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  The Soul Collectors

  ( Darby McCormick - 4 )

  Chris Mooney

  Chris Mooney

  The Soul Collectors

  Dear Coop, By the time you read this, chances are I'll be either missing or dead. Whatever you do, don't come looking for me. Making people disappear, as you already know, is what they do best. They're experts at hiding things: the living and the dead… the truth. They've been doing it for at least a hundred years — longer, if Jack Casey is to be believed, and I have no reason not to believe him. Not any more.

  This is what I know for sure. They're known to strike in daylight but more often they wait for darkness, like vampires. They work in pairs. If they come for me — no, not if, it's a matter of when — when they come for me, I'm sure they'll bring a small army. They won't kill me. They want to bring me back to that place they call home.

  It's where I belong, they say, to atone for my sins.

  I'm writing you this letter on the back porch of a rental home in Oguinquit, Maine. It's remote and private here. The salty air blowing off the water feels unnaturally warm for this first week of December. Maybe it's the Irish whiskey. I'm drinking Midleton, your favourite, and as I look out over the porch railing, at the setting sun, I can't stop thinking about how we're only given one life. How there's no second or third act, just this messy and imperfect one we've been handed, and it's up to us how we choose to live it.

  You were right, Coop. I should have chosen you when I had the chance.

  I've included the key for my condo, just in case you no longer have the copy I gave you. The condo, everything inside — it's all yours now.

  You need to know everything that happened. I want you to know the truth about what I saw. About what happened to me and Jack Casey.

  The first time I met him, Casey told me about his early career, his days working as an FBI profiler in what used to be called the Behavioral Science Unit. He called it the Monster Factory. He told me there are creatures lurking around us, doing things that the human mind doesn't want to, or maybe can't, comprehend.

  I thought he was being overly dramatic. Now I know Casey was speaking the truth. I've witnessed what lives behind their masks.

  I'll tell you one other thing I know for certain:

  Casey?

  He's the only one who believes me.

  PART ONE

  The Good Thief

  1

  When the helicopter began its rapid descent, to the now defunct Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Darby McCormick shifted her gaze out of her window and saw, courtesy of the bright searchlight blazing from the copter's belly, a big white van parked on the quiet stretch of dark and empty tarmac far below. She spotted a turret on the roof and then, a moment later, could make out the black gun ports along one side. Not a van but an Armoured Personnel Carrier, a brick shithouse of a vehicle meant to withstand both gunfire and explosions. The thing could roll over a landmine without suffering so much as a dent.

  Darby rubbed her fingers across her dry lips, thinking. An hour ago she'd been sitting in her living room, finishing off a Heineken and watching the final minutes of the Celtics game (Boston was giving the New York Knicks a well-deserved and highly enjoyable ass-kicking), when the phone rang.

  She had hoped it was Coop calling from London. He'd been moved there three months ago, and because of the different time zones — London was five hours ahead of Boston — they were constantly playing phone tag. She had called him earlier in the day to thank him for the gift — an antique hardcover copy of her all-time favourite book, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

  The gruff voice on the other end of the line introduced himself as Gary Trent, SWAT senior corporal for the Portsmouth and Durham areas of New Hampshire. He told her she was needed up north immediately and that someone was already on his way to take her to Logan Airport.

  Darby told him she didn't store her SWAT gear at home, just her tactical equipment. Don't worry, Trent said. All the arrangements had been made. Then he hung up.

  The man's abruptness or his failure to explain why she was needed didn't surprise or shock her, as SWAT never spoke over an unsecured channel. She shut off the TV and went to her bedroom closet to gather the things she needed. Five minutes later, when she heard the buzzer for her condo, she grabbed her duffel bag, locked up and headed down the winding set of stairs to the building's front door.

  Her escort, a skinny, puppy-faced Boston patrolman she didn't know, looked like a teenager dressed up as a cop for Halloween. He said his name was Tim and informed her he'd been ordered to bring her to Logan, where a private helicopter would take her directly to New Hampshire. Clearly Timmy had been given the word to step on it. Lights flashing and sirens wailing, the car made it to Logan in record time.

  Darby wondered how the Boston brass felt about her being called in to assist in a SWAT operation. Three months ago, Boston PD had suspended her, with pay, from the Criminal Services Unit, the department's specialized group that dealt with violent crime. CSU had been dismantled temporarily — maybe even permanently — in the wake of the murder of Boston Police Commissioner Christina Chadzynski.

  Seated inside the helicopter, it came back to her again, that night inside the abandoned auto garage with the two cops who had kidnapped her. One was a federal agent, the other a Belham detective, a man she had known since childhood — Artie Pine, a close friend and confidant of her deceased father — and they had planned on torturing her. Darby killed them both and on her way out of the garage found Christina Chadzynski waiting in an adjoining room, the woman sitting at an old desk holding a shotgun, the police commissioner's hands covered in latex gloves. Darby remembered the momentary flash of surprise on the woman's face at being discovered. You're supposed to be dead, that look said, and then the woman said, I have a way out of this for you… If you play your cards right, you'll come out of this looking like a hero.

