A Time of Torment (16 page)

Sam was not what he had believed her to be. She was his daughter, and more than that: she was a being in the process of becoming, but what might ultimately emerge from that metamorphosis could not be foretold. If Sam knew, then she declined to say.

But Parker suspected that she did know. He had seen it in her eyes.
They’re listening, Daddy
. Until the time came, she had to remain concealed.
They’re always listening
. No one could know how extraordinary she was because –
They’ll hear us
– that knowledge would place them all at risk.

They’ll hear us, and they’ll come.

He opened his new laptop, the one that had been sourced for him by Louis. In this Internet age, nothing was safe, and little could be done online without someone looking over your shoulder. The new machine, though, was about as secure as any could be, and the risk of snooping was minimal, especially with the Tor Browser. The information contained on it was also secured by so many firewalls and security procedures that Parker himself had to make an effort to remember them all, just in case he sent his own data into the void with an incorrect keystroke.

The computer contained all the information collated so far about the list of names retrieved from the wreckage of the plane in the Great North Woods. More details had been added to the profiles of each person on that list – husbands, wives, children, jobs, businesses, bank accounts, cars owned, homes bought, stocks acquired, friends, enemies, acquaintances – and all these details were being cross-checked with those of others in an effort to establish points of connection and patterns.

The handful of people who knew of Special Agent Ross and his work were convinced that Parker was engaged in some private mission to hunt down the most dangerous men and women on the list, but they were wrong. Oh, occasionally one – like Roger Ormsby – might rise to the surface and become worth hooking and pulling in, but Parker was content to feed most of these individuals to Ross without even involving himself in their apprehension. The FBI and the police were better placed to deal with them than he was, even with the help of Angel and Louis.

No, Parker was convinced that concealed somewhere on the list – or beyond it – was the identity of one person. The list was the early work of a group of men and women who called themselves the Backers: self-interested, amoral, and engaged in the hunt for a buried deity. They called it the God of Wasps, or the One Who Waits Behind The Glass. They called it Abaddon, and the Old Serpent. It was the light that fell, the sun eclipsed. ‘
And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit
.’

The Backers were looking for that pit, and they were led by a principal, one who stood above them all. Parker believed that the names on the list, and the data on their lives that he was amassing with the help of Angel, Louis, and a handful of others, functioned as circles, or spheres of existence. Some of those circles overlapped, creating a complex series of Venn diagrams, and somewhere in those shaded sectors, either as a name or as a perceptible, repeated absence, lay the identity of that principal. Parker could spend a lifetime hunting the servants, or he could find the master and destroy him.

He worked long into the night, seated by his kitchen window, guarded by a dead child who kept her vigil from a pitch pine bog.

And to the west, in a converted Vermont stable house, another child sat on the edge of her bed, staring out her window but seeing nothing of what lay beyond it. Instead, through the eyes of her lost half-sister, Sam watched her father’s face lit by the glow of a screen, and listened to the whisperings of a waking god.

T
he day after his conversation with Charlie Parker, Burnel went to meet his parole officer for the second time at the Department of Corrections on Washington Avenue. It seemed he was required to take another polygraph test, and a change in schedule meant that his first group therapy session had been brought forward to early that evening. It wouldn’t be worth returning to his apartment, so he’d find somewhere nearby to grab a coffee and read for a while. He had bought a bunch of used science fiction and fantasy novels cheaply at the Green Hand Bookshop on Congress, not far from his apartment, and was currently immersed in Alfred Bester’s tale of telepathy,
The Demolished Man
. He had never read such escapist works until he went to prison, preferring non-fiction and the kind of literature that advertised the good taste of the reader, but nothing better teaches a man the value of escapism than life behind bars.

He could have taken a bus – the damage inflicted on him in prison had left him in constant pain – but he chose to walk. He was growing a little more comfortable with the absence of walls surrounding him, and took pleasure in the freedom simply to be able to stroll down a street. Also, walking meant he was less likely to attract the attention of the police, as he was very aware of the Portland PD patrol cars that cruised the city, especially along Congress and down by the Old Port. Sitting on a bench or at a bus stop for too long, or, God forbid, taking time out over at Congress Square Park, was the equivalent of waving a magnet at iron filings. It was very likely that they would just have passed him by, because he didn’t really stand out: it was he who felt his own sense of difference, and feared its transmission to others.

And always he was conscious of children: of keeping his distance from them, of not looking at them, for fear that even accidental contact with a school group by the Children’s Museum, or a mistimed glance while walking near Portland High School on Cumberland Avenue, might be enough to draw the police.

His lawyer had called him that morning. A company in South Portland that sold the kind of trashy costume jewelry on which he used to look down had a vacancy in its purchasing department, and the lawyer had called in a favor. Burnel could start on Monday, if he chose. Surprising himself, Burnel had accepted the offer. Only later did he realize that he was making plans for some kind of future. It was a consequence of his meeting with the private detective and his two colleagues the previous evening, and the fact that they hadn’t rejected his story outright, or his fears. By sharing what he believed, he had drawn them to him. Perhaps they could protect him. He might even be exonerated. More than anything, he wanted his good name back. He did not want to die with this stigma upon him.

He remained troubled by the sighting of what he believed to be a familiar face at the Bear. He couldn’t quite place the man who had gone into the restroom while he was speaking with Parker, and he’d been gone when Burnel went to take a leak, but his features had reminded him of someone he once knew. He couldn’t swear to it, but there had been a hint to them of the man named Henry Forde. Burnel thought that he should have mentioned it to Parker, but he was afraid it might have been taken as a manifestation of paranoia to believe that he saw resemblances in the faces of strangers to a man he had killed.

