John Connolly - Dark Hollow

We entered through the front door. Ressler stood behind the desk, examining the jack on the telephone. Behind him was a second, younger patrolman whom I didn't recognize, probably another part-timer, and farther back again, standing across from the station house's two holding cells, was Jennings himself. In a chair beside the desk sat Walter Cole. He looked shocked at my appearance. I was kind of unhappy about it myself.

"The fuck do you want?" said Jennings, causing Ressler to rise from his position and cast a wary eye first over Louis and Angel, then me. He didn't look too happy at the sight of our guns and his hand hovered near his own side arm. His eyes widened a little as he saw the marks on my face and the blood on my clothing.

"What's wrong with the phones?" I returned.

"They're out," Ressler said, after a moment's pause. "All communications are down. Could be the weather."

I moved past him to the cells. One was empty. In the other, Billy Purdue sat with his head in his hands. His clothes were filthy and his boots were stained with mud. He had the haunted, desperate look of an animal caught in a snare. He was humming to himself, like a little boy trying to block out the world around him. I didn't ask Rand Jennings's permission to talk to him. I wanted answers, and he was the only one who could provide them.

"Billy," I said sharply.

He looked up at me. "I fucked up," he said, "didn't I?" Then he went back to humming his song.

"I don't know, Billy. I need you to tell me about the man you saw, the old man. Describe him to me."

Jennings's voice came from behind me. "Parker, get away from the prisoner."

I ignored him. "You listening to me, Billy?"

He was rocking back and forth, still humming, his hands wrapped around his body "Yeah, I hear you." He screwed his face up in concentration. "It's hard. I didn't but hardly see him. He was… old. "

"Try harder, Billy. Short? Tall?"

The humming started again, then stopped. "Tall," he said, during the pause. "Maybe as tall as me."

"Slim? Stocky?"

"Thin. He was a thin guy, but lean, y'know?" He stood, interested now, trying hard to picture the figure he had seen.

"What about his hair?"

"Shit, I don't know from hair…" He went back to his song, but now he added the words, only half forming some of them as if he was not entirely familiar with them.

"Come all you fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court your man …"

And I remembered the song at last: "Fair and Tender Ladies." Gene Clark had sung it, with Carla Olson, although the song itself was much older. With the recognition came the remembrance of where I had heard it before: Meade Payne had been humming it as he walked back to his house.

"Billy," I said. "Have you been out at Meade Payne's place?"

He shook his head. "I don't know no Meade Payne."

I clutched the bars of the cell. "Billy, this is important. I know you were heading out to Meade. You won't get him into trouble by admitting it."

He looked at me and sighed. "I didn't get out there. They picked me up before I even got into town."

I spoke softly and distinctly, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. "Then where did you hear that song, Billy?"

"What song?"

"The song you're humming, "Fair and Tender Ladies." Where did you hear it?"

"I don't recall." He looked away, and I knew that he did remember.

"Try."

He ran his hands through his hair, gripping the tangled locks at the back as if afraid of what his hands might do if he didn't find some way to occupy them, and began to rock back and forth again. "The old man, the one I saw at Rita's place, I think he might have been singing it to himself. I can't get the damned thing out of my head." He started to cry.

I felt my throat go dry. "Billy, what does Meade Payne look like?"

"What?" he asked. He looked genuinely puzzled. From behind me, I heard Jennings say: "I'm warning you for the last time, Parker. Get away from the prisoner." His footsteps sounded on the floor as he walked toward me.

"That's Meade over there, in that picture on the wall," said Billy, standing up as he spoke. He pointed to the framed photograph of three men which hung on the wall near the front desk, a similar version of that which hung in the diner but with only two faces instead of three. I walked over to it, nudging Rand Jennings out of my way as I went. In the middle of the group was a young man in a U.S. Marines uniform, his right arm around Rand Jennings, his left arm around an elderly man who grinned back with pride at the lens. A plaque below the photograph read "Patrolman Daniel Payne, 1967-1991."

Rand Jennings. Daniel Payne. Meade Payne. Except the old man in the picture was short, about five-six, stooped and gentle-eyed, with a crown of white hair surrounding a bald head marked with liver spots. His face was mapped with a hundred lines.

He was not the man I had met at the Payne house.

And slowly, tumblers began to fall in my mind.

Everybody had a dog. Meade Payne had mentioned it in his letter to Billy, but I had seen no dog when I was out there. I thought of the figure Elsa Schneider had seen climbing the drainpipe. An old man couldn't climb a drainpipe, but a young man could. And I recalled what Rachel had said about Judith Mundy, about her being used as breeding stock.

Breeding stock.

Breeding a boy.

And I remembered old Saul Mann, his hands moving over the cards, swiftly palming the lady, or slipping the pea from under a soda pop cap to take five bucks from a sucker. He never pushed them, never hailed them or tried to force them to come, because he knew.

Caleb knew Billy would come back to Meade Payne. Maybe he got Meade's name from Cheryl Lansing before he killed her, or it could have come up during Willeford's investigations. However he found out, Caleb knew that if he took away all the obstacles and all the options, Billy would have to turn to Meade Payne.

Because Caleb understood what con men and hunters all understood: that, sometimes, it's best to lay the bait, wait, and let the prey come to you.

I turned to find Jennings with his Coogan in his hand, pointing in my direction. I guessed that I had ignored him for just that little too long. "I'm tired of your shit, Parker. You and your buddies just drop your weapons and get on the ground," he said. "Now."

Ressler, too, drew his weapon and, in the rear office, the younger policeman was already holding a Remington pump to his shoulder.

"Looks like we just crashed a nervous cops' convention," said Angel.

"Jennings, I don't have time for this," I said. "You have to listen to me-"

"Shut up," said Jennings. "I'm telling you for the last time, Parker, put… " Then he stopped suddenly and looked at the gun in my belt.

"Where did you get that gun?" he asked, and menace stepped softly into his voice like a gunman at a funeral. He eased back the hammer on his pistol and took three steps toward me, his gun now inches from my face. He had now recognized the jacket and sweater as well. Behind me, I heard Angel sigh loudly.

"You tell me where you got that gun, dammit, or I'll kill you."

There was no good way to tell him what had taken place, so I didn't even try. "I was ambushed on the road. The old man who lived out by the lake, John Barley, he's dead. He died in my car. I was chased, I got to your house and Lorna gave me a gun. You may find some bodies in your living room when you get back but Lorna's okay. Listen to me, Rand, the girl-"

Rand Jennings let the hammer fall gently, hit the safety and then pistol-whipped me with the barrel of the gun, catching me a hard blow on the left temple. I staggered backward as he drew his arm back to hit me again, but Ressler intervened and caught his arm.