The Angel of Knowlton Park (32 page)

They found Perry tucked unobtrusively into a corner, still as a cigar store Indian. "Anything?" Burgess asked.

"Nah. I doubt if there will be. Guy's not stupid."

"How long's it been?" Burgess asked.

"Since he said he'd be back? Hour, hour and a quarter, maybe? Rocky says when we're done here, if we feel like it, we might wanna drop back and look at some of Osborne's pictures. Says he's got some doozies."

Kyle grunted. "I wonder what his standards are?"

"Probably not aesthetic."

"This doesn't pan out, what do we do next, Joe?" Perry asked.

"Sleep would be good," Kyle said.

"Sleep," Burgess agreed. "Get all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for 0700. We can run it all down then."

They stood in silence, watching the occasional car come and go. Waiting wearily under the cold, bright lights, things took on a time-altered, surreal quality that the distortions of the gauzy night only deepened. The gray night was prettier than the gray day had been. Hell of a lot more dangerous, too. Things came at you suddenly, disappeared just as quickly. It was hard to get your bearings.

"Well, well," Stan said quietly, satisfaction in his voice. "Looks like our guy may be stupider than we thought. I'm going to slip inside and get in front of them." In a flash, he was inside walking through the airport, wearing a baseball cap and carrying a duffle bag.

Ahead, a teal Jetta had stopped at the curb. The driver came around to the passenger side and bent down to confer. "It's that social worker, Taylor," Kyle said. The scumbag world was like a small town. Everyone in a particular area of wrongdoing knew everyone else. Drug dealers knew dealers and users. Thieves knew thieves and fences. Pimps knew hookers and pimps. Pedophiles knew other pedophiles. Cops eventually came to know them all, giving the "yeah, I see you" salute to the regulars on their beats.

The passenger door opened and Osborne got out. Moving stiffly, Burgess was pleased to see. He hated to think Osborne would have walked away unscathed while
he'd
bled from one end of the neighborhood to the other. Kyle spoke quietly into the radio, alerting Perry and the uniforms who were waiting. Then the two of them began walking down the sidewalk toward the car. Perry coming at them the other way. A patrol car, closing in too soon, spooked Osborne. In an instant, he was in the Jetta's driver's seat and moving, the patrol car in pursuit. Taylor stood on the sidewalk, staring in dismay at his departing car.

Perry waved at them, pointing to his car. "Let's go!" he said. Burgess stepped into the street, stopped a second patrol car, and indicated Jim Taylor. "Hold him," he said. Then he sprinted to the waiting car, Perry moving before he was in the door.

The airport, which straddled the Portland/South Portland line, was built on a patch of land isolated by three rivers, Long Creek, the Fore River, and the Stroudwater River, as well as by the Interstate. There weren't many roads and no neighborhoods for Osborne to lose himself in. But Osborne had obviously been watching Volkswagen commercials. They wanted drivers, he would give them a driver. He led them on a merry chase through the fog and darkness, from tarmac to dirt road to barely visible track, the cruiser and Perry close behind, rocking and rolling over the rough ground, the world around them black as sin. Suddenly, the cruiser's brake lights slammed on. Perry slewed sideways to avoid hitting it.

"You drive like a cop," Kyle said, as he jumped out.

Perry flashed a grin. "Thanks."

The uniform's flashlight illuminated Taylor's car nose-down in a watery ditch, driver's door standing open. Splashing and crackling sounds told them Osborne had struck out on foot through the sucking mud and razor-sharp grasses of the salt marsh. Burgess recognized the uniform—Remy Aucoin, a rookie just finishing his first year on the force. "Call dispatch and get us more cops, Remy. Tell 'em to bring plenty of flashlights. Then call Lt. Melia and tell him we're out here chasing Osborne. And next time, let us get in place first."

Aucoin ducked his head, embarrassed. "Sorry, Sarge, I..."

"No excuses," Burgess said.

Aucoin raised his radio, looking longingly after Kyle and Perry, who had taken Burgess's flashlight and were disappearing into the darkness. Aucoin was young, fit, and eager. A better candidate for the job than Burgess. "Oh, go ahead. Go get him. I'll make the calls," Burgess said. "Just, for God's sake, don't shoot him if you can help it."

