The Soul Collectors dm-4

by Chris Mooney

Lee said, 'Do you know the first rule of hostage negotiation?'

  'Form a bond.'

  'Yes. That's your primary goal. Always remember that. When you go in there, let him think he's Charles Rizzo. Don't fight him on it. Listen to his grievances. If he believes you really do care about his pain, cause, whatever, he'll be more receptive to releasing the hostages, which is our goal. Remember to always be working on that bond. We'll be listening in and speaking to you over an earpiece. That's all I have.' Lee glanced to Trent.

  'The APC will take you in,' Trent said.

  'And SWAT won't move in until I give the order?' Darby said.

  'Until you give the order,' Trent repeated. 'You have my word on that. But at the first sign of trouble, I'm ordering my men to breach.'

  The APC had built-in ladders on both sides of the back doors to allow a sniper quick access to the roof. She didn't want to ride inside or in the back. She had all of her equipment, and the fresh, cold air was keeping her head clear.

  Darby extended one of the ladder's rungs, climbed up and knocked on the side of the APC. The driver looked in his rear-view mirror, saw her standing on the back, then put a hand out of the window and waved.

  The engine came to life, rumbling, and the APC started crawling towards the house.

  5

  Darby mulled over the cryptic conversation she had just heard between the hostage negotiator and the man calling himself Charlie Rizzo. I need Dr McCormick to see them first, Charlie had said. I need her to bear witness.

  Bear witness to what? Killing the family? And what the hell did he mean when he said he couldn't survive the wheel again?

  Another police blockade had been set up on the far end of the street. She spotted three cruisers, their flashing blue and whites lighting up every inch of the neighbourhood, a place far different from, and light years beyond, the Rizzos' former Brookline address with its multimillion-dollar McMansions and professionally landscaped lawns and gardens, high-end BMWs and Mercedes parked in two- and three-car garages. A real-estate agent would call these three New Hampshire homes — the only ones here on this long stretch of woodlands — either 'cosy' or 'fixer-uppers'. No garages, just driveways with small, dependable economy cars. Living here in the Granite State gave you plenty of land and privacy. The houses were spaced far apart from each other, and each one looked like it had been dropped in the middle of the woods. No streetlights either.

  She caught two remote cameras set up on tripods on the front lawn and driveway of a small colonial with white-chipped paint and dark green shutters — the new home of Mark and Judith Rizzo. The windows, at least the ones she could see, were dark, the shades on the top floors drawn, just as Trent had said. Two cars were parked in the driveway: a white Jeep Cherokee and a maroon Honda Civic. She could make out stickers for the 'University of New Hampshire' on both back windows.

  Darby glanced to the ranch house across the street. It took her a moment to spot the sniper. He was lying on the flat roof, staring down his target sight. His partner, the spotter, knelt behind a chimney and stared at the Rizzo home through a thermal-imaging scope.

  The APC came to a stop. She stepped off and moved up the leaf-covered walkway.

  Please, Charlie had said, we're running out of time.

  Darby walked up the front steps and gripped the doorknob. It turned without a problem.

  She stepped inside alone, as instructed, but didn't shut the door behind her. The flashing police lights coming from opposite ends of the street were bright and strong enough to part some of the house's interior darkness, and it gave her a chance to take in her surroundings.

  Hardwood floors and directly in front of her, a set of stairs carpeted with a dark burgundy runner. To her left, a living room with a sectional couch and a small flat-screen TV. Modest furnishings. The Rizzos' Brookline home had had Ethan Allen furniture in large, spacious rooms. They were probably forced to downsize after blowing that money on private investigators, she thought. They probably moved here so the kids could get in-state tuition fees.

  'Shut the door and lock it.'

  The screechy, breathless male voice came from somewhere upstairs.

  'Hurry. We're running out of time.'

  We, she thought, easing the door shut. She locked it, hearing the bolt slam home, and moved to the bottom steps. She couldn't see Charlie up there. Too dark, but she could hear him panting.

  'Are they listening?' he asked.

  'Who?'

