He looked at the torn glove, and the cuts to his skin. There would be DNA beneath her fingernails, but he did not have time to remove it. Under other circumstances he might have taken the girl with him, or even cut off her fingers, but his instructions were clear: Amanda Winter was not to be hurt. He had already overstepped the mark by rendering her unconscious.
He found his knife near the bathroom. The door was open, and a bottle of Clorox stood by the toilet. As with cleaning a blade, it was an unsatisfactory compromise, but at least it would leave the girl with her fingers and her life. He took the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured it over Amanda’s right hand, rubbing it beneath her fingernails as best he could. It would burn, but it was still a mercy.
He had only been in the house for a matter of minutes, but it felt to him as though hours had gone by. It was always the way, just as he invariably experienced a sense of deflation, of sadness, after the act of killing. It was not sorrow at the deed, but a kind of disappointment that there was not more to it, that the taking of a life could be so easy, and the extinguishing of it could pass unnoticed by the universe.
He did not give Amanda Winter or her dead mother another thought as he left the house.
37
Parker had not tried to run in many months, not since before the shooting, and the action sent waves of pain coursing down his back and through his abdomen. He was conscious that lives were at stake, and he tried to keep up a steady pace, but his body resisted the effort. He thought that he felt old wounds opening, the parts of his internal organs that had been ruptured and sewn together again ripping along the scar tissue. He tasted blood in his mouth. Some of it had sprayed on his cellphone when he called the police.
And still he stumbled on.
The door to the Winter house was wide open when he reached it. He entered with his gun in his hand but held close to his body. His vision was blurred, and he was perspiring heavily. He checked the downstairs rooms first, and when he was sure that they were clear he tackled the stairs. The climb brought more pain, and each time he lifted a foot, a shock coursed through his being. He reached the first floor and saw Amanda Winter lying against a wall, but he did not approach her immediately. Instead he looked into the room at his back, which turned out to be her bedroom, and empty. Only then did he move toward her. He found her pulse, and even in the dim light he could detect the bruises that were rising on her skin. He could also smell bleach, and it transferred itself to his own hand after he touched her.
Then, beyond Amanda, he saw her mother, and he knew that there was nothing he could do for her, nothing beyond ensuring that her daughter remained alive. Still, he took the time to clear Ruth’s room – where he lifted a glass of water carefully from her bedside table and used it to dilute the bleach on her daughter’s fingers – and then the bathroom and spare room. In the latter, through the open drapes, he saw a figure on the dunes, watching the house. It was a man silhouetted against the pale moon like a stain on creation, his coat billowing behind him as the wind caught it, and Parker knew that he was willing him, daring him, to approach, to seek vengeance for a dead woman and, by doing so, to bring his own damnation down upon himself.
And all of Parker’s rage, all of the agonies that he had endured, found an outlet in the invitation. He was blind to the unconscious girl, blind to the body of her mother, blind to the possibility of his own demise. He wanted only to lash out, to visit pain on another, as though by doing so he could rid himself of some of his own, and watch it soak like oil into the dead sand, and in this he bound himself unknowingly to the man on the beach. Distant sirens sounded, but by the time he heard them he was already outside, the surf pounding in time with the blood in his head, the moon, cold and massive, silvering the strand and forming a great halo behind the one who waited for him, the one who offered a blood respite. Even as the man disappeared, retreating farther into the dunes, luring him on, a warning sounded in Parker’s ear: not of injury or further pain, not of death or dying, but of the loss of self, of all the changes his sufferings had wrought upon him that might become twisted and fixed, like the branches of a dead tree. He was acting now not out of a sense of justice, nor of a need to bring a great wrong to an end, but out of a desire to destroy, to burn.
He staggered up the first dune, the soft sand moving beneath his feet, swallowing his shoes, and the gun was a living thing in his hand, a creature that demanded to be fed, the bullet like the tip of a tongue waiting to shoot from the mouth of the barrel. He was once again the man who, years before, had stared down at the ruined bodies of his wife and daughter, and set aside his humanity in his determination to find the one who had taken them from him. His empathy, his compassion, were slipping away as surely as the white grains through which he advanced, the hissing of their fall like a snake at his back. He was the killer, the avenger. He was the dark angel, the true angel, linked by blood and wrath to those who slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt, and he shut himself off from the child’s voice that cried
no no
at all that now must surely come to pass.
Parker reached the top of the dune, but could find no sign of the one he sought. He released a breath of exhaustion, and a fine mist of blood flew from his mouth. The sirens were louder now. He glanced south, and saw the lights of emergency vehicles moving toward the beach.
Suddenly he was aware of movement. He reacted, but too slowly. The punch was hard and well aimed. His injured left side exploded and for an instant he was blind, the moon and stars above replaced by a red veil that collapsed upon him with the force of a wave, smashing him to the ground and buffeting him with its wake. When his sight returned he had somehow managed to crawl to his knees, but his gun was gone. The pain that he had experienced earlier was a distant memory, its insignificance made clear now by the damage that had been inflicted on his internal organs, on wounds that were still healing and now would never heal, for death would deny its possibility.
