Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (23 page)

    
“I’m
sorry,” he said, and his voice had absorbed some of her anger. “Truly sorry
it’s gone this way. Sorry that religion is ever about control. It isn’t
supposed to be like that, Mrs. Parrish. It’s supposed to be about comfort. And
wisdom.”

    
She
wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and waited for her focus to return so
that she could register him clearly.

    
Raszer
allowed himself to be examined, let himself go passive on the inside. He let
her look as long and hard as she wanted to, and waited for her to speak.

    
“You
want to understand what happened to Katy Endicott?” she said. “I’ll tell you
one thing, mister. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I don’t know if she’s
whoring herself or chanting ‘Hare Krishna.’ All I know is that she never
could’ve gone where she went if her father hadn’t paved the way. You take a
person’s choices away, and you might as well be a rapist. Silas Endicott was no
better than those boys.”

    
“Did you
know him well?”

    
Her
mouth, the most expressive part of her face, was dismissive. “He was the
pastoral overseer. The enforcer. He was the one who came to the house that day
to tell us my husband had been disfellowshipped. But he wasn’t the worst of
them.”

    
“Amos
Leach,” said Raszer.

    
She
stared and said nothing, but that was affirmation enough.

    
“May I
speak with Emmett?” Raszer asked.

    
“You can
try,” she said. Some of the tightness had left her voice.

    
“I’m not
a therapist, or a deprogrammer, or, God knows, a priest,” he said. “I’m a
tracker, mostly. But my
work
is with
people—often young people—who’ve been . . . isolated. Stripped of choice.
Sometimes spiritually defrauded.”

    
“You
mean cults?”

    
“If you
mean that in the sense of control, yes.”

    
She
stood up and smoothed her dress, then walked to the bedroom door and knocked
softly. When no answer came, she leaned in, her hand on the knob.

    
“Emmett?”
she called. “Emmett, there’s a gentleman here to see you.”

    
Raszer
approached and stood at her side.

    
“I’m
going to open the door now, Emmett,” she said. “I’m going to let Mr. Raszer
come in.” She turned the doorknob slowly. “He’s looking for Katy Endicott.”

    
The room
was unnaturally dark, even for the abode of a recluse, and it took Raszer a few
moments to make out the small, slack figure on the far side of the unmade bed,
sitting against the wall in his white briefs. His long hair was knotted and
unwashed, of indefinable color. His bony arms were hitched around his knees.

    
“Hi,
Emmett,” said Raszer. “May I come in?”

    
The boy
didn’t stir, but in the faint light from the hall, Raszer saw his eyes shift.

    
“My
name’s Stephan,” he said. “I think maybe you can help me.”

    
The
smell of the room was close, human, but not as fetid as Aquino had led him to
believe it would be. There was even a vague sweetness, and Raszer noticed
candles placed on various surfaces. The bedsheets smelled of semen, but a
boy’s, not a man’s.

    
“I’m
gonna have a seat on the bed here,” said Raszer. “If that’s all right.”

    
He
thought he saw the boy shrug his shoulders. Or maybe not.

    
“I don’t
know if your mom told you. I’m a private investigator. I look for missing
people. Right now, I’m looking for Katy Endicott.”

    
Emmett
was as still as a spider in the corner of a web and, except for periodic
blinks, might have been almost undetectable in the darkness. He could have been
hiding, or he could have been getting ready to pounce.

    
“Anything
you can tell me about the night she was taken—and the men who took her—would be
a big help. And just so we’re square, I don’t share secrets. I don’t have to. I
don’t go after the bad guys, I just try to get back what they’ve stolen.”

    
During the ten minutes of intervening silence,
Raszer glanced about the room. There was nothing to evidence a young man’s
presence: no trophies, no Xbox, no pinup girls or rap stars or Lakers posters.
The only thing on the walls was a single black stripe at a height of about
forty inches, spray-painted from corner to corner and running just over the top
of Emmett Parrish’s head. It seemed to Raszer to define a safety zone of some
sort, and if so, he was out of it—either threatened or threatening.

    
“You’ve
got a good idea there,” he said, slipping off the bed and onto the floor, about
five feet away from the boy. He took off his jacket and pulled his black
T-shirt over his head. “It’s cooler down here on the floor. A lot cooler
without clothes. Don’t take it wrong if I join you. It’s just . . . well, we
could be here for a while.”

    
Emmett
didn’t flinch as Raszer tossed his jacket and T-shirt on the bed, and made only
the faintest grunt when he unsnapped his jeans and stripped down to his shorts.

    
“You’re
a briefs man, huh?” said Raszer, indicating the boy’s underwear. “I used to be.
Even used to wear those bikini ones for a while. Now, I find most women prefer
boxers. I dunno, maybe they’re less obvious.”

    
Emmett
shot a sidelong glance at Raszer’s shorts. His eyes seemed to widen when he saw
that they were a green-gold paisley print. Raszer scooted a few inches closer.
Without warning, the boy put a hand inside his own underwear and began to play
with himself, like a squid threatening to release his ink of invisibility.

    
“I have
this superstition,” Raszer said, “that every time you fake it, you get one less
for real. You go ahead, though, if you’ve got the urge.”