  'The police. Did they send you in here with some sort of microphone so they could listen to us?'

  She thought about how to reply, recalling Charlie's response to the hostage negotiator: I want to speak to her inside the house. Alone.

  Lee whispered over her earpiece: 'Tell him about the mike strapped on your vest. It will be a show of good faith, a way to build trust with him.'

  Darby said, 'There's a mike strapped to my vest. It's in the front.'

  'Good,' Charlie said. 'Will they be recording our conversation?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good. Very good.' Sounding excited and, as Lee had said, hopeful. 'Please fold your hands on top of your head. When you reach the top of the steps, turn left. The bedroom is directly at the end of the hall. That's where I want you to go. Keep your hands on the top of your head until I tell you otherwise.'

  Darby followed the instructions, clasping her fingers together and folding her hands on top of her head. She climbed the stairs thinking about the excited tone in the man's voice. She wasn't imagining it.

  'Tell me about the man you threw out the window.'

  'It was a gift,' he said. 'For you.'

  'What's his name?'

  'He doesn't have one. None of them do.'

  Darby was about to ask what he meant by that when it hit her, an intense, sour smell that reminded her of the homeless people she'd sometimes pass on her way to work during the hot summer months in Boston, that putrid stench of body odour mingled with soiled clothing.

  She stepped on to the second floor, gagging. She couldn't see Charlie in the nearly pitch-black darkness, but she could hear moaning coming from down a hall. Moaning and muffled voices.

  Breathing through her mouth, she started walking, bumping into a wall full of hanging pictures. She knocked over one, hearing glass shatter against the floor. She kept walking, coming to a stop when she made out a door. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see it was cracked open. No light coming from behind it, just sounds — crying and a dull thump. And that goddamn odour — she could feel it coating the back of her throat.

  Keeping her hands on her head, Darby used her foot to slide open the door.

  6

  The bedroom shades were drawn, but the police lights flickering around the edges allowed Darby to make out the frightened faces.

  She saw Mark Rizzo first. Dressed in boxer shorts and a tank top spotted with what had to be blood, his swollen head hanging over his lap. He was the only one tied down to a chair.

  Judith Rizzo, wearing a white flannel nightgown and rollers in her grey-white hair, lay sideways, most of her face pressed into the carpet. Her ankles had been tied together with what appeared to be electrical tape. Hands tied behind her back, mouth taped shut.

  The woman's single, visible eye shifted to her daughters. They had been taped in the same manner as their mother, but the twins — thin and tall now, wearing tight boxer-type shorts and T-shirts — had managed to get themselves into a sitting position. Their backs rested against the foot of a king-sized bed, their knees propped up to their stomachs. They shook in fear but didn't appear hurt. Darby didn't see any blood on them.

  'Everything will be okay,' Darby told the girls, quickly taking in the rest of the room. A black goosedown jacket lay across the bed's tangled sheets. One of the nightstands had been tipped over. 'Just try to stay calm.'

  Darby saw the twin with the beauty mark above the lip, Abigail, turn her head to the door. Darby was about to move when she felt the muzzle of a gun pressing against
the back of her skull.

  'Don't turn around yet,' Charlie said behind her. 'Just stay right where you are, okay?'

  Darby hadn't heard any footsteps and wondered if the man had taken off his shoes so he could slide undetected through the darkness.

  'This is just a precaution,' he said. 'I only want to make sure you do what you're told. This is important. I don't want to hurt you or anyone else.'

  'Then why did you shoot your friend?'

  'That… thing was not my friend.'

  'Who was he?'

  'I'm hoping you'll find out. That's why I gave him to you.'

  The man reached across her thigh and fumbled for the holster strap holding the SIG. As he worked, keeping the muzzle pressed against her skull, she carefully slid the fingers of her right hand underneath the elastic fabric of her shirtsleeve… there, she felt the handle of the tactical knife. To pull it free and grip the knife properly would take no more than four seconds; but to use the blade effectively, she needed him to face her.

  He pulled the sidearm from her holster. She heard the SIG land somewhere in the hall.

