The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead, Blood of Angels

Becker laughed harshly. ‘Don’t “believe”? That’s it? Oh right. That’s very reassuring.’

‘It’s not my job to reassure you.’

‘No,’ Becker said, face blank. ‘I suppose not.’ There was silence for a few moments. And then he added: ‘These things really happen, don’t they?’

Zandt knew what he meant. That certain events, of a kind that most people just watch or read about, can actually happen. Things like sudden death, and divorce, and spinal injuries; like suicide, and drug addiction, and fading grey people standing in a circle looking down at you muttering ‘The driver never stopped’. They happen. They’re as real as happiness, marriage and the feel of the sun on your back, and they fade far more slowly. You may not get back the life you had before. You may not be one of the lucky ones. It may just go on and on and on.

‘Yes they do,’ he said. Unseen by the other man, he touched the cover of one of the schoolbooks. Ran his finger over its rough surface.

‘What chance do you think we have of getting her back?’

The question was asked simply, with a steady voice, and Zandt admired him for it. He turned away from the table.

‘You should assume that you have none at all.’

Becker looked shocked, and tried to say something. Nothing came out.

‘A hundred people are killed by men like this every year,’ Zandt said. ‘Probably more. In this country alone. Almost none of the killers are ever caught. We make a big fuss when we do, as if we’ve put the tiger back in his cage. But we haven’t. A new one is born every month. The few we catch are unlucky, or stupid, or have been driven to the point where they start making mistakes. The majority are never caught. These men are not aberrations. They are part of who we are. It’s like anything else. Survival of the most fit. The cleverest.’

‘Is The Delivery Boy clever?’

‘That’s not his name.’

‘That’s what the papers called him before. And the cops.’

‘He’s called The Upright Man. By himself. Yes, he’s clever. That may be what causes him to fall. He’s very keen for us to admire him. On the other hand …’

‘He may just not get caught, and unless you find him we’re never going to see Sarah again.’

‘If you see her again,’ Zandt said, replacing his pad and pen in an inside pocket, ‘it will be a gift from the gods, and you should see it as such. None of you will ever be the same. That need not be a bad thing. But it’s true.’

Becker stood. Zandt didn’t think he’d ever seen a man who looked both so tired and incapable of sleep. Unknown to him, Michael Becker was thinking the same thing of him.

‘But you’ll keep trying?’

‘I’ll do everything I can,’ he said. ‘If I can find him, then I will.’

‘Then why tell me to assume the worst?’

But his wife came in through the French doors, with the FBI agent just behind, and the policeman did not say anything more.

Nina thanked the Beckers for their time, and promised to keep them up to date. She also managed to imply that their visit had been a formality, without direct relevance to the course of the investigation.

Michael Becker watched as they walked away down the path. He did not shut the door when they were out of sight, but stood a moment looking out at the night. Behind him he heard the sound of Zoë going upstairs to check on Melanie. He doubted his second daughter would be asleep. The nightmares of a year ago were returning, and he could not blame her. What little sleep he managed was an enemy to him, too. He knew she still used the spell he had written, and the knowledge filled him with horror. Irony was no protection, whatever he and Sarah and the directors of modern horror films might think. In a land of blood and bones, irony doesn’t cut it. He remembered discussing night fears with Sarah, several years before. She had always been a questioning child, and asked why people were afraid of the dark. He told her it was a leftover from when we were more primitive, and slept out in the open or in caves, and wild animals might come and kill us in the night.

Sarah had looked dubious. ‘But that’s an awfully long time ago,’ she’d said. She’d thought for a little while, before adding, with a ten-year-old’s perfect certainty: ‘No. We must be frightened of something else.’

Michael believed now she was right. It’s not monsters we’re afraid of. Monsters were only a comforting fantasy. We know what our own kind is capable of. What we’re frightened of is ourselves.

He closed the door eventually and walked into the kitchen. Here he made a pot of coffee, something that had become a ritual for this part of the evening. He would carry it into the sitting room on a tray, along with two cups and a jug of warm milk. Perhaps a cookie or two, which was all Zoë seemed willing to eat. They would sit in front of whatever the television had to offer, waiting for time to pass. Old films were best. Something from another time, from before Sarah had been born and any of this could be true. Sometimes they would talk a little. Usually not. Zoë would have the phone close by.