    
Emmett
paused for a moment, leaving his hand where it was.

    
“I met
someone who knows you,” said Raszer. “A very pretty Middle Eastern girl by the
name of Layla. I gather she was Johnny Horn’s girl for a while.”

    
The
boy’s wide mouth gaped just slightly.

    
“I
gather also that before she was Johnny’s, she belonged to the men you saw take
Katy. And that there was some kind of . . . arrangement.”

    
The
breath whistled out over Emmett’s dry lips.

    
“But you
didn’t tell the police about her.”

    
Emmett
shifted left to reclaim his distance from Raszer.

    
“That
puzzles me, because she would have been their strongest lead to the kidnappers.
To the men who killed your friends. Without her, all we’ve got are four
phantoms in a black Lincoln who almost come off like heroes, by your account.”

    
“No,”
Emmett said, from the back of his throat.

    
“No,
what?” asked Raszer.

    
“Wasn’t
like that,” said Emmett.

    
“What
was it like?”

    
“Fucked
up,” said Emmett. For a few moments, he locked onto Raszer’s right eye like a
homing signal, then shuddered and said, “Oh, shit.”

    
“What is
it, Emmett?”

    
“You’ll
get inside me, won’t you?”

    
“No,”
said Raszer. “I can’t do that, and I wouldn’t if I could. But I think it might
be a good idea for you to come outside for a while. It must be pretty scary in
there.”

    
“I feel
naked.”

    
“You are
naked, Emmett, but so am I.”

    
“You can
see me?”

    
“Yes, I
can, Emmett. You’re real as rain.”

    
Once
again, the boy locked on, eye to eye with his visitor, and this time, he passed
something across the space between them. Raszer felt a muscle twitch.

    
“God is
great,” said Emmett, without inflection. “God is good.”

    
“Yes.”

    
“But God
went away, and the Devil owns the world.”

    
“It
seems that way sometimes,” said Raszer. “It must have that night.”

    
“To whom
shall we go?” said Emmett, parroting a Witness pitch line.

    
“John,
chapter six, verse sixty-eight,”
said
Raszer. “Good question. I think you can only answer it as a negative: not to
the Devil.”

    
“What if
the Devil pretends to be God?”

    
“That’s
the puzzle, isn’t it?” said Raszer. “But in a way, you solved it. God took a
powder. In the meantime, anyone who says he speaks for God is probably a liar.”
Raszer felt a current move across his scalp. A static charge built up in the
still, stale air, and he felt, more than heard, a
snap
.
“God speaks through
the ear of the heart.”

    
“Henry
Lee saw the Devil,” said Emmett. “So did Johnny. In Babylon.”

    
“He’s
playing both sides against the middle over there.”

    
“Johnny
said like you did. He said the only way to beat the Devil was to doubt
everything people said. Nothing is true—”

    
“Everything
is permitted,” said Raszer. “Except for one thing.”

    
“What?”

    
“Playing
God. What did you see that night, Emmett?”

    
“It was
really dark,” the boy said.

    
“Yes,
and foggy, too,” said Raszer. “But you saw the car come.”

    
“I was
in the woods. In the trees.”

    
Emmett
still had a hand on his genitals, but now more like a frightened child, or a
man facing death.
  

    
“You
were hiding.”

    
“Yes . .
. no. Henry showed me how to be invisible. Henry said there had to be a
witness.”

    
“A
witness to what, Emmett?”

    
“When he
called forth the servitor from the sigil. When the magic happened.”

    
Raszer’s
lower half became aware of a cold draft coming from under the bed, but in this
very awareness, he realized that this part of himself was detached from
whatever part was in contact with Emmett Parrish.

    
“What
kind of magic was Henry making?”

    
Emmett
glanced up at the black stripe that ran just over the crown of his head, then
looked at Raszer. “Can I tell you?” he asked. “You won’t say anything?”

    
“I won’t
say anything, Emmett. People wouldn’t understand.”

    
“To
protect Katy,” said Emmett. “Henry said that the s-servitor—the magical
Thought-Form—would make it so the men wouldn’t take her away. He had everything
prepared. He said they just had to do the sex thing, like in his book.”

    
“You
told the police it was rape.”

    
“Like
you said, people wouldn’t understand. It was pretend. But it was real. It was a
kind of . . .
acting
.”

    
“Was
Katy acting, too?”

    
“No.
Henry said that would mess it up. He said she had to think it was real. But
they got her all fucked up on GABA so she wouldn’t freak out.”

    
“GABA.
GHB, right?” said Raszer. “The stuff you mix up in a bottle?”

    
“Yeah.
It fucks you up good. Makes you all lovey. Then you pass out.”

    
“So
Johnny and Henry—and your friend Joseph—they knew the men were coming? And they
thought they could use magic to trump them? To protect Katy, kind of like”—Raszer
tapped his knuckles on the black stripe—“like this protects you.”

    
“Henry
did. But Henry said that when you make a servitor, if . . . if something goes
wrong or if you don’t finish the ritual, it can go against you. It’s s’posed to
go away when the magic is done, b-but if something happens . . . ” His cheek
twitched.

    
“The
entity you’ve created,” said Raszer, “can take on a life of its own, right?”