A Game of Ghosts: A Charlie Parker Thriller: 15. From the No. 1 Bestselling Author of A Time of Torment

by John Connolly

  Parker took a flashlight from his pocket and locked the beam to its smallest setting, which was little more than a bull’s-eye spot. He was still instinctively cautious, even though Angel had pulled down the blinds on the windows in each room. Flashlight beams in an otherwise dark house were a sure way of attracting attention.

  The interior smelled stale. It was relatively clean, but had the air of benign neglect that Parker associated with a certain type of single man. The kitchen cabinets contained some interesting and exotic ingredients, which suggested that Eklund enjoyed cooking, but otherwise the rooms were much as Parker might have anticipated, given what he knew of the investigator. A glass case in the living room displayed various trophies and awards, some dating back as far as Eklund’s high school days, and others from his time in the New Hampshire State Police and the Providence PD. The case also held a lot of photographs, although the subjects, apart from his ex-wife, were exclusively male: cops, sporting buddies, and a couple of Eklund with local ball players. A signed and framed Providence Bruins hockey shirt hung on the wall behind the well-used couch, while a flat-screen TV dominated the wall over the fireplace, which was piled high with fresh logs. More logs rested in a red bucket nearby. A long bookcase contained a mix of very male novels and even more male nonfiction, including a whole shelf of volumes on JFK. The Blu-rays lined up in a separate case by the TV consisted of action movies, HBO shows, and comedies, along with a few sports documentaries.

  ‘You got that door open yet?’ he called to Angel.

  ‘Patience. The first lock was easy, but he’s also got a pretty good double cylinder deadbolt on this, and it’s a steel door. The deadbolt can take ten door strikes. Add in the steel door, and the noise I’d make trying to break it down would be heard in Florida.’

  Parker continued his search. The house had three bedrooms, one of which contained a twin bed, and closets stacked with men’s clothing wrapped in plastic to guard against moths. Parker patted the bedspread and raised dust. It hadn’t been used in a while. A smaller, second bedroom – which gave Parker mild claustrophobia as soon as he stepped inside because of the slope of the ceiling, the tiny floor space, and a window that reminded him uncomfortably of an oven door – was given over to gym equipment, including an exercise bike and some light-to-medium free weights. It had its own small bathroom, with clothing dumped in a laundry bag secured on a wooden frame. Parker opened the medicine cabinet and saw assorted medications, including metformin to tackle type 2 diabetes, and a prescription nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, probably to help with arthritis. An open box of twelve rubbers occupied the top shelf. Three had been used. Parker checked the date on the box and saw that they’d expired in 2013. Either Eklund had given up on safe sex, or he was going through a dry spell on the dating front.

  Parker continued his search, but found little of interest, apart from a small gun safe in one of the closets. The safe was open and empty. Wherever Eklund was heading, he’d gone armed.

  He heard a sound on the stairs, and then Angel’s voice called to him.

  ‘I got it open,’ he said.

  The basement door stood ajar. Parker’s flashlight revealed a set of wooden stairs, and a light switch to his left. The basement was windowless, which meant that they were in no danger of alerting a neighbor if they turned on the light. Parker hit the switch, activating a series of fluorescent bulbs, and together he and Angel descended, Parker leading.

  They paused at the base of the stairs, and stared at the walls around them.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Angel. ‘You’ve just found someone who’s weirder than you are.’

  24

  Donn Routh arrived in Providence, but was delayed in his approach to the Fox Point neighborhood by a traffic accident, and later by his own lack of familiarity with the layout of the city. He did not own a GPS system, just as he did not own a smartphone. His cell phone was an ancient, battered clamshell Nokia, the object of so many repairs that he could be certain of the originality of only the case itself. He liked the Nokia because the battery could easily be removed, and a phone with a removable battery was virtually untraceable, as long as one was careful of where and how one used it. For Routh, it was little more than a mobile answering service on which messages from the Brethren could be left for him, and then always couched in the most neutral of terms. He made all follow-up calls using calling cards and public phones.