  'I just want to talk,' he said.

  Darby waited. He didn't pat her down for any other weapons. Yet.

  'I don't want to hurt anyone,' he said again. 'Please believe me.'

  A part of her did believe him. She could hear the hope in his voice, the excitement, as if a gift he had longed for was about to be realized. And he was speaking too clearly and coherently for a schizophrenic.

  'The people listening to us right now,' he said. 'I want you to tell them to stay away from the house until you've heard the truth. We're all going to talk, that's it. After we're done, I'll release the hostages, and you can arrest me. I'll cooperate. Did you bring something to transport me?'

  'It's parked right out in front of the house.'

  'What is it?'

  'An Armoured Patrol Car.'

  'Is it bulletproof?'

  'It can withstand rocket fire.'

  'Thank you.' His voice caught, strangling on tears.

  Judith Rizzo moaned.

  'Thank you,' he said again, more clearly now. 'Tell the people listening to us I won't harm anyone.'

  'They heard you.'

  'I want you to tell them. I want them to hear you say it.'

  Darby's gaze had cut sideways. Judith Rizzo had rolled on to her back. Blood dribbled from her mouth and broken nose. A dark, wet pool was on the carpet.

  'It was an accident,' Charlie said. 'She tried to run while I… She fell and hit her head on the edge of the bureau. Now talk to the SWAT people and tell them what I just said, word for word.'

  'I will if you release your mother.'

  'Not yet. She has to stay here.'

  'Why?'

  'We'll get to all of that. Now tell the SWAT people, hurry.'

  Darby said, 'Charlie Rizzo has asked for SWAT to stay away from the house. All he wants to do is talk. After he's done, he'll release the hostages. I'll arrest him and then transport him to the assault vehicle.'

  'Ack-' Lee began, interrupted by a coughing fit. 'Acknowledged.'

  Darby expected Trent to pipe in and add his two cents. Much to her surprise, he remained silent.

  Charlie said, 'Dr McCormick, I'd like you to please turn slowly to your right… Okay, stop. Stay right there. Don't move.'

  Behind her she heard the scratch and hiss of a match being struck. The room lit up with a faint orange glow and now she could see the terror etched on the twins' faces, their cheeks shiny with tears.

  Charlie said, 'My mother told me someone named Detective Kelly was in charge of trying to find me. Stan Kelly.'

  'That's right.'

  'What happened to him? I called the Boston police and was told there was no one there by that name.'

  'He retired.'

  'Retired,' Charlie repeated. 'That means… that's when a person leaves a job, right?'

  Darby blinked in surprise. Is he being serious?

  'That's right,' she said.

  'When did he die?'

  'Why do you think he's dead?'

  'Never mind, it's not important.' He was speaking quickly — too quickly, she thought. He's panicking. 'My mother also said you helped look for me. Said you're a good person, someone worthy of trust.'

  Judith Rizzo blinked dully in the candlelight. Her pupils appeared dilated.

  'You can turn around now.'

  Darby didn't move. Up until this point, she had cooperated. Now it was time to push back a little, to try to turn the tables.

  'Release your mother and I'll turn around.'

  'She needs to hear the truth first,' Charlie said. 'She needs — '

  'What your mother needs is medical attention. Let me bring her outside. There are people waiting who can take her to an ambulance. I'll come back upstairs and we can talk.'

  'No.'

  'If you really are Charlie Rizzo — '

  'I am! I am Charlie Rizzo, and I'm going to prove it to you!'

  'Careful,' Lee whispered over her earpiece. 'Don't push him too hard.'

  Darby said, 'If you really are Charlie Rizzo, you'd want your mother to get help. She's suffered a serious head injury. Accident or not, she'll die unless you let me bring her — '

  'Turn around,' Charlie roared. 'You turn around right now or you'll never know the truth about what happened to me, what I'm doing here. I'm giving you a Goddamn gift so you turn around right now or we'll lose everything!'

  She did, slowly, her hands folded on top of her head.

