John Connolly - The Lovers

T HE GIRL’S BODY HADbeen wrapped in plastic sheeting, then weighted with a rock and dumped in a pond. It was discove SIt Ä[1]‡red when a cow slipped into the water and one of its legs became tangled on the rope securing the plastic. As the cow, a Horned Hereford of no small value, was hauled from the pond, the body came with it.

Almost as soon as it was found, the locals in the small southern Idaho town of Goose Creek knew who it was. Her name was Melody McReady, and she had disappeared two years earlier. Her boyfriend, Wade Pearce, had been questioned in connection with her disappearance and, although the police had subsequently ruled him out as a suspect, he had killed himself one month after Melody went missing, or so the official version went. He had shot himself in the head, even though he didn’t appear to own a gun. Then again, people said, there was no understanding the nature of grief-or guilt, for there were those who felt that, regardless of anything the cops might have said, Wade Pearce had been responsible for whatever happened to Melody McReady, although such suspicions owed more to a general dislike of the Pearce family than to any real evidence of wrongdoing on Wade’s part. Still, even those who believed Wade was innocent weren’t too sorry when he shot himself, because Wade was a vicious jerk, just like the rest of the men in his family. Melody McReady had ended up with him because her own family was almost as screwed up as his was. Everybody knew that it would end in tears. They just hadn’t expected bloodshed too, and a body eventually dragged from still waters on the leg of a cow.

DNA tests were conducted on the remains to confirm the identity of the young woman, and to find any possible traces left by whoever had killed her and dumped her in old Sidey’s pond, although the investigators were skeptical of anything useful being revealed. Too much time had gone by, and the body had not been sealed in the plastic, so the fish and the elements had had their way with her.

To their surprise, then, one usable print was recovered from the plastic. It was submitted to AFIS, the FBI’s fingerprint identification system. The detectives investigating the discovery of the body then sat back to wait. AFIS was overburdened by submissions from law enforcement agencies, and it could take weeks or months for a check to be conducted, depending upon the urgency of the case and the extent of the AFIS workload. As it happened, the print was checked within two weeks, but no match was found. Along with the print had come a photograph of a mark that had been found carved on a rock by the pond, a photograph that eventually found its way to Unit Five of the agency’s National Security Division, the arm of the FBI responsible for collecting intelligence and carrying out counterintelligence actions related to national security and international terrorism.

Unit Five of the NSD was nothing more than a secure computer terminal in the New York field office at Federal Plaza. Its recent NSD designation, and the new title of Unit Five that came with it, were both flags of convenience, approved by the Office of the General Counsel in order to ensure that cooperation from law enforcement was swift and unconditional. Unit Five was responsible for all inquiries linked, however peripherally, to the investigation into the actions of the killer known as the Traveling Man, the individual responsible for the deaths of a number of men and women at the end of the 1990s, among them Susan and Jennifer Parker, wife and daughter of Charlie Parker. Unit Five had, over time, also absorbed earlier information on the death of a man named Peter Ackerman in New York in the late sixties, the shooting of an unidentified woman at Gerritsen Beach some months later, and the Pearl River killings involving William Parker, information that had been assembled by an ASAC, an assistant special agent in charge of the New York field office and R Q office asubsequently passed on to one of his successors. In addition, its files contained all known material on the cases with which Charlie Parker had been involved since he became a PI.

Other agencies, including the NYPD, were aware of Unit Five designations, but ultimately only two people had full access to the unit’s records: the special agent in charge of the New York field office, Edgar Ross, and his assistant, Brad. It was this assistant who, twenty minutes after the initial referral, knocked on his boss’s door with four sheets of paper in his hands.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said.

Ross looked up as Brad closed the door behind him.

“I never like anything that you tell me. You never bring good news. You never even bring coffee. What have you got?”

Brad seemed reluctant to hand over the papers, like a child concerned about submitting flawed homework to his teacher.

“Fingerprint request submitted to AFIS, taken from a body dump in Idaho. Local girl, Melody McReady. She disappeared two years ago. Body was found in a pond, wrapped in plastic. The print came from the plastic.”

“And we got a match?”

“No, but there was something else: a photograph. That started ringing bells.”

“Why?”

Brad looked uneasy. Despite the fact that he had been with his boss for almost five years now, everything to do with Unit Five made him uneasy. He’d read details of some of the other cases that had been automatically flagged for the unit’s attention. Without exception, every one of them gave him the creeps. Similarly without exception, every one of them seemed to involve, peripherally or directly, the man named Charlie Parker.

“The prints didn’t match, but the symbol did. It’s been found on two earlier bodies. The first was the corpse of an unknown woman fished from the Shell Bank Creek in Brooklyn over forty years ago, after she was shot by a cop. She was never identified. The second match comes from the body of a teenage girl killed in a car at Pearl River about twenty-six years ago. Her name was Missy Gaines: a runaway from Jersey.”

Ross closed his eyes and waited for Brad to continue.

“Gaines was shot by Charlie Parker’s father. The other woman was killed by his father’s partner sixteen years earlier.”

Now, reluctantly, he proffered the papers. Ross examined the symbol on the first sheet from the McReady body dump and compared it to the symbol from the earlier killings.

“Aw, hell,” he said.

Brad reddened, even though he knew that he was not to blame for what was to come. “It gets worse. Look at the second sheet. This was found hacked into a tree near the body of a kid called Bobby Faraday.”

This time Ross swore more forcefully.

“The third one was cut into the wood beside the back door of the Faraday house. It was assumed R Q was assu that they’d killed themselves, but the chief, a guy named Dashut, didn’t seem so sure. Took them five days to find it.”

“And we’re only getting it now?”

“State police never passed it on. They’re kind of territorial out there. Eventually, Dashut just got tired of the lack of progress and went over their heads.”

“Get me every piece of paper you can find on the McReady girl and the Faradays.”

“Already on their way,” said Brad. “They should be here within the hour.”