John Connolly - The Unquiet

“Sure. That figures. Maybe Jerry Legere came out here instead. I suppose the company will have to find someone else to take care of it, now that they’re both dead.”

Todd didn’t reply. He seemed about to walk me down to Harmon, but I told him it wasn’t necessary. He opened his mouth to protest, but I raised a hand, and he closed it again. He was smart enough to know that there was something going on that he didn’t fully understand, and the best thing to do might be to watch and listen, and intervene only if it became absolutely necessary. I left him on the porch and made my way across the grass. I passed Harmon’s kids on the way down as they headed back to the house. They looked at me curiously, and Harmon’s son seemed about to say something, but they both relaxed a little when I smiled at them in greeting. They were good-looking kids: tall, healthy, and neatly but casually dressed in various shades of Abercrombie amp;Fitch.

Harmon didn’t hear me approach. He was kneeling by an Alpine garden flower bed dotted with weathered limestone, the rocks sunk firmly into the ground, the grain running inward and the soil around them scattered with stone chips. Low plants poked through the gaps between the rocks, their foliage purple and green, silver and bronze.

My shadow fell across Harmon, and he looked up.

“Mr. Parker,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting company, and you sneaked up on my bad side. Nevertheless, now that you’re here, it gives me the chance to apologize for what I said to you on the telephone when last we spoke.”

He struggled a little to stand. I offered him my right hand and he took it. As I helped him up, I gripped his forearm with my left hand, forcing the sleeve of his shirt and his sweater up on his forearm. The claws of a bird were briefly revealed upon his skin.

“Thank you,” he said. He saw where my attention was directed, and moved to pull his sleeve back down.

“I never asked you how you damaged your hearing,” I said.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” he replied. “My left ear was always weaker than my right, the hearing just slightly worse. It wasn’t too serious, and it didn’t interfere any with my life. I wanted to serve in Vietnam. I didn’t want to wait for the draft. I was twenty, and full of fire. I was assigned to Fort Campbell for my basic training. I hoped to join the 173rd Airborne. You know, the 173rd was the only unit to make an airborne assault on an enemy position in Vietnam? Operation Junction City in sixty-seven. I might have made it over there too, except a shell exploded too close to my head during basic training. Shattered my eardrum. Left me near deaf in one ear and affected my balance. I was discharged, and that was as close as I ever got to combat. I was one week away from finishing basic.”

“Is that where you got the tattoo?”

Harmon rubbed his shirt against the place on his arm where the tattoo lay, but he did not expose the skin again.

“Yeah, I was overoptimistic. I put the cart before the horse. Never got to add any years of service underneath. I’m just embarrassed by it now. I don’t show it much.” He peered carefully at me. “You seem to have come here armed with a lot of questions.”

“I’ve got more. Did you know Raymon Lang, Mr. Harmon?”

I watched him think for a moment.

“Raymon Lang? Wasn’t he the guy who got shot up in Bath, the one who had the child stashed under his trailer? Why would I know him?”

“He worked for A-Secure, the company that installed your surveillance system. He did maintenance for them on cameras and monitors. I wondered if you might have met him in the course of his work.”

Harmon shrugged. “I might have. Why?”

I turned and looked back toward the house. Todd was talking with Harmon’s children. All three were watching me. I recalled a remark of Christian’s that a pedophile might prey on the children of others yet never make any approaches to his own children, that his family might remain entirely unaware of his urges, allowing him to preserve the image of a loving father and husband, an image that was, in a sense, simultaneously both the truth and a lie. When I had spoken to Christian, it was Daniel Clay whom I had in mind, but I had been wrong. Rebecca Clay knew exactly what her father was, but there were other children who did not. There might have been many men with tattoos of eagles on their left arms, even men who had abused children, but the links between Lang and Harmon and Clay, however tentative, could not be denied. How did it happen, I wondered? How did Lang and Harmon come to recognize something in each other, a similar weakness, a hunger that they both shared? When did they decide to approach Clay, using his access to target those who were particularly vulnerable, or those who might not be believed if they made allegations of abuse? Did Harmon bring up that drunken night when Clay had allowed him to abuse Rebecca as leverage against the psychiatrist, for Harmon had been the other man in the house on the night that Daniel Clay, for the first and last time, had shared his daughter with another, and had drunkenly allowed pictures to be taken of the encounter. If these were used carefully, Harmon could have destroyed Clay with them while making sure that his hands were clean. Even an anonymous mailing to the cops or the Board of Licensure would have been enough.

Or did Clay even have to be blackmailed? Did they share the evidence of their abuse with him? Was that how he fed his own hunger in those years after he ceased to torment his own daughter as she grew older, before the reemergence of those old urges that Rebecca saw in his face as her own child began to bloom?

I turned back to Harmon. His expression had changed. It was the face of a man who was calculating the odds, assessing his degree of risk and exposure.

“Mr. Parker,” he said, “I asked you a question.”

I ignored him. “How did you do it?” I continued. “What brought you together, you and Lang, and Caswell and Legere? Bad luck? Mutual admiration? What was it? Then, after Clay disappeared, your supply dried up, didn’t it? That was when you had to look elsewhere, and that brought you into contact with Demarcian and his friends in Boston, and maybe Mason Dubus too, or had you paid him a visit long before then, you and Clay both. Did you worship at his feet? Did you tell him about your ‘Project’: the systematic abuse of the most vulnerable children, the ones who were troubled, or whose stories were less likely to be believed, all targeted through Clay’s inside knowledge?”

“You be careful, now,” said Harmon. “You be real careful.”

“I saw a photograph,” I said. “It was in Lang’s trailer. It was a picture of a man abusing a little girl. I know who that girl was. The photo’s not much to go on, but it will be a start. I’ll bet the cops have all sorts of ways to compare a picture of a tattoo with an actual mark on skin.”

Harmon smiled. It was an ugly, malicious thing, like the opening of a wound upon his face.

“You ever find out what happened to Daniel Clay, Mr. Parker?” he said. “I always had my suspicions about his disappearance, but I never spoke them aloud out of respect for his daughter. Who knows what might turn up if I started poking around in corners? I might find pictures, too, and maybe I might recognize the little girl in them as well. If I looked hard enough, I might even recognize one of her abusers. Her father was a distinctive-looking man, all skin and bone. I discover something like that, and I might have to turn it in to the proper authorities. After all, that little girl would be a woman by now, a woman with troubles and torments of her own. She might need help, or counseling. All kinds of things might come out, all kinds. You start digging, Mr. Parker, and there’s no telling what skeletons could be exposed.”