  A small votive candle had been placed on the foot of the bed, and in the flickering candlelight Darby got her first look at the man claiming to be Charlie Rizzo and felt the blood drain from her limbs.

  7

  Darby's gaze flashed inward, away from the man claiming to be Charlie Rizzo and seizing on a memory of herself at thirteen, lying on her stomach underneath the bed in the spare bedroom of her childhood home and watching, in mounting horror and fear, a pair of soiled work boots moving slowly across the carpet towards her — the serial killer she would later come to know as Traveler, a real-life Michael Myers dressed in greasy blue coveralls and wearing a mask of stitched-together flesh-coloured Ace compression bandages, the holes for the eyes and mouth hidden behind strips of black cloth.

  The mask covering Charlie's face was made of human skin.

  The areas around the mask's eyes and mouth had been cut away, and in the candlelight she saw black non-absorbable sutures crisscrossing their way around the mask's eyeholes and dark leathery flaps of dried skin around Charlie's neck. The curling, cracked edges of the mask's mouth had been sewn into his healthy lips. There was no sign of blood, or of swelling or infection, on the lips or along the healthy, living skin around the sutures. This… procedure had been done some time ago, and Charlie's skin had healed.

  Darby swallowed drily, the candlelit bedroom taking on a surreal quality, as though by turning around she had stumbled through some portal and straight into one of Stephen King's creepy horror stories.

  Charlie stood behind the chair holding Mark Rizzo, whose head was still slumped forward. With the aid of the light, she now saw that Rizzo's face was swollen, the skin split in several places — Christ, the skin around his left eye was a bloody mess. Darby thought Rizzo had been beaten unconscious; he didn't stir or make a sound when Charlie placed a hand on the man's shoulder.

  She saw dirty, callused nubs of scarred skin. No fingernails. They had been removed.

  'I didn't do this,' Charlie said, pointing to the mask with the revolver.

  She believed him. There was no way he could have done that to himself — or by himself. The sutures had been sewed and tied off with a neat, orderly precision. Someone else had sewn the mask to his skin — someone with a skilled, patient hand.

  'Who did this to you?'

  'One of the twelve,' he said. 'He sewed it on to my face as a reminder.'

  'For what?'

  Charlie grinned. 'You'll see. First, this.'<
br />
  He removed his hand from Rizzo's shoulder and began to work furiously at the buttons of his long black shirt. No, not a shirt, she thought. It's one long piece of black material, like a robe or a tunic. It seemed to belong to some past century, some ancient and now dead culture. It brought to mind European castles, a time of fiefdoms and serfs.

  'I was born with a specific genetic condition,' he said, moving his bent and crooked fingers with their missing nails to work on the next button. 'Do you remember what it is?'

  She did. And she easily recalled the odd-sounding name because the condition was so bizarre and unusual.

  'Athelia,' she said. 'It's when a child is born without one or both nipples.'

  'Yes.' Charlie grinned, pleased. 'Yes. It's very rare. Dr Adams — that would be my family doctor — he told me there were something like two hundred thousand cases worldwide. This was back in '97, when I was taken. Do you remember how many nipples Charlie Rizzo was missing?'

  'Two,' Darby said, staring at the dark rat's nest of unwashed hair secured to the mask.

  Not a mask, she reminded herself. He's wearing another man's face.

  'Come closer,' he said, training the gun on her. 'I want you to see this… That's far enough.'

  Darby stopped about a foot away from the chair. If she could just move closer, she could bridge the gap and get into fighting range.

  Charlie undid the last button. With his free hand, he pushed the fabric aside and let it drape across his shoulder to give her a full view of his naked body.

  His chest, wasted thin and so pale it seemed to glow in the candlelight, was covered with a mess of thick, raised scars. Some were white, others pink and red; some were fresh welts, crusted with blood. Both nipples were missing. She also saw that he'd been turned into a eunuch.

  Darby stared at the thick white scar left where his genitals had been and felt a cold place in her stomach, her skin slick underneath the heavy tactical clothing.

  'Being born without both nipples,' he said, excited, 'that would put me in a rather exclusive club, wouldn't you agree?'