Parker 02 - The Guilty (24 page)

"Piece of advice, Henry. If you go chasing false light,

you'll end up in darkness. Don't bother."

I gave a courteous nod and left her office.

I wanted to stop at home and change, then call Professor

Vance and meet with him as soon as possible. If there was any

more to this story, I wanted to alert Wallace and Jack and

hopefully make tomorrow's national edition.

I hailed a cab and headed home, plunging my head into the

leather seat rest. I took a deep breath and could feel my body

swimming away. The more I pulled on this thread the more

spool there seemed to be. There had to be a core, some place

where the full story was revealed. There was an emptiness. I

was so used to calling Amanda, to actively ignore her was

torture. I thought about what Jack said in the bar that day. For

one terrifying moment, I wondered if what happened yesterday was fated to happen at some point. If people like Jack and

I were meant to be alone. If loneliness would inevitably hunt

us down.

I was still thinking about this when I paid the cabdriver and

trudged upstairs. I unlocked the door, flicked on the light

switch, half hoping (and possibly expecting) to see Amanda

waiting for me. I checked my phone again just in case. I

hadn't missed anything. The emptiness was overwhelming.

I tossed my bag down and went into the kitchen. My

stomach growled for food. I poured a drink of cranberry juice

and seltzer, set the glass down on the counter and reached into

my pocket for Largo Vance's phone number. And that's when

I felt a massive blow to the side of my head and everything

went black.

31

Amanda Davies sat in the high-back leather chair and stared

out the window. She wanted to call Henry, desperately wanted

to hear his voice if only for a moment. Several times over the

last few hours she'd reached for the phone, felt the plastic

beneath her fingers, only to retract like she'd touched a poisonous plant.

The office was empty, dark except for a desk lamp and her

computer screen. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours.

She watched the phone. He'd called once. She waited to see

if he would call again. He didn't.

She'd told Henry she was coming here to sleep. She knew

sleep wouldn't come easy. Not last night and not tonight. Not

after what she saw.

Since joining the Legal Aid Society, Amanda had witnessed some horrible things. Mothers and fathers who beat

their children within an inch of their life, starved them. Made

seven-year-olds wear diapers for days and weeks on end.

Boys and girls who were found caked in their own excrement

while their parents were out drinking, stealing or fornicating.

And no matter how hard they worked, how many children

they rescued, it was like putting a Band-Aid on a busted dam.

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There wasn't enough manpower, not enough funding. As long

as society remained this screwed up, as long as there were

hedonistic parents who put themselves over their child, there

would always be children without homes. Just like her. Until

she met Henry.

She thought about Mya Loverne. Hated the fact that she

felt even a whisper of sympathy for the girl. But she did. It

was tearing her apart, because she could still see Mya's arms

wrapped around Henry's waist, their lips touching, Henry

seeming to give in.

He should have ended it months ago. He should have

severed all ties with Mya Loverne. But he hadn't, and last

night showed why. He wasn't ready to give her up. Amanda

lost the one person she could turn to, the one who showed her

that there were relationships beyond her diaries.

She couldn't take it anymore. She grabbed the phone,

nearly spilling a cup of water all over the desk, and dialed

Henry's cell phone. She waited as it rang, hoping that any

second he would pick up and she would hear his voice,

hoping there
was
more to the story. Henry was not a bad guy,

like so many of the douche bags and deadbeats desperate

women seemed to flock to. Guys who smelled like skunk

residue and wore enough hair gel to paste King Kong to the

Empire State Building. Henry wasn't like them. She couldn't

picture him cheating on her. Being with another woman.

Pressing his lips

(stop it)

Henry's voice mail picked up.

"This is Henry. Leave a message and I'll get back to you

as soon as possible."

She bit her lip, then spoke.

"Henry, it's me. We need to talk. Call me when you get this."

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205

For a moment, fear gripped Amanda. What if he was with

Mya? Couldn't be. He wasn't like that. He wasn't...

She hung up. Looked out the window again as the sun began

to dip below the clouds, casting a golden hue over New York

City. In a city of millions, Amanda had never felt so alone.

32

Wake up, Parker.

I heard a voice in the distance, like a dream beginning to

fade into the reality of morning. There was a beeping noise,

like an alarm clock. Then just as abruptly it stopped. A gush

of water hit me in the face, and the dream was shattered. I spit

it out, coughed it out of my nose. My eyes opened. When I

realized where I was, I wished I was still dreaming.

I was on the floor. Sitting up against the radiator. My hands

were strapped behind my back. I couldn't see what was

holding them together. My head throbbed and my neck felt

sticky. My legs were numb, the tingling sensation of poor circulation. I had no idea how long I'd been here, but every

muscle in my body felt some measure of pain.

The room was dark, a faint amber glow dying on the

carpet. The sun was going down. How long had I been out?

My heart beat fast, fear and adrenaline spreading quickly, my

pulse racing as panic began to set in. Water dripped down my

face. It got into my eyes and I tried to blink it away.

Then I heard a sucking sound, looked over and saw a man

I'd never seen before sitting at the living room table, smoking

a cigarette like he didn't have a care in the world. He was

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207

flicking ashes into a neat little pile on the floor. There was an

empty glass in front of him, water beading down its sides. I

recognized it as a piece Amanda bought from a mail order

catalog a few months back. She'd said my glassware looked

so worn it was ready to turn back into sand.

