The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  And so, while Ricky might have seemed a loser, living in a misnamed trailer park whose denizens were frequently on nodding terms with poverty, he was, in fact, quite comfortable in his squalor. He spent his money on constantly upgrading his hardware and software, on DVDs and computer games, on sci-fi novels and comic books, and on the occasional hooker whose details caught his fancy. He kept his trailer the way it was in order not to attract unwanted attention from the owners of the park, the IRS, or the law. He even showered more often, after one of the gentlemen from Boston complained that his new suit had smelled all the way back down I-95 after a visit to Ricky, and if that situation arose again, then Ricky would have to learn to peck at his keyboard using a chopstick attached to his forehead, because the gentleman from Boston would make good on his original threat to break Ricky’s other arm and stick it up his ass.

  And so it was that Ricky Demarcian, the Not-Such-a-Loser-Now, could be found in his trailer that night, tapping away at his keyboard, the long fingers of his right hand extended across the keys as he entered the information that would take a user with the right password and the right combination of point-and-clicks straight to some very dubious material. The system involved the use of certain trigger words familiar to those whose tastes extended to children, the most common being “Lolly,” which most pedophiles recognized as an indication that their interest was being piqued. Typically, Ricky would give the name Lolly to an ordinary, unremarkable prostitute who, in fact, did not exist, her details and even her appearance a fiction cobbled together from the histories and bodies of other women. Once a potential customer had expressed an interest in Lolly, a further questionnaire would appear on-screen asking for “preferred ages,” with options ranging from “sixty plus” to “barely legal.” If the latter category was ticked, an apparently innocuous e-mail would be sent back to the customer, this time with another trigger word—Ricky favored “hobby” at this point, another term familiar to pedophiles—and so on until eventually a customer’s credit card details would be requested and the flow of images and information would begin in earnest.

  Ricky enjoyed working late at night. Tranquility Pines was almost, well, tranquil at that time, since even the bickering couples and shouty drunks had usually quietened down some by three in the morning. Seated in the darkness of his home, lit only by the glow of his screen, and with the stars sometimes visible in the night sky through the skylight above his head, he might almost have been floating in space, and that was Ricky’s great dream: to glide through the heavens in a huge ship, weightless and unencumbered, drifting through beauty and total silence.

  Ricky didn’t know how old the kids on the screen before him were—he judged twelve or thirteen at most; he was always bad with ages, except when it came to the really little ones, and even Ricky tried not to spend too much time looking at those pictures, because there were some things that didn’t bear thinking about for too long—but it wasn’t for him to police another man’s tastes. Tap, tap, tap, and image after image found its rightful place in Ricky’s great scheme, slotting into position in the virtual universe of sex and desire he had created. He was so lost in the sound and rhythm of what he was doing that the knocking at his trailer door was simply absorbed into the general cacophony, and it was only when the visitor increased the force of the impacts that Ricky started to discern the new noise. He paused in his labors.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  There was no reply.

  He went to the window and pulled the drapes aside at one corner. It was raining slightly, and the glass was streaked, but still he could see that there was no one at the door.

  Ricky didn’t own a gun. He didn’t like guns much. He wasn’t a violent person. In fact, Ricky’s views tended toward the cautious where guns were concerned. In his opinion, there were a lot of people out there who had no right to be carrying even a sharpened pencil, never mind a loaded weapon. Through a process of flawed logic, Ricky had formed an equation whereby guns equaled criminals, and criminals equaled guns. Ricky did not see himself as a criminal, and therefore he did not possess a gun. Alternatively, he did not possess a gun, and therefore he could not possibly be a criminal.

  Ricky stepped away from the window and looked at the locked door. He could open it, he supposed, but there now appeared to be no reason for doing so. Whoever had been at the door was gone. He tugged at his lip, then went back to his computer. He had just commenced checking some of the code when the tapping came again, this time at the window he had recently left. Ricky swore and looked out once again into the night. There was now a shape at his door. It was a man, squat and powerful-looking, with a quiff of black hair that glistened with oil.