  Even being in Fox Point made him ill at ease; these were not his people, and never would be. He felt estranged from them by virtue of his own alien nature, as though these privileged young folk could detect his otherness, so that if he were to glance in his rearview mirror he would see only faces staring back at him, following his progress to make sure he continued on his way and did not attempt to infiltrate their ranks.

  He turned onto Arnold Street and squinted at the numbers on the houses to his right. He carried Eklund’s keys in his pocket, and had memorized the alarm code, so he had no concerns about gaining access to the house. He knew the names of Eklund’s neighbors, and the state of the investigator’s relationships with them. He was aware that Eklund did not get along with the man who lived in the house to the right of his own; it was something to do with a tree, and the extent to which it overhung his neighbor’s property. Because of this, the two men had not exchanged a civil word in seven years, not since shortly after the neighbor, a young restaurateur, purchased the property. Relations with the couple to the left were better, although both worked long hours outside the city, and were rarely home before seven or eight. As for the rest, Eklund was on nodding terms with most of them, but close to none. It seemed unlikely that anyone had noticed his absence, or if they had, that anyone was worrying too much about it.

  Routh parked within sight of Eklund’s house and turned off the engine. He was armed with a Heckler & Koch USP 9, and the long-bladed knife he had used on May and Alex MacKinnon – the same blade, curiously, that he had also used on Mike MacKinnon, a killing that had brought much of this trouble down on the Brethren to begin with. Routh legally owned a number of firearms, and had acquired a few more which he kept as throwaways, but he carried a weapon only when he was convinced he might have cause to use it. Otherwise, the attention it might draw meant that carrying even a legally owned weapon was just not worth the risk.

  For the Eklund business, he had decided to bring a gun. If he were caught in the man’s house, he would be in trouble with or without a weapon. Armed, he would give himself a way out. The big tool kit in the trunk of his car was filled with various parts and implements, including assorted pieces of piping. Concealed among them was an Osprey suppressor, which was illegal in the state of Rhode Island. Routh was aware of this, but remained unconcerned. To any but the most expert eye, the Osprey blended in perfectly with the pipes.

  His job here was simple: to remove from Eklund’s home any and all traces of the investigations he had been conducting into the Brethern. Eklund’s laptop was already in their possession, since the investigator had conveniently brought it with him. Eventually, Eklund’s disappearance would in turn be investigated, and the absence of his laptop, along with the purging of his records, might well be noted. The house would become a possible crime scene. If nothing else, the Cousin’s work left him under no illusion about the capacity of human beings to contaminate, deliberately or inadvertently, the spaces through which they moved. With this in mind, he had brought with him a pair of fresh disposable overalls from the laundry, the feet protectors oversized in the manner of a onesie so that he would not have to remove his shoes. He was also in possession of a pair of Hatch protective gloves and a plastic dust mask. All were contained in a black backpack lying in the trunk of his car. If, by some small chance, he were to be pulled over by police, his job gave him the perfect excuse for having such materials with him. A pair of larger expandable bags would be used to accommodate whatever material he decided to remove from the house.

  He was about to open the car door when he saw the dead girl in
the road.

  25

  Louis did not enjoy acting as a lookout. Watching for cops made him feel like the dumb guy in the gang, the one who generally ended up dead. He understood the need to occupy the role of picket on this particular occasion, but it did not make him feel any happier.

  Neither did he trust Edgar Ross. Louis’s past activities, in addition to a number of his current ones, gave him no cause to wish to associate with the FBI or any other branch of law enforcement, but his loyalty to Parker had pulled him into Ross’s orbit. He tried to look on the silver lining of the deal, but he had to skirt a lot of cloud to find it. The FBI, whatever its suspicions, was not about to move against him in the near future – Ross had seen to that – but as a consequence Louis had confirmed for them something of his own skills and proclivities, and made himself and Angel into Ross’s creatures, just as Parker was. Despite all Ross’s protestations about keeping his distance from the search for Eklund, Louis could not shake a sense of being observed, but to what end he could not say. He remained certain only that somewhere in the mystery of Eklund’s disappearance lay a potential trap.

