The Burning Soul

by John Connolly

  ‘After twelve years they moved us to out-of-state prisons to make the changes in identities run smoother. I was born William Lagenheimer, but I became Randall Haight between the state penitentiary in Bismarck and the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vermont. After a couple of years, they moved me to Berlin, New Hampshire, where I served out the last year of my sentence. They wouldn’t tell me Lonny’s new name, and I didn’t want to know anyway. I never wanted to see him again, after all the trouble he got us into. Eventually, I came to Maine.’

  Haight pointed to the photograph of the weathered barn door.

  ‘This was the barn in which Selina Day died,’ he said. ‘They used that picture in some of the newspapers. These others I don’t know, but this one is, or was, in Drake Creek. I still see it in my dreams.’

  He looked at his lawyer, seeking her response to this second telling of his story. She tried to smile encouragingly at him, but it was more like a grimace. He turned to me. His mouth opened, and he spread his hands as if to add something to the narrative – an apology, or an explanation for why this was all in the past, and how he was different now – but he seemed to realize that there was nothing more that could be said, so he closed his mouth, and folded his arms, and remained silent while he waited to hear what we had to say.

  ‘So someone has found out who you are?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know who, or how, but yes, that’s it.’

  ‘It could be a prelude to blackmail,’ said Aimee.

  ‘Has there been a blackmail threat?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Aimee.

  I shrugged. Beside me, the light of the setting sun reflected on the lenses of Haight’s spectacles, and I could no longer see his eyes.

  ‘For now, it seems that Mr. Haight here has two choices,’ I said. ‘He can stay where he is and deal with the consequences if this individual chooses to make public what he or she knows, or he can leave his home and go somewhere else. Maybe he can make contact with the authorities in North Dakota and see if they will provide him with another identity, although I guess he’d have to prove that he was in some form of danger as a consequence of his potential exposure, and even then new identities aren’t handed out so easily. Look, in the end, whatever the nature of his crime, he did his time. He was a child when Selina Day was killed, not an adult. Also, if one were to be cold-blooded about it, it’s a crime that was committed a long time ago, and in another state. If his identity is revealed, there may be people in Maine who’ll react badly, but he might also be surprised by how understanding folk can be.’

  ‘All that is true,’ said Aimee. ‘But there’s one detail that Mr. Haight hasn’t shared with you yet. It’s where he’s living. Why don’t you tell Mr. Parker where you’ve made your home?’

  And I knew that this was the bait in the trap, the detail that she had deliberately held back from me, and as Haight began to speak I felt the jaws snap shut upon me, and I understood that I would not be able to turn away from this.

  ‘I live two miles from Anna Kore’s house,’ said Haight. ‘I live in Pastor’s Bay.’

  5

  Randall Haight had resumed his seat in the reception area. The receptionist, shared by Aimee with the other businesses in the building, had gone home, so he was alone with his thoughts. He appeared dissatisfied as he left the room. It was there in the way that he held himself, in the pause before he closed the door behind him, the sense he gave that there was more to be said, or more that should have been said, and not by him. Our response – or possibly more correctly, my response – to his story had not satisfied him. I think that he might have been seeking some form of reassurance and consolation, not about the problem of the photographs, but about his own nature.

  It was now dusk outside, and the rain continued to fall. The lights of passing cars illuminated the parking lot, casting new shadows over the office in which Aimee and I sat. Dark patches remained in the branches of the tree. The ravens had not moved, and they made no sound. I felt the urge to take a handful of stones and force them from their perch.

  Traitorous birds. Apostates.

  ‘Well?’ said Aimee.

  We had not exchanged a word since Haight left the office at Aimee’s request so that we might discuss in private all that he had told us. The pictures of the barn doors remained on the desk. I moved them around with the index finger of my right hand, rearranging their order, as though the colors represented a code I could crack, and by doing so I would be allowed the revelation, the certainty, that I sought.

  I was wondering where the lie was. It might be that I had grown more cynical as the years went by, or it might simply have been an atavistic instinct I had learned not to ignore, but a lie was hidden somewhere in Randall Haight’s testimony to us. It could have been a lie of deceit or a lie of omission, but it was there. I knew, because there is always a lie. Even a man like Haight, who, in his youth, was party to a terrible crime, and who had just confessed as much to two strangers, reducing himself in their eyes, would hold back at least one crucial detail. If nothing else, it was human nature. You didn’t give everything away; if you did, you would have nothing left. There were those who took the view that there was a liberation in the act of confession, but mostly they tended to be the ones who were listening and not the ones confessing. The only full confessions occur on deathbeds; all others are partial, modified. The lie in Haight’s story was probably one that he had practiced, a rearrangement or omission of details that had now become crucial to his account of events, maybe to the extent that he no longer knew it as a lie at all. There had been a rehearsed element to his testimony, but I was not entirely certain that it had been solely for our benefit.

  ‘He’s lying,’ I said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was watching him while he spoke, and there was something in the way he told his story. It was too polished, like he’d been preparing it for years in his head, waiting for the chance to perform it.’

