A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “You’ll tell them that, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I really want to do it again.”

  “I’ll make sure they know.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “By the way, why the new number?”

  “Just being careful. I picked up one of those weird SIMs, the cheap ones all the Pakis use. Go on now, put your foot up. You did good, all things considered.”

  He frowned as Sellars ended the call. He didn’t like racist talk. Mind you, it was funny that he should be so sensitive about it, given what they were leaving inside those dead women…

  All this, everything he was doing, seemed to be the actions of another man, one that walked and talked like he did but existed on another plane, as though his darker reflection had stepped from a mirror and taken over this unfolding of his life. Even what he’d said about wondering what it might be like to kill a woman, about having the will and strength to do it, wasn’t wholly true. It bore the same relation to reality as a seed might to an oak, or an embryo to a fully formed human being. Those thoughts had just been specks on his soul, dots on his conscience, and we all had bad thoughts sometimes, right? We all entertained fantasies that we’d never actually put into action. They were just… there. They intruded when you were least expecting them, and if you were in the right frame of mind you permitted them a little latitude just to see how they developed, and where they might end up. It wasn’t wrong, because they weren’t real. You weren’t hurting anyone, except in your head.

  But suppose one day you walked into an old church in Fairford, Gloucestershire, even though you had never been one for churches in the past. You’d heard that its windows were worth seeing, because your new friend from the Darknet had mentioned them during your conversations, and suggested you and he might like to meet at the church, get to know each other better; and suddenly there you were, standing on the cold stones smelling the antiquity of the place, but you weren’t alone, because waiting beneath the most famous of the windows was another man, slightly overweight, with thinning hair; and you felt no unease about joining him, the two of you gazing up at the window together, not speaking, just looking; and then listening, because the voices came to you, and even though they spoke in a language you’d never heard before, still you understood what they were saying, what they wanted from you, because it was what you wanted for yourself, what you’d always wanted but never admitted.

  “Do you hear them?” said the man next to you, and he was smiling, and suddenly you were smiling, too.

  Yes, you replied.

  Yes, you told Sellars, I hear them.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Parker had another reason for wanting to return to Portland as quickly as possible, aside from any dearth of affection for unfamiliar territories: Frank and Joan Wolfe, the parents of Rachel, his ex-partner, were driving from Vermont to Boston for an annual gathering of old friends at some fancy club, and had consented to a detour in order to drop off Parker’s daughter, Sam, along the way, and pick her up again the following morning on the journey home.

  They had entered into an odd conspiracy, he and Sam, one in which each acknowledged the other’s singularity, yet agreed to leave it in large part unremarked. But Parker knew this: that his daughter spoke to her dead half sister, Jennifer, and she in turn whispered to Sam of old gods. And what did Sam know of her father, and the part he was destined to play in some larger narrative? Well, that was less clear, but it was more than any child so young should have known.

  Frank and Joan came by the house with Sam, although they did not linger. Relations between Parker and Frank had improved somewhat in recent times, largely as a result of a clearing-the-air talk back in Vermont the previous winter, and also because there was little scope for their relationship to deteriorate much further. Whatever the reason for the rapprochement, they remained formal rather than friendly with each other. They exchanged some comments on the weather, and the trees in Parker’s yard, and the mileage Frank was getting out of his new Audi, and when those threads of civility began to fray, which didn’t take long, the Wolfes got back in their car and headed south, off to mix with the great and the good of the Commonwealth.

  “I like it when you and Grandpa talk,” said Sam, as her grandparents drove away.

  “Yeah? I wish I could say the same.”

  Sam wrinkled her nose in disapproval.

  “I’m kidding,” said Parker. “We just don’t have a whole lot in common.”

  “You have me.”

  “There is that.”

  “And Mom.”

  “How is your mom?” said Parker, grasping the opportunity to steer the conversation onto safer ground.

  “Good,” said Sam, but she was not to be so easily diverted. “And Walter. You and Grandpa have Walter in common.” Walter was the family dog. He had once been Parker’s dog, too, back when he, Rachel, and Sam had lived under the same roof. It was dumb, but mention of Walter always caused something to stick in Parker’s throat, even after all this time. Damn dog. “Which means you and Grandpa like lots of the same stuff.”

  “You’re right,” said Parker. “He has a great deal to be thankful for.”

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  “Only if you think it is. So, how about ice cream? Or a nap?”

  Sam wrinkled her nose.

  “I think that’s sarcasm, too,” she said.

  * * *

  THEY SPENT A GREAT day together: a bike ride around Peaks Island, some shopping, and lunch at the Great Lost Bear, where Dave Evans and Cupcake Cathy ensured that Sam was treated like royalty, aided by the Fulci brothers, now returned from New York, who acted as her courtiers. The Fulcis even joined Sam in coloring some pictures provided by Dave, albeit with a disturbing intensity, and excessive use of black and red crayons.

  “Jesus,” said Dave, as he watched—from a safe distance—the Fulcis concentrating on their artwork, “they probably learned how to do that in therapy sessions at the mental institution.”