As he took two cups from the new dresser – old pine, imported from England after their recent trip – Michael thought back on the things the policeman had said, holding each sentence up for consideration. He realized that, for the first time since the disappearance, he felt a small thread of something that must be hope. It would be gone by the morning, but he welcomed its temporary respite. He felt it because he believed he knew what had been said between the lines, that what the policeman had said was less important than what he had not.

The female investigator had shown identification, but the man had never been named. With the dedication of someone who believed in the magic of articulation, that naming and containing events in words could subdue them, Michael Becker had read as much as he could concerning the previous crimes of the man who had taken his daughter. He had been on the Internet, and found copies of the news pieces, even sought out a copy of the supermarket hackbook on unsolved crimes. He had done this at the expense of, among other things, his work. He hadn’t touched Dark Shift since the night of the disappearance. He privately thought it was unlikely he ever would, though his partner was as yet unaware of this, and kept frantically rescheduling the meeting with the studio. Wang had money, and his contacts appeared inexhaustible. He was plugged into the city in a way Michael could never hope to be. He’d survive.

Through his research Michael had learned, or been reminded, that in addition to the LeBlanc girl and Josie Ferris and Annette Mattison, another young woman had disappeared at around the same time. This girl had been the daughter of a policeman who had been involved in the apprehension of two previous serial killers. There had been speculation, of a quiet kind, that she had been targeted as a taunt, a punishment for her father’s successes. He had become involved in the investigation of her disappearance, against the advice of the FBI, and at least one newspaper had implied that he was believed to be making concrete progress where they were manifestly failing. Then he had simply dropped out of sight. The policeman’s name had been John Zandt. The Delivery Boy, as Michael Becker had reason to know, had not been apprehended. A retrospective published a year after the disappearances had reported that a Mrs Jennifer Zandt had returned to Florida to be close to her family. The journalist had been unable to discover what had happened to the detective.

Michael thought that tonight, whatever was on television, he and his wife should talk. He would tell her what he believed concerning the man who had come to see them, and he would suggest that when the other policemen and women came to visit, the well-meaning people with whom they now shared a horrible familiarity, they should not mention this evening’s visit.

And something else. Though his faith in words had been deeply shaken, he clung to the belief that words and names were to reality what pillars and architecture were to space. They humanized it. Just as DNA took the random chemicals and turned them into something recognizable, language could take inexplicable phenomena and tame them into situations about which something could be said, and thus about which something could be done.

He would no longer think of The Delivery Boy. He would call him The Upright Man. But in the meantime he would assume the worst. The policeman was right. More than that, Michael Becker realized that it was what Sarah would want.

Nokkon Wud be damned. If the fates demanded this level of tribute, then they could go fuck themselves.

They were sitting outside the Smorgas Board, a combination café and surfer hangout about eight yards down the street from where the Becker girl had been abducted. They had been for an hour, and the place was near to closing. The only other customers were a young couple hunkered around a table a couple of yards away, listlessly sipping something out of big cups.

‘Are you thinking, or just watching?’

Zandt didn’t respond immediately. He sat beside Nina, observing the street. He had barely moved. His coffee was cold. He had only smoked one cigarette, and most of that had burned away unnoticed. His attention was focused entirely elsewhere. Nina was reminded of a hunter, though not necessarily a human one. An animal that was prepared and able to sit, to wait, for as long as it took, without boredom, rage or pain to distract it.

‘They don’t all come back,’ she said, irritably.

‘I know,’ he said, immediately. ‘I’m not watching.’

‘Bullshit.’ She laughed. ‘It’s either that or you’ve had a seizure.’

He surprised her by smiling. ‘I’m thinking.’

She folded her arms. ‘Care to share?’

‘I’m thinking what a waste of time this is, and wondering why you brought me here.’

Nina realized it hadn’t really been a smile. ‘Because I thought you might be able to help,’ she said. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘John, what is this? You know why. Because you helped me before. Because I value your advice.’

He smiled again, and this time she actually shivered.

‘What did I achieve last time?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Tell me. What happened?’

‘You know what happened.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘All I know is that you told me that you were getting somewhere. And you started getting secretive and not telling me anything, despite the fact that up until then you’d relied upon me to feed you stuff out of the Bureau. Stuff you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise because you’d been specifically barred from taking part in the investigation by your own department. I did you a favour and you cut me out.’

‘You did me no favours,’ Zandt said. ‘You did what you thought would do you the most good.’

‘Oh, fuck you, John,’ she snapped. The two slackers at the far table jerked upright, like puppets whose master had suddenly woken up. Heavy vibes.