The Soul Collectors

46

'I've read about you,' Darby said. 'Followed you in the papers and on the Internet.'

'You shouldn't trust the press,' Casey said with a wry, tired grin.

'So you're saying you didn't plant that fibre evidence at Hamilton's house.'

'I'm assuming you have a point to make so let's hear it.'

'After the Hamilton case, you retired from the Bureau. Then, years later, you came back to police work — as a detective here, in Massachusetts. You worked the Sandman case. With Malcolm Fletcher.'

No reaction from Casey.

'Miles Hamilton,' she said, 'has been gearing up for a retrial for the past few years, and there's been no word from you. The Bureau has stated in the press that you moved out of the country. That they had no idea of your whereabouts or how to get in contact with you, yet here you are, surrounded by federal agents and heading up an investigation. Want to know what I think?'

'Sure, why not?'

'I think you've been in the country the whole time. I think you've been living under an alias and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Bureau helped you because they don't want you to take the stand in Hamilton's retrial. And I think you have some sort of history with this religious group or cult or whatever you call them. I think they've been looking for you for a long, long time. I think you've been moving around a lot. I think you remarried — you have a faint white line on your ring finger, but you're not wearing your wedding band — and I'm willing to bet you have at least one child. I think that, given what happened to your first wife and your unborn daughter, you agreed to come out of exile and make a run at these people because that's the only way you can keep your new family safe.'

Casey stared at her, his body very, very still. It reminded her of the way the air turned just before a thunderstorm broke.

Darby said, 'I don't think they'll make a run at me again, at least in the short term. Right now, they're too busy planning. They're going to try to find a way to bait us. My guess is they'll come after you since I don't have anyone they can use against me. My parents are dead. I don't have any brothers or sisters. I'm not married, and the only person I care about is the man you saw sitting here at this table.

'So you have a choice to make. You can bring me inside your inner circle, where I can help you out, or I can do it on my own. Either way, I'm going to get in front of this. I'm not going to spend my time sitting in some safe house. And I'm sure as hell not going to spend the rest of my life living under different names and hopping from state to state praying to God that these people don't find me.

'Ball's in your court,' she said. 'How do you want to play it?'

Casey weighed the question on his cold scales. The only sound came from the hum of the overhead lights.

Then he looked down at the scuffed floor between them. Looked at it as if something expensive and rare had shattered there and was lying in pieces.

He let out a rush of air through his nose.

'You're right,' he said.

His expression had changed. Become more haggard.

'Okay,' he said. 'I'll bring you on board. Probably better that way. I can keep a close eye on you.'

'And Coop. That's the man who was sitting in here with me, Jackson Cooper. He stays next to me. That condition is non-negotiable.'

Casey thought about it for a moment, then finally nodded.

'Now let's talk about Darren Waters,' she said.

Casey rubbed his eyes. 'He was abducted in July of '76. He lived in Washington — the state, not the city. He was four when they took him. Mother put him down to sleep and the next morning he was gone. He suddenly reappeared in the summer of 2001.'

Darby ran the numbers in her head. Disappears in 1976 when he's four, then reappears in '01, which puts his age then somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty-nine, which means now he's — Jesus — thirty-eight years old.

'Police in Reno, Nevada, picked him up,' Casey said. 'He was rooting through a restaurant dumpster. Wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. An employee came out, tried to shoo Waters away from the dumpster, and the guy ended up with two broken arms and a concussion. Police came and Waters was just sitting there eating scraps. It took three policemen to take him down.'

'And the police knew to call you?'

'No. The Bureau asked me if I'd be willing to consult.'

'The Bureau found out because his fingerprints had been coded.'

He sighed. 'Yes, we had his prints coded. I was called and asked if I'd be willing to consult and talk to Waters because of my prior experience with these people.'

Darby wanted to know more about Casey's experience with 'these people', but decided to stick with Waters for the moment. 'How do you know they were the ones who abducted him? No, let me guess. He had a certain Latin phrase tattooed on his neck.'

Casey nodded. 'Et in Arcadia ego. Literally translated, it means "Even in Arcadia, I exist" — the "I" being Death. We believe it's a reference to someone who once enjoyed the pleasures of life and has now been transformed in death. That's all we know.'

'Waters didn't shed any light on it?'

'His tongue and vocal cords had been removed.'

Darby flashed back to her first encounter with the pale-faced creature with the missing tongue and teeth and said, 'Did he have a black plastic device sewn into his back and above his spine?'

'No.'

'Where's Waters now?'

'Someplace where they can't find him.'

'Not even his parents?'

'They died in a car crash, a couple of months after Waters disappeared. Police think the father ran the car off the road on purpose. I read the reports and I'm inclined to agree.'

'How did his fingerprints wind up on your forged army forms?'

'I had a Bureau lawyer draft up the forms so they'd look legitimate. I had them with me when I went to see Waters, and he-'

'Why did you go to see him?'

'To make preparations to move him to another hospital. The Bureau moves him every couple of years. But, with what happened in New Hampshire, I wanted to move him again as a precaution. I wanted to oversee everything myself so there'd be no mistakes, no way to find him.' Casey sighed. 'Darren Waters grabbed the forms from me and took them over to his table and his crayons and markers.'

'You're telling me a 38-year-old man thought you had, what, brought him a colouring book?'

'Physically, he's an adult. But he has the mentality of a child.'

'What happened to him?'

Casey blinked away whatever image had appeared in front of his eyes. He was about to speak when the door swung open.