John Connolly - Bad Men

Lipska arrived forty minutes later and tried the buzzer. There was no reply. He tried twice more, then tested the door with his hand. It opened at his touch. He gestured to the boy waiting in the car, and the young man stepped out. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. He was shivering as he followed Lipska into the house.

The door to Barron’s apartment was open when they reached it. Lipska knocked once, then again, harder this time. The door unlatched beneath the pressure of his hand. Inside there was water on the floor; just a little, as if someone had left the shower or the bath without properly drying off first. To Lipska’s left, the bathroom door stood half open and he heard the sound of the tap dripping. The only light came from there.

“Barron?” he called. “Barron, man, you in there? It’s Lipska.”

He walked to the bathroom door and pushed it open. He took in the naked man, his knees above the surface of the water, his head below it, eyes and mouth open, one arm dangling over the edge of the tub; registered too the faint tang of saltwater that hung in the air.

He turned to the boy, who had remained standing at the door.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Don’t I get my money?” said the boy.

“I’ll give you your money,” said Lipska. “Forget you were ever here. Just forget you were ever here…”

Lipska led the boy down the stairs and out into the street, then stopped as two uniformed policemen advanced toward him, a plainclothes detective walking close beside them. Behind the cops, he saw the private detective named Charlie Parker leaning against a Mustang. Parker’s face was expressionless as the uniforms separated Lipska from the boy. Only when Lipska was cuffed did Parker step away from the car and join the cops.

“What’s this about?” said Lipska.

“I think you know what this is about,” said Parker.

“No,” said Lipska. “I don’t.”

Parker leaned in close to Lipska’s face.

“It’s about Barron,” he said. “It’s about children.”

Marianne looked out of the window to where the boy sat on the small wooden bench at the end of the garden. From that seat, it was possible to peer through the branches of the evergreens and catch glimpses of the sea beyond. She stood at the sink, her hands immersed in soapy water, and waited for him to move, but he did not.

He has not cried, she thought. He has not wept since the night Joe Dupree died. He has not asked that we leave this place, and for the present we cannot. They are still trying to work out what happened here. Men are dead, and the reporters have washed over the island like a flood, questioning anyone who will stand still long enough to talk to them. Two weeks have gone by, and still they ask questions.

So many had died because of her: Bonnie Claeson was dead, and Richie too. His body had been washed ashore the night after the blizzard, the body of another man joined with it, both impaled upon a single arrow. Joe Dupree, the man who had shared her bed, had been laid to rest the week before. She had wept by his grave, haunted by the thought that he had died believing that he had been used and that she had felt nothing at all for him. The police were unwilling to let her leave the state until they had finished their investigation, and so the bodies of Patricia and Bill remained on ice in a morgue until she could officially identify them. She had read of the discovery of Karen Meyer’s body in the newspapers. Marianne had brought death upon them all, and for that she could never forgive herself.

They had found her husband’s body two days before, buried in the remains of a network of tunnels beneath the site. It appeared that he had died in the collapse. The searchers discovered dirt in his mouth-dirt and human remains. There were finger bones lodged in his throat.

Throughout the days that followed, Sharon Macy had been her ally, her protector, the two women united by their experiences. The investigators had taken away the money, but she had been told quietly that no charges would be filed against her. The states of Maine and Virginia proved remarkably sympathetic to her plight, perhaps recognizing that a battered wife, fleeing her husband to save herself and her child, would sway even the most hardhearted of jurors.

But Danny concerned her most of all. He had suffered through a terrible ordeal, and had seen men die in front of him. She felt that she needed to get him away from the island and the memories it held for him in the hope that time and distance might fade them. They were seated at the breakfast table, and he was merely toying with his Cheerios when she’d brought the subject up for the first time.

“I don’t want to leave,” Danny replied. “I want to stay here.”

“But after all that has happened-”

“It doesn’t matter. The bad men are dead.”

“We may have to leave. People here may not want us to stay after what happened.”

“They won’t make us leave,” he said.

And now it was she who seemed to be the younger one, the child, and he the older one, the one offering reassurance.

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“Who told you?”

“Joe. He told me it would be okay.”

She let it rest then, not wishing to return either of them to the vision of the dying policeman on the floor, the ragged wound in his throat and his blood spilling across the tiles. It came to her at night, unbidden, just as she supposed that it came to Danny too. She would not allow it to torment her son’s waking moments as well.

But then Larry Amerling came to her, and he and Jack sat with her in her living room. Amerling told her that nobody on the island blamed her for what had happened, at least nobody who mattered, and that she couldn’t be held responsible for the actions of her husband. The deaths of Bonnie and Richie and Joe would remain with them always, and nobody who knew them would ever forget them, but they would not be brought back by forcing Marianne and Danny to leave.

“Joe cared for you, and I know Bonnie and Richie did too,” said Amerling. “Of all people, they would want you to stay.”

She cried and told them that she would think about it, but Jack, his right arm still in a sling, took her hand, and hushed her and told her that there was nothing to think about. Then Larry Amerling said something very strange.

“Maybe I’m just getting fatalistic in my old age, but I think that what happened was meant to happen,” he said. “Strange as it sounds, you and Danny were brought here for a reason, your husband too. There are things about that night that I don’t understand, and that I don’t want to understand. I’ve spoken to Officer Macy, to Linda Tooker and her sister, to old Doug Newton, and others too. A lot of people on this island have tales to tell about what they saw that night. You didn’t cause any of that. It was here, waiting. My guess is that it had been waiting for a long time for the chance to emerge. The island feels different now because of it. It’s been purged of something that’s troubled it, and it’s at peace. You should stay. You’re part of us. Sometimes I think you were always part of us.”

Now, as she stood watching her son, she wondered at the change that had come over him in recent days. He was quieter, more subdued, and that was to be expected. But rather than his confidence being shaken, or his becoming fearful of the world beyond the island, he seemed to have grown in assurance as a consequence of the events that had occurred. The night sounds that scared her did not trouble him, and he no longer even required his night-light to be left on, the little rocket that she had bought for him at Abacus in the Old Port for his last birthday. In truth, he now appeared happier in the darkness.