  “What do you want?” said Ricky.

  The man indicated with a nod of his head that Ricky should come to the door.

  “Hell,” said Ricky. The man didn’t look like any cop Ricky had ever seen. In fact, he looked more like one of the gentlemen from Boston, who had a habit of turning up unexpectedly at odd times. Still, you couldn’t be too careful where such things were concerned. Ricky went back to his computer and entered a series of instructions. Instantly, windows began to close, firewalls were erected, images were encrypted, and a baffling series of false trails was put in place so that anyone attempting to access the material on his computer would quickly find himself in a maze of useless code and buffer files. If they persisted, the computer would go into virtual meltdown. Ricky knew too much about computers to believe that the material his machine contained would be inaccessible forever, but he reckoned it would take a team of experts many months before they even started retrieving anything worth further investigation.

  He stepped away from his desk and walked to the door. He was not frightened. He was protected by Boston. The word had gone out on that a long time ago. He had nothing to fear.

  The man on the step wore dark blue jeans, a blue polyester shirt that strained against his body, and a worn black leather jacket. His head was a little too large for his frame, although it also gave the disturbing impression that it had been compressed at one point, as if it had been placed in a vise from chin to crown. Ricky thought he looked like a thug, which, strangely, made him even more inclined to lower his guard. The only thugs with whom he dealt came from Boston. If the man on his step looked like a thug, then he must be from Boston.

  “I like your place,” said the man.

  Ricky’s face furrowed in confusion.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

  The man leveled a huge gun at Ricky. He wore gloves. Ricky wasn’t to know it, but the gun was a Smith 10 designed for use by the FBI. It was an unusual gun for a private individual to own. While Ricky did not know that, the man holding the gun did. In fact, that was why he had chosen to borrow it earlier that night.

  “Who are you?” asked Ricky.

  “I’m the finger on the scales,” said the man. “Back up.”

  Ricky did as he was told.

  “You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret,” said Ricky, as the man entered the trailer and pulled the door closed behind him. “There are men in Boston who won’t like it.”

  “Boston, huh?” said the man.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, you think these men in Boston can get to you faster than a bullet?”

  Ricky thought about the question.

  “I guess not.”

  “Well, then,” said the man, “I reckon they ain’t much use to you right now, no sir.” He took in the computer and the array of hardware that surrounded it. “Very impressive,” he said.

  “You know about computers?” asked Ricky.

  “Not much,” said the man. “That kind of thing passed me by. You got pictures on there?”

  Ricky swallowed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You don’t want to be lying to me, now. You do that and, well, I’m likely to lose my temper with you, yessir, and seeing as how I h
ave a gun and you don’t, I don’t think that would be in your best interests. So I’ll ask you again: you got pictures on there?”

  Ricky, realizing that a man who asked a question like that already knew the answer, decided to be honest.

  “Maybe. Depends what kind of pictures you want.”

  “Oh, you know the kind. Girlie pictures, like in the magazines.”

  Ricky tried to breathe a sigh of relief without actually appearing to do so.

  “Sure, I got girlie pictures. You want me to show you?”

  The man nodded, and Ricky was relieved to see him tuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers. He sat down at his keyboard and brought the equipment back to life. Just before the screen began to glow he saw the man approach him from behind, his figure reflected in the dark. Then images began to appear: women in various stages of undress, in various positions, performing various acts.

  “I got all kinds,” said Ricky, stating the obvious.

  “You got ones of children?” said the man.

  “No,” Ricky lied. “I don’t do kids.”

  The man let out a warm breath of disappointment. It smelled of cinnamon gum, but it couldn’t hide the mixed scents that the man exuded: cheap cologne, and a stink that was uncomfortably reminiscent of parts of the chicken factory.

  “What’s wrong with your arm?” he asked.