"Thank you, sir." Aucoin plunged into the high grass, taking his flashlight with him, leaving Burgess in a world lit only by the occasional lightning bug and the piercing beams and blue strobes of Aucoin's cruiser, in a night alive with the impassioned screams of insects and amphibians searching for mates and the deadly whine of mosquitoes. No one was going to have fun out here; when they caught Osborne, he was in for some rough handling for putting them through this. Like the cops say, "Make me run, I'll hurt you."

As he got on the radio and called Melia, Burgess felt a wave of regret. Dangerous as it was—and he knew Osborne was plenty dangerous—a chase through the darkness after a fleeing suspect always held vestiges of that most sublime childhood experience, being outside in the dark, late at night, playing games. Even aside from the atavistic stuff, one of a cop's driving forces was that adrenaline rush. You spent the formative years of your career as a street cop, getting hooked by those surges. Dispatch mutters something over the radio. You hit the siren and lights, and go.

Even with the heat, a bum knee, and a bad shoulder, he wanted to be in the game, wanted to be the one to grab the back of Osborne's neck and push his sweaty face down into the oozing mud. He wanted to vent his rage screaming curses, using language he normally excised from his daily speech. He wanted to pull those flailing arms back, plant a knee in the middle of that flabby back, and snap on his own cuffs. He wanted the collar.

Leaning against the car, its metal slippery from fog, he wished he smoked. At least it would keep the damned bugs away. In a summer so dry, they should have died out. But swampy spots, marshes and wetlands, were their last resort. Funny expression, last resort. People always talked about going to a "fancy resort" or a "world-class resort." If they went there and died, had they gone to a last resort?

He heard the distant rise and fall of a siren, the sound distorted by the fog. Looking in the direction Osborne had gone, he couldn't see anything, not even the glow of flashlights. The marsh had swallowed them up. There was a place farther along where the water almost met the road. Once this end was covered, he'd head down there with some people, pinching Osborne between them.

He turned the car around and got himself facing out, waiting as the cars came up to him, Melia in the lead. Burgess rolled down his window, gave a succinct report, and told Melia what he wanted to do. With Melia's approval, he drove back to the road past the line of cruisers, telling the last ones to follow him.

They parked just past the elbow in the road, gathering around as Burgess filled them in. "We don't know if he's armed, so assume he is," he said. "Everyone wearing vests?" There was a murmur of assents. "If you've got gloves, wear 'em. That grass can slice like a knife." In a thin line, they headed into the grass. This time, he slogged through the muck with the rest of them.

It was rough going with his knee and more than once he cursed his macho stupidity. All the same, he needed to be here. Bringing Osborne in was important. Something to hand Melia and stick in Cote's face. To show the media the Portland police weren't a sorry lot. They all took insults to the department personally. All the venom in the world spewing from a suspect's mouth might roll right off, but a nasty word in the press hurt everyone.

They were all doing the same thing—walking a few paces, then pausing to listen and survey the area around them with their lights. Step. Stop. Step. Stop. He'd borrowed a spare flashlight from one of the cruisers. Ahead, there were rustling sounds that might have been the approach of Osborne, or other cops, or the agitated perambulations of disturbed nocturnal creatures. At times, he felt like a nocturnal creature.

Step. Stop. Listen. The backs of his hands oozed from grass cuts. Sweat plastered his shirt to his chest. Clinging muck made his steps heavy. Step. Stop. Listen. Every step transporting him farther from Portland, Maine, in a new century, back to Nam and the seventies. Shaving decades off his life and giving him back the metallic taste of fear, the perpetual burden of dread. It was the place, the air, the heat, the smells. The rasp of grass against his clothes and the stinking, sucking mud. Awareness of his surroundings and their potential danger stirring his nerves like a subtle current. He sniffed the air and felt the night like he hadn't in a long time.

Off to his left, he heard splashing, faint as waves on a beach. Butt down, thighs dropping into an automatic crouch, he moved that way, swinging his flashlight in a steady arc in front of him. Left to right. Right to left. Holding it far from his body, in case someone decided to shoot. He was coated with slime to mid-thigh, the mud sucking at his feet like Mother Nature giving a blow job.

