John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

I heard the buzzer sound in my apartment upstairs. I dropped the phone to the floor and drew the Smith & Wesson from my holster. I took the remaining steps two at a time, racing down the stairs with adrenaline pumping through my system. My neighbor Mrs. D’Amato, startled by the noise, stood at her apartment door, the one nearest the front entrance, a housecoat held tight at her neck. I rushed past her, wrenched open the door, and came out low, my thumb already clicking down the safety.

On the step stood a black child of no more than ten years, a cylindrical, gift-wrapped parcel in his hand and his eyes wide in fear and shock. I grabbed him by the collar and flung him inside, shouting for Mrs. D’Amato to hold him, to get both of them away from the package, and ran down the steps of the redbrick and on to the street.

It was deserted except for the papers and the rolling cans. It was a strange desertion, as if the East Village and its inhabitants had conspired with the Traveling Man against me. At the far end of the street, beneath the streetlight, a telephone booth stood. There was no one there and the handset was hanging in its place. I ran toward it, moving away from the corner wall as I approached in case anyone was waiting at the other side. Here, the street was alive with passersby, gay couples hand in hand, tourists, lovers. In the distance I saw the lights of traffic and I heard around me the sounds of a safer, more mundane world I seemed to have left behind.

I spun at the sound of footsteps behind me. A young woman was approaching the telephone, fumbling in her purse for change. She looked up as she saw me approach and backed off at the sight of the gun.

“Find another,” I said. I took one last look around, clicked the safety, and stuck the gun in the waistband of my pants. I braced my foot against the pillar of the phone booth and with both hands I wrenched the connecting cable from the phone with a strength that was not natural to me. Then I returned to my apartment house, carrying the receiver before me like a fish on the end of a line.

Inside her apartment Mrs. D’Amato was holding the kid by his arms while he struggled and fought, with tears rolling down his cheeks. I held his shoulders and squatted down to his level.

“Hey, it’s okay. Take it easy. You’re not in any trouble, I just want to ask you some questions. What’s your name?”

The boy quieted down a little, although he still shook with sobs. He glanced around nervously at Mrs. D’Amato and then made an attempt to break for the door. He nearly made it, too, his jacket slipping from his body as he pulled out his arms, but the force of his efforts made him slip and fall and I was on him. I hauled him to a chair, sat him down, and gave Mrs. D’Amato Walter Cole’s number. I told her to tell him it was urgent and to get over here fast.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Jake.”

“Okay, Jake. Who gave you this?” I nodded toward the parcel that stood on the table beside us, wrapped in blue paper decorated with teddy bears and candy canes, and topped with a bright blue ribbon.

Jake shook his head, the force sending tears flying off in both directions.

“It’s all right, Jake. There’s no need to be scared. Was it a man, Jake?” Jake, Jake. Keep using his name, calm him, get him to concentrate.

His face swiveled toward me, the eyes huge. He nodded.

“Did you see what he looked like, Jake?”

His chin crumpled and he started to cry in loud sobs that brought Mrs. D’Amato back to the kitchen door.

“He said he’d hurt me,” said Jake. “He said he’d cu-cut my face off.”

Mrs. D’Amato moved beside him and he buried his face in the folds of her housecoat, wrapping his small arms around her thick waist.

“Did you see him, Jake? Did you see what he looked like?”

He turned from the housecoat.

“He had a knife, like doctors use on TV.” The boy’s mouth hung wide with terror. “He showed it to me, touched me with it here.” He lifted a finger to his left cheek.

“Jake, did you see his face?”

“He was all dark,” said Jake, his voice rising in hysteria. “There was nuh-nuhthin’ there.” His voice rose to a scream: “He didn’t have no face.”

I told Mrs. D’Amato to take Jake into the kitchen until Walter Cole arrived, then sat down to examine the gift from the Traveling Man. It was about ten inches high and eight inches in diameter and it felt like glass. I took out my pocket knife and gently pulled back an edge of the wrapping, examining it for wires or pressure pads. There was nothing. I cut the two strips of tape holding the paper in place and gently removed the grinning bears, the dancing candy canes.

The surface of the jar was clean and I smelled the disinfectant he had used to erase any traces of himself. In the yellowing liquid it contained I saw my own face doubly reflected, first on the surface of the glass and then, inside, on the face of my once-beautiful daughter. It rested gently against the side of the jar, now bleached and puffy like the face of a drowning victim, scraps of flesh like tendrils rising from the edges and the eyelids closed as if in repose. And I moaned in a rising tide of agony and fear, hatred and remorse. In the kitchen, I could hear the boy named Jake sobbing, and mingled with his cries, I suddenly heard my own.

I don’t know how much time elapsed before Cole arrived. He stared ashen faced at the thing in the jar and then called Forensics.

“Did you touch it?”

“No. There’s a phone as well. The number matches the caller ID but there won’t be any traces. I’m not even sure he was at that phone: that number shouldn’t have come up on the cell phone ID. His voice was synthesized in some way. I think he was running his words through some form of sophisticated software, something with voice recognition and tone manipulation, and maybe bouncing it off that number. I don’t know. I’m guessing, that’s all.” I was babbling, words tripping over one another. I was afraid of what might happen if I stopped talking.

“What did he say?”

“I think he’s getting ready to start again.”

He sat down heavily and ran his hand over his face and through his hair. Then he picked up the paper by one edge with a gloved hand and almost gently used it to cover the front of the jar, like a veil.

“You know what we have to do,” he said. “We’ll need to know everything he said, anything at all that might help us to get a lead on him. We’ll do the same with the kid.”

I kept my eyes on Cole, on the floor, anywhere but on the table and the remains of all that I had lost.

“He thinks he’s a demon, Walter.”

Cole looked once again at the shape of the jar.

“Maybe he is.”

As we left for the station, cops milled around the front of the building, preparing to take statements from neighbors, passersby, anyone who might possibly have witnessed the actions of the Traveling Man. The boy, Jake, came with us, his parents arriving shortly after with that frightened, sick look that poor, decent people get in the city when they hear that one of their children is with the police.

The Traveling Man must have been following me throughout the day, watching my movements so he could put into action what he had planned. I traced back my movements, trying to remember faces, strangers, anyone whose gaze might have lingered for just a moment too long. There was nothing.

At the station, Walter and I went through the conversation again and again, pulling out anything that might be useful, that might stamp some distinguishing feature on this killer.

“You say the voices changed?” he asked.

“Repeatedly. At one point, I even thought I heard Jennifer.”

“There may be something in that. Voice synthesis of that kind would have to be done using some sort of computer. Shit, he could simply have routed the call through that number, like you said. The kid says he was given the jar at four P.M. and told to deliver it at four-thirty-five P.M. exactly. He waited in an alley, counting the seconds on his Power Rangers digital watch. That could have given this guy enough time to get to his home base and bounce the call. I don’t know enough about these things. Maybe he needed access to an exchange to do what he did. I’ll have to get someone who knows to check it out.”