The Burning Soul

by John Connolly

  ‘You know, that’s true, Detective,’ he said. ‘Mr. Haight has a hell of a memory for detail.’

  Walsh let it go. He returned to Haight’s knowledge of the Kore family, but didn’t get much return on his buck. When Haight told him that he had no alibi for the day of Anna’s disappearance, Walsh perked up some. He was about to pursue the matter further when help came from an unlikely source. Once again Allan moved in his chair, this time with obvious unease. Even Walsh noticed, and looked at him in irritation. Allan indicated that he wanted to speak to him in private and the two policemen consulted quietly for a moment. When they returned to the table Walsh informed us that he was finished with his questions, unless anyone else had something to add. Even Engel appeared surprised enough to rouse himself briefly from his torpor, but said nothing.

  We all stood. Walsh gave Aimee a receipt for the sealed bags containing the envelopes, and told Haight that he might need a more detailed statement about them in the coming days. While they spoke, I followed Allan outside, where he was fumbling for one of his cigarettes.

  ‘Can I ask what that was about?’ I said.

  ‘Randall Haight has an alibi for the day that Anna Kore disappeared,’ he replied. ‘I’m his alibi. I dropped by his place around three that day to deliver some quotes for the vehicle purchase that he mentioned. He was asleep on his couch with a blanket over him, so I decided not to disturb him. I went back shortly before the call came in about Anna Kore and he was still there. He hadn’t even moved. I met him on the street the next day and he had a nose like Rudolph’s. He didn’t take Anna. We would just have been wasting our time in there at the end.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to thank me. It was the truth.’

  ‘Do you have any opinion on the rest of what he said?’

  ‘Nope.’ He lit the cigarette and drew long, holding the smoke deep inside, savoring it. ‘Why? You expect me to say that he doesn’t look like the type, that you never can tell? I’m just surprised he managed to keep it quiet for so long. Hard to do in this day and age. Somebody always finds out.’

  ‘Somebody has found out.’

  ‘You get anywhere on that?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘I guess Walsh will have those envelopes examined, just in case there’s a connection to Anna. Between the state police and the feds we’ve got twenty-four-hour turnaround on any DNA, so we’ll know soon enough if there’s a trace. We’ll also have to get those records in North Dakota unsealed.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘Sure. That might take a couple of days, but once the formal request for assistance is made they’ll eventually have to share whatever they have with us.’

  ‘Including Lonny Midas’s new identity?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  I was curious to find out if Lonny Midas had also been targeted. If so, I might yet be proved wrong in my belief that Randall Haight’s tormentor lived in or close to Pastor’s Bay.

  ‘In the meantime, we’d like to keep what he told you confidential,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll do our best. We wouldn’t want people getting some fool ideas into their heads about him.’

  He leaned back against the wall and pressed a thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose.

  ‘I need to rest up,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had more than a couple of hours’ sleep a night since Anna went missing. I’m going to take a day off tomorrow to pay my bills and recharge my batteries. I’ll still be on call, but it’ll be a respite.’

  I left him to finish his cigarette in peace. After all, there were plenty of other people that I could bother, among them Engel, who was waiting for his ride by the front door.

  ‘Your lack of interest in the proceedings was noted, Special Agent Engel,’ I said. ‘Maybe you were hoping I was going to bring in Whitey Bulger himself.’

  He was clearly debating whether talking with me was better than getting wet. He seemed to decide that it was, although not by much.

  ‘That’s an interesting client you have, Mr. Parker. He’s just not that interesting to me.’

  ‘Because he wasn’t going to jump for a five-K motion?’

  A ‘five-K motion’ referred to section 5K1.1 of the sentencing guidelines, under which a prosecutor could argue for a term shorter than the advised sentence for an offense in return for ‘substantial assistance cooperation’ from the defendant. It was a snitch’s charter, but it was a popular weapon for the prosecution during organized-crime trials, as they so often depended on statements from mobsters who had turned on their own. Engel had been hoping the surprise guest might be someone with a connection to Tommy Morris that could be exploited. He had been disappointed.

