The Soul Collectors

Epilogue
86

Darby woke to sunlight and the squawk of seagulls.

She sat up in the bed and checked her watch. It was early, just past six. She pulled the covers off and padded across the room in her bare feet to the rear window overlooking the ocean. The binoculars sat on the bureau. She picked them up and examined the shore.

After her hospital stay, three short days that felt like a lifetime, she helped Sergey and a federal team consisting of fifty people, most of them forensics, search every corridor, tunnel and room. When Jack and Sarah Casey's bodies didn't turn up, she braced herself for the fact that they would bob to the surface of the ocean at some point. The currents from Black Rock Island hit the beach near her rental home in Ogunquit, so she checked the shoreline every morning, at noon and then in the early evening before it got dark and she had to lock herself inside the house.

No bodies this morning, but she could see only part of the beach from her house. She'd have to walk the rest of it to be sure. She put down the binoculars, went back to the bed, grabbed the Glock from underneath the pillow and took the nine with her to the shower. She had already put out the next day's clothes, laying them on top of the toilet tank.

After she locked the door, she wedged the chair underneath the knob. Dressed in heavy winter clothes, her hair blown dry and tucked underneath a Red Sox baseball cap, she checked the upstairs rooms first, Glock in hand.

Finding nothing out of the ordinary — all the closet doors were open, the windows locked tight — she headed downstairs and started with the front door. Locked, alarm still on. Living room, spare bedroom and bath clean. All the windows locked. She wound her way into the kitchen, found everything neat and tidy, just as she had left it. She relaxed a little but kept the gun in her hand as she started to make coffee.

She found the picture when she went to put in a new coffee filter.

It was a recent one, showing Sarah Casey huddled in a corner and clutching her knees tightly against her chest. Fresh cuts and bruises on her shins. Her head had been shaved.

Darby tripped on the way back upstairs to retrieve a pair of latex gloves and an evidence bag. The restaurants in Ogunquit's downtown area catered to the lunch crowd, so most of them were closed. Darby hit the gas stations and found a payphone next to an air pump at a Mobil Station, its windows sprayed with fake snow and decorated with Christmas garlands.

Sergey was back in Washington. She called his cell, woke him up and told him about the picture.

'Bring it to our Boston office,' he said after she finished. 'Give it to Tina.'

Tina was the name of the federal agent who handled Sergey's mail. Darby had met the woman only once, when she drove to Boston at the beginning of the month to deliver the letter and stack of pages she'd written for Coop. Tina had forwarded the package to Sergey, who had delivered it to Coop's London address. When it came to Coop, she didn't want to take any chances.

She hadn't talked to him since he'd left but knew he was safe. Sergey had placed people on him, and she had called him every three days, like clockwork, to get a status report.

Coop had no way of getting in contact with her, and she hadn't called him. She thought about him, wondering what he was doing right now, if he still thought of her.

Sergey was speaking.

'What's that?'

'I said I'll send some forensic people to your house,' he said. 'What are you going to do now?'

'I'm already on my way to Boston.'

'I meant after that.'

'Pack and move.'

'Where?'

'I don't know yet.'

'You want me to bring you into federal — '

'No,' she said. 'No, I don't want that.'

'You still checking the beach every morning for bodies?'

Darby didn't answer. A car had peeled into the station and her hand reached inside her jacket.

The car, an old blue Volkswagen Beetle, parked at one of the pumps. She watched three college-aged guys stagger out, their faces pinched with hangovers.

'You there?' he asked.

'I'm here. How do you know about the beach?'

'I have people watching you too.'

Her jaw clenched. 'Since when?'

'Since you decided to embark on this plan or whatever it is you've got locked in your head. I know about your beach walks, how you watch it every morning from your window. I know about the boats you chartered during the first month to see if any bodies bobbed to the surface.'

'We should check the tunnels again.'

'We've checked them a dozen times. Each time we brought you along, remember?'

'But we haven't really explored every inch of the island. There could be — '

'Jack and his daughter aren't there.'

'Then they moved them someplace else. You have any leads?'

'Darby, you need help.'

'I'll be fine on my own.' But the words died on her mouth. One of these people had broken into her house, bypassed the alarm code and left Sarah Casey's picture in her coffee-maker. They had been watching her and found her. Maybe they were watching her right now.

