The Unquiet

Chapter XXXIII

While Frank Merrick died with his daughter’s name upon his lips, Angel, Louis, and I decided on a course of action to deal with Caswell. We were in the bar, the remains of our meal still scattered around us, but we weren’t drinking.

We agreed that Caswell appeared close to some form of breakdown, although whether caused by incipient guilt or something else we could not tell. It was Angel who put it best, as he often did.

“If he’s so overcome with guilt, then why? Lucy Merrick has been missing for years. Unless they kept her there for all that time, which doesn’t seem too likely, then why is he so conscience-stricken now, all of a sudden?”

“ Merrick, perhaps,” I said.

“Which means somebody told him that Merrick has been asking questions.”

“Not necessarily. It’s not like Merrick has been keeping a low profile. The cops are aware of him, and thanks to Demarcian’s killing, the Russians are too. Demarcian was involved somehow. Merrick didn’t just pick his name out of a hat.”

“You think maybe these guys were sharing images of the abuse, and that’s the co

“Dr. Christian said that he hadn’t heard of anything involving men with bird masks turning up in photos or on video, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing like that out there.”

“They would have been taking a chance by selling it,” said Angel. “Might have risked drawing attention to themselves.”

“Maybe they needed the money,” said Louis.

“But Caswell had enough to buy the Gilead land outright,” I replied. “It doesn’t sound like money was an issue.”

“But where did the cash come from?” asked Angel. “Had to have come from somewhere, so maybe they were selling this stuff.”

“How much does it go for, though?” I said. “Enough to buy a patch of unwanted land in a forest? The barman said that the land wasn’t exactly given away for free, but it didn’t cost the earth either. He could have bought it for the equivalent of nickels and dimes.”

Angel shrugged. “Depends what they were selling. Depends how bad it was. For the kids, I mean.”

None of us said anything more for a time. I tried to create patterns in my mind, to put together a sequence of events that made sense, but I kept losing myself in contradictory statements and false trails. More and more, I was convinced that Clay was involved with what had occurred, but how, then, to balance that with Christian’s view of him as a man who was almost obsessed with finding evidence of abuse, even to the detriment of his own career, or Rebecca Clay’s description of a loving father devoted to the children in his charge? Then there were the Russians. Louis had asked some questions and discovered the identity of the redheaded man who had come to my house. His name was Utarov, and he was one of the most trusted captains in the New England operation. According to Louis, there was paper out on Merrick, a piece of unfinished business relating to some jobs he had undertaken against the Russians sometime in the past, but there were also rumors of unease in New England. Prostitutes, mainly those of Asian, African, and Eastern European origin, had been moved out of Massachusetts and Providence and told to lie low, or they had been forced to do so by the men who controlled them. More specialized services had also been curtailed, particularly those relating to child pornography and child prostitution.

“Trafficking,” Louis had concluded. “Explains why they took the Asians and the others off the streets and left the pure American womanhood to take up the slack. They’re worried about something, and it’s co

Their appetites would have stayed the same, wasn’t that what Christian had told me? These men wouldn’t have stopped abusing, but they might have found another outlet for their urges: young children acquired through Boston, perhaps, with Demarcian as one of the points of contact? What then? Did they film the abuse and sell it back to Demarcian and others like him, one operation funding another? Was that the nature of their particular “Project”?

Caswell was part of it, and he was weak and vulnerable. I was certain that he had put in a call as soon as he had encountered us, a plea for help from those whom he had assisted in the past. It would have increased the pressure on all of them, forcing them to respond, and we would be waiting for them when they came.

Angel and Louis went to their car and drove up to Caswell’s place, parking out of sight of the road and his house to take the first watch. I could almost see them there as I went to my room to get some sleep before my turn came, the car dark and quiet, perhaps some music playing low on the radio, Angel dozing, Louis still and intent, part of his attention on the road beyond while some hidden part of him wandered unknown worlds in his mind.

In my dreams, I walked through Gilead, and I heard the voices of children crying. I turned to the church and saw that there were young girls and boys wrapped in stinging ivy, the creepers tightening on their naked bodies as they were absorbed into the green world. I saw blood on the ground, and the remains of an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, points of red seeping through the cloth.

And a thin man crawled out of a hole in the ground, his face torn and ruined by decay, his teeth visible through the holes in his cheeks.

“Old Gilead,” said Daniel Clay. “It gets in your soul…”

The call came through on the phone in my room while I was sleeping. It was O’Rourke. Since there was no cell phone coverage in Jackman, it had seemed like a good idea to let someone know where I was in case anything happened back east, so both O’Rourke and Jackie Garner had the number of the lodge. After all, my gun was still out there, and I would bear some responsibility for whatever Merrick did with it.

“ Merrick ’s dead,” he said.

I sat up. I could still taste food in my mouth, but it tasted of dirt, and the memory of my dream was strong. “How?”

“Killed in the parking lot of the Old Moose Lodge. It sounds like he had an eventful final day. He was busy, right up to the end. Mason Dubus was shot dead yesterday with a ten-millimeter bullet. We’re still waiting on a ballistics match, but it’s not like people get shot here every day, and not usually with a ten. Couple of hours ago, a Somerset County sheriff ’s deputy found two bodies on a side road just out of Bingham. Russians, it looks like. Then they got a call from a woman who found her father locked in his basement a couple of miles north of the scene. Seems the old guy was a vet-the animal kind, not the war kind-and a man matching Merrick’s description forced him to treat a gunshot wound and give him directions to Dubus’s house before locking him up. From what the vet said, the wound was pretty serious, but he sewed it and strapped it as best he could. It looks like Merrick continued northwest, killed Dubus, then had to stop at the lodge. He was bleeding badly by then. According to witnesses, he sat in a corner, drank some whiskey, talked to himself, then headed outside. They were waiting for him there.”

“How many?”

“Two, both wearing bird masks. Ring any bells? They beat him to death, or near enough to it. I guess they thought the job was done when they left him.”

“How long did he survive?”

“Long enough to take your gun from under the driver’s seat and shoot one of his attackers. I’m going on what I’ve been told, but the cops at the scene can’t figure out how he managed it. They broke just about every bone in his body. He must have wanted to kill this guy real bad. He got him with one in the left ankle, then one in the head. His pal tried to drag him away, but he got the dead guy’s foot caught in a drain, so he had to leave him.”