A Song of Shadows (36 page)

‘She doesn’t seem troubled by it,’ said Rachel. ‘We’ve had no nightmares, and no moods – or no more than usual.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘Some. I’ve tried talking to her myself, but she doesn’t want to discuss it. It may emerge in time. I don’t want to force it.’

Parker was aware that they were having two different conversations about the same subject, but he didn’t point it out. Rachel was discussing the aftermath, but he was interested in the event itself. Does she even see it, he wondered: the strangeness of their child?

Or maybe he was imagining it all, and was only projecting his own curse on to Sam. He was the troubled one. He was the one whose deceased child wrote messages to him on dusty glass, and crossed the boundaries between worlds, between what was and what once had been. He was the one tormented by memories of his own dying, of sitting by a glass lake while his dead daughter held his hand and his lost wife whispered words in his ear that he could not recall.

Dunes collapsed. Every year people died in accidents just like the one that killed Earl Steiger. The fact that no such incident had ever previously occurred at Green Heron Bay meant nothing. Steiger’s death was not inexplicable. It was not even regrettable. His daughter had witnessed it, and no more than that.

But her face, her face …

Rachel broke into his thoughts.

‘Are you leaving today?’

‘I haven’t discussed it with Angel and Louis, but I guess so.’

‘Why don’t you stay?’ she said. ‘There should be enough to keep those two occupied in Burlington for an evening, and I can get them a good rate at the Willard Street Inn. Sam has a sleepover planned, and my mom will catch a movie. I’ll cook you dinner. We can talk.’

‘And where will I sleep?’

‘We have space,’ she said. She placed her right hand against his face. ‘It’ll do you good.’

So Angel and Louis left, and he stayed. Sam came down from her room, and after circling warily for a time joined him to watch a Marx Brothers movie on TCM. Afterward they played checkers, and he fell asleep on the couch. When he woke both Sam and her grandmother – who had not commented upon his continued presence beyond a mildly pained pursing of the lips – were gone, and Rachel was cooking chicken in a cream sauce. He showered in the guest bathroom, allowed himself a glass of wine, and they ate in the kitchen by candlelight while 1st Wave played in the background on Sirius. Afterward he helped her wash up, and then it was her turn to fall asleep beside him on the couch. He woke her shortly before eleven p.m. and kissed her goodnight.

He lay awake in the spare room. His side ached. He considered taking a couple of the prescription pills to help him sleep, but he hated the aftertaste and the way they made his head feel clouded for hours after waking up. Thirty minutes, he thought. I’ll give myself thirty minutes. If I can’t get to sleep by then, I’ll take the pills. He heard Rachel’s mother come back and go to her room. After that, the house was quiet.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes more.

The bedroom door opened slowly, then closed again. Rachel came to him. She was wearing a short nightgown, and he watched as she lifted it over her head and let it fall to the floor.

‘Does it hurt a lot?’ she said.

‘No, not a lot.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. She eased herself onto the bed, and sat astride him. ‘You just stay still. Let me take care of you.’

And he did.

52

R
achel was gone when Parker woke. He had a vague memory of her getting up to leave during the night, but it seemed then as much of a dream as her sleeping presence beside him had been. He showered, and changed – he had just enough clothing in his overnight bag to remain presentable for another day. The rest of his wardrobe was divided between Scarborough and Boreas. His time as a resident of that northern town was coming to a close, but he had decided to return for a few more days at least. He had unfinished business there.

He went down to breakfast and caught Mrs Wolfe sending bad juju his way, although at least she had the decency to include Rachel in her glare of disapproval. He figured that she’d heard Rachel heading back to her room in the stable annex during the night. At least Frank wasn’t in the house as well. If he thought that his daughter had slept with her ex-partner under his roof, he’d have gone looking for his shotgun.

