The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  While Mickey was genuinely interested in human beings and their stories, he also acknowledged to himself a kind of numbness of the heart that afflicted many in his trade. He was curious about people, but he did not care about them, or not enough to feel their pain as his own. He sympathized with them, a temporary, shallow emotion, but he did not empathize. Perhaps it was a consequence of his work, of being forced to deal with story after story in close succession, the depth and duration of his involvement dependent entirely on the public’s appetite and, by extension, his newspaper’s. That was, in part, why he had decided to leave the world of journalism behind, and devote himself to books. By immersing himself in only a handful of cases, he hoped to sensitize himself anew. That, and make a little money along the way. He just needed to find the right story to tell, and he was convinced that, in Charlie Parker, he had found that story.

  Mickey could recall the moment he had become convinced that there was something different about the man. He hadn’t faded away after the deaths of his family. Neither had he gone on daytime shows to talk about his pain, in an effort to keep the killings in the public eye and ensure that the pressure on the law enforcement community to track down their killer remained constant. No, he had picked up a PI’s license, and then he had gone hunting, both for the killer, the one who would come to be called the Traveling Man, and for others. The first one he found was the Modine woman, and that was when the bells starting ringing for Mickey. That was a story in itself right there, worthy of a Sunday supplement: father loses his wife and child to a killer, then hunts down a pair of child killers in turn. It had everything that a jaded public could desire.

  Except Parker wouldn’t tell it. Requests for interviews were politely, and sometimes impolitely, declined. Then – bang! – there he was again, and this time it was the big one he was trying to hook, the Traveling Man. Over the years that followed, it became clear to Mickey, and to others like him, that there was something quite exceptional going on here. This man had a gift of sorts, although it wasn’t a gift that anybody in his right mind would wish to have: it seemed that he was drawn to evil, and evil, in turn, was drawn to him. And when he found it, he destroyed it. It was as simple, or as complex, as that, depending upon how you chose to view it, because Mickey Wallace was not dumb, and he knew that a man couldn’t do what Parker had done and not suffer serious damage along the way. Now here he was, working in a bar in a northeastern city, separated from his girlfriend, seeing the child he’d had with her maybe once or twice each month, and living alone in the big house upon which Mickey was now carefully shining his flashlight.

  Mickey wanted to go inside. He wanted to poke around in desk drawers, to open files in cabinets and on computers, to see where the subject ate, sat, slept. He wanted to walk in his footsteps, because what Mickey proposed to do was to give Parker a voice, to take his words, his experiences, and improve upon them, creating a new version of him that was somehow greater than the sum of his parts. To do that, Mickey needed to become him for a time, to understand the reality of his existence.

  And if Parker ultimately decided not to cooperate? Mickey was trying not to think about that. He had spoken to his publisher that morning, and the publisher had made clear his preference for Parker being involved with the project. It wasn’t a deal breaker, but it would affect the number of copies that would be printed, and the nature of the publicity for the book. His view was understandable, but it would make Mickey’s task more difficult. Anyone could put together a cut-and-paste job, although not as good a cut-and-paste job as Mickey could, but that wasn’t what the big bucks would be paid for. It wasn’t just about the money, either: there was a real story here, something deep and peculiar and unsettling, and the words had to come from the subject’s own mouth. Mickey would wear him down, of that he was certain, or reasonably certain. In the meantime, he had begun making contact with other prospective interviewees in the hope of establishing a more detailed background dossier about the subject, because Mickey wanted to know more about Parker than Parker did about himself.

  Except, the people who were close to him were also loyal, and so far all that Mickey had to show for his efforts was a series of rebuffs. True, he had sessions lined up, both on and off the record, with a couple of ex-cops who remembered Parker from New York, and a former captain from Internal Affairs who, Mickey was reliably informed, believed that the subject should be behind bars; the subject, and his buddies. They interested Mickey too. All he knew were their names: Angel and Louis. The captain said that he could help with them too, just not as much. He was only willing to talk off the record, but he had promised Mickey copies of investigation reports, and some juice that a good reporter like he was would easily be able to corroborate. It was a start, but Mickey wanted more.

  His clothes felt damp. The mist was a blessing in that it concealed him from any casual observer passing on the road below, and even someone coming up the drive would struggle to see his car, or him, until they reached the house itself. In fact, Mickey had parked the car beneath a copse of trees, and unless somebody was actively looking for it, he was pretty certain that it would pass unnoticed. Even if Parker returned unexpectedly, Mickey was convinced that he would drive right by it. But the mist was also cold and wet, and so thick that Mickey felt he might almost clasp a clump of it in his hand if he tried, like cotton candy.

  In the pocket of his coat he had a set of lock picks.

  He climbed up to the porch of the house and, more out of hope than expectation, tried the door. It was locked. He thought for a moment, then gave the door a hard push with his shoulder, rattling it in its frame. No alarm went off. Good, thought Mickey. Another lucky break, to add to the absent neighbors and the fact that Parker no longer seemed to have a dog. He’d heard him talking about it with one of the bartenders shortly before Parker gave Mickey the bum’s rush.

