CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HE COULD HAVE GONEto his fellow cops, of course, but what would he have told them? That two kids were coming to kill his son; that those two kids could be hosts for other entities, malign spirits who had already killed the boy’s mother and had now returned to murder her child? Perhaps he might have concocted a lie, some tale of how they had threatened his family, or he could have fed them the information that a car resembling the one they were driving had been seen close to the director’s office after his death, and a young man and a young woman had been glimpsed leaving his house on the night that he was killed. All of that might well have been enough to hold them, assuming they were found, but he didn’t want them merely to be held: he wanted them gone forever.

The rabbi’s warning against killing them had not gone unheeded. Instead, it had broken something inside him. He had thought that he could cope with anything-murder, loss, a child suffocated beneath a pile of coats-but now he was no longer certain that this was true. He did not want to believe what the rabbi had told him, because to do so would be to throw aside all of the certainties he felt about the world. He could accept that somebody, some agency as yet unknown, wanted his son dead. It was an appalling purpose, and one that he could not understand, but he could deal with it as long as its agents were human. After all, there was no proof that what the rabbi believed was actually true. The man and woman who had been hunting Caroline were dead. He had watched them both die, and had gazed upon their bodies after death.

But they were different then, weren’t they? The dead are always different: smaller, somehow, and shrunken in upon themselves. Their faces change, and their bodies collapse. Over the years, he had become convinced of the existence of a human soul, if only because of the absence he witnessed in the bodies of the deceased. Something departed at the moment of death, altering the remains, and the evidence of its leaving was visible in t Ss v”[1]‡he appearance of the dead.

And yet, and yet…

He thought back to the woman. She had been less damaged than the man in the course of her dying. The wheels of the truck had rendered him beyond identification, but she was physically intact apart from the holes that Jimmy’s bullets had made in her, and they had all caught her in the upper body. Looking upon her face after she was pulled from the water, Parker had been astonished at the change in her. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman. The cruelty that had animated her features was gone but, more than that, her looks were softer, somehow, as though her bones had been blunted, the sharp edges removed from her cheeks and her nose and her chin. The imperfect mask that had covered her face for so long, one that was based on her own appearance yet subtly altered, had fallen away, disintegrating in the cold waters of the creek. He had looked at Jimmy and seen the same reaction. Unlike him, though, Jimmy had spoken it aloud.

“It doesn’t even look like her,” he had said. “I see the wounds, but it’s not her…”

The crime scene guys had looked at him in puzzlement, but had said nothing. They knew that different cops responded in different ways to their involvement in fatal shootings. It was not their place to comment.

Oh yes, something had left her as she died, but Will did not believe, or did not want to believe, that it had come back again.

So while Jimmy Gallagher’s nephew guarded Will’s son, he drove around Pearl River, pausing at intersections to peer along the cross streets, shining his flashlight on dark cars in parking lots, slowing down to stare at young couples, daring them to look back at him, for he felt sure that he would be able to identify the ones who had come for his son by the look in their eyes.

Perhaps he had always been fated to find them. In the hours that followed, he wondered if they had been waiting for him, knowing that he would come yet certain that he would not be able to act against them. They were strangers to him, and even if the rabbi had warned him of their true nature, who could ever truly believe such a thing?

And something would come for Epstein too, in time. It was not their purpose. It would be left to another. The rabbi could wait…

And so they had not moved as his flashlight found them on the patch of waste ground not far from his home. They had seen the other man, big, redheaded, arrive at the house, and they had glimpsed the pistol in his hand. Now that they knew where the boy was, and had learned for certain the truth about his parentage, they were anxious to move against him, to finish the task they had been assigned so long before. But if they were to rush it and make a mistake, then he would be lost to them again. The redheaded man with them was armed, and they did not want to die, neither one nor both. They had been separated for too long, and they loved each other. This time, the struggle to reunite had been shorter than before, but the separation had still been painful for them. The boy had been traced by another, the one called Kittim, who had whispered foul things in his ear, and the boy had known them to be true. He had traveled north, and in time, aided by Kittim, he had found the girl. Now they burned for each other, rejoicing R/diperin their physicality. Once the boy was dead, they could disappear and be together forever. They just had to be careful. They did not want to take any chances.

And here was the boy’s father approaching, for they recognized him immediately. Curious, the girl thought: the last time she had seen him was at the moment of her death. Now here he was, older and grayer, tired and weak. She smiled to herself, then leaned over and gripped the boy’s hand. He turned to look at her, and she saw an eternity of longing in his eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“And I love you,” he replied.

Will got out of the car. He had a gun in his hand, held close to his right thigh. He shone his flashlight on them. The boy raised his hand to shield his eyes.

“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s the deal with the light?”

Will thought that the boy looked vaguely familiar. He was from somewhere in Rockland County, of that Will was certain, although he was a recent arrival. He seemed to recall something about juvie stuff, maybe from visiting down at Orangetown with the local cops.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, both of you.”

They did as they were told, the boy resting his palms upon the wheel, the girl placing her painted fingernails upon the dashboard.

“License and registration,” said Will.

“Hey, you a cop?” said the boy. He had a lazy drawl, and he grinned as he spoke, letting Parker know that this was all a charade, a farce. “Maybe you need to show me some ID first.”

“Shut up. License and registration.”

“Behind the visor.”

“Reach up slowly with your left hand.”

The boy shrugged but did as he was told, holding the license for the cop to see once he had retrieved it.

“ Alabama. You’re a long way from home.”

“I’ve always been a long way from home.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” he said. “And then some…”

Will stared at him, and he saw the darkness in the boy’s eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sitting. Taking time out with my best girl.”

The girl giggled, but it wasn’t a pretty sound. Parker thought that it sounded like something bubbling in a pot on an old stove, something that would scour you if it touched your skin.