Before him stood the man who had taken the life of Ruth Winter, his right foot aimed for a kick. Somehow Parker managed to block it with his arm, protecting himself from the blow that would open him up inside, but his arm went numb with shock, and the man was already poised to strike again. Parker waited for the second kick to come, his upper body swaying slightly, the red veil parting, the stars a blur, frozen in the act of shooting across the night sky.
The man lowered his foot. Parker forced himself to focus, but the face of his tormentor remained distorted, and Parker saw the profound baseness of him, and smelled the poison that seeped from his pores. Beyond lay the sea, and then the sea became a lake, and he knew that he would return there, and his first daughter would be waiting for him. A car would come, and from it the hand of a woman would reach for his, and he would take his seat for the Long Ride.
His eyes turned south once again. The lights of the vehicles were closer now, but the one who stood above him did not seem troubled by their approach. Parker found his voice.
‘Who are you?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘I want to know.’
‘Here, and now, I’m Steiger. Tomorrow I’ll be someone else. Does that satisfy you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I know who you are.’
Steiger removed his right hand from his pocket. It held a gun.
‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘A fractured man, a broken thing. I asked for money to kill you, but none would give it. Now I understand why. There is no value to you. You’re nothing, and therefore nothing is what your life is worth. But I will kill you anyway, out of pity. I’ll make it fast, if you tell me what the woman shared with you. If not, I’ll shoot you in the gut and leave you to bleed out in shit and pain. Which will it be?’
‘Nothing. She told me nothing.’
‘Then the guts it is. Goodbye, Mr Parker.’
He raised the gun. Parker did not look away. It would make no difference.
He heard the shot, and instinctively closed his eyes, but felt
no impact. A cry of hurt and surprise came instead from behind him. It was a woman’s voice. Despite his own pain, he moved his head enough so that he could turn and look.
Cory Bloom was standing in a patch of marram grass, one hand braced against a half-toppled fence post from which a length of wire curled down to earth itself below ground. She was wearing a blue windbreaker with a white sweatshirt under it. Across the white, a bloody cloud spread from within her. She stared directly at Parker for a moment, then toppled backward and was lost from sight.
The ground shook, as though the beast buried deep beneath the sands had been disturbed in its sleep. Steiger’s mouth opened. He looked to his feet as the dune began to collapse, and then it was gone and he with it, the edge now barely inches from where Parker knelt. Parker looked down, but no trace of Steiger remained below, only a hill of white. Grains flowed from the slope in rivulets, but when they reached the beach they grew still, and remained undisturbed by the final struggles of the man suffocating beneath them.
The last thing that Parker saw before unconsciousness came was a small figure standing by Steiger’s still-forming grave.
‘Sam,’ he said, but she did not hear him, and did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed solely on the funeral mound before her, and her gaze was as pitiless as an ancient god’s.
38
As with Bruno Perlman’s remains, the requirement for an autopsy meant that Ruth Winter’s body could not be buried before nightfall, as directed by the Talmud, and her burial only took place days later. Once her body was released, the corpse was purified and dressed in shrouds, and placed in a simple wooden casket for the funeral service at the Sinai Memorial Chapel in Bangor. Amanda Winter was present, a black ribbon attached to the left lapel of her new overcoat, bought for her by her grandmother, Isha. Amanda did not cry until the casket was lowered into the ground, and the Kaddish prayer was recited, and after that she could not stop, so that her head stayed bowed as she passed through the mourners and on to the waiting funeral car.
Amanda Winter’s grandmother was very old, but she carried herself like a much younger woman. Her hair was gray, but her face bore only the finest tracery of lines, like ancient porcelain. Gordon Walsh was present, observing all that had taken place. So too was Marie Demers. The police now had a reason for Bruno Perlman’s presence in Maine, for Ruth Winter’s mother was Isha Winter. Almost seventy years earlier, as Isha Górski, she had been the sole survivor of the camp at Lubsko.
As Isha saw her granddaughter safely into her seat, Walsh approached the old woman and offered his condolences. She nodded at him, and said, ‘They will never leave us in peace. Never. Always they will persecute and torment us.’
She climbed into the car, and it pulled away.
The basement door opened, and Oran Wilde tried to shield himself from the sudden shaft of light. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and a length of chain led from a manacle around his left leg to a D-ring on the wall. He had lost some weight, and was even paler than before. Other than the single occasion when his captor had drawn blood from Oran’s arm using a disposable syringe fresh from the wrapper, he had not been harmed in any way. Oran had a bucket in which to urinate and defecate, which the man slopped out twice daily, making sure to clean it with some bleach so that it didn’t smell. Every morning he would also bring Oran a second bucket filled with hot water so that he could wash, each time accompanied by a fresh towel and a little bar of wrapped soap like those left in motel bathrooms. For the first couple of days, Oran had limited himself to washing only his face and hands, because he thought that the man might be watching him, and he didn’t want to be naked in front of him. A subsequent search of the basement revealed no cameras, as far as Oran could tell, although he wasn’t an expert, and there was really no way of knowing just what might be concealed in the brickwork. Eventually Oran had stopped caring about such things. He just preferred not to be able to smell himself.