The stranger cocked his head and smiled at me, like he'd

just noticed I was there.

"You're a heavy sleeper, Parker. I thought I'd have to bring

a marching band in here to get those eyes open."

I blinked the spots from my eyes. The man in my living

room was young. Mid-twenties. His face had no lines from age,

but looked slightly weather-beaten, like he'd grown up in the

sun and hadn't yet learned the dangers of UV rays. He was

wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. A blue bandanna was

wrapped around his head. His eyebrows and sideburns were

dirty blond, but the bandanna hid his hair's length and style.

He wasn't from the city. Nobody got natural tans living here.

Immediately I knew this man, like me, had come to New York

from far away. He'd come for a reason. He'd killed four people

without mercy or remorse. And now he was in my home.

The skin around his face was taut but smooth, like an older

man squeezed into a younger man's body. His hands were

veiny and strong, his expression one of both deep thought and

intense malice, like he'd take a long hard thought before slitting

your throat. This was the man who had ended four lives.

Mixed with fear, I felt a strange dose of excitement. The

man sitting in my living room presented a fascinating story,

one that I'd been dying to uncover. A spool that unraveled

here--leaving me beaten and vulnerable, at a murderer's

mercy.

He peered at me through a smoky haze as he took another

drag and exhaled. I couldn't see any weapons on him, didn't

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know what he'd hit me with, only that it was heavy and

knocked me out with one blow. I had a burning urge to write

a very strongly worded letter to the landlord about the shitty

security in this apartment building, but there were more

pressing issues.

"How did you..." I said. My mouth felt like it was filled

with cotton, my words slurred and slow.

"Please," he said. "Your building is easier to get into than

my jeans. And it costs a whole lot less, too."

He stood up. Moved closer until he was hovering over me.

My heart was pounding. I tried futilely to struggle with my

bonds. I could smell the stink of sweat. He was breathing hard,

but not enough to keep a sick smile from spreading over his

face.

"Part of me just wants to kill you right now," he said.

"Lord knows you deserve it."

"Like Athena deserved it," I spat. "And Joe Mauser, and

Jeffrey Lourdes and David Loverne."

"Damn straight," he said. "Fact is, you belong right in

with the whole lot of 'em. I could fucking kill you right now

and nobody would know until some shitty two-line statement

in your newspaper told 'em."

I had nothing to say. I tugged against my bonds, felt pain

in my shoulder. It was useless. My legs were asleep, and I had

no leverage. The boy watched me with odd fascination, like

watching a fly struggle to free itself from a web.

Finally I stopped struggling.

"If you wanted to kill me--" I started to say.

"I would have done it right after I knocked your ass out,"

he finished. "No, I don't aim to kill you just yet, Henry.

You've been useful so far. I'm sure you were flattered I left

one of your writings behind."

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209

"You're demented."

He eyed me with disappointment. "Killing you is still a

possibility, you don't get a lot smarter."

"Smarter?" I said, rather stupidly.

"I've read your paper," he said. "I've read all those stories

about the guns and the bullets and the blah blah blah. Fact

is your stories don't mean
anything.
What are you doing,

son, other than just repeating shit that's already happened?

You're a goddamn stenographer with a fancy business card,

my friend, and just because you happened to look under a

log nobody else wanted to get dirty enough to look under

doesn't make you any less of a maggot than the dirt you find

underneath."

"Like you," I said. "The maggot I found underneath."

"Maggot, whatever. All depends on your perspective," he

said, dropping his cigarette onto the floor where he stubbed

it out with the toe of his sneaker. "Funny thing about maggots

is, people hate 'em, but the whole world would go to hell

without 'em. Maggots strip dead flesh from bone, make sure

the smell doesn't bother your pretty nostrils."

"Billy the Kid," I said, tasting my own blood. "What do

you..."

"Shut the fuck up," the boy said. Without warning, he

stomped on my leg hard with his foot. I let out a cry of pain.

"You don't know
anything.
You know what you do, Henry

Parker? You write
about
history. Me?" he said with a sharp

laugh. "I
am
history. I decide what makes tomorrow's headlines. Without me you'd have nothing to write about Athena

Paradis, her shitty singing, and David Loverne screwing some

whore instead of his wife. Without me Jeffrey Lourdes would

have nothing to write about except no-talent hacks getting

high and crashing their cars. Fact is, guys like you need a guy

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like me to survive in this world. You reap what I sow. Nothing

you can do to change that."

"So why are you here?" I said, the words spilling out of

my mouth. "You say I can't live without you, but I didn't

break into your home and whack you over the head."

He laughed, one time, sharply.

"See my problem is, ungrateful asshole like you doesn't

even know I'm doing you a
favor.
You might not be able to

see it past your six-dollar coffee cup, but Athena Paradis,

Lourdes, those people are ruining this place. You take the

spotlight off of them you find what really matters. You talk

about maggots?
They're
the vermin. Guys like you put a spotlight on the vermin, pretend you can't see how diseased they

are. Then they infect you and everyone else. And what do you

do? Blame people like me. And since you, Parker, are too

chicken-shit to do it yourself, I'm going to do it for you. At

some point there won't be no Athenas left. No more maggots

to celebrate. And then you'll thank me."

"So why are you here, exactly?You have some grudge against

the world?You didn't get laid until you were eighteen 'cause the

girls didn't like some freak with a chip on his shoulder?"

He looked at me, as though confused and saddened by my