A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  The third man had given his name as José Hernández, which was the equivalent of a Caucasian claiming to be called John Smith. He had not been picked up in the sweep of the yard, but a couple of hours later, supposedly as he waited for a bus to Tucson, although it was more likely he was waiting for a ride back to Mexico, since the next bus for Tucson wasn’t scheduled to leave until the following morning. He was smaller and leaner than the others, and had so far done his best not to make eye contact with any of his interrogators. He was also the only one who had been wearing a long-sleeved shirt, fully buttoned, when detained.

  “What did Lagnier have to say about him?” Ross asked.

  “Beyond the fact that Hernández had been working for him on and off for about five days,” said Zaleski, “Mr. Lagnier had nothing to say about him at all, and that’s ‘nothing’ with a heavy emphasis.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Lagnier knew better than to ask about José’s background. It’s probably not the first time Lagnier’s done a solid for some friends from across the border: a place for cousins to sleep, a little work to replenish funds before they head farther north. But sometimes…”

  Zaleski let it hang. Parker figured everyone in the room now knew that Lagnier had an arrangement with the ATF, and if they didn’t, they had no business being there.

  “Sometimes it’s a more substantial favor,” finished Newton, one of the Maricopa detectives. “One he doesn’t share with his handlers.”

  “Not unless Lagnier wants to try holding his silverware without thumbs,” said Zaleski. “This whole territory belongs to the Sinaloa cartel, and nothing moves in or out without their knowledge. Young José in there has himself a collection of tattoos under that shirt. He didn’t much approve of us having a look-see, but he knew better than to kick up a fuss.”

  Zaleski took out her phone and displayed a series of photographs of Hernández’s adornments. The man was a walking skin gallery of devils, clowns, and death’s-head virgins, but pride of place went to the number 13 on his back.

  “He’s Mara Salvatrucha Thirteen,” said Zaleski, mostly to Parker. “You know what that is?”

  “Gang member—and not just any gang.”

  The mainly Salvadoran MS-13 had emerged out of Los Angeles in the 1980s, where it initially went head-to-head with its rivals, principally the Mexicans. When the United States began deporting the Salvadorans, it also effectively exported MS-13 to Central America, facilitating the expansion of its activities—notably human trafficking, especially children and young women destined for the sex trade. The gang’s motto was mata, viola, controla, or “kill, rape, control,” and it favored knives and machetes over guns for the purposes of maiming and murdering. MS-13 quickly came to a series of mutually beneficial arrangements with the Mexican cartels, and was now firmly embedded within la Eme, the Mafia Mexicana. MS-13 members formed the foot soldiers of the Sinaloa cartel.

  “You think Hernández put that body in the freezer?” said Ross.

  “He might have,” said Zaleski, “or helped get it into the yard. Lagnier was kind of vague on when Hernández first appeared, but that may be deliberate forgetfulness on his part, not that I’d blame him. These guys eat people alive, but they like to play with their food first. Even if Hernández wasn’t directly responsible for dumping the body, he may have been the lookout. He could have been placed at the yard to make sure the victim wasn’t found until the right time.”

  “It still doesn’t explain how they got the freezer past those dogs,” said Newton.

  “I think I can answer that,” said Parker. “Mors did it.”

  “Wait a second,” said Newton. “We still haven’t established for certain that the victim isn’t this Mors woman.”

  “And we’re going to have trouble doing that,” said Parker, “because we don’t have any of Mors’s DNA to check against the remains from the freezer. But my guess is she was directly involved in getting that freezer into the yard.”

  Mors had been both careful and lucky in her activities. She had probably suffered a facial injury from a key in Cadillac, Indiana, after one of her intended victims successfully fought her off, but the young woman in question hadn’t thought to preserve the key with the blood intact. Searches of the other houses occupied by Mors and Quayle had come up with nothing usable, and while the wound, or wounds, inflicted on Mors by Louis had almost certainly resulted in bleeding, rainfall had washed away the blood before an evidence team could even get to the scene.