  He scratched an itch on his left cheek. He glanced over at Eklund’s house, and glimpsed a veil of mist that hung in the night air beyond the window of the car. He exhaled a cumulus cloud in the cold of the vehicle. He did not like a warm car at the best of times, but heat, or the drowsiness it brought, was potentially lethal on a surveillance detail. The vapor inside dissipated, but the haze outside remained. Curiously, he could only really see it when he did not look directly at it.

  And then he was otherwise distracted, because the police car appeared.

  26

  The girl was sixteen or seventeen, and wearing a short jacket of gray tweed over a black dress. Her hair was more dark yellow than red, and hung loosely over her shoulders. Her right foot tapped a slow rhythm on the street, as of one who was not yet impatient but was gradually becoming so. Routh did not recognize her, but he knew her for what she was even before he registered the milky cast to her eyes; they seemed almost to glow in the evening dark. She was standing beside a late model Lexus, staring intently at the driver through the glass.

  Routh remained in his vehicle. He took another look at Eklund’s house. The blinds were drawn on all the windows. He could not recall if Eklund had indicated whether this was how he had left them. Routh went over what he had been told, and what he had subsequently asked to be confirmed for him. He was good on details. It was why he had kept his job for so long, even when the company rationalized a few years earlier, shedding employees at all levels like flakes of old skin.

  Now he saw the Providence PD patrol car. It was moving slowly, but without lights. As it passed the Lexus on the opposite side of the street, the officer at the wheel turned his head, and just for a moment, Routh wondered if the cop might somehow have seen the girl. No, he thought, it was more likely that he was taking in the man or woman at the wheel of the Lexus.

  The patrol car did not stop, merely continued on its way, then turned right before it reached the block on which Routh was parked. He waited for a time, but the car did not reappear, so he returned his attention to the Lexus and the house. The girl remained standing where she was, but now she gave her attention to Routh, confirming that he had seen her and, more importantly, had registered the object of her attention. Even after all these years, finding himself looking directly into the eyes of one of the departed Brethren still gave him a chill.

  Routh blinked, and the girl vanished.

  Louis put down the phone he had been holding to his ear as the patrol car approached. The only thing worse than attracting the scrutiny of a cop while you were sitting in a parked car was attracting the scrutiny of a cop while you were sitting in a parked car doing nothing. Cops had a natural suspicion of people who appeared to be doing nothing, as it usually meant that they were in actuality doing something, and often something they shouldn’t have been doing.

  Louis knew the cop would be back. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen at most. If Louis were still there when he returned, he’d be asked to state his business. The car could remain where it was, but it would be better if it were unoccupied the next time the cop swung by.

  Louis got out of the Lexus and sniffed the air. He smelled a faint trace of burning, like the acrid aftermath of an electrical fire. The prickling at his cheek had ceased, and the faint haze had departed.

  Louis decided he did not like Providence.

  Farther up the street, he took in the most recently parked car. A big man emerged from it and removed something from the trunk. Louis didn’t like that much either until the man closed the trunk, turned his back, and disappeared from sight.

  Routh had taken the suppressor from the tool kit, fitted it to the H&K, and was debating how best to approach and kill the driver of the Lexus. The pack containing the mask and overalls remained in the trunk, but he had put on the gloves before handling the gun.

  He watched the tall black man step from his car and take in his surroundings. Routh shopped only at JC Penney and Marshalls. He owned one suit that stood duty for formal business events and funerals. He had never attended a wedding, but assumed that the same suit would have served perfectly well had such an occasion arisen. He had no knowledge of fashion worth speaking of, but he could tell at a glance that the clothing worn by the man he was watching probably cost more than his entire wardrobe, including all his shoes. Routh had never seen a black man who was so well dressed, except on TV.

