John Connolly - The Unquiet

I was parked by the side of a gas station about fifty feet west of Lang’s drive, drinking coffee and reading the Press Herald. There was a Dunkin’ Donuts attached to the gas station, with seating for only a handful of customers, which meant that it wasn’t unusual to see people eating in their cars. It meant that I wasn’t likely to stand out while I was watching Lang’s place. After an hour, Lang emerged from the trailer, and the patch of silver started to move as he turned onto the main road and headed in the direction of Bath. Seconds later, Louis and Angel followed him in the Lexus. I had my cell phone close to hand in case it turned out to be just a short trip, even though Lang had his toolbox with him when he was walking to his car. I still gave him a half hour, on the off chance that he decided to head back for some reason, then left my car where it was and cut through the trees to get to the trailer.

Lang didn’t seem to keep a dog, which was good news. It’s hard to perform a little breaking and entering while a dog is trying to rip your throat out. The trailer door didn’t look like much, but I still didn’t have Angel’s ability to pick a lock. Frankly, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and I didn’t want to spend half an hour squatting in front of Lang’s door, trying to open it with a pick and tension tool. I used to own an electric rake, which did the job just as well, but the rake got lost when my old Mustang was shot up a few years back, and I’d never bothered to replace it. Anyway, the only reason a private detective might keep a rake in his car would be in order to bust illegally into someone’s place, and if my car was searched for any reason by the cops it would look bad, and I might lose my license. I didn’t need Angel to help me break into Lang’s trailer, because I didn’t plan on leaving Lang in any doubt that his place had been searched. At the very least, it would rattle him, and I wanted him rattled. Unlike Caswell, Lang didn’t look like the kind of guy who was going to reach for a noose when things got tough. Instead, if Merrick ’s fate was any indication, he was the kind to lash out. The thought that Lang might not be guilty of anything never really crossed my mind.

For the purposes of breaking into Lang’s trailer, I had a crowbar under my coat. I forced it between the door and the frame of the trailer, then kept pushing until the lock broke. The first thing that struck me about the interior of Lang’s trailer was that it was stiflingly hot inside. The second was that it was tidy, and therefore not what I had expected from a single man’s trailer. To the left was a galley-style kitchen with a table beyond it, surrounded by a three-sided couch arrangement that took up the entire lower quarter of the trailer. To the right, just before the sleeping area, was a La-Z-Boy recliner and an expensive Sony wide-screen television, beneath which stood a matching DVD, a DVD recorder, and a twin VCR. There were tapes and DVDs on a shelf beside it: action movies, some comedies, even a couple of Bogart and Cagney classics. Under them was a selection of porn on both DVD and video. I glanced at some of the titles but they seemed like pretty average fare. There was nothing related to children, but then I supposed that most of the stuff involving children was probably packaged to look like something else anyway; that, or it was buried on other tapes or disks so that it would not be found in the event of a casual search. I turned on the TV and picked some of the porn at random, skipping forward in case anything unusual was to be seen, but it was just as advertised. I could have spent an entire day trying to go through all the movies in the hope that I might find something, but there didn’t seem to be much point. It was also kind of depressing.

Next to the TV was a Home Depot computer desk, and a new PC. I tried accessing the computer but it was password protected. I turned it off and went through the books on the shelves and the magazines stacked beneath a small corner table. Again, there was nothing, not even porn. It was possible that Lang had other material hidden elsewhere, but after searching the entire trailer, I couldn’t find any trace of it. All that was left was the laundry basket in the spotless bathroom, which seemed to be full of Lang’s dirty T-shirts, underwear, and socks. I tipped it onto the floor just in case, but all it left me with was a pile of stained clothing and the smell of stale perspiration. In every other way, Lang appeared to be clean. I was disappointed, and for the first time I started to doubt my actions in relation to him. Maybe I should have called the cops. If there was incriminating material on his computer, then they could have found it. I had also managed to contaminate the trailer, so that even if they found evidence that Lang had been involved in Merrick’s killing-a bloodstained baseball bat, or a splattered bar-it wouldn’t take much of a lawyer to argue that I could have planted the weapons, assuming I confessed what I knew to the cops. For the moment, it seemed like Lang was a dead end. I would just have to wait and see how he reacted to the break-in.

I looked out of the window to make sure there was nobody approaching, then opened the door and prepared to head back to my car. It was only when my foot touched the gravel, and I glanced at the picket fence, that I realized that, while I had searched the inside of the trailer, I hadn’t checked underneath. I went around to the rear, out of sight of the road, then knelt and squinted through the fencing.

There was a large metal container, seven or eight feet in length and four feet in height, under the trailer. It seemed to be bolted to the underside. I did a full circuit with the flashlight and could see no sign of a door, which meant that the only way in was through the trailer itself. I went back inside and examined the floor. It was carpeted from wall to wall in a thick brown fabric that looked like wet dog fur. I went over it with my fingers and felt rough patches and gaps. I dug my fingers into one of the gaps and pulled. There was the crackle of Velcro releasing, then the carpet came away. I was looking down at a two-foot-by-two-foot trapdoor, with locks at either side. I took off my coat and went to work with the crowbar, but this time it wasn’t as easy as it had been with the door. It was steel, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t raise it enough to press home the crowbar. I sat back down on the floor and considered my options. I could leave things as they were, replace the carpet, and try to come back another time, which would give Lang ample opportunity to remove anything incriminating once he realized that someone had broken into his place. I could call the cops, in which case I’d have to explain just what I thought I was doing busting into the man’s trailer to begin with. Assuming they were even able and willing to get a warrant to search Lang’s trailer, the metal box might just be storing the manuscript of his great novel, or his late mother’s dresses and jewelry, and I’d be facing jail time on top of everything else.

I called Angel.

“Where is he?”

“Bath Iron Works,” he said. “I can see him from where we are. Looks like there’s some problem with the monitors for their surveillance system. He’s checking cables and opening shit. Should be a while.”

“Disable his car,” I said. “Two tires should be enough. Then come back here.”

A half hour later, they were with me at Lang’s place. I pointed Angel to the door in the floor and he went to work. He didn’t speak once, not even when, five minutes later, he cracked the first lock and shortly after, the second. He didn’t speak when a flat metal storage shelf was revealed, containing unmarked videocassettes, DVDs, computer disks, and plastic files with transparent pages within, each page containing images of naked children, sometimes with adults and sometimes with other children. He didn’t speak when he released the shelf using a pair of clasps at either end, raising it up to uncover a boxlike cell in which was crouched a small girl wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets, her eyes blinking in the light, some old dolls scattered around her alongside chocolate bars, cookies, and a box of breakfast cereal. He didn’t speak when he saw the bucket she was forced to use as a toilet, or the circular opening in the wall, covered by a grille, that allowed air into the prison.