  One of the more curious aspects of the DNA that had been recovered—in this case, from a cabin in northwestern Maine temporarily used by Quayle and Mors—was the condition of two hair samples containing the Y chromosome, indicating that they came from a male. The DNA was degraded, like tissue obtained from a dead body. The hair also contained traces of black dye, and while the dye on Quayle’s hair had been noticeable to all who encountered him—or the ones that had survived the contact—the lawyer appeared to be a living, breathing specimen. The only logical conclusion to be drawn was that the hairs had not come from Quayle, and the body of an unknown decedent had been present in the cabin at some point. Still, it was peculiar.

  “You think she was in the country until recently?” Ross asked Parker.

  “Louis believes he hit Mors with at least one bullet, possibly two, and I wouldn’t doubt his word. It would have been hard for her to travel, so she probably found somewhere safe to hole up while she was being treated. Quayle may have remained with her, but it’s more likely he left without her, because he’d draw less attention to himself that way. But before he goes, Quayle pays for a favor: the killing of a woman, one roughly similar in age and build to Mors, who can be used to lay a false trail.”

  “Even if that’s the case,” said Zaleski, “and you have a whole lot of supposition in there, it still doesn’t explain how they got the freezer past Lagnier’s dogs.”

  “Look, it seems to me that there are two possibilities,” said Parker. “The first is that Lagnier or his assistant, Miguel Ángel, facilitated the storage of the freezer, but unless you have strong feelings to the contrary, that doesn’t seem likely. It’s one thing tossing a little work and a few dollars to illegals passing through Gila Bend, and another letting a body decay in a yard. Had they brought the freezer in with Lagnier’s knowledge, I believe he’d have taken a look inside as soon as possible, no matter how many warnings he’d been given to mind his own business. Narcotics may end up stored at Lagnier’s place on occasion, but I bet they don’t stay there for long. A container of any kind left on his premises for more than a day or two would have given Lagnier cause for concern.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Parker,” said Newton. “I was one of the first on the scene after the body was discovered. Lagnier was shaken, Miguel Ángel, too. I don’t think they knew about that freezer until a few minutes before Miguel started removing it from under their trash.”

  “But Lagnier must have been suspicious when Hernández started hanging around,” said Ross. “He wasn’t there just to earn some cash by sorting junk.”

  “Lagnier still wasn’t going to raise any objections,” said Zaleski. “I guarantee that he likes his balls attached to his body.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t just about Lagnier himself,” said Parker. “There’s also Leticia, that girl he has with him.”

  “Story I heard is that she may have been cut by the Jalisco New Generation,” said Zaleski. “No love lost between them and Sinaloa.”

  “Why did they hurt her?” asked Parker.

  “Who knows? Just because: because she turned down the wrong guy; because she objected to being raped; because she opened her mouth when she shouldn’t have; because someone in her family didn’t show enough respect; because she’s a woman; or because a narco was bored one afternoon. So: just because.”

  “And Lagnier took her in?”

  “He found her out in the desert, paid for her medical care,” said Newton. “I’m not saying that he did
it entirely out of the goodness of his heart—Lagnier’s no looker, and he’d been hurting for some female company for a long time—but he’s not keeping her captive, and she seems to like him, far as anyone can tell. Lagnier’s a strange guy. There’s a lot of bad to him, but that’s not all there is.”

  “So Lagnier does what he’s told by Sinaloa,” said Parker.

  “While trying to stay righteous with the ATF, mostly by feeding them anyone dumb enough to trespass on Sinaloa’s territory,” said Zaleski. “In return, nobody mentions to the JNG that he’s sheltering a girl they mutilated. But I agree that Lagnier’s still going to draw the line at bodies stinking up his yard.”

  “Which leaves Mors,” said Parker. “We think she may have killed a woman named Connie White up in Piscataquis County. White had a dog that was all mean, but when we found White’s body, the dog was inside with it, alive and well and still all mean. If Mors did murder Connie White, then she may have a way with animals.”