Rachel gave him coffee and a bagel, but refused to catch his eye for fear of confirming her mother’s suspicions. It made Parker feel like a teenager again, and not in a bad way. Sam had gone straight from her sleepover to school, but it was a half day so he waited for her return. Angel and Louis appeared not long after she got back. Not wishing to strain Mrs Wolfe’s patience any further, they all made their farewells. Before Parker left, Sam hugged him and said: ‘Daddy, you should have used the crutch that they gave you.’ And he agreed that, yes, he should have, but he felt better now, and maybe he wouldn’t need it at all.

Rachel kissed him on the cheek, and the affection of the gesture filled him with a tender sadness. The night before was lost to them now: it had been a small consecration, a minor epiphany, and no more than that, but sometimes such moments are all that we are given, and they are enough to fuel us, and give us hope that, somewhere down the line, another might be gifted.

Angel and Louis sensed something of his mood, and there was no mockery as they drove away, no loaded questions about how the night had gone. The sun shone, and a classical piece played on the radio, one that Parker thought he recognized but could not identify. He didn’t ask its name, though. He simply listened, and let its waves break upon him.

And only then did he realize he had not told Sam about the crutch. It had remained in the trunk of the car, where she could not have seen it. He said nothing to Angel and Louis, but merely added it to his concerns about his daughter.

‘What now?’ said Louis, after they had been driving in silence for almost an hour.

‘I’d like you to take me back to Boreas,’ said Parker. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d help me pack up my things. It won’t take long: a couple of hours at most.’

‘And then?’

He’d read about the previous day’s press conference on the
Portland Press Herald
’s website, and had followed up with a call to Gordon Walsh before he went down to breakfast. He was now clear on how slowly the investigation into Ruth Winter’s murder was progressing. Steiger was one of the problems: a professional shooter meant a disconnect between the motive and the act, one that could only be remedied by forcing the killer to turn on whomever had hired him – not an option in the case of the late Earl Steiger. But as Louis pointed out, it also had to be recognized that, because Steiger could have been hired out by a third party – Cambion, in this case – he might not even have been aware of the original source of the contract. If they could get to Cambion, and make him talk, then they might learn something useful, but Cambion had gone underground. The solution, then, was to work backward.

‘I’m going to find out who ordered the killing of Ruth Winter,’ said Parker.

Angel glanced at him in the rearview mirror. There was no doubt in the detective’s voice, and although he was staring out the window, his eyes saw nothing of what passed before them.

Angel and Louis had spoken of Parker the night before. Yes, thought Angel, Louis was right: he is different. He has a certainty to him that was not there before. He should be dead, yet he is more alive and, more dangerous than ever.

God help anyone who went up against him now.

God help them all.

53

B
ernhard Hummel was currently residing in the special care unit of the Golden Hills Senior Living Community just outside Ellsworth, Maine.

Of the many ends that he might meet, Baulman had always been most fearful of dementia. The idea of slowly losing himself appalled him, and he had done all he could to ensure that such a fate was not destined to be his: he exercised regularly, ate well, and was never without a newspaper or a book. He played memory games – reciting the fifty state capitals, listing the names and numbers of beloved symphonies, or the German soccer teams of various vintages – and, although he was right-handed, he forced himself to perform many tasks using his left. His arthritis he could live with. His bladder was little better than a thimble, but he could calculate almost to the minute how long he had before he would need a men’s room. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep, but he’d learned to grab a nap whenever he could, and anyway, it left more time for reading.

But still he was troubled when he forgot the name of an acquaintance, living or dead, or couldn’t bring to mind quickly enough a favorite film, or the title of a novel. Unlike poor old Bernhard Hummel, he had nobody around who might notice any deterioration in the quality of his mental functioning. He had to be his own guardian, his own monitor. He could only hope that, if it happened, he would recognize the symptoms before it was too late, giving him time to kill himself.