  Darby didn't have to worry about Chadzynski any more — or Internal Affairs. Darby had told the IA officers that Artie Pine had killed the police commissioner. She had staged the crime scene, and, after hearing the recording of Chadzynski boasting about her skilful corruption methods, IA had cleared her. Now she had a more pressing problem: the Boston Police Department. The brass believed she had committed the one mortal and unforgivable sin: airing the department's dirty laundry in the press. That was the real issue at work here, why the suits were taking so long deliberating her fate. If she was reinstated — her lawyer had an almost unwavering confidence that this would, in fact, happen — the powers that be would find a way to punish her. Probably kick her back to the lab and make her process rape kits or feed old DNA samples into CODIS. Drown her in mind-numbing work given to a first-year forensic tech.

  The helicopter made a hard landing on the tarmac. Darby unbuckled her seatbelt, grabbed her heavy duffel bag and opened the cabin door, crouching underneath the steady thump thump thump of the spinning blades. Once she cleared them, she hoisted the bag over her shoulder and ran through the brisk late-September night air, heading for the SWAT officer, dressed head to toe in black assault gear, standing by the APC's rear doors.

  Darby climbed inside, quickly found the empty spot on the edge of the right bench mounted against the wall and sat. A SWAT officer banged a gloved fist twice on the wall, the signal to get rolling. The APC lurched forward, and just before its rear doors slammed shut she caught sight of the copter taking back off.

  Six SWAT officers, all men, in heavy black assault gear and with black greasepaint on their faces, crammed the benches. Her attention locked on the seventh man — a big white guy standing near a partition behind the driver, looking away from her and his men. He held on to one of the metal handl
es installed on the ceiling while he talked on a phone connected to an encryption pack. He stared down at the floor listening to the person on the other end of the line, his jaw muscles bunching as he bit down hard on the wad of gum wedged between his front teeth. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late forties, and in the dim interior light she could make out the stubble on his shaved head, the webbing of fine white lines around his narrowed eyes.

  Has to be Trent, she thought, tying her hair behind her neck using one of the elastics she always wore around her wrists. She could feel the stares coming from the black-painted faces. They were trying to size her up.

  SWAT was still strictly boys-only. It didn't matter if she could shoot the balls off a flea or that she could go head to head with any one of these bozos and have him on his knees sobbing in less than a minute; right now they couldn't see past her tits. They were probably wondering how she'd be in the sack. The Puerto Rican-looking guy sitting to her right — a dead ringer for one of her favourite Red Sox players of all time, Manny Ramirez — held a gas grenade launcher between his knees and had no problem checking her out like she was a piece of meat.

  Darby turned to him, grinning, and said, 'Something on your mind, cowboy?'

  He licked his lips, and she expected him to say how she looked like Angelina Jolie. More than one person had said they had the same lips and eyes, but Darby didn't see it. She had auburn hair, for one, and green eyes; and, unlike Mrs Brad Pitt, she had a permanent scar on her left cheek, courtesy of being hit by an axe that had fractured her cheekbone. The surgeons ended up removing the bones and installing something called a MediCor implant.

  Instead, the Manny Ramirez-looking guy said, 'You the same Darby McCormick who was involved in that shootout at the garage with the Boston police commissioner?'

  She nodded, knowing where this conversation was headed.

  'That recorded conversation between you and Chadzynski, where she admits to all of her foul deeds?' He whistled. 'That broad was one cold and cunning bitch. She sold her soul and for what? To protect that Irish gangster prick Sullivan — and a serial killer to boot. Damn smart of you using your cell to record that conversation.'

  Darby had a captive audience. She saw the grins and nods from the other men seated around her, leaning forward to listen to her every word.

  'Lucky you that conversation got leaked to the media,' he said. 'Otherwise, no one would've believed that shit.'

  'I'm assuming you have a point here.'

  'Got some friends at Boston PD.'

  'Congratulations.'

  'Word is you released that recording to the press.'

  Darby shook her head and chuckled softly. Amazing. The cops she met now didn't care about Chadzynski being exposed for the corrupt and cunning bitch she was; how the woman had, over the course of her career, orchestrated the murders and disappearances of several dozen state cops, federal agents, Boston patrolmen, undercover detectives and eyewitnesses. With a phone call, she had removed from the earth anyone who had tried to expose Frank Sullivan's horrific methods. Thomas 'Big Red' McCormick had been one of her victims. Yet the only thing every cop wanted to know was whether she had been the one who had leaked the Chadzynski tape to the media.

  'Wasn't me,' Darby said. Technically, that was true. Coop had been the one who had released it to the press. She had only forwarded him a copy.

  Manny Rameriz leaned in closer. She could smell his stale cigarette breath.

  'You'll have to forgive me for asking this, but me and the boys here are wondering if you're recording this conversation right now?'

  'What do you think?'

  'I think I should pat you down just to make sure. Nobody here wants to be on the news. You know how reporters can slice and dice things to make you look bad.'

  Darby smiled. 'Touch me and you'll be picking your broken fingers out of your ass.'

  Manny seemed to be seriously considering making a move. He opened his mouth, about to speak, when a wail of sirens cut him off. The APC had picked up a police escort — several of them, judging by the multiple sirens.