A TV hung from a bracket in a corner, slightly too high for Oran to reach. It was basic cable, but better than nothing, and he had a remote with which to change channels. He had also been supplied with books, magazines, and a couple of graphic novels. He had an armchair on which to sit and a sofa bed on which to sleep. The basement was windowless, but adequately ventilated through a series of grilles. Heat came from a radiator and the room was lit by a pair of lamps. Oran had tried to figure out where he was being held, but no sound penetrated the basement, either from the floors above or the world outside. The car had been driven into a garage when they’d arrived, so Oran’s first sight of the man’s world was a shelf lined with paint cans, jars of screws and nails, and a series of boards on which his tools hung. The sight of all those implements had frightened Oran at first, for he feared being cut by them. But his captor had merely helped Oran from the trunk of the car and guided him down to the basement, and Oran had been there ever since.
The man had spoken little to Oran since taking him, beyond asking if there was anything that he needed, and warning him to keep still when the blood was being drawn. He did not raise his voice, did not threaten to harm Oran in any way, but the boy remained terrified of him. He could still recall waking up at home to find the masked man looming over him, his hand closing on Oran’s mouth, and the appearance of the gun. It all happened quickly after that: the cuffs, the gag, and the heavy-duty tape around Oran’s legs.
Then the shooting began.
Oran had no idea why his family had been targeted. He had no idea why he was being held in the basement. He had asked the man, but received no reply. Oran knew only that he was still alive, and so far his captor had continued to keep his face concealed behind a ski mask. That was good, as far as Oran was concerned. It gave him hope. If the man didn’t want Oran to see his face, it was because he didn’t wish to be identified, which meant that, at some point, he intended to release him.
But Oran – quiet, clever Oran – thought that he might have some inkling of who his captor was. The voice, although rarely heard, was familiar. He had heard it before. The competition, the essay …
Now he came down the staircase and stood before Oran, his hands on his hips. He was wearing a big L.L. Bean olive field coat, the kind that Oran’s father used to wear when he went hiking. Oran wondered if it might not even be the same coat, taken from their house before the flames consumed it. He forced the thought away. He tried not to think of his parents and his sisters. He regretted all the times that he’d fought with them, all the occasions on which he’d called his sisters bitches, or spurned his mother’s demonstrations of affection and his father’s awkward attempts at bonding. He would have given anything to be able to rewind time, to spend just one more day with them.
‘You’ve been a good boy, Oran,’ said the man. The ski mask muffled his words slightly because the mouth hole was too small.
Oran didn’t reply. He was too afraid.
‘I’m sorry for what happened to your parents, to your sisters,’ the man continued. ‘I know that it’s caused you a lot of pain. It’s going to come to an end now.’
He reached up and yanked off the ski mask.
And Oran began to cry.
III
There is no reason why good cannot triumph over evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
39
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Maine was located in a nondescript building on Hospital Street in Augusta, conveniently situated behind the State Police Crime Laboratory. It had always operated under some degree of financial constraint, in large part because the state legislature, like most elected bodies of its kind, had generally been reluctant to approve significant budget increases for it because the dead do not vote. Thus, while the national standard for determining a cause of death was sixty days for uncomplicated cases, and ninety day for homicides, the determination of a c
ause of death in Maine could take up to six months. There was a backlog of cases, and the office had been forced to become increasingly selective about those that it felt obliged to investigate.
None of this was the fault of the various appointees to the post of ME over the years, who had done their utmost to squeeze every nickel while pleading for additional resources from the state, usually to little avail. It was fortunate for Maine, therefore, that the various holders of the office were not only conscientious in their duty, but also clever in the bargain, and were therefore capable of taking the kind of imaginative leaps that enable important institutions to keep functioning, even when no money is left in the cookie jar. To the untrained eye, some of those leaps might have been perceived as somewhat unorthodox. For example, it is a requirement of medical examiners that they should retain samples of internal organs – typically the liver, lungs, heart, and kidneys – from autopsied bodies, in case any questions or queries should arise at some future date. These are generally preserved in formalin, and stored in glass sample jars. (It is considered inadvisable to keep tissue samples in a chocolate box, as one Tennessee medical examiner was alleged to have done, a lapse that, perhaps unsurprisingly, contributed to the loss of his license.) Nevertheless, specialized sample jars are expensive, when all that is really required for the task is a simple glass container with an airtight seal. Thus it was that one former Maine medical examiner, perhaps lost in contemplation of a bottle of mayonnaise or jelly, noticed that such comestibles came in resealable glass jars of a kind not entirely dissimilar to those for which his office was paying top dollar. And so – assiduously collected, carefully cleaned, and scrupulously delabeled to avoid any embarrassing, and possibly traumatic, confusion – jelly jars became sterile storage containers, and the money saved was put toward providing answers to more pressing problems, namely the manner in which someone might have died, and how, in cases of homicide, that knowledge could be used to apprehend the person or persons responsible.