Golden Hills wasn’t the worst such facility that Baulman had visited in his time. It did, at least, have hills of a sort, and the buildings and gardens were well maintained. One half of the property consisted entirely of apartments and small cottages for those individuals or couples that needed a little help with day-to-day activities, yet didn’t require round-the-clock care, but Hummel was in a secure annex at the rear of the main building. Baulman was admitted without any trouble. He wasn’t even required to show ID, and for an instant he considered signing in under a false name. But what if the people from the Justice Department were tailing him? He would only bring down suspicion on himself if they checked the visitors’ register and found that he had signed in under an alias. He had grown increasingly paranoid about such surveillance – not without cause – and now found himself searching the faces of strangers for signs of excessive interest and monitoring the cars that followed him on both local roads and the freeway. He incorporated the routine into his memory games, filing away the license numbers, makes, and colors of cars. If they were keeping an eye on his movements, he had given them no cause to suspect him, and was not about to start today. He was entitled to visit his old friend Bernhard. What kind of man doesn’t visit his friends in the hospital? To hell with them if they did question him about it.

He hadn’t seen Hummel in two years, not since he’d been admitted to Golden Hills at the instigation of his daughter, Theodora. Baulman had never liked her. He hadn’t liked Hummel’s wife much either, but at least she had the decency to stop bothering people by dying. Theodora had always struck Baulman as too selfish even for mortality. She would outlive them all, like a cockroach. At the first sign of her father’s deterioration she had packed him off to Golden Hills without a second thought, or so it appeared to Baulman. It made him glad that he would die without issue.

The receptionist gave him a four-digit code to get past the first door, but he had to press a button and wait to be admitted through the second. He smelled cooked food, and human waste, and disinfectant. No matter how well-managed they were, all these places smelled the same. He tried to shut his ears to the wailing of an old woman somewhere to his left – ‘No!’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to! No, no, no, no, no …’ – and barely glanced into the lounge where an assortment of residents younger than he sat slumped like zombies in chairs. He felt uncomfortable even being within these walls, as though one of the staff – a passing doctor, an orderly – might mistake him for a patient and refuse to let him leave. He had always hated confinement. It was why he would fight Demers and her kind until the end.

He found Hummel’s room and paused on the threshold. He hadn’t been sure what to bring. He had decided against hard candy or saltwater taffy – even he didn’t care much for gnawing on such delicacies at his age – and opted instead for marshmallows and seedless grapes. He took a deep breath and entered the room.

His friend was seated in a comfortable chair by the window, smiling beatifically. Outside was a line of trees, masking the wall of the property. Either he liked trees a lot, though Baulman, or Hummel was communing with the birds. He had aged terribly since Baulman had last seen him. His clothes no longer fitted him properly, and his tiny bald head on its wrinkled neck poked from the collar of his shirt like the skull of some ancient tortoise.

Baulman coughed, but Hummel didn’t react.

‘Hello?’ said Baulman. ‘Bernhard?’

Hummel’s head turned slowly. The smile faded. He grew confused. Baulman wondered if he even knew who he was any more. As far as Hummel was concerned, Baulman might as easily have called him by his wife’s name and received something of the same response.

He moved into the room, but did not approach Hummel too closely, for fear that he might frighten or distress him. It pained him to see his former colleague and friend this way. Hummel had always been so strong, so vital. At Lubsko, Baulman had watched him fight to the death with a Jew named Oppert, a former wrestler, just to prove that he could beat him. By then, Oppert had seen the bodies of his wife and children, and even though they promised to let him live if he won, Oppert knew better. He accepted the challenge because to do otherwise would be to accept a bullet in the back of the head, and he entertained the hope that he might go to his grave after breaking Hummel’s neck. He was mistaken. Weeks at Lubsko had given Oppert back some of his strength, but he was still no match for Hummel, who had later been severely reprimanded for such a breach of regulations. Now look at him, thought Baulman: it’s hard to believe that this is the same man.

A flicker of recognition ignited in Hummel’s face, but still he did not speak.

‘Bernhard, it’s me. Marcus. Marcus Baulman.’

The smile returned to Hummel’s face.

‘Kraus!’ he said. ‘My friend, how good to see you!’

You have condemned yourself, thought Baulman. You are a dead man.