A big splash to his left. Switching his light off, he moved toward it. Everything went silent. He stood on the slippery bank, hearing the water lap, the crashing in the grass behind him. Holding his breath and listening the way he'd listened as a nineteen-year-old in the jungle, aurally probing the darkness for the sounds of living bodies. Over the lap of the water and the noises around him, he heard the sound of muffled breath and then, acute as anything, the scent of another man's fear. He turned toward it as Osborne threw himself up the bank and pulled him down into the river, forcing his head into the brackish water.

Osborne was younger, uninjured, and desperate, but Burgess was bigger and madder and he'd spent a lifetime subduing people who didn't want to be restrained. As soon as he got his head above water, he called for help. They were like eels wrestling, and the mud gave them no decent footing, but in the end, it went exactly as he'd envisioned it.

When he finally got his feet under him, he dragged Osborne upright and sank fist after first into the man's soft stomach. The others held back and let it happen. It wasn't a one-sided contest. Somewhere, despite the stockbroker image and the yuppie Saab, Osborne had acquired some street fighting experience, but Burgess had a point to make. He pounded Osborne until there was no more resistance. Then he grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him up the bank.

"Lie down on your stomach and put your hands behind your back," he ordered. Osborne tried to run. There were cops all around, ready to help if they were needed. He grabbed an arm, swept Osborne's feet out, and slammed him down on his stomach. Osborne tried to crawl away.

"Give it up, you dumb fuck," Burgess ordered, planting a knee in the middle of Osborne's back and pushing his face down into the mud. Through his knee and his hand, he felt furious resistance turn to surprise and then to flailing panic as Osborne realized he couldn't breathe. What did the asshole expect, after the trouble he'd given them—warm tea and a snack?

"Hold still," he ordered. "Put your hands behind your back. As soon as I get these cuffs on, I'll let you up." Osborne continued to struggle, trying to turn his body, to kick his captor away. Burgess put a hand on the back of his head and pushed him deeper into the mud, grinding his face down into it. "Listen, asshole. Make it easy on yourself and do what you're told. I said hold still. Understand?"

Then Remy Aucoin was there, grabbing Osborne's arm and forcing it back, while Perry took the other. When Osborne resisted, he got an extra twist on each arm, his groans muffled by the mud. Burgess snapped the cuffs on, tight enough to hurt.

"It's okay. We've got him, Joe," Perry said. He held out a hand.

Burgess grabbed it and hauled himself up, feeling primitive and evil and elated. He'd lost the flashlight during the struggle. Didn't need light to know what a mess he was.

Osborne bared his teeth in a face glistening with mud and tried to spit mud from his mouth. "I didn't hurt him," he said. "The kid. I didn't hurt that kid."

"Hold on." Kyle, in the voice of revival preacher, recited the Miranda warning, his cadences slow, perfect, and elegant, as they stood in a congregation of the righteous, staring at the trash they were removing from Portland's streets. "Do you understand these rights?" he concluded. Custody and interrogation. If Osborne said something useful, they didn't want to lose it. Osborne nodded.

"Didn't hurt him or didn't kill him?" Burgess said.

"I didn't kill that kid."

"What kid?"

"Timmy Watts. I didn't kill him. I never killed anybody."

"What did you do to him?" Burgess asked. "Use your dog to scare him into getting naked? Take pictures of him? Fuck him in the ass and then kill him because he cried?"

"I didn't kill him." Osborne had finally recognized the mess he was in. "I didn't kill him. I like kids. You've got to believe me. I like kids."

"We already know that, Mr. Osborne." Burgess turned away, disgusted. "Anyone have a clean handkerchief?"

"Why?" Kyle asked, handing him one. "You want to surrender?"

"Surrender? I thought I won." He didn't feel like a winner, only like a grunt during a lull in the battle. He took the cloth, waded into the water, and washed off the worst of the mud. As an act of hygiene, it was fruitless, but at least he could open his eyes and mouth. He staggered up the bank and held out his hand. "Kyle. Radio?" His own was too muddy to bother with. He called Vince. Told him they had Osborne.