  “Came out of my mother this way. It don’t work.”

  “You still got feeling in it?”

  “Oh yeah, it just ain’t no good for—”

  Ricky didn’t get to finish the sentence. There was a searing red-hot pain in his upper arm. He opened his mouth to scream, but the man’s right hand clamped tightly across his face, smothering the sound while his left hand worked a long, thin blade into Ricky’s flesh, twisting as he went. Ricky bucked in the chair, his screams filling his own head but emerging into the night air as only the faintest of moans.

  “Don’t play me for a fool,” said the man. “I warned you once. I won’t warn you again.”

  And then the blade was plucked from Ricky’s arm, and the hand released its grip upon his face. Ricky arched back in his chair, his right hand moving instinctively to the wound then immediately distancing itself from it again as the pain intensified at the touch. He was crying, and he felt ashamed for doing so.

  “I’ll ask you one more time: you got pictures of children on there?”

  “Yes,” said Ricky. “Yes. I’ll show you. Just tell me what you want: boys, girls, younger, older. I’ll show you anything, but please don’t hurt me again.”

  The man produced a photograph from a black leather wallet.

  “You recognize her?”

  The girl was pretty, with dark hair. She was wearing a pink dress, and had a matching ribbon in her hair. She was smiling. There was a tooth missing from her upper jaw.

  “No,” said Ricky.

  The blade moved toward his arm again, and Ricky almost screamed his denial this time. “No! I’m telling you I don’t know her! She’s not on there. I’d remember. I swear to God, I’d remember. I got a good memory for these things.”

  “Where do you get these pictures from?”

  “From Boston, mostly. They send them to me. Sometimes I have to scan them in, but usually they’re already on disk. There are films too. They come on computer disks or DVDs. I just put them on the sites. I’ve never hurt a child in my life. I don’t even like that stuff. All I do is what I’m told to do.”

  “You said ‘mostly.’”

  “Huh?”

  “You said ‘mostly’ you get them from Boston. Where else?”

  Ricky tried to find a way to lie, but his brain wasn’t working right. The pain in his arm was dulling slightly, but so was his mind. He felt sick, and wondered if he was going to faint.

  “Sometimes, other people used to bring me stuff,” he said. “Not so much anymore.”

  “Who?”

  “Men. A man, I mean. There was a guy, he brought me some good material. Videos. That was a long time ago. Years.”

  Ricky was lying by omission. Strangely, the pain in his arm was helping him to keep his head clear by forcing him to recognize the possibility that more pain might be to come if he did not play this the right way. True, the man had brought him material, clearly home-filmed but of unusually high quality, even if it was a little static in its camera movements, but it was as a goodwill gesture. He was one of the first who had approached Ricky directly in the hope of renting a child for a few hours, referred to him by a mutual acquaintance in that part of the state, a man well known to those with such proclivities. The gentlemen in Boston had told him that it would happen, and they had been right.

  “What was his name?”

  “He never told me his name, and I didn’t ask. I just paid him. It was good stuff.”

  More half truths, more lies, but Ricky was confident in his abilities. He was far from stupid, and he knew it.

  “You weren’t afraid that he was a cop?”

  “He wasn’t no cop. You only had to take one look at him to know that.”

  Snot dribbled from his nose, mingling with his tears.

  “Where did he come from?”

  “I don’t know. Up north, somewhere.”

  The man was watching Ricky carefully, and caught the way his eyes shifted again as he lied. Dave “the Guesser” Glovsky might almost have been proud of him at that moment.

  “You ever hear tell of a place called Gilead?”

  There was the “tell” again, the body betraying the difficulty the brain felt in disguising the lie.

  “No, I never did, unless it was at Sunday school when I was a kid.”

  The man was silent for a time. Ricky wondered if that had been a lie too far.

  “You got a list of people who pay for all this?”

  Ricky shook his head.

  “It’s done through credit cards. The men in Boston take care of it. All I have is e-mail addresses.”