  “Enough to charm Lagnier’s junkyard curs?” asked Ross.

  “It’s possible.”

  Ross returned his attention to Zaleski.

  “What about Hernández? Can you lean on him?”

  “We can try,” said Zaleski. “We’ll run his prints and see if they’ve ended up on the handle of the wrong blade. If we get a match, we can use it to pry him open, but mostly I think we’ll be wasting our time. He’ll know better than to say anything. Bad enough that we picked him up before he could slip back across the border, and we only did that because one of the sheriff’s deputies remembered seeing him around Lagnier’s place, so Lagnier couldn’t deny all knowledge of him. If Hernández keeps his mouth shut, and hasn’t left evidence of his involvement in any crime, then we only have him for alleged gang membership based on the tattoos. We’ll check with the Mexicans, and the Salvadorans and Guatemalans, too. Who knows, if he’s pissed off any of them, he might prefer to take his chances with us rather than be shipped south. But even if he does talk, all we’ll get from him is the name of whoever sent him to Lagnier to start with, and that guy probably just received a phone call telling him the check had cleared.”

  “Which is what Quayle wants us to do,” Parker said to Ross. “He’d like nothing better than to have us chasing dead-end leads in Mexico.”

  “You mean have you chasing dead-end leads,” said Ross. “I’m not going down to Mexico. That’s why you’re on retainer.”

  “Thanks,” said Parker. “I always wondered.”

  “That’s assuming no one down in cartel land takes offense at your line of questioning, and decides to bring it to an end by cutting off your head,” said Zaleski.

  “Yeah, assuming that,” said Parker.

  Newton raised a hand.

  “I got a question,” he said.

  They all looked at him.

  “Just who the fuck is Quayle?”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Pallida Mors stood in the quarters of the lawyer Quayle, the accumulated burden of the past imposing itself upon her as though the gloom of these spaces were less a function of the absence of light than a physical manifestation of darkness itself, a material accumulation of centuries of night. It accentuated her own pallor, so that she perceived herself as a ghost reflected in the glass front of the bookcases behind Quayle’s desk.

  Not that this place was in need of more ghosts, not by any means.

  The room, like the rest of Quayle’s living area, was entirely windowless, the only light being bequeathed by a pair of lamps, one on the desk, the other freestanding in a corner. The former illuminated a small circle of embossed leather, and the latter, hampered by a heavy red and cream shade, imbued its territory with a filtered, amniotic phosphorescence. This was the lair of one who hunted, and was now being hunted in turn. It lay in Holborn, close to the heart of London’s legal community, which was an organ that beat just the faintest of rhythms—if it truly beat at all, some might have said—and pumped only cold blood. Once, Quayle’s chambers had formed part of a little courtyard, the exterior walls wretched in appearance, blackened by the soot and pollution of ages. A narrow passageway from Chancery Lane had permitted access to the core, but it became locked and gated between the First and Second World Wars. Finally, in 1940, a German bomb did what plague and fire had signally failed to do, and laid waste to the courtyard, leaving only one building standing. In time, this was subsumed by newer structures, slowly fading from the city’s memory; forgotten by most, perhaps, but not entirely lost. A complicated series of trusts and bequests, a quagmire of deeds and transfers of ownership, meant that this architectural relic, and its fossilized chambers, remained beyond the reach of developers. Eventually, as is often the case, it largely ceased to be noticed at all, which suited its occupant perfectly.

  Officially, the last of the Quayle line had been rendered into dust sometime during the 1940s, although no one could say precisely when. Unofficially, he—or some figure resembling him: a distant scion, a bastard son, for the original must surely have long since ceased delighting even the worms—remained aboveground, his footsteps occasionally echoing on the cobbles of Lincoln’s Inn, his breath pluming in the winter air of the Temple, his solitude now broken only by the visits of a woman with unnaturally white skin and prematurely silver hair who trailed the stink of moral and corporeal corruption.