'I'm talking about your head,' he said. 'You're exhibiting classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.'

'What's the status of that EMT? Have you found him yet?'

Sergey didn't answer, and she spoke into the silence.

'I gave you his description. He spoke to Keats, remember? I told you — '

'His name is Peter Grange,' Sergey said. 'He's thirty-six years old and single.'

'When did you find out?'

'A while ago.'

'When were you going to tell me?'

Sergey didn't answer.

'Do you have him in custody?' she asked.

'No. He disappeared. We know he's not one of the bodies we found in the ossuary.'

'So let me help with the investigation. I can — '

'The Bureau has enough people working on it.' He sounded so incredibly tired. 'The guy's gone. We're never going to find him.'

She squeezed the receiver, wanting to take it and smash it across Sergey's head. Knock out that loser thinking and help him get his priorities straight.

'Darby, you're going to have to deal with this.'

'I'd deal with it much better if you'd let me into the investigation.'

'There is no investigation. Not any more.'

She felt a cold space in her stomach. 'Since when?'

'Since about a week or so ago. The suits upstairs, they decided to pull the plug on it for the time being. Those bodies we found, most of them were identified and — '

'I know. It's all over the news.' She had followed it in the papers and on TV. The FBI was getting heat about not having found this cult sooner, with the media resurrecting the ghost of Waco and drawing comparisons with that botched operation.

She also knew that Sergey's son was not among the dead.

'We put in a lot of manpower, a lot of time and even more money,' he said. 'The suits and bean-counters looked at the bottom line and decided that finding and identifying those bodies, bringing them home to their families — that was a victory. They put all the information about this group into the open. Forwarded all our information to police departments while the press is hot and it's fresh in everyone's minds. This group is on everyone's radar screen now.'

'And Casey and his daughter? Are they still on your radar?'

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

'I consider Jack a friend,' he said. 'Keep that in mind when you hear what I'm about to say.'

She heard a hitch in his voice. He cleared his throat and said, 'Have you considered the fact that both he and his daughter are dead?'

'They're alive.'

'You don't know — '

'Last week you told me Taylor Casey received a phone call from her daughter.'

'Yes. Yes, I did say that. But we don't know for sure that her daughter was on the other end of the line. Taylor Casey received a phone call that lasted twenty-two seconds. And you remember I said I couldn't trace it.'

'You said it was Sarah. Taylor told you her daughter called crying, asking her mother when she's coming to get her.'

'Darby, the woman was lobotomized. She has permanent and severe brain damage. She doesn't know what day it is. She thinks Jack is coming in any minute to pick her up.'

'I want to talk to her.'

'No. She's being moved to another private facility — the same place we're taking Darren Waters. They'll both be well taken care of. You need to stop this obsessive thinking.'

'Sarah Casey is twelve years old.'

'And my son was five when they took him.'

Darby propped an arm up on top of the payphone and looked out at the cars whisking by on the highway, the sun warm on her face.

'My son isn't coming back,' Sergey said. 'I've come to grips with that. I won't lie to you, it's not an easy process. For a while there I was a member of the living dead. But I've got past that now, and yes, there are still days when I wake up and wish I could go back and do things differently. But I can't. Sad fact of life but there it is. That day is gone, and my son's gone. You've got to start letting this go.'

Her eyes were burning. Wet. 'And do what?'

'Live,' Sergey said. 'Coop has been calling me. He wants to know where — '

'Don't tell him.'

'He wants to talk to you.'

'No. I can't risk it.'

'You can't hide for ever.'

'Don't tell him,' she said, and hung up.

*

Darby delivered the picture to the Boston office and then checked herself into the Four Seasons. The room she had shared with Coop was occupied, so she picked out the cheapest room, raided the mini-bar and got drunk.

That night, she dreamed of men and women rising from the surf under a moonless sky, their ghoulish faces and bloated white bodies picked apart by fish. They crept across the sand dragging their chains and she was so tired she didn't hear them enter her room.

She woke with a start. Her Glock was lying next to her, and she picked it up and searched the rooms.

Sweating, she sat on the couch in the small living room, her Glock aimed at the door.