The Unquiet

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.

He only spoke when he leaned down and reached out a hand to the frightened girl.

“It’s okay now,” he said. “We won’t let nobody hurt you again.”

And the child opened her mouth and howled.

I called the cops. Angel and Louis left. There was only me and a ten-year-old girl with sallow skin whose name appeared to be Anya. She wore a cheap necklace around her neck with those four letters picked out in silver upon it. I put her in the front seat of my car and she sat there unmoving, her face turned away from the trailer, her eyes fixed on a spot on the car floor. She couldn’t tell me how long she had been held there, and I could only get confirmation of her name and her age out of her in thickly accented English before she went silent again. She said she was ten years old. I doubted that she trusted me, and I didn’t blame her.

While she sat in the car, lost in her own thoughts, I went through Raymon Lang’s album of photographs. Some of them were very recent: Anya was among the children pictured, masked men on either side of her. I looked closely at one of the photographs and thought I saw, on the arm of the man on the right, what might have been the yellow beak of a bird. I flicked back through the rest, the tones and colors changing as the pictures grew older, Polaroids taking the place of computer images before their place was taken in turn by the oldest of the photographs: black-and-white pictures, probably developed by Lang himself in a home darkroom. There were boys and girls, sometimes photographed alone and at other times with men, their identities hidden by bird masks. It was a history of abuse that spa

The oldest images in the album were photocopies, their quality poor. They showed a young girl on a bed, two men taking turns with her, the pictures cropped to remove their heads. In one of the photos, I thought I saw a tattoo on the arm of one of the men. It was blurred. I imagined that it could be cleaned up, and that when it was it would reveal an eagle.

But one of the photographs was different from the rest. I looked at it for a long time, then removed it from its plastic sleeve and carefully rearranged the other images to disguise what I had done. I tucked the picture beneath the rubber mat on the floor of my car, then sat on the cold, hard gravel with my head in my hands and waited for the police to come.

They arrived out of uniform and in a pair of unmarked cars. Anya watched them coming and curled up fetally, repeating a single word over and over in a language that I did not recognize. It was only when the doors of the first car opened, and a pair of women emerged, that Anya started to believe she might be safe. The two women approached us. The passenger door of my car was open, and they could see the little girl just as she could see them. I hadn’t wanted Anya to feel she had simply been moved from one cell to another.

The first cop squatted before her. She was slim, with long red hair tied back tightly on her head. She reminded me of Rachel.

“Hi,” she said. “My name is Jill. You’re Anya, is that right?”

Anya nodded, recognizing her name, if nothing else. Her face began to soften. Her lips turned down at the corners, and she started to cry. This wasn’t the animal response that had greeted Angel. This was something else.