared much for Ray Czabo, but he didn’t deserve to end up dead. Three shots to the head also sounded like overkill. One shot with a .22 will leave the bullet rattling around inside, tearing up tissue until it runs out of steam. Ray must really have annoyed someone to end up with three of them in his skull.

  “I guess he wasn’t shot here.”

  “Wouldn’t think so. It’s a long way to transport someone just to shoot them. Our guess is he was killed someplace else, then driven out here and buried in a shallow grave. A dog dug up his hand. It hasn’t rained in a while, but there’s a whole bunch of it due.”

  I knew what Jansen was saying. The rain would come and the river would rise, covering the burial site. Then, with winter settling in, it would freeze over until March, maybe even April. By the time the thaws came, there would be no evidence left that the ground had ever been disturbed.

  I went back to my car, turned on the radio, and listened to NPR until the M.E. arrived. I watched her descend to the body and then, finally, the corpse was taken from the riverbank in a white bodybag. Jansen came over to speak to me shortly after and told me that the M.E. estimated that Czabo had been in the ground for up to two weeks, then let me go. I called Rachel, told her I’d be a little late, then headed for Orono.

  Orono is a college town, housing part of the University of Maine. It has an intimate feel to it, and most people know one another’s names, so the first guy I stopped was able to direct me to Casey Tillman’s garage.

  The second thing I noticed once I got there was the Lexus parked outside. The first thing I noticed was the Missing Link, who had to step aside before I could see the Lexus. Link wasn’t much more than six feet tall, but he was probably the same width across. His head looked too small for the rest of his body—in fact, it looked too small, period—but I suspected that he hadn’t been hired for his brain power. He had slightly Asian features, and his dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He also seemed to have shopped in the same hoods’ store as his boss, except his clothes came from the “big man” section.

  “We’re closed,” he said, when I stepped from the Mustang. “Come back later.”

  “I’m here to see Casey,” I told him. “You haven’t eaten him, have you?”

  Link blinked. I figured him for the kind of guy who heard a joke at midnight, and started laughing at about 8 A.M. I kept walking until I was standing in the garage’s entrance. Link lumbered after me and stopped me from going any farther by the simple measure of standing in front of me and tapping me in the chest with his index finger. It barely involved him stretching a tendon, but it nearly sent me sprawling in the gutter.

  “You got a problem with your hearing?” he said.

  Inside the garage’s office, I could see Gunnar Tillman talking to his son. His voice was raised and he was doing a lot of finger pointing. Casey looked over his father’s shoulder, saw me, and raised a hand to stop the older man’s diatribe. Gunnar turned around and glared at me. He didn’t look happy, but I didn’t think it was personal. Gunnar Tillman wasn’t someone whose smiling muscles got a lot of exercise.

  Casey stepped from behind his desk and walked toward me.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Ray Czabo’s dead,” I said.

  “I know. Edna called me.”

  “And you called your father.”

  “I figured he should know.”

  Link stood beside us, looking from me to Casey and back again. He reminded me of my dog, but without the capacity to learn. I was about to ask him to give us a little breathing space when the issue became redundant.

  Gunnar Tillman pushed his way between Casey and Link. I had five or six inches on him, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Gunnar pretty much sweated bad vibes.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

  “It’s okay, Pop, he’s—”

  Casey’s intervention was cut short by Gunnar’s left hand, which slapped his son hard on the right cheek. Casey took a step backward. His eyes teared with pain and humiliation.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” said Gunnar. His voice was perfectly even, as though he had not even registered the blow he had delivered to his son.

  He turned his attention back to me.

  “You see what you made me do,” he said. “He’s my son, and I care about him, but you made me hit him. I don’t even know you, so you better believe that I’ll fuck you up good if you don’t start answering my questions. Now who are you?”

  “My name’s Parker. I’m a private investigator.”

  “So?”

  “Ray Czabo’s dead.”

  “And?”

  “Your son is seeing Czabo’s wife.”

  “You saying he had something to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. Did he?”

  Gunnar reached behind his back and pulled a gun on me. The muzzle looked very big, and very black.

  “You’ve got some fucking mouth,” he said.

  Casey tried to calm his father down.

  “Jesus, Pop, come on. Don’t do this.”

  “You got no right to say things like that, you hear me?” said Gunnar.

  His son reached out and patted him on the back, gradually forcing the gun down with his right hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Let me talk to him.”

  Gunnar was slowly coming off the boil. He let out some deep breaths.

  “You watch your mouth,” he told me.

  He put the gun back in the waistband of his trousers and walked over to a Dodge with a yawning hood. He slammed the hood down and leaned his hands upon it, his head bowed. His son watched him until he was certain that Gunnar had regained control of his temper, then said in a low voice:

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Your old man visited Czabo. From what I hear, he threatened him. There were witnesses.”

  Casey swallowed and shook his head in frustration.

  “I knew Ray was following me around. I saw him take some pictures. I tried to warn him off, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I was coming between him and his wife. My pop found out—”

  “Found out, or was told?”

  Casey reddened. He was, I realized, an even weaker man than he seemed.

  “I thought he could get Billy over there to talk some sense into Ray. You know, I do some things for my pop. I look after cars for him. Some of them, well, they may have ownership issues, you know what I
’m saying? Ray needed to be warned off, or else things would get really bad for him.”

  “Things did get really bad for him. Someone shot him in the head.”

  “My pop didn’t do it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Casey’s voice lowered.

  “He doesn’t need that kind of heat. He’s getting older now. The stuff they say about him, most of it’s not true anymore. He only has a couple of guys on the payroll, and mostly what they do is drive my old man to lunch. He fences some cars, distributes a little pot for the college kids, but that’s about it. He’s small time now, but if they caught him they’d put him away, and he doesn’t want to die in jail. He didn’t kill Ray Czabo. Neither did I. When the cops come calling, we’ll tell them that.”

  I looked over at Gunnar. He was coughing. It was suddenly clear that what I had mistaken for his efforts to control his temper were actually attempts to get his breathing back in order. He sounded sick. Billy was now beside him, holding a cup of water to the old man’s lips.

  “He can be a prick but he’s still my father,” said Casey.

  His eyes pleaded for understanding.

  “And—”

  Casey put a hand on my shoulder, as though to guide me away from the garage. I let him do it.

  “We lost a guy, Chris Tierney,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Week or so back. Stabbed in the heart.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. I recalled a story from the Press Herald about a stabbing in Orono. It hadn’t mentioned Gunnar Tillman.