The Soul Collectors

38

Darby started with the phone call from Gary Trent. She summarized her conversations with the NH SWAT senior corporal inside the APC and the hostage negotiator, Billy Lee, inside the mobile command trailer. She went into great detail about the conversation she had with Charlie Rizzo inside the family's new home in Dover and then described what had followed after the explosion: the dead SWAT team members and the man she had captured, the thing with the egg-white skin and the missing tongue and the Latin words tattooed on the base of his neck. She explained to Smith what the words meant.

She told Smith about the sarin gas, the listening devices found inside her condo and the feds watching her at the end of her street. She left out what had happened during the early morning hours at the blast site and then later, at the BU Biomedical Lab, with the men she was sure were Secret Service. Her decision didn't have to do with trust; it was more to do with the fact that Smith looked like he was having a problem with everything she'd just told him. Give him a moment to digest it.

She waited for his questions. He had listened to her intently, and without interrupting. Now he lit another cigarette and stared thoughtfully at the small waves breaking across the shore below them.

Darby stared past his head, across the street at the nest of tall trees shedding their gold and red leaves. The puppies were still in the backyard, and she could hear their playful high-pitched barks and squeals behind the wind.

Smith leaned forward in his chair. He had smoked half of his cigarette. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. She waited.

'That's one hell of a story.'

'Agreed,' she said. 'But that's what happened.'

'Now I know why you insisted on talking face to face. If you had told me this shit over the phone, I would've hung up on you.'

'You read about it in the papers? I know the Globe covered it.'

'I'm a Herald guy, and I only buy it for the sports page. I stopped following the news… Christ, it's been years. First thing you learn as a cop is that almost everything that's printed or said on the news is about two per cent truth. The other ninety-eight per cent is bullshit spin. You really think it's him? Charlie, I mean?'

'I don't have the benefit of DNA or a fingerprint, so the rational part of me says no.'

Smith nodded, and took a long drag off his cigarette.

'My gut says the man I met was Charlie,' she said. 'The eyes were the right colour, and he was missing two nipples. He made it a point of showing them to me.'

He nodded again, more to himself than her.

'All this time…' He ran a big hand over his face, staring out at the darkening sky. 'If what you're saying is true, all this time that kid was alive and…' He took in a deep breath and cocked his head to her. 'You said his body was scarred.'

She nodded.

'He tell you from what?'

'No, but I think it was from being whipped.' She had thought about it on and off during the past week. The lattice pattern seemed right. 'It's only a guess. I forgot to mention he'd been turned into a eunuch.'

Smith glared at her, wide-eyed.

'Castrated,' she said.

'I know what it means, I just… you're sure?'

'Positive.'

He ran a big hand over his face. Then shook his head as if snapping out of a trance.

'This business with the face mask, what's that all about?'

'Don't know,' she said. 'Charlie didn't say anything about it. Does it mean anything to you?'

'First time I've ever heard about such a thing. Must have some sort of religious significance.'

'What makes you say that?'

'The tattoos on that guy's neck, the one with the missing tongue? You said they were Latin, right?'

'According to what I read on the Internet. I don't know their significance, so I sent them over to a Harvard professor to decipher their meaning.'

'You Catholic?'

'Irish Catholic.'

'My condolences.' He chuckled softly. 'They used to speak Latin during church services years and years ago, way before you were born — before I was born, probably. Makes me think you're dealing with some sort of religious cult.'

She nodded. The thought had occurred to her too.

'What did the army tell you?'

'They didn't tell me anything. Neither did the feds. I'm shut out from the investigation. My guess is that this thing is bigger than someone using nerve gas to kill a bunch of cops.'

'I'm not sure how I can help you here.'

'Tell me about Mark Rizzo.'

'He… Shit, you're talking about, what, twelve years ago? Truth be told, I don't want to revisit it. Don't look at me like that, you know what I'm talking about. You worked a missing person's case before, that Traveler creep, the one who came for you when you was a little girl and ended up snatching your friend.'

Darby nodded.

'So you know how that shit can linger if you don't find a way to turn it off. Because if you don't, you end up dragging it around like a ball and chain for the rest of your life. I can't really help you here. You'd be better off reading my case notes.'

'I don't have access to them.'

'You've lost me. You're not working with that CSU group?'

'No. It's been permanently disbanded. And, as of this morning, I'm no longer an employee at the crime lab. I'm looking into this on my own.'

