John Connolly - The Unquiet

“You know about computers?” asked Ricky.

“Not much,” said the man. “That kind of thing passed me by. You got pictures on there?”

Ricky swallowed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do. You don’t want to be lying to me, now. You do that and, well, I’m likely to lose my temper with you, yes sir, and seeing as how I have a gun and you don’t, I don’t think that would be in your best interests. So I’ll ask you again: you got pictures on there?”

Ricky, realizing that a man who asked a question like that already knew the answer, decided to be honest.

“Maybe. Depends what kind of pictures you want.”

“Oh, you know the kind. Girlie pictures, like in the magazines.”

Ricky tried to breathe a sigh of relief without actually appearing to do so.

“Sure, I got girlie pictures. You want me to show you?”

The man nodded, and Ricky was relieved to see him tuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers. He sat down at his keyboard and brought the equipment back to life. Just before the screen began to glow he saw the man approach him from behind, his figure reflected in the dark. Then images began to appear: women in various stages of undress, in various positions, performing various acts.

“I got all kinds,” said Ricky, stating the obvious.

“You got ones of children?” said the man.

“No,” Ricky lied. “I don’t do kids.”

The man let out a warm breath of disappointment. It smelled of cinnamon gum, but it couldn’t hide the mixed scents that the man exuded: cheap cologne and a stink that was uncomfortably reminiscent of parts of the chicken factory.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” he asked.

“Came out of my mother this way. It don’t work.”

“You still got feeling in it?”

“Oh yeah, it just ain’t no good for-”

Ricky didn’t get to finish the sentence. There was a searing red-hot pain in his upper arm. He opened his mouth to scream, but the man’s right hand clamped tightly across his face, smothering the sound while his left worked a long, thin blade into Ricky’s flesh, twisting as he went. Ricky bucked in the chair, his screams filling his own head but emerging into the night air as only the faintest of moans.

“Don’t play me for a fool,” said the man. “I warned you once. I won’t warn you again.”

And then the blade was plucked from Ricky’s arm, and the hand released its grip upon his face. Ricky arched back in his chair, his right hand moving instinctively to the wound, then immediately distancing itself from it again as the pain intensified at the touch. He was crying, and he felt ashamed for doing so.

“I’ll ask you one more time: you got pictures of children on there?”

“Yes,” said Ricky. “Yes. I’ll show you. Just tell me what you want: boys, girls, younger, older. I’ll show you anything, but please don’t hurt me again.”

The man produced a photograph from a black leather wallet.

“You recognize her?”

The girl was pretty, with dark hair. She was wearing a pink dress, and had a matching ribbon in her hair. She was smiling. There was a tooth missing from her upper jaw.

“No,” said Ricky.

The blade moved toward his arm again, and Ricky almost screamed his denial this time. “No! I’m telling you I don’t know her! She’s not on there. I’d remember. I swear to God, I’d remember. I got a good memory for these things.”

“Where do you get these pictures from?”

“From Boston, mostly. They send them to me. Sometimes I have to scan them in, but usually they’re already on disk. There are films too. They come on computer disks or DVDs. I just put them on the sites. I’ve never hurt a child in my life. I don’t even like that stuff. All I do is what I’m told to do.”

“You said ‘mostly.’”

“Huh?”

“You said ‘mostly’ you get them from Boston. Where else?”

Ricky tried to find a way to lie, but his brain wasn’t working right. The pain in his arm was dulling slightly, but so was his mind. He felt sick and wondered if he was going to faint.

“Sometimes, other people used to bring me stuff,” he said. “Not so much anymore.”

“Who?”

“Men. A man, I mean. There was a guy, he brought me some good material. Videos. That was a long time ago. Years.”

Ricky was lying by omission. Strangely, the pain in his arm was helping him to keep his head clear by forcing him to recognize the possibility that more pain might be to come if he did not play this the right way. True, the man had brought him material, clearly home-filmed but of unusually high quality, even if it was a little static in its camera movements, but it was as a goodwill gesture. He was one of the first who had approached Ricky directly in the hope of renting a child for a few hours, referred to him by a mutual acquaintance in that part of the state, a man well known to those with such proclivities. The gentlemen in Boston had told him that it would happen, and they had been right.

“What was his name?”

“He never told me his name, and I didn’t ask. I just paid him. It was good stuff.”

More half-truths, more lies, but Ricky was confident in his abilities. He was far from stupid, and he knew it.

“You weren’t afraid that he was a cop?”

“He wasn’t no cop. You only had to take one look at him to know that.”

Snot dribbled from his nose, mingling with his tears.

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know. Up north, somewhere.”

The man was watching Ricky carefully and caught the way his eyes shifted again as he lied. Dave “The Guesser” Glovsky might almost have been proud of him at that moment.

“You ever hear tell of a place called Gilead?”

There was the “tell” again, the body betraying the difficulty the brain felt in disguising the lie.

“No, I never did, unless it was at Sunday school when I was a kid.”

The man was silent for a time. Ricky wondered if that had been a lie too far.

“You got a list of people who pay for all this?”

Ricky shook his head.

“It’s done through credit cards. The men in Boston take care of it. All I have is email addresses.”

“And who are these men in Boston?”

“They’re Eastern Europeans, Russians. I only know first names. I have some numbers to call if there’s trouble.”

Ricky swore. He thought he had made a mistake by telling his assailant once again that there would be repercussions for hurting him, that of course he would have someone to call if the operation was threatened. Ricky didn’t want the man to be reminded that it might be better not to leave him alive. The man seemed to understand Ricky’s concerns.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you’ll be expected to call them about this. I figured they’d hear about it one way or the other, uh-huh. It don’t bother me none. Let ’ em come. You can get rid of that stuff on your screen now.” As he spoke, he picked up a cushion.

Ricky swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly in gratitude. He turned back to his computer and began clearing it of the images. His lips parted.

“Thank-”

The bullet blew a big hole in the back of Ricky’s head, and tore a bigger one in his face as it exited. It shattered the screen, and something in the monitor exploded with a dull pop and began to burn acridly. Blood hissed and bubbled in the exposed workings. The ejected shell casing had bounced off a filing cabinet and lay close to Ricky’s chair. Its position was almost too good, so the visitor tapped it with the side of his foot, sending it sliding over toward the trash basket. There were prints on the linoleum from his boots, so he found a rag in a closet, placed it on the floor, and used his right foot to erase the marks. When he was satisfied that all was clean, he opened the door slightly and listened. The sound of the gunshot had been loud, despite the cushion, but the trailers on either side of Ricky Demarcian’s were both still dark, and elsewhere he could see the glow of TVs, could even hear what they were showing. He left the trailer, closing the door behind him, then disappeared into the night, pausing only at a gas station along the way to report a shot fired at Tranquility Pines, and a glimpse of what looked like an old Mustang speeding away from the scene.