  ‘The only person your client could rat on is himself, and he’s done that,’ said Engel.

  ‘That’s kind of why I was anxious to get your attention,’ I said. ‘If word of what he said here today leaks, he could be at risk.’

  ‘Because angry, frightened people don’t tend to look too closely at the fine print, right? Because one child killer is as good as the next? I told you, we don’t have any interest in him, but you know it’ll get out. The state police are going to have to investigate his story, and Allan will be drawn in. There’ll be calls, paperwork. I hope you’ve prepared him for the worst. His name is about to become lower than dirt in Pastor’s Bay.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the locals I was concerned about.’

  Engel’s SUV pulled up alongside us. The driver looked quizzically at Engel, who started to move. I put a hand up to stop him.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said.

  ‘My question exactly.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not psychic, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. Now put your hand down or I’ll have you arrested.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’ve taken the opportunity presented by a young girl’s disappearance to lure a dangerous man north in the hope that you can corner him and persuade him to turn federal witness. You have only a passing interest in the safety of Anna Kore, or of anyone else. All that matters to you is getting Tommy Morris in a room and cutting a deal, and you’ll let him run loose until then.’

  ‘Mr. Parker, you have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  He pushed my hand away. Simultaneously, his cell phone began to ring, along with the cell phone of the agent in the car. Engel answered the call as he was getting into the vehicle, and his usually impassive features flooded with surprise. All I heard were the words ‘He what?’ as the door closed and the SUV sped away.

  I checked my phone. There was an e-mail from the Yahoo address. It consisted solely of a smiley icon. The job at Allan’s house had been done. I cleared the screen just as Gordon Walsh came up beside me and tapped me hard on the shoulder. Soames lurked behind him, his mouth set in a thin, unimpressed line like that of a Sunday-school teacher faced with the town drunk.

  ‘You and I are going to have a talk later, clear?’ said Walsh.

  ‘Clear. I’ll even pay for the drinks. Just as long as you don’t bring your friend along. I don’t think he’s a fun guy.’

  Soames scowled at me. Then again, he scowled at everyone. It was less a mode of intimidation than an ongoing disability. Before either of them could say anything else, a monster truck pulled into the lot, dwarfing every other vehicle parked nearby. A massive bass was pumping so many decibels that the ground vibrated. Since the truck was too big to fit into any of the available spaces, the driver just parked it facing the building and killed the engine.

  The driver’s and passenger’s doors opened, and virtually identical men who appeared to have been constructed entirely from flesh-colored cinder blocks stepped from the truck and dropped awkwardly to the ground. They had dressed for maximum shock and awe: blue polyester big-man pants, dark-blue sport shirts so tight they’d have to be cut out of them later, and matching gold neck chains that could have anchored a ship. Even Soames stopped scowling for a mo
ment as his bottom jaw dropped. Tony and Paulie Fulci in all their heavily medicated glory were indeed a sight to behold. Walsh, by contrast, seemed more amused than impressed.

  ‘It’s the Fabulous Unfurry Freak Brothers,’ he said. ‘What happened, the circus leave town without you?’

  ‘Detective Walsh,’ said Paulie, assuming an air of wounded dignity. ‘It’s very nice to make your acquaintance again.’

  Tony and Paulie knew most of the senior cops in the state, either personally or by reputation. The knowledge was reciprocated, and not just in this state either.

  ‘What about you, Tony?’ said Walsh. ‘You happy to see me again?’

  ‘No,’ said Tony, who lacked his brother’s finely honed diplomatic skills.

  Walsh turned to me. ‘Let me guess: These knuckleheads are working for you.’

  ‘Knuckleheads Inc., that’s us,’ I said.

  ‘Well, keep them on their leash, and don’t let them break anything – furniture, buildings, people. They’re also convicted felons, so if I hear that they’re carrying even a water pistol I’ll put them behind bars.’

  ‘What about a bow?’ said Paulie.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No, we got bows. For hunting. We got licenses too.’

  Tony nodded solemnly in agreement. ‘We got them with us.’

  ‘The licenses or the bows?’ asked Walsh, drawn in despite himself.

