Authors: John Connolly
Parker reached beneath his sweater, killed the connection on his phone, and removed the earphone with its little mike attachment. Louis emerged from the dunes to the south. He had already disassembled the rifle, and was carrying the case in his right hand. Moments later, Angel – who had been watching Werner for most of the day – drove down from his perch above the bay.
Parker stepped over Werner’s body, which was staining the sands red, and went to join the others. He didn’t want their footprints on the beach, even with the tide coming in. The police would have to be called, and his story had no hope of standing unless the only steps visible were Werner’s and his own.
‘I was hoping you could have shot to wound,’ said Parker to Louis.
‘Like the man said, that’s just for the movies.’
‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ said Parker. ‘He would have told us nothing.’
‘What did you want to know?’
‘What everyone wants to know: why.’
‘We could search his house,’ said Angel.
‘No. You don’t know what you’re looking for, and you’d need more time than I can give you. Just get going. Don’t drive through town. Head north, then cut southwest. Don’t stop. Just keep going.’
‘What will you tell them when you call it in?’ asked Louis.
‘Everything, except who fired the shot.’
‘Walsh will know.’
‘Did you write him a confession?’
‘Yeah, I signed my name on the sand, and left my card under a stone.’
‘Then let Walsh think what he wants.’
He handed Angel the burner phone. Louis did the same with his. Their use was at an end.
‘You’re going to be real popular here,’ said Angel.
‘It’s okay,’ said Parker. ‘I was leaving anyway.’
He made the call from the porch of the house, and returned to wait by Werner’s body for the first of the cars to arrive. The bullet had distorted Werner’s face. He was not the same man who had served soup and said prayers only a few nights earlier. Then again, he had never really been that man.
Stynes arrived first, Preston close behind. The sea was already lapping at Werner’s feet. They stared down at his body, then Stynes told Parker to raise his hands while Preston searched him. He was not carrying a gun. He had always had faith in Louis and Angel. Preston went to get some plastic sheeting from the car, in order to preserve whatever evidence might be left on Werner’s body.
‘Tell me what happened,’ said Stynes, and Parker did, or most of it.
‘And you want me to believe that you don’t know who fired the shot?’ she asked, when he was done.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You set yourself up as bait, and then you trapped him.’
‘Have you secured his house?’ asked Parker, ignoring her.
‘Answer me.’
‘I’ve told you all I know. Now: have you secured Werner’s house?’
‘Yes, we have an officer out there. What kind of amateurs do you think we are?’
‘You’ll need to search his property with ground-penetrating radar.’
‘Why?’
‘I think Oran Wilde is buried somewhere there.’
‘Did Werner tell you that?’
‘Call it an educated guess.’
Stynes was visibly reddening.
‘You might not have pulled the trigger, but you had this man killed.’
Parker leaned in closer to her.
‘Even if that were true, you knew what I was doing, and you let me stake myself out for whoever came.’
Stynes produced a pair of cuffs and told Parker to turn around.
‘I’m placing you under arrest,’ she said. ‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you …’
He looked out at the sea. He breathed in the salt air. His side still hurt, but he didn’t care. He wondered if his conversation with Baulman had been the final spur for Werner to move against him. Had all this been about Baulman? Ruth Winter, Bruno Perlman, Oran Wilde and his family, Lenny and Pegi Tedesco, all killed to protect one old war criminal who might well have died before he could be punished for his sins?
Another car arrived, followed by an ambulance. Soon the detectives from the MSP would join them, and the feds, and then the real fun would start. He was in for a difficult couple of days. It didn’t matter.
For he could smell the sea.
68
P
arker was put in one of the holding cells at the back of the Boreas Police Department. They were clean, and mostly used for DUIs and the occasional out-of-control student during the summer months. He closed his eyes and tried to create a narrative that would satisfactorily explain all of the killings. He kept coming back to Lubsko. That had to be the connection, but Ruth Winter’s death didn’t fit comfortably into the chain of events. Even though she was linked to Lubsko through her mother, her murder still made no sense to him. He remained convinced that Perlman had told her something to bring Steiger down on her, but what?