'I hope to Christ you're not trying to recruit me. Because the answer's no. Besides, I wouldn't be of any use to you. And I don't have them. Copies, I mean. Some homicide guys, they make copies of the cases they didn't get to solve before they go into retirement. They think they'll revisit one or two, you know, break it open or something. Not me. When I left, I shut the door behind me.'

'Was Mark Rizzo ever a suspect?'

Smith didn't pause to consider the question; he shook his head.

'Never,' he added.

'But you looked into him.'

'Of course we did. Him and his wife. It's the first thing you do when a kid is abducted or goes missing, because nine times out of ten the parents or a relative is involved. So, yeah, we looked into the parents, but they both had strong alibis. The mother was at home, the father working at the office. Everything checked out.'

'How far did you dig?'

'Well, if I'm to believe what you say, that the father was involved in his son's abduction, then I'd have to admit we didn't dig far enough.' He leaned back in his chair. 'Like I said, his alibi checked out. Marriage was solid.'

'Was he married before?'

'No. First marriage for both of them. He was a tax guy… I remember some incident involving one of his clients, guy pissed off about having to pay too much money to the government and thought Rizzo had bungled his tax return. So this guy, he went back to Rizzo's office and goes after him with a baseball bat. Police were called, so there was a report. We looked into it, thinking this guy harboured a grudge all these years and maybe decided to get even with Rizzo by snatching the kid. I don't remember the guy's name, but I remember it came up empty.'

'Was Rizzo born here?'

He thought about it as he took another sip of his drink.

'I think so,' he said.

'I don't remember him having a Boston accent.'

'That doesn't mean anything. I know plenty of people who don't — people who've lived here their whole lives. Like you. You don't have one, and you grew up in Belham, right?'

Darby nodded. 'Where'd you hear that?'

'Didn't hear it, I read it. Online.'

'What about Mark Rizzo's extended family? Any brothers or sisters?'

'No. He was an only child. His parents died when he was seventeen. Some sort of car crash. I don't remember where or when.'

'Who raised him?'

'Haven't the foggiest. I can't even say I asked him the question. I don't know if the guy had any uncles or aunts either. And his wife, Judith? I don't remember anything about her except that she was a die-hard Catholic. Kept a pair of rosary beads in her hands at all times. That's the only thing that sticks out.'

He shrugged, showed her his empty hands. 'I don't know what else to tell you. The guy was as clean as a whistle — at least that's how he looked at the time.'

'Did the feds get involved in the case?'

Smith took another healthy slug of whiskey. 'They usually do with missing kids.'

'Only if they believe someone's been transported over state lines.'

'News got out fast that Charlie Rizzo had been abducted — that was the way it looked since we found his abandoned bike — and that's when the calls started coming. You know the ones I'm talking about. "I have Charlie and if you want to see him again put unmarked bills in a brown-paper bag on such and such a day." "I have Charlie and he's in a lot of pain." Shit like that. One call came in from someplace in the Midwest — Wisconsin, I think — and that's when the feds got involved. They helped us run down all the leads. They had the manpower and the resources.

'Almost every call came from a payphone, and they were all cranks. None of 'em knew specifics about the kid or how and where he was abducted. But we had to run them down. We got a shitload more when the Rizzos went to the press — you know, try to appeal to the kidnapper. Like I said, they were all cranks. Can I ask you a personal question?'

'Go for it.'

'You married?'

'No.'

'Kids?'

'Don't have the maternal drive. That, and the fact that I'm forty now, I'm pretty sure the factory's shut down.'

'You serious with anyone?'

Darby opened her mouth, then shut it, unsure of how to answer the question. Yes, I'm in love with a guy I've known for fifteen years. There's always been an attraction between us, but I never acted on it because I didn't want the friendship to change. And just when I realized I couldn't ignore this attraction any more, he relocated to London. I haven't been over there to visit him because I'm afraid nothing more will come of it or, even worse, it will end our friendship, and, as much as I love him, I can't bear to lose that.

'There's someone in my life,' she said. 'Someone serious.'

'Good. Spend as much time with him as you can. Get married and have babies. If you can't have them, be like Angelina Jolie and adopt a whole Rainbow Coalition or whatever. That's the shit that matters. That's what haunts you at my age, all the opportunities you ignored because of the job, because the job don't mean anything in the end.'

'It matters to me.'

'Your choice. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go spend some time with my wife. At my age, I don't have much time left.'

Smith got to his feet, his knees cracking. She was staring at the wrinkles on his face, about to get up, when his head exploded.