  ‘Maybe he has been. It was a turning point in his life – the worst thing that he’s ever done, or ever will do. It wouldn’t be surprising if he returned to it again and again, and constructed his own version of the crime and its aftermath. After all, he’s probably been trying to explain it to himself for years when he hasn’t been explaining it to cops or therapists.’

  ‘A version,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You described it as a “version.” That’s all it is. The only people who really know what went on in that barn are Randall Haight, Lonny Midas, and Selina Day, and the only one we’ve heard from is Randall Haight, who says that it wasn’t his fault, that he tried to stop the killing from happening, but Lonny Midas was too strong.’

  ‘Do we accept that that’s how we should think of him – as Randall Haight and not William Lagenheimer?’

  ‘That’s an interesting question. How does he see himself?’

  ‘I notice that you didn’t ask.’

  ‘I didn’t ask because I don’t think that it matters, for now. For your purposes, and in the eyes of his fellow citizens, he’s Randall Haight. For the most part, I imagine that’s how he thinks of himself. He’s had to accept the reality of his new identity, and whatever imagined history goes along with it, in order to survive.’

  She made a note to herself on her legal pad, then let the subject go.

  ‘He could be telling the truth about what happened in the barn,’ she said. ‘You’re questioning details instead of substance. Randall Haight is not denying his partial culpability for the death of Selina Day.’

  ‘Sure, he could be telling the truth, but if I’d been involved in the death of a young girl and could shift some of the blame onto the shoulders of another, I would.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Aimee. ‘Someone else, maybe, but not you.’

  ‘Why do you say that? I don’t believe I’m so honorable.’

  ‘Honor is just part of it. Self-torment is the rest.’


  She said it with a smile, but it didn’t make what she had said any less sincerely meant. God preserve me, I thought, from dime-store psychologists, especially cloaked in lawyers’ garb.

  ‘He was fourteen,’ I said. ‘I never killed anyone when I was fourteen. If I had, I don’t know for sure how I would have reacted afterward.’

  ‘This is all beside the point.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You know it is. Someone is taunting Randall Haight with their knowledge of what he did as a boy. At the same time, a fourteen-year-old girl has gone missing in Pastor’s Bay. The similarities are troubling.’

  I saw my daughter staring up at me, and heard her asking me to find Anna Kore. I looked at my hands, and perceived the ghost of a cross made from sticks and twigs. Around my neck hung a smaller version of the same symbol: a Byzantine bronze pilgrim’s cross. Sometimes we have to be reminded of our obligations to others, even at a cost to ourselves.

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘if whoever has figured out Randall Haight’s identity gave a damn about Anna Kore they’d have gone to the police with what they know: The convicted killer of a fourteen-year-old girl is living in the same town from which another fourteen-year-old girl has recently gone missing. Instead, they’re sending him pictures of barn doors and waiting to see how he responds.’

  ‘Part of me still thinks it could be a prelude to a blackmail attempt.’

  ‘Then he should go to the police.’

  ‘If he goes to the police, they’ll make him a suspect.’

  ‘Or rule him out of the investigation, if he can answer all of their questions and if he didn’t do it.’

  Aimee winced at each use of the word ‘if.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s not like you haven’t considered the possibility.’

  ‘Assuming it’s crossed my mind, do you really think he could have taken Anna Kore?’

  ‘No, not unless he’s playing a high-stakes game by involving us, in which case he’s either ridiculously clever or he’s crazy.’

  ‘He doesn’t strike me as either. He is smart, but if he’s crazy he’s hiding it well. What?’

  I had been unable to conceal a frown of doubt.

  ‘Crazy would be a strong word, but he’s a man living with the knowledge that he once killed a child. He’s been forced into a new identity, and he lives in an isolated community far from his original home. I think he’s functioning under immense emotional and psychological strain. He practically hums with tension. Do you know if he’s maintained any form of contact with his family?’

  ‘He says that he hasn’t. We know that his father is dead. He doesn’t know where his mother is. He told me that he lived with her for a time after his release from Berlin, but felt suffocated by her presence. He also believed that, for the purposes of inhabiting his new identity, it would be better if he had no further contact with his family. That’s not unusual. He’d learned to live without them for a long time, and a lot of prisoners have trouble adjusting to familial relationships once they’re released. It would have been even harder for Randall, as officially he was no longer even a member of his own family.’

  ‘That was some social experiment he and Lonny Midas found themselves involved in.’

  ‘You disapprove?’

  ‘No. I just don’t fully understand the thinking behind it.’

  ‘We should find out more.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘And we’ve established that he’s not crazy, but under pressure he may buckle.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I said, reluctantly.

  ‘If he goes to the police, his old life in Pastor’s Bay will be over. He doesn’t want that. He wants to stay where he is, and live out his days there. As you said, he’s done his time. The law and society have no further hold on him in that respect.’

  ‘So he’ll stay quiet and hope that the girl is found?’

  ‘That will be my advice to him, for now. Meanwhile, you’ll look into who might be sending him these images, because you understand why it matters.’