Gordon Walsh appeared after a couple of hours, trailed by Tyler and Welbecke, the two female detectives out of Belfast. Parker knew Tyler by sight, but not well. He was aware of Welbecke by reputation, mainly because she was one of the few people who could put the fear of God into Walsh.
The Boreas PD had one interview room, which, as in many small departments – and some larger ones – doubled as storage space for boxes of paperwork and broken chairs that might yet be repaired and salvaged. The room didn’t have built-in recording facilities, so Walsh and Tyler both used their phones to record the interview. Tyler looked surprised when Parker waived his right to have counsel present, but Walsh didn’t. They didn’t have much on Parker: a man had been shot and killed with what appeared to be a high-powered rifle at Green Heron Bay, but unless the private detective was capable of bilocation he hadn’t pulled the trigger. On the other hand, they only had Parker’s word on what had been said in the minutes before Werner’s death. A Lutheran pastor, a respected member of his community, was dead, and Parker was the sole witness to his killing. Walsh decided that, for now, Parker didn’t need to know that Werner had been at Golden Hills when Bernhard Hummel, another suspected war criminal, had apparently choked to death.
So Walsh said little, leaving most of the talking to Tyler and Welbecke. Walsh had been in this situation before with Parker. It was getting to be uncomfortably close to a habit, and he already knew what he was likely to hear: the truth, but not the whole truth, and maybe nothing like the truth. He sat back and let Tyler and Welbecke go through the motions while he tried to spot the lies and omissions.
After listening to the back and forth for an hour, and watching Welbecke come close to an aneurysm on at least one occasion, Walsh arrived at two conclusions. The first was that Parker was lying when he said he hadn’t known for sure that it was Werner who would be coming for him, although he had his suspicions. Walsh couldn’t say why, exactly, but he was convinced that Parker had been forewarned.
The second conclusion arose from Parker’s acknowledgement that he had put himself out there as bait by approaching both Werner and Baulmann, yet he also claimed not to have been armed when Werner finally confronted him on the beach. Parker wasn’t angling to be a martyr, and he wasn’t a fool. Werner had been fixed in a rifle sight from the moment he set foot on that beach, and Walsh believed that he knew exactly whose sight it was. Despite his denials, Parker knew too.
‘Why did you tell Sergeant Stynes to search Werner’s property for Oran Wilde’s body?’ Tyler asked.
‘A theory,’ he said.
‘Based on what?’
Parker looked over her shoulder to where Walsh was seated.
‘Based on a belief that the killing of the Wilde family, and the subsequent hunt for their son, was a distraction, a means of drawing attention away from the drowning of Bruno Perlman, and from the town of Boreas.’
Parker waited to see if Walsh would be drawn into saying something, but he remained silent.
‘And Werner gave no indication that this might be true before he was killed?’ said Tyler.
‘As I told you, he wasn’t in the mood to talk. But check his gun: I think you’ll find a match with the bullets used to kill the Wilde family.’
‘So you’re saying that he came to murder you, but before he could, he was shot.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess we’ll never know.’
‘You seem certain that the mystery of his death is destined to remain unsolved.’
It was Welbecke. Parker had to admit that she had a nice line in withering sarcasm.
‘Since he was about to shoot me,’ he replied, ‘you’ll understand if I have a natural sympathy for his killer, and wish him – or her – every success in the future.’
Tyler began going back through the same questions again for form’s sake, although Walsh could tell that she still hoped to trip Parker up on the details of Werner’s killing. Walsh admired her tenacity, but Parker wasn’t going to make any slips. There was not a single person in the room who accepted that he didn’t know the identity of Werner’s killer, but it was also true that none of the three detectives believed Werner’s shooting was anything but a last resort. That didn’t make it right, but they had more hope of charging Parker as an accessory to the rising and setting of the sun than they had of linking him to the shooting.