  ‘Both,’ confirmed Tony. ‘And arrows.’

  Walsh regarded them both carefully. Where the Fulcis were concerned, it often wasn’t entirely clear when they were joking. Louis had once commented that he wasn’t sure if they were deadpan or brain-dead.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Walsh. ‘Bows and arrows. Well, remember: The sharp end points away from your face. Although feel free to practice the other way if the mood takes you.’

  He and Soames returned to their car. The Fulcis watched them go.

  ‘I lied,’ said Paulie. ‘It wasn’t nice to make his acquaintance again.’

  ‘Same,’ said Tony. ‘Except without the lying.’

  27

  Randall Haight didn’t respond well to the news that Anna Kore’s uncle was a Boston mobster who was being hunted by his own people and the FBI, and who would almost certainly attempt to involve himself in the search for his missing niece. He knew that he was at risk from Tommy Morris if word got out about his past. It wouldn’t matter to Morris that Haight had been questioned and effectively cleared by the police of any involvement in his niece’s disappearance. He was a child killer, and Morris would instinctively assume that he knew more than he had revealed.

  Briefly, Haight fired Aimee and, by extension, me. He reconsidered when he realized that, if he was in trouble now, he’d be in more trouble without us. I also introduced him to the Fulcis, which simultaneously reassured and unsettled him, in the same way the Duke of Wellington was said to have noted of his soldiers that, while he was uncertain of their possible effect on the enemy, by God, they frightened him. Then again, Wellington had also called his own men ‘the scum of the earth’, which the Fulcis were not. They had their own code of honor, particularly when it came to women. Insults centering on mothers did not sit well with the Fulcis. I was pretty sure that there were other aspects of behavior about which they might have set concepts of honor, but I couldn’t think of any offhand.

  Haight was reluctant to have the Fulcis stay at his home unless it became absolutely necessary, and it was true that the sight of their monster truck parked on his property might attract attention to him. In addition, it was unclear what the result of his discussions with the police might be. I was sure that Walsh and Allan would let us know if there was any indication that Haight’s story was about to become public knowledge, and it was in their interests as much as ours to keep it quiet. The last thing they needed was misguided media speculation about a possible suspect, which would further strain their manpower. Nevertheless, I would have preferred it if Haight had acceded to our request to let the Fulcis bed down in his house, but the more we pressed him, the less willing he was to consider the possibility. The concession we reached was that the Fulcis would become his shadows if we learned that the facts of Haight’s past could no longer remain hidden. Depending upon the situation, they could either plant themselves on Haight’s property like the trunks of trees or they could move him to safety. I had already made arrangements for him to be quietly placed at the Colony near Sebago Lake if necessary. The Colony was a retreat house for troubled men, often those suffering from addiction or other social difficulties. The company might not be to Haight’s taste, but those involved in the Colony’s running would make no judgment upon him, and they were very, very discreet.

  After a little more sulking, and some calming words from Aimee and me, Haight returned to Pastor’s Bay. I gave him a half hour start, then followed him north.

  Angel and Louis had checked into an inn called the Blithe Spirit, about four miles from Pastor’s Bay. It was run by an elderly couple named the Harveys, whose first question to them was ‘Are you gay?’

  ‘Would that be a problem?’ said Louis.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs. Harvey, who was bent almost double by arthritis but moved surprisingly fast, like a hare with a minor disability. ‘We like gay people. They’re very tidy.’

  Her husband nodded along enthusiastically, although his smile had apparently faltered as he tried to balance their firmly held belief in the neatness of all gay people with Angel’s presence on their property. They had provided Angel and Louis with a large room on the second floor overlooking the neat garden at the rear of the house. The Harveys had only two rooms available to rent, and the other was unoccupied for now. According to Angel, the décor erred on the side of chintzy but was otherwise perfectly acceptable.

  ‘So, tell me about Kurt Allan,’ I said, as we sat in the living room of the inn, its picture window looking out on a small pond and a glade of black ash trees that had lost most of their leaves. The Harveys had provided a pot of tea, served on a silver tray alongside china cups and the kind of dainty cookies that small girls fed to dolls at parties.

