John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

I watched him go, then looked at Louis. He raised an eyebrow. “Guess I’m more famous than I thought.”

“Guess you are,” I said, and went after Woolrich.

I caught up with him on the street but he said nothing until we were seated and he had a beignet in front of him. He tore off a piece, sprinkling powdered sugar on his suit, then took a long gulp of coffee, which half drained the cup and left a brown stain along its sides. “C’mon, Bird,” he said. “What are you trying to do here?” He sounded weary and disappointed. “That guy, I know his face. I know what he is.” He chewed another piece of beignet.

I didn’t reply. We stared at each other until Woolrich looked away. He dusted sugar from his fingers and ordered another coffee. I had hardly touched mine.

“Does the name Edward Byron mean anything to you?” he said eventually, when he realized that Louis was not going to be a topic of discussion.

“It doesn’t ring any bells. Why?”

“He was a janitor in Park Rise. That’s where Susan had Jennifer, right?”

“Right.” Park Rise was a private hospital on Long Island. Susan’s father had insisted that we use it, arguing that its staff were among the best in the world. They were certainly among the best paid. The doctor who delivered Jennifer earned more in a month than I made in a year.

“Where’s this leading?” I asked.

“Byron was let go-quietly-following the mutilation of a corpse earlier this year. Someone performed an unauthorized autopsy on a female body. Her abdomen was opened and her ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed.”

“No charges were pressed?”

“The hospital authorities considered it, then decided against it. Surgical gloves with traces of the dead woman’s blood and tissue on them were found in a bag in Byron’s locker. He argued that someone was trying to frame him. The evidence wasn’t conclusive-theoretically, someone could have planted that stuff in his locker-but the hospital let him go anyway. No court case, no police investigation, nothing. The only reason we have any record of it is because the local cops were investigating the theft of drugs from the hospital around the same time, and Byron’s name was noted on the report. Byron was dismissed after the thefts began and they pretty much ceased, but he had an alibi each time there were found to be drugs missing.

“That was the last anyone heard of Byron. We have his Social Security number, but he hasn’t claimed unemployment, paid tax, dealt with state government, or visited a hospital since he was dismissed. His credit cards haven’t been used since October nineteenth, ninety-six.”

“What brings his name up now?”

“Edward Byron is a native of Baton Rouge. His wife-his ex-wife, Stacey-still lives there.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“We interviewed her yesterday. She says she hasn’t seen him since last April, that he owes her six months’ alimony. The last check was drawn on a bank in East Texas but his old lady thinks he may be living in the Baton Rouge area, or somewhere nearby. She says he always wanted to come back here, that he hated New York. We’ve also put out photos of him, taken from his employee record at Park Rise.”

He handed me a blown-up picture of Byron. He was a handsome man, his features marred only by a slightly receding chin. His mouth and nose were thin, his eyes narrow and dark. He had dark brown hair, swept from left to right. He looked younger than thirty-five, his age when the picture was taken.

“It’s the best lead we’ve got,” said Woolrich. “Maybe I’m telling you because I figure you have a right to know. But I’m telling you something else as well: you keep away from Mrs. Byron. We’ve told her not to talk to anyone in case the press get wind of it. Secondly, stay away from Joe Bones. His guy Ricky was caught on one of our taps swearing blue hell about some stunt you pulled today, but you won’t get away with it a second time.”

He laid some money on the table. “Your little team back there got anything that might help us?”

“Not yet. We figure a medical background, maybe a sexual pathology. If I get anything more, I’ll let you know. I’ve got a question for you, though. What drugs were taken from Park Rise?”

He tilted his head to one side and twisted his mouth slightly, as if debating with himself whether or not to tell me.

“Ketamine hydrochloride. It’s related to PCP.” I gave no indication that I already knew about the drug. The feds would tear Morphy a new asshole if they knew he had been feeding me details like that, although they must have already had their suspicions. Woolrich paused for a moment and then went on. “It was found in the bodies of Tante Marie Aguillard and her son. The killer used it as a form of anesthetic.”

He spun his coffee cup on its saucer, waiting until it came to rest with the handle pointing in my direction.

“Are you scared of this guy, Bird?” he asked quietly. “Because I sure am. You remember that conversation we had about serial killers, when I brought you to meet Tante Marie?”

I nodded.

“Back then, I thought I’d seen it all. These killers were abusers and rapists and dysfunctionals who had crossed some line, but they were so pathetic that they were still recognizably human. But this one…”

He watched a family pass by in a carriage, the driver urging the horse on with the reins while he gave them his own history of Jackson Square. A child, a small, dark-haired boy, was seated at the edge of the family group. He watched us silently as they passed by, his chin resting on his bare forearm.

“We were always afraid that one would come who was different from the others, who was motivated by something more than a twisted, frustrated sexuality or wretched sadism. We live in a culture of pain and death, Bird, and most of us go through life without ever really understanding that. Maybe it was only a matter of time before we produced someone who understood that better than we did, someone who saw the world as just one big altar on which to sacrifice humanity, someone who believed he had to make an example of us all.”

“And do you believe that this is him?”

“ ‘I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ Isn’t that what the Bhagavadgita says? ‘I am become Death.’ Maybe that’s what he is: pure Death.”

He moved toward the street. I followed him, then remembered my slip of paper from the previous night. “Woolrich, there is one more thing.” He looked testy as I gave him the references for the Book of Enoch.

“What the fuck is the Book of Enoch?”

“It’s part of the Apocrypha. I think he may have some knowledge of it.”

Woolrich folded the paper and put it in the pocket of his pants.

“Bird,” he said, and he almost smiled, “sometimes I’m torn between keeping you in touch with what’s happening and not telling you anything.” He grimaced, then sighed as if to indicate that this was something that just wasn’t worth arguing about. “Stay out of trouble, Bird, and tell your friends the same.” He walked away, to be swallowed up by the evening crowds.

I knocked on Rachel’s door, but there was no reply. I knocked a second time, harder, and I heard some noises from inside the room. She answered the door with a towel wrapped around her body and her hair hidden by a second, smaller towel. Her face was red from the heat of the shower and her skin glowed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot that you’d be showering.”

She smiled and waved me in.

“Take a seat. I’ll get dressed and let you buy me dinner.” She took a pair of gray pants and a white cotton shirt from the bed, picked some matching white underwear from her case, and stepped back into the bathroom. She didn’t close the door fully behind her so that we could talk while she dressed.