  “And who are these men in Boston?”

  “They’re Eastern Europeans, Russians. I only know first names. I have some numbers to call if there’s trouble.”

  Ricky swore. He thought he had made a mistake by telling his assailant once again that there would be repercussions for hurting him, that of course he would have someone to call if the operation was threatened. Ricky didn’t want the man to be reminded that it might be better not to leave him alive. The man seemed to understand Ricky’s concerns.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you’ll be expected to call them about this. I figured they’d hear about it one way or the other, uh-huh. It don’t bother me none. Let ’em come. You can get rid of that stuff on your screen now.”

  Ricky swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly in gratitude. He turned back to his computer and began clearing it of the images. His lips parted.

  “Thank—”

  The bullet blew a big hole in the back of Ricky’s head, and tore a bigger one in his face as it exited. It shattered the screen, and something in the monitor exploded with a dull pop and began to burn acridly. Blood hissed and bubbled in the exposed workings. The ejected shell casing had bounced off a filing cabinet and lay close to Ricky’s chair. Its position was almost too good, so the visitor tapped it with the side of his foot, sending it sliding over toward the trash basket. There were prints on the linoleum from his boots, so he found a rag in a closet, placed it on the floor, and used his right foot to erase the marks. When he was satisfied that all was clean, he opened the door slightly and listened. The sound of the gunshot had been very loud, but despite that the trailers on either side of Demarcian’s were still dark, and elsewhere he could see the glow of TVs, could even hear what they were showing, the volume was turned up so high. He left the trailer, closing the door behind him, then disappeared into the night, pausing only at a gas station along the way to report a shot fired at Tranquility Pines, and a glimpse of what looked like an old Mustang speeding away from the scene.

  Frank Merri
ck didn’t like people getting in his way, but he had a certain amount of respect for the private detective. In addition, killing him would create more problems than it would solve, but killing someone else with the detective’s gun would create just enough problems to keep him occupied, and only a few for Merrick.

  Because Merrick knew that he was now entirely alone. He didn’t care. He had tired of the old lawyer and his careful questions some time before, and Eldritch had made it clear when he came up to Portland after Merrick’s arrest that their professional relationship was now at an end. The private detective’s comments about Eldritch’s motives and, more to the point, about whoever had instructed the lawyer to aid Merrick had only exacerbated his own doubts. It was time to finish this thing. There was still some business to be concluded down here, but then he would go northwest. He should have gone there long before now, but he had felt certain that some of the answers that he sought were in this small coastal city. But he was no longer so sure, and Gilead beckoned.

  Merrick took the duct tape and stuck the detective’s gun to the underside of the driver’s seat. He had liked the feel of it in his hands. It had been a long time since he had fired a gun, longer still since he had done so in anger. Now he had the taste for it again. He had been careful not to carry a weapon, just in case the cops came for him. He did not want to be incarcerated again. But the time had come to act, and the detective’s gun would be more than suitable for the work he had to do.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Merrick whispered, as he left the light of the gas station and headed east once more. “Won’t be long now. Daddy’s coming.”

  24

  I lost track of time. Hours became minutes, and minutes became hours. My skin itched constantly from the touch of the sacking, and the sense of impending suffocation was never far away. Occasional whispers emerged from the shadows, sometimes close by, and sometimes farther away. Once or twice I began to doze, but the tape across my mouth hindered my breathing and almost as soon as I fell asleep I would wake again, breathing heavily through my nose like a thoroughbred after a long race, my heart rate increasing, my head straining away from the pillow as I struggled to draw in more oxygen. Twice, I thought that something touched my neck before I awoke, and the contact was so cold that my skin burned. When that happened, I tried to work the burlap off, but Merrick had secured it well. By the time I heard the front door open and close, followed by the heavy, deliberate tread of footsteps upon the stairs, I was completely disoriented, but even with my senses confused I was aware of presences receding, moving away from me as the stranger approached.