And the last thing that I saw as I lay there, my skull blazing with pain from the force of the Collector’s blow, was the image of John Grady trapped behind the glass of the mirror that the Collector had taken, screaming impotently as justice came for him at last.
Now that same mirror, charred and warped, lay beneath a deserted house, reflecting an assemblage of unrelated objects, tokens of other lives, of justice meted out by that emaciated figure. In the past, he had signed his name at least once as “Kushiel”: a black joke, the name stolen from hell’s jailer, but nevertheless a hint as to his nature, or what he believed to be his nature. I felt certain that each of the items in that old closet represented a life taken, a debt paid in some way. I recalled the stink that hung over the pit in the cellar. I should make the call, I thought. I should bring the cops down on him. But what could I say? That I smelled blood, yet there was no blood to be seen? That there was a closet of trinkets in the cellar, but with only a first name here, a date there, to connect them to their original owners?
And what were you doing down in the cellar, sir? You do know that breaking and entering is a crime, don’t you?
And there was another matter to be considered. I had encountered individuals in the past who were as dangerous as the Collector. Their natures, only some of which I could begin to explain or understand, had been corrupted, and they were capable of great evil. But the Collector was different. He was motivated by something other than a desire to inflict pain. He appeared to occupy a space beyond conventional morality, engaged in work that had no time for concepts of due process, of law or mercy. In his mind, those he sought had already been judged. He was merely executing the sentence. He was like a surgeon removing cancerous growths from the body, excising them with precision and casting the diseased parts into the fire.
Now he was manipulating Merrick, using him to draw unknown individuals from the shadows so that they might reveal themselves to him. Merrick had been in the house, if only for a time: the discarded pack and the rotting chicken told me as much. The Collector also smoked, but his tastes were a little more exotic than American Spirit. Through Eldritch, he had provided Merrick with a car, probably funds too, and also a place in which to stay, a base from which to operate but almost certainly with an injunction attached stipulating that he was not to enter any locked part of the house. And even if Merrick had disobeyed and made his way down to the cellar, would those items in the closet have meant anything to him? They would merely have appeared to be a random jumble, an eccentric amalgam of disparate items held in an old closet that vibrated to the touch, tucked into a corner of a cellar that reeked faintly of old, rotting things.
It was clear now that the Collector was looking for someone connected to Daniel Clay although, if Eldritch was to be believed, not Clay himself. There could be only one answer: he wanted those who had preyed on Clay’s patients, the men who, if I was right, were responsible for whatever had happened to Lucy Merrick. So Eldritch had been engaged to ensure that Frank Merrick was freed and pointed in the right direction, but Merrick was not the kind of man to report his every move back to an ancient lawyer in a paper-filled office. He wanted revenge, and the Collector must have known that, at some point, Merrick would move entirely beyond his control. He would have to be shadowed, his movements revealed, so that any information he gleaned would automatically be shared with the one who had freed him to conduct his search. And when the men he sought at last made their move, then the Collector would be waiting, for there was a debt to be paid.
But who was shadowing Merrick? Again, there seemed to be only one possible answer.
Hollow Men.
Angel seemed to be following some of my thoughts.
“We know where he is,” he said. “If he’s tied in with this, then we can find him if we need to.”
I shook my head.
“It’s a storehouse, nothing more. Merrick was probably allowed to use it for a while, but I’ll bet he never made it down to the cellar, and I’ll lay you another ten he never met anyone connected with the house apart from the lawyer.”
“The lock on the back door was new,” said Angel. “I could smell it. It had been changed recently, probably in the last day or two.”
“ Merrick ’s key privileges might have been taken away. I don’t think Merrick will care. It didn’t look like he’d been there in a while, and he’s the suspicious kind anyway. My guess is that he cut himself loose as soon as he could. He wouldn’t want the lawyer to be able to keep tabs on him, but he had no idea who was bankrolling his search. If he did, he’d never have gone anywhere near that house.”
“But we’re still ahead of this guy, right? We left that place just like we found it. We know he’s involved, but he doesn’t know that we know.”
“The fuck are you?” said Louis. “Nancy Drew? Let him come. He’s a freak. We had our share of freaks before. One more ain’t goin’ to cap-size our boat.”
“This one’s not like the rest,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t take sides. He doesn’t care. He just wants what he wants.”
“Which is?”
“To add to his collection.”
“You think he wants Daniel Clay?” asked Angel.
“I think he wants the men who abused Clay’s patients. Either way, Clay is the key. The Collector is using Merrick to try to smoke them out.”
Louis shifted in his seat. “What are the options on Clay?”
“Same as on everyone else: he’s either alive, or he’s dead. If he’s dead, then either he killed himself, like his daughter suspects, in which case the question is why did he do it, or someone helped him along to the same end. If he was murdered, then it’s possible that he had some idea of the identities of the men who were abusing those children, and they killed him to keep him quiet.
“But if he’s alive, then he’s concealed himself well. He’s been disciplined. He hasn’t contacted his daughter, or she says that he hasn’t, which isn’t the same thing at all.”
“You takin’ her word for it, though,” said Louis.
“I’m inclined to believe her. There’s also the Poole thing. She hired Poole to see if he could find her father, and Poole didn’t come back. According to O’Rourke in the Portland P.D., Poole was an amateur, and he may have made some bad friends. His disappearance might not be linked to Clay’s, but if it is, then either his questions brought him into contact with the men who killed Clay, and Poole died for his trouble, or he found Clay, and Clay killed him. In the end, there are only two possibilities: Clay is dead, and nobody wants questions asked, or he’s alive and doesn’t want to be found. But if he wants to stay hidden badly enough to kill someone in order to protect himself, then what is he protecting himself from?”
“It comes back to the children,” said Louis. “Dead or alive, he knew more than he was telling about what happened to them.”
We were at the Scarborough exit. I took it and followed Route 1, then headed for the coast through moonlit marshes, toward the dark, waiting sea beyond. I drove past my own house, and Rachel’s words came back to me. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was haunting myself. It wasn’t a very consoling thought, but neither was the alternative: that, as at the Grady house, something had found a way to fill those spaces that remained.
Angel saw the way I looked at my home. “You want us to come in for a while?”
“No, you’ve paid for your fancy room at the inn. You’d better enjoy it while you can. They don’t do fancy up in Jackman.”