  ‘If he is a pedophile, he’s hiding it well,’ said Angel. ‘I went through his computer files, his library, even his attic. There was one skin mag, but it was standard stuff. Same with the porn websites that he’s accessed. His e-mail is so dull that I almost dozed off reading it. He has a landline, but it doesn’t look like he uses it much; there was dust on the phone. On most levels, he looks clean.’

  He let that last statement hang.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He makes a base salary of fifty thousand dollars. Over the last year, he’s managed to supplement that through overtime, but it’s only brought him up by another five grand. He’s eating alimony payments of a thousand a month, although it looks like he agreed to them and didn’t contest the figure.’

  A thousand a month was a lot on a salary of 50K. That pretty much constituted a punitive payment.

  ‘Any indication of why he agreed?’

  ‘He has a file of correspondence from the divorce, but it very carefully avoids mentioning specific details. Stated grounds were “irreconcilable marital differences”.’

  ‘“Irreconcilable marital differences” is a catch-all,’ I said. ‘It can cover anything from bank robbery to whistling “Dixie” during sex. They didn’t want the real reason for the divorce to be made known in the filing.’

  ‘There were a couple of references to the “troubling nature” of Allan’s behavior in the letters from his ex-wife’s attorney to his attorney, but that was it.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘The alimony payments are made to a bank in Seattle, which is about as far away from her ex-husband as she can get without moving to Russia. There’s no evidence in the house that Allan and his wife have stayed in touch.’

  ‘So Chief Allan is living on mac and cheese in order to buy his wife’s silence?’

  ‘You’d have thought,’ sa
id Angel. ‘He has twenty-three hundred dollars in his checking account, and is making minimum payments to his 401(K). But until last year he was paying a lot of bills in cash, and even on a quick run-through it’s clear that his outgoings and income don’t balance. The disparity isn’t huge, but it’s there.’

  ‘How big is the disparity?’

  ‘Uh, five hundred a month, sometimes more. I’d guess that, until a couple of months ago, he had money coming in on the side, enough to take the sting off his alimony, but that’s now been cut off. Could be bribes, or maybe he just picked up some other work along the way: security, escorting businessmen to the bank, collecting bottles for the fifteen-cent deposit. It’s not a lot of cash, but it was there, and it was regular.’

  ‘You tag his truck?’

  ‘Yeah, behind his rear fender. It’s small, with a limited power supply. We could have run it off his battery, but that truck is a piece of shit. Any trouble under the hood and a large device would be spotted before the engine cooled. We’ll get a couple of days out of it, max, then we’ll have to change it.’

  ‘He’s taking time off tomorrow. If he’s doing something he shouldn’t be doing, then he won’t be looking to the Pastor’s Bay PD for his ride. It’s best if I keep my distance, so you stay with him. If he does anything interesting, let me know and I can come take a look.’

  We drank some more tea, and I gave them the summarized version of all that had happened at Aimee’s office.

  ‘If the cops have it in hand, seems like you’re out of a job,’ said Louis.

  ‘I wasn’t exactly cracking the case wide open before they got to it,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m curious about Lonny Midas.’

  Haight had implied once again that Midas might hold a grudge against him for admitting to the police what they had done to Selina Day. I still believed that Haight was holding back on aspects of his history, including the precise extent of his role in her death. After all, he had been there right until the final act, and he could have backed out at any time. He might have been in thrall to Midas, as he claimed, but he had also confessed to a degree of sexual interest in the girl. Nevertheless, Midas had to be seen as the instigator of the assault. Again, I had only Haight’s word on how troubled Midas might have been in his youth, but if he was capable of targeting a girl and dragging her into a barn then he was already manifesting an aberrant sexuality. Haight had received counseling and therapy while in custody, so it was probable that Lonny Midas had too. The unsealing of the records would provide some insight into both of them, as well as the degree to which Midas blamed his friend for confessing their crime to the police. Also, if the cops were given Midas’s new identity they could begin to trace his movements and find out if he had made his way to this state.