  He moved to the left and peered in the window. There was a night-light burning in the kitchen at the back of the house that shed a little illumination into the living room. It looked like it was comfortably furnished, with a lot of books. To the right of the front door was a small office, with a computer on a desk, papers piled neatly around it, and on the floor. Mickey knew that Parker had been down in New York recently. He wondered why. He desperately wanted to look through those papers.

  He walked to the back of the house, and stood in the segmented square of illumination cast by the night-light. The mist seemed thicker here, and when he looked behind him it formed a near-impenetrable wall of white, obscuring the trees and the marshes beyond. Mickey shivered. He tried the back door, with no result. Once again, he pressed his face to the glass.

  And something moved inside the house.

  For a moment, he thought that it was reflected light, or a car on the road creating shadows in the room beyond the kitchen, but he had heard no car. He blinked, and tried to recall what he had seen. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it might have been a woman, a woman in a dress that hung just below her knees. It wasn’t the kind of dress anyone would usually wear at this time of year. It was a summer dress.

  He considered leaving, but then he realized that an opportunity to enter the house might just have presented itself without necessitating a breach of the law. If there was someone inside, maybe he could introduce himself as a friend of the detective. There might be a cup of coffee in it for him, or a drink, and once Mickey got himself seated he would be difficult to roust. Cockroaches were harder to get rid of than Mickey Wallace in interrogation mode.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Anybody home?’ He knocked on the door. ‘Hello? I’m a friend of Mr. Parker’s. Can you—’

  The light went out in the kitchen. The shock was so sudden that Mickey stumbled backward in fright, spots before his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. He recovered himself, and took a breath. Maybe it was time to leave. He didn’t want the woman inside to be frightened and call the cops. Still, he carefully approached the door one more time. His flashlight was in his righ
t hand, and he used it to rap on the door as he leaned against the glass, shielding his eyes with his left hand.

  The woman was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She was looking right at him, her hands by her sides. He could see the shape of her legs through the thin material, but her face was cast in shadow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he called. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. My name is Michael Wallace. I’m a writer. Here’s my card. I’m going to slide it under the door, so you’ll know I’m legit.’

  He knelt down and slipped the card through. When he stood up, the woman was gone.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  Something white appeared at his feet. His card had been pushed back at him.

  Jesus, thought Mickey. She’s at the door. She’s hiding at the door.

  ‘I just want to talk to you,’ he said.

  go away

  For a moment, Mickey wasn’t sure that he’d heard right. The words had been clear enough, but they seemed to come from behind him. He turned around, but there was nothing there, only mist. He put his face to the glass again, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman hiding inside. He could almost see her: a patch of darkness on the floor, a palpable presence. Who is she? he wondered. Parker’s girlfriend was supposed to be in Vermont, not here. Mickey planned to try to talk to her sometime over the next couple of weeks. Anyway, they were estranged. There was no reason she should be here, and even less reason for her to try to hide herself if she was.

  Something began nagging at Mickey, something that made him uneasy, but he tried to force it from his mind. He only partially succeeded. He felt it lurking at the edge of his consciousness, just like the woman who was squatting in the shadows by the door, an unwelcome presence to which he was frightened of giving his complete attention.

  ‘Please. I just wanted to speak to you for a moment about Mr. Parker.’

  Michael

  The voice came again, only this time it was closer. He thought that he could feel breath on his neck, or maybe it was just the wind coming in from the sea, except there was no wind. He spun around, breathing heavily. He felt the mist enter his lungs. It made him cough, and he tasted snow and saltwater. He hadn’t liked the way the voice had spoken his name. He hadn’t liked it one little bit. There was a hint of mockery to it, and an implicit threat. He felt like a recalcitrant child being spoken to by a nanny, except—

  Except it was a child’s voice that had spoken.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ he said. ‘Show yourself.’

  But there was no movement, and no response, not from before him. Instead, he became aware of movement at his back. Slowly, he craned his neck, not wishing to turn away from whatever had spoken to him from the mist, yet anxious to see what was happening behind him.

  The woman was standing in the kitchen once again, midway between the back door and the entrance to the living room, but there was a lack of substance to her. She cast no shadow, distorting instead of blocking what little light was filtering through the glass, like a piece of gauze in the shape of a human being.

  go away

  please

  It was the use of the word ‘please’ that finally got to him. He had heard the word used in that way before, usually before a cop wrestled someone to the ground, or a doorman at a nightclub applied brute force to a drunk. It was a final warning, couched in a version of politeness. He shifted position so that he could see both the door and the mist, then began to retreat, moving toward the corner of the house.

  Because the shadow that was troubling him had just assumed a recognizable form, even as he tried to deny the reality of it.