  The big white guy standing at the end shouted into the phone: 'Tell him we're on our way, ETA ten minutes.'

  The gruff and raspy voice belonged to the man she had spoken to earlier. Gary Trent slammed the phone back against his cradle, walked down the APC and took a seat across from her.

  2

  'That was the command post,' Trent shouted over the sirens. 'CP said the subject is threatening to start killing the hostages.'

  Darby leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. 'How many?'

  'Four. He's got them tied up in this bedroom right here.' He turned slightly to point to a whiteboard showing a layout of the house. 'He's drawn down the shades on all the top-floor windows, so there's no way we can get a clear shot.'

  'You already got a sniper in position?'

  Trent nodded. 'He's on the roof across the street. It's the only place offering a clear view of the bedroom. Spotter's using a thermal-imaging scope, so we can make out their heat signatures pretty clearly. One hostage appears to be tied to a chair; the other three are on the floor. At the moment, everyone's alive, but this guy's getting edgy, threatening to kill them. I'm hoping he'll hold off until you get in there and talk to him.'

  'I'm not a hostage negotiator.'

  Trent flapped a hand. 'I know that. But you know the family. Mark and Judith Rizzo.'

  The name triggered a flood of memories and mental snapshots. There was one that stood out from the others: that overcast morning she'd spent in the couple's kitchen of their Brookline home, a place where the greatest threat to kids was getting hit by a car. The previous day, on a late October afternoon with the sky beginning to grow dark, their youngest child, their ten-year-old son, Charlie, told his mother he was going down the street to visit a neighbourhood friend. The mother told him to be careful and to ride his bike on the sidewalk, not on the main street, and returned to making dinner. Charlie hopped on his blue Huffy and vanished.

  In her mind's eye Darby could see Mark Rizzo, a man with thick, bushy black hair and olive skin, sitting at the kitchen table next to his wife, Judith, a curvy, pale-skinned Irish Catholic eleven years his senior; could see the parents staring down at a mess of photographs sprawled across the blood-red tablecloth, both unwilling to touch them, terrified that by picking one to run on the TV and in the newspapers they'd seal their son behind it, imprison him someplace where they'd never see or hear from him again.

  And they never did, Darby thought, returning her attention to Trent. The APC was driving fast now, the engine's low, deep rumbling vibrating through the metal bench and climbing through her limbs. The air, much warmer than before, reeked of gun oil.

  Trent shouted, 'The kid disappeared over a decade ago, right?'

  'Twelve years,' Darby shouted back. Charlie Rizzo's abduction had been her first field case.

  'You ever find his body?'

  Darby shook her head, a part of her still thinking back to that morning in the Rizzos' kitchen. Standing behind the parents were Charlie's older sisters, blue-eyed curly blonde twins named Abigail and Heather, tall for their age and wearing tight Abercrombie amp; Fitch T-shirts stretched over curvy frames still holding baby fat. Abigail, the one with the Cindy Crawford type of beauty mark near her lip, swiped a shaky hand over her wet and bloodshot eyes and then reached over her father's big shoulder.

  This one, Abigail said, picking up a photo of a gap-toothed kid with dark black hair and olive skin, his rolls noticeable under the white Star Wars T-shirt with Darth Vader. This one's the most recent picture of Charlie.

  Trent shouted, 'When was the last time you spoke to the parents?'

  'Back when they were living in Massachusetts — in Brookline. Must've been… maybe two years or so after Charlie vanished. They came to ask me about some private investigator who offered to help them. The father was thinking of cashing in some of his retirement account to pay for it and wanted to know if I knew this guy, wha
t I thought. I told them to save their money.'

  'They hire him?'

  Darby nodded. 'Nothing came of it. No new leads. I think they hired another guy who specialized in missing kids, but I don't know for sure. When did they move to New Hampshire?'

  'When their girls got accepted to UNH. They're finishing up their final year. They're living at home, not at the college. After what happened to the boy, I guess the parents wanted the girls to stick close so they could keep an eye on 'em.'

  'You need a hostage negotiator.'

  'Already got one. Guy named Billy Lee. He's already made contact.'

  'So why am I here?'

  'Person holding the family hostage, he's demanding to speak to you — won't speak to anyone but you.'

  'What's his name, do we know?'

  Trent nodded. 'Guy's saying he's their kid — their son, Charlie Rizzo.'

  3

  Darby stared at Trent. Stared at him for what seemed like a long time.

  'You heard me right,' Trent shouted. 'Guy said he can prove it too.'

  'How?'

  'He won't say. This guy — let's just call him Charlie, keep it simple — Charlie says he won't speak to anyone but you. Said that if we can get you to come up here and talk to him, alone, face to face, he'll release the hostages. I'm not buying it. He's already shot someone.'

  'Who?'

  'Don't know the vic's name; he didn't have any ID on him. He's a white male, bald, somewhere in his fifties. Charlie shot this guy in the back. Twice. Ambulance arrived at the house before we did and found the vic lying in shrubs. Last report is this guy's still alive but unconscious. He lost a lot of blood.'

  'How do you know Charlie shot him?'

  'He called 911 and told the operator.'