Randall Haight lived southeast of town. He’d given me clear directions, and I remembered his car from his visit to Aimee’s office. He came to the door as I pulled into the yard. His pale-pink shirt was open at the neck, and he wore suspenders instead of a belt. His pants were high on his waist, and tapered at the leg, offering a glimpse of sensible tan socks. There was an element of the old-fashioned about his appearance, but not studiedly so. It was not an affectation; Randall Haight was simply a man who took comfort in older things. He did not step down into the yard, but waited for me to reach the door. Only then did he remove his hands from his pockets to shake my hand. He was chewing at the inside of his lower lip, and he snatched his hand back after only the merest contact. His reluctance to have me in his house was palpable, but so was his greater unhappiness at what was happening to him.
‘Is something wrong, Mr. Haight?’
‘I got another package,’ he said. ‘I found it in my box this morning.’
‘A photograph?’
‘No, different. Worse.’
I waited for him to invite me into the house, but he did not, and his body continued to block the door.
‘Are you going to show me?’ I asked.
He struggled to find the right words.
‘I don’t have many visitors,’ he said. ‘I’m a very private man.’
‘I understand.’
He seemed about to say more. Instead, he stepped aside and extended his left hand in a robotic gesture of admittance.
‘Then, please, come in.’
But he said it with resignation, and with no hint of welcome.
If Haight was, as he said, a private man, then it appeared that he had little about which to be private. His home had all the personal touches of a show house: tasteful, if anonymous, furniture; timber floors covered with rugs that might have been Persian but probably weren’t; dark-wood shelves that hadn’t come from Home Depot but from one of the better mid-price outlets, in all likelihood the same place that had supplied the couch and chairs, and the cabinet in which sat the TV, a big gray Sony monster with a matching DVD player beneath, and a cable box. The only individual touch came from a pair of paintings on the wall. They were abstract, and original, and looked like a slaughterhouse yard, all reds and black and grays. There was one above the couch, and another above the fireplace, so it was hard to see where someone might sit without looking at one or the other. Haight spotted the direction of my gaze and picked up on my involuntary spasm of revulsion.
‘They’re not to everyone’s taste,’ he said.
‘They certainly make a statement,’ I replied, the statement being ‘I killed him, Officer, and spread his guts on a canvas.’
‘They’re the only things in and of this house that have increased in value over the last couple of years. Everything else has tanked.’
‘And you an accountant. I thought you’d be better prepared for the recession.’
‘I suppose it’s like doctors trying to diagnose their own ailments. It’s easier to find the flaws in others than to figure out what’s wrong with yourself. Can I offer you a drink, or coffee?’
‘Nothing, thanks.’
I took in the books on the shelf. They were mostly non fiction, with an emphasis on European history.
‘Are you a frustrated historian?’ I asked.
‘It’s an escape from what I do for a living. I’m curious about strategy and leadership. To be honest, I don’t see many effective examples of either in the business world. Please, sit.’
I headed for the couch that faced the TV, but he looked flustered and suggested that I take one of the armchairs instead, then waited until I was seated before lowering himself into his own chair. It was the only item of furniture that showed any real sign of use. I could see the indentations of cups and glasses on the right arm, and a slight darkening of the fabric where Haight’s head had rested over the years.
For a couple of moments, neither of us spoke. I had the uncomfortable sense of being in the presence of someone who had recently been bereaved. The house spoke of absence, but I couldn’t tell whether I was just picking up on its relative lack of character or something deeper. Because, of course, nobody really lived here; Randall Haight owned it and put bad art on its walls, but Randall Haight was an artificial creation. Perhaps, at times, William Lagenheimer moved through its rooms, but William Lagenheimer didn’t exist either. He had disappeared from the world, and was now just a memory.
And all the time I was aware of Haight’s nervousness, although he tried to conceal it. His hands shook, and when he clasped his fingers to stop their movement the tension merely passed on to his right foot, which began to tap on the rug. I supposed that if I had once killed a child, and now felt that I was being targeted in the aftermath of another child’s disappearance, I would be nervous too.
Haight passed me a typed list of names detailing those individuals for whom he had recently begun to act as an accountant, and any new arrivals to Pastor’s Bay. I glanced at it, then put it aside. The names meant nothing to me for now.
‘What is it that you’ve been sent, Mr. Haight?’ I asked.
He swallowed hard, and shifted a battered art volume from the coffee table between us. Beneath it lay another brown cushioned mailer with a printed address label.
‘There was a disc. I’ve left it in my laptop so that you can see it, although it’s not the worst of what I found.’
He pushed the envelope toward me with his fingertips. I pried it open with the point of my pen so as not to contaminate it any further should it be required as evidence at some point. Inside I could see pieces of paper of various sizes, most of them glossy. They looked like more photographic prints.
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I said.
I went to my car and removed a box of disposable plastic gloves from the trunk. Haight hadn’t moved while I was gone. The light in the room changed slightly as the clouds moved outside, and I realized how ashen he was. He also appeared to be on the verge of tears.
I reached into the envelope and removed the images. They were all of a similar nature, and all featured young girls, none of them older than fourteen or fifteen, and some much younger than that. They had been photographed naked on beds, and on carpets, and on bare floors. Some of them were trying to smile. Most of them weren’t. The photographic paper was standard Kodak. It was possible that a computer expert might be able to tell the type of printer from which the images came, but that would be useful only in the event of a prosecution, assuming the individual responsible for creating the photos was found with the printer in his possession.
‘I don’t like that kind of thing,’ said Haight. ‘I’m straight, but they’re just children. I don’t want to look at naked children.’
There it was once again: that primness, that need to reassure the listener that the killing of a young girl had been a temporary deviation. He had not carried teenage desires for young girls into adult life. He was a normal man, with normal sexual inclinations.
‘And the disc?’ I said.
‘It arrived in the same envelope, wrapped in tissue.’
His laptop was on the floor beside his chair, already powered up and on sleep. Seconds later, I was looking at an image of an old barn door, but not the same one as last time. This door was painted a bright red. As the camera drew nearer, a gloved hand reached out and pulled open the door. The interior was dark until the camera light clicked on. There was straw on the stone floor, and I caught glimpses of empty cattle pens on either side.
The camera stopped midway down the barn’s central aisle and turned to the operator’s right. On the floor of one of the pens a set of girl’s clothing was laid out: a white blouse, a red-and-black checked skirt, white stockings, and black shoes. Their positions roughly corresponded to the dimensions of a girl’s body, the way a parent might lay out a day’s outfit for a young child, but they also gave the uncomfortable impression that the wearer had somehow disappeared, vanishing in an instant, drawn into the void as she was lying in place in the barn, staring up at wood, and cobwebs, and pigeons or doves, for I could now hear the birds cooing softly in the background.