  “So they’ve found the body,” said Quayle, not turning from the glass. His eyes were cast downward, their gaze fixed not at the books on the shelves but on a single volume occupying its own plinth: the Fractured Atlas, its recovered vellum pages now restored to the whole; the work that would, he believed, bring this world to an end.

  And yet still it was not complete.

  “It seemed the right moment had come,” said Mors. “The Americans were asking questions about passports.”

  She was glad to have left the United States behind, glad to be back here where she belonged: in London, by Quayle’s side.

  “It won’t fool them for long,” he said.

  “Possibly not,” Mors agreed, “but it may divert them. Let them travel to Mexico. Let them hunt for leads in the desert. They’ll find nothing, and more time will slip away. Time stolen from them is time gifted to you.”

  Quayle’s right hand reached out and touched the Atlas, gently stroking it as one might a living creature. The pages responded to the contact. He glimpsed within them an image of his own hand, as though mirrored in glass, and beyond them his face, and the lineaments of his rooms. The magic of it never ceased to entrance him.

  “He will come, in the end,” said Quayle.

  “Parker?”

  “Who else? I’m surprised he has not done so already.”

  “He won’t find you.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

  Quayle closed the Atlas. He was now unrecognizable as the man who had, with the help of Mors, butchered his way across the United States only a month earlier. He had dispensed with dye, so that his hair was almost entirely restored to its natural white, and a rough silver beard obscured much of his lower face. The prosthetics that had subtly altered the shape of ears and eyes, the colored lenses, all were gone. Even the Botox injections to conceal his wrinkles were wearing off. He now resembled what he was: an old, old man who had lived far, far too long.

  “And even if you’re right,” he continued, “I can’t remain hidden behind these walls until a way is found to rid ourselves of him. There is work to be done.”

  But it was more than that. This was his city, his world. Versions of him breathed in the dust of the Blitz, minute fragments of the living and the dead alike reduced to spores in the sunlight; regarded the maimed returning from the trenches of the Somme; smelled the blood of dead whores in Whitechapel; and watched a king’s head fall before the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Quayle understood that no real distinction existed between what is and what once had been. The past was alive in the present, and the seeds of the present were lodged in the past. What was gone before had a
habit of manifesting itself over and over again, sometimes without even bothering to find new raiment. And Quayle was the living proof. He was both his own self and all his former selves. Their paths lay parallel to his, and their footsteps echoed in unison.

  On the desk before him lay a copy of The Times, open to an article detailing the discovery of the body of a young woman named Helen Wylie, who had disappeared from her flat in Ealing one week earlier. Her remains had recently been found in the grounds of the church of St. Martin in Canterbury, Kent, eighty miles from her home. St. Martin’s was the oldest church in England. It had been in use as a place of worship since the sixth century, although the site dated back to Roman times, and parts of the building were constructed from salvaged Roman brick. Helen Wylie had been killed close to the exterior of the apse, with stabbing as the cause of death, although it would have been more accurate to say that a serrated knife had been used to prize her open from abdomen to chest. One additional detail had not been revealed to the press: the nature of the item recovered from the dead woman’s mouth.

  But Quayle knew of it, because he had ordered it to be placed there.

  Helen Wylie was the first to be revealed.

  It had begun.

  CHAPTER IX

  Zaleski and Newton—with Parker and Ross in attendance, although seated farther back from the others—gave eliciting information from Hernández the good old college try, but received only silence for their efforts. Parker did notice Hernández’s attention occasionally drifting to him, even when the questions were coming from elsewhere. The rest of the time, the gang member preferred to keep his eyes fixed on the surface of the table to which his cuffs were attached. But he blanked Zaleski entirely, as though, as a woman, she was beneath contempt, so the two interrogators tried a different tack.

  “I don’t think José likes women much,” said Newton.

  “I was wondering about that,” said Zaleski. “I always feel that men with excessive tattoos are trying to hide something, or make up for some deficiency.”