  A number of explanations existed for this individual’s presence. One was that it was simply coincidental, and his purpose for being in the vicinity of Eklund’s house was entirely legitimate, although the minimal lapse of time before the arrival of the police car and the man’s exit from his own vehicle suggested otherwise, as did the presence of the dead girl. The second possibility was that he was watching Eklund’s home, perhaps to see who might display an interest in it in turn. The third was that he was the sentinel, and others were already inside.

  The object of Routh’s attention crossed the street. Eklund’s house was near the corner of the block, but the man did not enter. Instead he followed the sidewalk around, keeping the house to his right. He cast a glance at Routh, an appraisal that appeared casual but which Routh recognized as something more loaded. Routh removed his tool kit, closed the trunk, and walked away from the car, not looking back, giving no cause to suspect surveillance. Only when the black man was gone from sight did he return to his vehicle. He started the engine and moved the car so that instead of being parked on the same side as Eklund’s home he was now looking straight at it, partly shielded by a Dumpster.

  From this vantage point, he resumed his vigil.

  27

  Three entire walls of Eklund’s basement were lined with shelves, some of which were sagging under the burden of the volumes they held: hardcovers, paperbacks, lever arch files, and bundles of typewritten and handwritten pages bound with ribbon, string, and rubber bands. The room was dry and well insulated, so that it held the dense yet brittle scent of an old library. A metal desk stood on a red tasseled rug in the center of the floor, along with a black office chair. The desk was covered in piles of papers and strewn with photographs. A banker’s lamp was available to provide additional illumination. Attached to its frame was a magnifying glass that could be moved into position when required.

  Eklund’s shelves were devoted almost exclusively to the paranormal. They included works by the Austrian-born paranormal researcher Hans Holzer and his predecessor Charles Fort, the American researcher who gave the world the term ‘Fortean’ to characterize phenomena that fell outside the picture of reality provided by science or common sense. Eklund had also collected books by prominent skeptics, among them David Marks and Joe Nickell, but the main body of his library was clearly weighted in favor of believers.

  The main wall facing the desk and the stairs was not shelved, and was dominated by a map of the continental United States dotted with an array of pin
s. From each pin extended a thread that led beyond the borders of the map to a collection of notes, press clippings, photographs, even hand-drawn illustrations, all set against the whiteness of the wall. Every cluster contained details of murders and disappearances dating back from the present day to the nineteenth century: individual killings, mass slaughters, kidnappings, unexplained vanishings. The oldest dated back to the 1850s, while the most recent was about a year old, and involved the disappearance of a family man named Michael MacKinnon from Millwood, New Hampshire. Between those two incidents, like ugly baubles on a chain, were accumulations of information on at least fifty other incidents, a minority distinguished by the violence inflicted on the victims – burning, slow torture, skinning, mutilation, the breaking of bones – while others appeared to have been carried out with the brutal efficiency of someone putting an injured animal out of its misery. Most, though, concerned disappearances: individuals who had passed from sight, never to be found.

  The photographs alongside these accounts were of old houses or flat fields, stretches of river or expanses of forest. Some of the landscapes were marked with red dots as though to say ‘Here: this was the place,’ while others had sepia-tinted reproductions of older photographs linked to them by more of the ubiquitous threads, each showing a town, a family, or sometimes just an individual. Parker’s attention was drawn to a picture of a pretty young woman with dark hair standing next to a man in a sailor’s uniform, a blue pin and matching thread anchoring them to a photograph of a pond surrounded by dead and broken trees, like the fallen crosses and fragmented monuments in some abandoned and neglected cemetery.

  Two names were written in block capitals on a piece of card above their black-and-white heads: RICHARD FILLER & HEIDI WOLKE. They had died in December 1945, shortly after Filler was discharged from the US Navy. He was twenty-four and she was twenty-two. Their bodies were found tied to a pair of trees in woodland near Burdette in Mississippi County, Arkansas, by a group of students and scientists studying the group of little blue herons and great egrets that had begun to nest in the area. Both Filler and Wolke were naked, although according to one of those who discovered the bodies, an academic from the University of Arkansas, quoted in a report from the Blytheville Courier News next to the picture of the victims, ‘there was so much black blood on them, it was hard to tell.’