Eastern Cemetery was coming up on Burnel’s right, and the sight of its headstones threatened to turn his fairy tale of a future to so much ash. He fought against despair, because there might yet be hope for him. He saw three possible realities. The first was that he was right about everything, and his life had been ruined as a punishment for killing the two unknown men at Dunstan’s Gas Station, a punishment that would conclude with his death. The second was that he was wrong to be fearful, and his years in prison had simply driven him insane. He would not be the first to break in that way, and he would not be the last. In time, and with help, he might recover his reason.

And the third? The third was that those who had chosen to torment him had forgotten about him, or believed he had suffered enough. He had lost his reputation, and whatever was left of his marriage. He had lost his home, and years of his life. His nerves were shot, and the damage to his insides from repeated physical and sexual assaults had left him a ruin. If they wanted to snuff out his existence as well, then they could do so, for all it was worth.

But even as he thought this, he understood that he did not want to die. He had never considered himself to be a strong man, or a survivor, but he had come through five terrible years of incarceration, endured times when he had considered taking his life, yet he was still breathing, and still fighting. He would take the job and get a better place to live. He would continue to feed the birds at Deering Oaks Park and on Eastern Promenade. He might even get himself a dog for company. He had always wanted a dog, but Norah was allergic to them, or claimed to be. Never mind: she was gone now, and a mutt from the pound would more than adequately fill the space that she had once occupied. This life, or what was left of it, was better than no life at all.

But suppose they were watching him, these unseen men, these servants of the Dead King? What if they judged that his continued suffering was better than bringing it to a violent end? If he tried not to look too happy (hardly difficult, under the circumstances); if he kept his head down; if he held himself like a man even more damaged than he was: would that be enough for them?

He arrived at the black railings of Eastern Cemetery, and paused to look at the little wooden shed with its granite abutment, the only standing structure in the graveyard. It bore a sign with the cemetery’s name and the date of its establishment: 1668. The Victorian building was known as the Dead House, because it sheltered the door to the city’s receiving tomb belowground. It was an entrance to the underworld, Portland’s own little gateway to Hades. Burnel had read that special tours were being offered to enable people to explore the tomb, but he had no desire to take one. The ranks of the dead would eventually welcome everyone, and he didn’t see the need for a preview of coming attractions.

Behind him, a van pulled up to the curb, hiding Burnel from the view of those passing opposite. The side doors opened, and men emerged from inside. Burnel became aware of them at the same moment that he felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck, and the cemetery before him began to blur. His legs gave way but he did not fall. Strong arms gripped him, bearing him away, and because his last thoughts had been of the underworld, Burnel had a sensation of floating. He was on a boat crossing dark water: Acheron, the river of pain, or Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. The current would take him into the Dead House, and beneath it he would meet at last the Dead King, this god against whom he had sinned, and who would find an eternal place for him in the Fields of Punishment.

Within seconds the sidewalk was empty, and the van was heading west. It turned down Washington Avenue and passed the squat redbrick building housing the office of Adult Community Corrections, where Chris Attwood was re-reading the file on Jerome Burnel in preparation for their second meeting, and wondering if a man could at once be so brave and yet so depraved.

By then, Burnel had lost consciousness. His final thought before his world turned black was:

At least I was not mad.

R
elations between Parker and Detective Gordon Walsh of the Maine State Police’s Major Crimes Unit were frostier than they once had been. The events in Boreas earlier that year had forced Walsh to recognize the awkwardness of his position where Parker, Louis, and Angel were concerned: these were men who appeared comfortable with black, white, and every shade of gray in between, with Angel and Louis tending toward the darker tones. Walsh had tried to use Louis’s knowledge in particular to gain some insight into what might be happening in Boreas, partly at the urging of SAC Ross – and there was a man equally comfortable in the shadows, Walsh thought, with an agenda to match. The result was that Walsh had found himself badly compromised, and in a potentially career-damaging way.

Oh, he wasn’t so naïve as to think that you could lie down with dogs and not get fleas, but the bite, when it came, was not from Louis or Angel, but from Parker himself. It was Parker who had pointed out that Walsh had been consorting with known criminals, including one – Louis – who might well have put a bullet through a man’s head not twenty-four hours earlier. Since then, Walsh had given a wide berth to Parker and his charmingly dangerous (even dangerously charming) acolytes, so he wasn’t overly happy to emerge from his office at the MSP’s barracks in Gray to find Parker’s midlife crisis Mustang parked in the lot, and the man himself taking the cool lunchtime air, seemingly without a care in the world. Worse, he was leaning against Walsh’s ride, so it would be hard to get out of the lot without running him down, not that Walsh was entirely above considering that possibility under the current circumstances.

‘Hey,’ said Parker, just like that, as though he hadn’t effectively blackmailed Walsh into silence earlier that year. Not that they’d ever exactly been close friends, but Jesus, you know …

‘Get away from my car,’ said Walsh.

‘This is your car?’

‘You know it’s my car. Step away from the vehicle. Step away from the lot. In fact, just head east and keep walking until you fall into the fucking sea.’

He skirted Parker and unlocked the driver’s door, but the damned private detective remained seated on the hood. Walsh got behind the wheel and started the engine. He even went so far as to give it a little gas, just in case Parker might take fright and flee, although that would have been more of a surprise than finding him there in the first place. Walsh saw a couple of officers peering over curiously. He felt as though he were having some kind of lovers’ quarrel, a comparison which caused him to grit his teeth so hard he thought he felt one of them shift in his gums.

Walsh took his foot off the gas. Parker walked to his door, and Walsh rolled down the window without looking at him.

‘I’ll buy you lunch,’ said Parker.

Walsh continued staring ahead. He thought about putting his forehead on the steering wheel and resting it there for a little while, maybe close his eyes and hope that a blackness took him, but he was afraid it might look like he was weeping.