  A woman and a child. A little girl’s voice. A woman in a summer dress. Mickey had seen that dress before, or one very like it. It was the dress that Parker’s wife had been wearing in the pictures that were circulated to the press after her death.

  As soon as he was out of sight of the door, Mickey began to run. He slipped once and landed heavily, soaking his trousers and plunging his arms into the icy snow up to his elbows. He whimpered as he got to his feet and brushed himself off. As he did so, he heard a sound from behind him. It was muffled slightly by the mist, but it was still clearly identifiable.

  It was the sound of the back door opening.

  He ran again. His car came in sight. He found the keys in his pocket and pushed the Unlock button once to turn on the lights. As he did so, he stopped short and felt his stomach lurch.

  There was a child, a little girl, on the far side of the car, staring at him through the passenger window. Her left hand was splayed against the glass, while the index finger of her right traced patterns in the moisture. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been inches away from her instead of feet. She was as insubstantial as the mist that surrounded her.

  ‘No,’ said Mickey. ‘No, no.’ He shook his head. From behind him came the sound of hard snow crunching underfoot, of an unseen figure drawing nearer. Even as he heard it, he sensed that if he were to retrace his steps to the back door he would find only the imprint of his own footsteps. ‘Oh Jesus,’ whispered Mickey. ‘Jesus, Jesus . . .’

  But already the little girl was receding into the mist and the trees, her right hand raised in a mocking gesture of farewell. Mickey took his chance and made a final dash for the car. He wrenched the door open, slammed it behind him, and hit the internal locking button. His fingers didn’t fumble, despite his fear, as he started the car and pulled onto the driveway, looking neither right nor left but staring only ahead. He hit the road at speed and hung a sharp right, back over the bridge toward Scarborough, the headlight beams assuming a definition of their own as they tried to slice through the mist. Houses appeared, and then, in time, the reassuring lights of the businesses on Route 1. Only when he reached the gas station on his right did he slow down. He pulled into the lot, and hit the brakes, then leaned back against his seat and tried to get his breathing under control.

  The traffic signal at the intersection began to change color. The action drew his attention to the passenger window, and what had seemed at first to be random patterns in the moisture now assumed a definite shape.

  On his window, someone had written:

  STAY AWAY FROM MY DADDY

  Mickey stared at the words for a few moments longer, then hit the button to wind down the window, destroying the message. When he was sure that it was gone, he drove back to his motel and went straight to the bar. It was only after a double vodka that he found it within himself to begin updating his notes, and it took another double to stop his hand from shaking.

  That night, Mickey Wallace did not sleep well.

  15

  I didn’t find Wallace’s card until I opened the back door on the afternoon of the next day to put out the trash. It lay on the step, frozen to the cement. I looked at it, then went back inside and dialed his cell phone number from my office.

  He answered on the second ring. ‘Mickey Wallace.’

  ‘This is Charlie Parker.’

  He didn’t reply for a moment or two, and when he did he sounded uneasy, although, like a true professional, he quickly rallied. ‘Mr. Parker, I was just about to call you. I was wondering if you’d considered my offer.’

  ‘I’ve given it some thought,’ I said. ‘I’d like to meet.’

  ‘Great.’ His voice rose an octave in surprise, then resumed its usual timbre. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Why don’t you come out to my place in, say, an hour? Do you know where it is?’

  There was a pause. ‘No, I don’t. Can you give me directions?’

  My directions were intricate and detailed. I wondered if he was even bothering to take them down.

  ‘Got that?’ I said, when I was done.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I heard him take a sip of liquid.

  ‘You want to read them back to me?’

  Wallace almost choked. When he had finished coughing, he said: ‘That won’t be nec
essary.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Parker. I’ll be with you shortly.’

  I hung up, then went down the drive and found the tire tracks beneath the trees. If it was Wallace who had parked there, he’d left in a hurry. He’d managed to churn up ice and snow to reveal the dirt beneath. I walked back to the house and sat reading the Press-Herald and The New York Times until I heard a car pulling into the drive, and Wallace’s blue Taurus came into view. He didn’t park in the same spot as the night before, but drove right up to the house. I watched him get out, take his satchel from the passenger seat, and check his pockets for a spare pen. When he was satisfied that all was in order, he locked the car.

  In my drive. In Maine. In winter.

  I didn’t wait for him to knock. Instead, I opened the door, and hit him once in the stomach. He buckled and dropped to his knees, then doubled over and retched.

  ‘Get up.’

  He stayed down. He was struggling for breath, and I thought that he might vomit on my porch.

  ‘Don’t hit me again,’ he said. It was a plea, not a warning, and I felt like a piece of grit in a dog’s eye.

  ‘I won’t.’

  I helped him to his feet. He sat against the porch rail, his hands on his knees, and recovered himself. I stood opposite him, regretting what I had done. I had allowed my anger to simmer, and then I had taken it out on a man who was no match for me.

  ‘You okay?’

  He nodded, but he looked gray. ‘What was that for?’