  “You think it helped?” asked Parker.

  “Not really. If Tony scribbles any harder, he’ll go through the table. And what are they doing anyway? I gave them a picture of a unicorn to color, and now it looks like it’s dying of gunshot wounds. They’re not even staying inside the lines.”

  The Fulcis were still trying to source suitable premises in Portland for their own bar, but so far two lease agreements had fallen through at the last minute. They were now considering opening a gym instead, as they were less interested in a serious investment than finding somewhere to loiter without concerned citizens calling the police. For now, there was always the Bear. Parker thought that, despite all his protests, Dave Evans felt sorry for the Fulcis; maybe not as sorry as Dave felt for himself for allowing them into his beloved bar to begin with, but a bit sorry.

  “Sam’s getting tall,” said Dave.

  “Yeah.”

  Parker felt the recurrent pang of any father often separated from his offspring, the sadness that comes from experiencing the child’s progression to maturity in fits and starts rather than as a continuous process, or perhaps this was simply his own heightened awareness of their situation. He suspected that if, in years to come, he asked Rachel to look back on their daughter’s childhood, she would wonder how the time could have passed so quickly, and how little of it she could seem to recall.

  “She’s a great kid,” said Dave. “You’re doing okay, you and Rachel.” He patted Parker lightly on the back, as though sensing the direction of his thoughts.

  The only pall over Sam’s visit was cast that night, as they ate dinner at a window table in a restaurant on Congress Street. Four Massholes were occupying one of the adjacent booths: two guys and two girls, all in their early thirties. One of the guys was loud, even by Boston standards, and foul-mouthed—again, even by Boston standards.

  “Why is that man using so many bad words?” asked Sam.

  “Because he’s fr
om Boston,” said Parker.

  “And why is he wearing a baseball cap indoors?”

  Parker regarded men who wore any kind of cap or hat inside as blights on humanity, and was happy to have passed on this conviction to his daughter. He was still working on convincing her that grown men shouldn’t wear shorts anywhere but on an athletic field, and was optimistic about an eventual result.

  “Because he’s from Boston,” he said.

  “How do you know he’s from Boston?”

  “Because he’s using so many bad words, and wearing a baseball cap indoors.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  It was clear that Parker wasn’t the only one who’d noticed, because one of the servers approached the Mass table to request that its occupants keep their voices down. The restaurant was casual, with great food, and its reputation inevitably drew all kinds. The volume of the Massholes’ conversation decreased marginally as a result of the intervention, but the language didn’t get any better. It wasn’t that Parker was a prude, but Sam was still within earshot, and he wasn’t the only person in the place with a kid.

  “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” he said to Sam.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? You should go, just in case.”

  Sam regarded him thoughtfully.

  “Do you want me to go to the bathroom so you can talk to that man?”

  “Might do.”

  “You should have said.”

  Sam left for the bathroom, with one of the female servers keeping her company. Parker leaned over toward the party behind.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  The guy in the baseball cap looked over at him.

  “Yeah?”

  “My daughter is concerned about your language.”

  The guy laughed. He had very white teeth. In the event of a fire, the other diners could have used his dental work to guide them to safety through the smoke.

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes. You see, I’m sensitive, and she worries about me. I mean, she’s heard it all. You know what kids are like these days. But me, I lead a sheltered life, so maybe you could ease up on the swearing, for my sake.”

  The guy laughed again, but his dining companions didn’t. For whatever reason, possibly just more brain cells, they were able to perceive something in Parker that had passed their friend by.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  “I thought you’d say that,” said Parker, “so here’s how it’s going to play out. I’m going to keep asking you nicely to stop swearing—even if you’re not swearing, but just in anticipation, because it won’t take long for you to get around to it again—and eventually you’re going to become so frustrated that one of two things will happen: either you’ll give up on eating and leave, in which case you won’t get to enjoy your entrée when it arrives; or you might take a swing at me with your best shot, except you look kind of slow, and I don’t think your best shot is going to cut it, so someone will call the cops and, hey, still no entrée.”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Next is where you threaten me.”

  “Nope,” said Parker. “This isn’t Boston. We’re subtler. I’m just going to go back to telling you not to swear, like this: Stop swearing. Stop swearing. Stop swearing. I may vary the tone to sound like your mom, or your grade school teacher, just to break the monotony. You know, go high, go low. I may even get my daughter to join in. Either way, you’re not going to enjoy your meal here. I’d start thinking about alternative venues.”

  At that moment, Sam returned.

  “I was just explaining to the nice man how we’re going to tell him to stop swearing, over and over, until he gets tired of it and leaves.”

  Sam sat.

  “Cool,” she said. “Stop swearing. Wait, have we started?”

  “We have now. Stop swearing.”

  “Stop swearing,” said Sam.

  “Stop swearing.”

  “Stop swearing.”

  “Stop swearing.”

  “Stop swearing.”