Tyler was almost done when there was a knock on the door. Walsh opened it, and Parker caught a glimpse of a small, dark woman in a gray suit. She radiated seriousness. Parker figured her for a fed, or maybe Justice Department. She couldn’t have screamed government more if her face had been stamped with the Presidential seal. She struck him as vaguely familiar, and he wondered if their paths had crossed before. Walsh went outside to speak with her, and when he returned he whispered something in Tyler’s ear that made her wrap up the interview there and then. She thanked Parker for his time, even if she didn’t sound like she meant it, and left the final word to Welbecke.
‘Sometime soon your luck is going to run out,’ Welbecke told Parker.
‘I’ll know it’s happened when we start dating.’
Tyler hustled her partner out before the interview descended into actual violence. Walsh retrieved his phone and ended the recording.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘A dating joke?’
‘I was under pressure.’
‘Huh.’ Walsh pocketed the phone. ‘Right now, I’d like to feed you to Welbecke and let her chew on your bones for what went down on that beach.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Spare me,’ said Walsh. ‘When they eventually come for you, just remember that you brought it on yourself.’
‘Is that all?’ said Parker. ‘I’d like to leave now, if I’m free to go.’
‘You can stay where you are,’ said Walsh. ‘That was just the warm-up. The good stuff is next.’
He admitted the woman in the suit. She took a seat across from Parker, and asked Walsh if he wanted to stay.
‘No, I’ve heard enough,’ said Walsh. ‘I’m going to get some sleep.’
He already had the door open when Parker called to him.
‘Walsh?’
‘What?’
Parker wanted to tell him about Cambion’s call to Louis, and his confirmation that Werner had been behind not just the Wilde killings, but the deaths of Perlman and the Tedescos as well, but to do so would effectively be to negate his earlier statement, and put Walsh in a position of knowing for certain that it was untrue.
‘Somehow, Werner knew the Wildes. He didn’t pluck them from thin air. He was familiar with the family. He killed them and then he put Oran Wilde in the ground.’
Walsh nodded.
‘We found a D-ring fixed to the wall of his basement,’ he said. ‘The house is empty, but we’ll start searching the grounds at first light.’
Marie Demers introduced herself, and at the mention of her name Parker realised who she was. He’d seen her in TV news reports about Engel and Fuhrmann. She didn’t produce any recording devices more sophisticated than a yellow legal pad and a pencil. For the next two hours, Parker recounted in detail all that had occurred during his time in Boreas, including his dealings with Ruth and Amanda Winter, and his conversations with Isha Winter, Pastor Werner, and lastly, Marcus Baulman. He left out only matters pertaining to Angel and Louis, and his daughter and his private concerns about her. By the end, he was exhausted, but he also felt a certain satisfaction. It was the first time that he had been able to properly assemble a coherent version of events from start to finish and recite it aloud, both to himself and another. It enabled him to hear the places where it rang hollow.
‘I don’t believe that Werner’s father underwent any kind of conversion during or after the war,’ he told Demers. ‘I think he used his position to arrange for war criminals to enter the United States under the guise of immigrants and displaced persons. When he died, his son took on the responsibility of protecting them. Somehow Bruno Perlman discovered the truth, and it involved Lubsko. He made contact with the Winter family, but Werner found out, and so it began.’
He had been sitting for too long. He felt as though he were being repeatedly lanced in his side. He wanted to lie down and sleep.
‘What I don’t understand,’ he finished, ‘is why Ruth Winter was targeted, but not Isha. As the last survivor, Isha had to be the one with dangerous knowledge, even if she didn’t know that she was in possession of it.’
‘Maybe Perlman thought Isha Winter was too old to be able to do anything about it,’ said Demers, ‘and, for the same reason, Werner didn’t perceive her as a threat.’
Now that he had acknowledged his desire to rest, Parker was overcome with weariness. He couldn’t think clearly. He could barely keep his eyes open.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That must be it. I think I’d like to rest now.’
‘One last question.’
‘What is it?’
‘Did you have Werner killed?’
Parker summoned up his last reserves of energy. He had almost begun to relax. He looked at her over the table: so small, so neat, so threatening.
‘I wanted him alive,’ he replied.
‘You’re not answering the question.’
‘No,’ said Parker, ‘I just did. There is no more. I’m done.’ He rose from his chair. It fell backwards as he pushed it away. ‘You know where to find me.’