John Connolly - Nocturnes

“The cops?”

“No. Anyone asks, you tell them you’re here to do some work on the house and Matheson will back you up, but this place is pretty much invisible from the road so we shouldn’t be bothered. You two will take the lion’s share of the duty-twenty-four on, twelve off. There’s a motel about three miles out of town. I’ve rented a room there for the next week. This place has no hot water, and we can’t risk too many lights. There are blackout shades in the kitchen, so if you want to read, then that’s the place. There’s a radio and TV in there too.”

I led them to the back bedroom. There, a single window looked down upon the Grady house, framed by a gap in the trees. It would be hard for anyone to approach it from north, south, or east without being seen, and the west side of the house had no point of entry.

“There it is,” I said.

“You been in there?” asked Angel.

“Yes. Do you want to check it out?”

Among the items left by Matheson was a plan of the house. Louis spread it out on the floor and examined it.

“Is this accurate?”

I looked it over.

“Looks like it. There’s not much to add. Mirrors on the walls. Some old furniture, but most of it is stacked away, so the floors are clear.”

Louis shrugged. “Maybe we’ll take a look in daylight if we get bored.”

We watched the shape of the house, darker yet against the night sky.

“So we wait,” he said.

“We wait.”

Nothing happened that night. I drove home to Rachel after a couple of hours, then returned the following evening. It set the pattern for the week that followed. Sometimes I would stay with them for a couple of hours after they arrived to relieve me, sitting at the window and talking with Angel while Louis rested or read, the Grady house before us like a dark hand raised against the sky.

Conversations with Angel were not always a good idea.

“Are me and Louis the only gay men you know?” he asked, on the second night.

“You’re certainly the most irritating gay men I know.”

“We bring color into your life. Seriously, you got any other gay friends?”

I considered the question.

“I don’t know. It’s not like you all wear lavender loon pants and Village People T-shirts, or introduce yourselves with ‘Hey, I’m Dan and I’ll be your token homosexual for the evening.’ Just like I don’t walk up to people, shake their hands, and tell them, ‘I’m Charlie, and I’m proud to be a heterosexual.’ It worries people.”

“It would sure worry me.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be my target market.”

“You have a target market? What is it: the needy? Needy heterosexuals. ‘The Needy Heterosexuals.’ It sounds like a band.”

“Anyway, in answer to your question, I don’t know how many of my acquaintances are gay men. Maybe a couple. Plus I don’t have ‘gaydar.’ I think that’s a gay preserve.”

“I think gaydar’s a myth. It’s all kind of confusing, now that straight men are dressing nice and using skin care products. Kind of muddies the waters.”

I looked at him.

“But you’re a gay man and you don’t dress nice. Plus, if you use skin care products you’re using them on a part of your body that I can’t see, and you have no idea how happy I am to be able to say that.”

“You telling me I look straight? If I look straight, how come straight women never hit on me?”

“You’re lucky anybody ever hit on you, looking the way you do. Don’t blame straight women for keeping their distance.”

Angel grinned.

“But still, you’re happy to call me ‘friend.’ ” He reached over and patted my arm.

“I didn’t say I was happy about it, and get your hands off me. I have a suspicion about where they’ve been.”

He backed off.

“You and Rachel okay?” he asked.

“We had a scare the other night. She had pains. The doctors took a look at her and told her she was fine.”

“She was kind of funny with us. Distant.”

“It was a long night.”

“You sure that’s all it was?”

“Yes,” I said. “Pretty sure.”

When I was alone, I kept myself alert with a radio and caffeine, or cleared my head a little by taking a walk around the property when I was certain everything was quiet. Once or twice I saw Officer O’Donnell make a cursory check of the Grady house, but he didn’t even glance up at the farmhouse on the slope above.

On the seventh day, as I was heading home, I got a call from Detective Jeff Weis, the cop who had given me Voodoo Ray’s new bachelor address.

“Bet you didn’t have any luck finding Ray Czabo,” he said.

“How’d you know?”

“Because they just found him.”

I pulled over to the side of the road.

“Something tells me that he’s not about to be talking to me anytime soon.”

“Not unless you’re psychic. Somerset County Sheriff called it in about an hour ago. His body was buried over by Little Ferguson Brook, mile or two east of Harmony. Looks like he’s been there for a while, so you’re probably off the hook.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was on the hook.”

“There you go. You were innocent and you didn’t even know it.”

I thanked Weis for the tip, then got back on the road and headed for Harmony. It wasn’t too hard to find the location of the discovery. I just followed a state police patrol car until I came to a cluster of vehicles by a small metal bridge off Main Stream Road. I tried to pick out someone I might know, but they were all unfamiliar faces. Instead, I settled for showing my license to the Somerset County deputy who was trying to move me on, and asked to speak to the detective in charge. After a couple of minutes, a balding man in a blue Wind-breaker broke away from the group standing by the riverbank and came over to talk to me.

“Help you?” he said.

“Charlie Parker,” I said.

He nodded. One thing about gaining a reputation in Maine, for better or worse, was that most of the cops at least knew my name.

“Bert Jansen,” he said. “You’re off your turf.”

“I get around.”

I gestured toward the riverbank.

“I hear you may have found Ray Czabo.”

Jansen didn’t respond immediately, then seemed to decide “What the hell?” and echoed Ray’s name.

“What’s your interest in Czabo?”

“I went looking for him about a week ago. His wife said he’d moved out, but when I called by his new place there was no reply. I left my card. You’ll find it underneath his door when you search his apartment.”

“Why were you looking for him to begin with?”

I decided there was no percentage in not being open with Jansen.

“I’m working for a man named Matheson. His daughter died in the Grady house. Matheson thinks someone may be developing an unhealthy interest in the house, and the local cops told me that they’d rousted Ray from the property a couple of times. I wanted to ask him what he was doing, or what he might have seen when he was there.”

Jansen took out his notebook and began writing. “And this was when?”

“A week ago Wednesday.”

He made some more notes, then asked me if I minded hanging around for a while. I told him I had no problem with that.

“You have any idea how long he’s been down there?” I asked.

“Nope. My guess would be a week or more. He’s pretty bloated up.”

“Cause of death?”

“Shot in the head. Three close entry wounds, no exits. Scoop his brains out and you could use his head for a bowling ball. Probably a two-two.”

I’d never cared much for Ray Czabo, but he didn’t deserve to end up dead. Three shots to the head also sounded like overkill. One shot with a.22 will leave the bullet rattling around inside, tearing up tissue until it runs out of steam. Ray must really have annoyed someone to end up with three of them in his skull.