  “Stop swearing…”

  * * *

  THEY WERE EATING DESSERT. The restaurant was quieter now.

  “He lasted longer than expected,” said Parker.

  “I counted sixty before he gave in,” said Sam. “But I might have missed some.”

  She spooned a large glob of melting ice cream into her mouth.

  “It was fun,” she concluded. “I wish Mom had been here. She’d have joined in.”

  Parker wasn’t so sure about that.

  “How about we keep this between us?” he suggested.

  “But it’s not like that time Uncle Louis threatened to shoot someone for using bad words in front of us.”

  Parker had almost managed to blot that incident from his memory.

  “That was certainly different. But I think your mom worries about us getting into trouble.”

  Sam licked her spoon clean.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “It’s probably better if she doesn’t hear about stuff that would worry her.”

  Her eyes flicked to her father, and the knowingness in them gave Parker a chill, but he said nothing.

  And thus their conspiracy acquired another layer of complexity.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  The following morning, with Sam already safely on her way back to Vermont, Parker met Moxie Castin for a late breakfast at Union in the old Portland Press Herald building, since the restaurant was close to the Superior Court at Newbury Street, where Moxie was destined to be tied up for most of the day. Moxie was wearing his serious lawyer wardrobe, which meant he’d dialed down the garishness of his tie, and found a suit that looked like it might once have fitted properly—not necessarily fitted Moxie, but fitted someone.

  Since he didn’t usually eat much before midday, Parker opted for just coffee and toast, while Moxie made a small concession to sensible dining by ordering the Light Hearted, a three-egg-white vegetarian omelet, although he asked the server to hold the tofu because, as he put it, “nobody actually likes tofu, and certainly not for breakfast.”

  Parker generally tried to avoid morning meetings, or even talking to anyone for long before the time moved into double digits, but Moxie was heading out of town for a few days once his obligations at the courthouse had been fulfilled, and there was some housekeeping to be done after the Houston testimony. They got through it with a minimal amount of speech or effort from Parker, and moved on to the events in Arizona. Parker gave Moxie the condensed version, although he did mention the part about screwing Ross for beer, pizza, and champagne.

  “The champagne flutes were a nice touch,” said Moxie. “Pity about the flowers, though.”

  “Next time.”

  Moxie was familiar with most of Parker’s business and legal affairs, and had issues with any number of them, but top of the list was the monthly consultancy retainer from the FBI. The news from Arizona made him even less happy about it, but this time there was no trace of good humor or indulgence in his response.

  “MS-13?” said Moxie. “And Ross was parading you in front of this Hernández?”

  “Parading might be putting it kind of strongly.”

  “But Hernández knew who you were?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “You have to end this arrangement with Ross,” said Moxie. “Now.”

  “You’re always telling me that.”

  “Because it’s the smart thing to do.”

  “Smart or not, I don’t consider it an option, not at the moment.”

  “It’s always an option. You think you’re on the books somewhere in Federal Plaza? You’re not. You’re not even in the small print at the bottom of a stationery bill. You’re a miscellaneous expense without an identifier, because that way you’re deniable. You may be an open secret on Ross’s floor, but that still doesn’t mean you have any protection if, or when, it all goes to hell. I know you think you’re using Ross in turn, and maybe you’ve been thrown a bone or two along th
e way, but all the risk is on your end.”

  “I need Ross.”

  “Why?”

  “To find Quayle.” Among other things.

  Moxie almost spat in disgust.

  “Quayle? What, for Louis? Out of some misguided sense of duty? Tell me. I’d like to know.”

  “Let me remind you that it was you who brought me into Quayle’s orbit.”

  “I hired you to look for a missing child, not embark on some transcontinental hunt for an apocalyptic fanatic.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Moxie waved his hand wildly in the air for more coffee.

  “You know,” he said, “I’m starting to believe you might have incurred some form of brain damage the last time you were shot, and I’m speaking as a friend.”

  Parker waited for him to calm down. Moxie didn’t quite manage it, but his complexion gradually lightened from red to pink. The coffee arrived. When the server had departed, he resumed speaking.

  “Ross is a member of the Colonial,” said Moxie. “You know what that is?”

  “It’s a private club in Boston.”

  “No, it’s the oldest private club in Boston, older than the Union or the Algonquin. They’ve only been around since the second half of the nineteenth century, but the Colonial, or some version of it, has existed since the eighteenth.”

  “And?”

  “Nobody good is a member of the Colonial,” said Moxie. “It’s a society of predators. You know who was a member of the Colonial, until shortly before somebody excised a couple of his major organs in a bathtub? Garrison Pryor. That’s how bad the Colonial Club is, and even Pryor’s removal from its register of members represents only a marginal improvement in its moral quality, at least until someone worse is nominated in his place. Apparently, there’s a scramble to fill the vacancy, so they’re taking their time in choosing. My question is: If Ross is even on nodding terms with decency and morality, what the fuck is he doing in the company of people like that?”

  Parker had no answer, beyond the fact of Ross’s wealth.

  “He has money.”