  She had me in a bind. Randall Haight had committed no crime in the state of Maine of which we knew. Haight was a client of Aimee’s, and I had tentatively agreed to work for her on Haight’s behalf. I was bound by issues of client confidentiality, to a certain extent, and it offered a degree of protection against being forced by the police to reveal details about my involvement, should it come to that. But I didn’t like the situation we were in. To protect Haight, we were concealing information that might be germane to the investigation into Anna Kore’s disappearance, even though there was no evidence to suggest a direct link between Haight and the crime beyond one of geographic proximity and the similarity in the ages between two of the girls involved. It was the grayest of gray areas, and I felt that Aimee was exploiting it.

  ‘Does it bother you?’ asked Aimee. ‘What Randall did, does it trouble you?’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘But more than it should? Do you feel a personal animosity toward him because of the loss of your own child? I have to ask that. You do understand?’

  ‘I understand. No, I don’t feel excessive animosity toward him. He killed a child when he was a child himself, and I get the feeling he’s a bit of a creep, although I can’t say why. You know that I could walk out of here, right? Nothing to which I’ve agreed in this office is binding.’

  ‘I know that. I also know that you won’t walk.’

  ‘If you’re right, do you want to try telling me why?’

  ‘Because there’s another child involved. Because Anna Kore is out there somewhere, and she may still be alive. As long as there’s hope for her, you won’t walk away. I know that you’re uneasy about not going to the police. I’ll work on Randall to see if I can get him to change his mind about coming forward voluntarily, but if you can find one firm connection between what’s happening to our client and the disappearance of Anna Kore, I’ll call the cops myself, and I’ll sit on Randall until they come.’

  While I wrestled with that mental image, she added, ‘Because that’s the other reason you’ll take the case: You, like I am, are wondering if there’s a possibility that the person who is taunting Randall Haight is the same person who took Anna Kore.’

  I drove back to Scarborough, my eyes straining as the rain pummeled the windshield. The Mustang’s lights weren’t worth much in this kind of weather, but it hadn’t been this bad when I left earlier, and I enjoyed taking the car out when I could. It was an indulgence, but I liked to believe that I was a man of relatively few indulgences. On the seat beside me was a printout of the names of all those involved in the prosecution of the Selina Day case that Haight could recall. He was unsure of spellings in some cases, and claimed to know nothing of where those people were now. When I asked if he hadn’t been tempted to find out about them, he replied that William Lagenheimer might have been, but Randall Haight was not.

  I was troubled by the Haight case, but even if there had not been the matter of Anna Kore to take into account I would still have accepted it. After all, I could do with the money, and the diversion that the job offered. Work was thin on the ground at present. Businesses and individuals didn’t have cash to spend on private investigators, not unless there were large sums or considerable reputations at risk, in which case they’d approach one of the bigger agencies anyway. Even marital work, which was usually worth a trickle of income, had dried up. Spouses suspicious of their partners, believing them to be straying, would carry out their own investigations, checking cell phone records, credit card slips, hotel bookings. They’d even follow their husbands or wives themselves, or get a friend to do so, if they could find one they trusted enough, and one they were certain wasn’t the third party in the possibly adulterous relationship. Many, though, would just live with their suspicions, because even if they found out that they were right, what were they going to do? Everybody was struggling. It was hard enough to keep one roof above their heads; they couldn’t afford two. Sometimes economics alon
e were enough to keep men and women from straying, or force them to live with their doubts.

  So I picked up work where I could, mostly insurance stuff, and surveillance for businesses concerned about the activities of employees. I’d even begun engaging in stolen-property recovery, but that was one step above becoming a repo man, and it was cash hard earned. At best, it involved trawling pawnshops for goods that had been sold on, and then breaking the news to the pawnbroker that he’d have to take a hit on the deal, assuming the broker was reputable in the first place and I could prove that he was selling a fenced item. At worst, it meant knocking on the doors of junkies and deadbeats and professional thieves, most of whom tended to look upon cooperation as a last resort when lies, intimidation and – that old reliable – violence had failed to convince. In the end, you could slum it for only so long before you became part of the slums yourself.

  Once it was agreed that I would take the Haight case, and Aimee had tried to stiff me on my rates as a matter of course, and I’d laughed and waited for her to get serious, she’d offered to see what she could find in the way of court documents related to the Selina Day killing. If they were sealed, as Randall Haight claimed they were, then there would be a limit to what would be available to her. In the meantime, Haight was on his way back to Pastor’s Bay. There he would sit in his home office and write out a list of everyone whom he knew in the area, including all of his business contacts and all of his acquaintances, however casual, with a particular emphasis on recent arrivals in the area, and new clients. I would go up there to talk to him in a day or two, and try to establish whether there was anyone in town who had begun to act differently around him, or any new arrival who might have some connection to North Dakota, either to the juvenile facility in which Haight had served the early part of his sentence or to the state penitentiary. I’d also have to seek points of possible contact between the prisons in Newport and Berlin, although it seemed less likely that they might be the weak links, assuming the transfer under his new identity had been conducted smoothly. After that, it would be a matter of going through public and private records in an effort to establish the whereabouts of such individuals, in case one of them had made his or her way to eastern Maine and there had crossed paths with Randall Haight.