The Anniversary Man (51 page)

Irving cut him short, explained his fear, that the threat to get personal may already have become more than just a threat.

Farraday said to move ahead with the operation, that he would handle the paperwork.

Irving arrived at Costello′s apartment building at five of one. He went up the stairs with his gun drawn, his senses attuned to every sound in the place, and had already knocked several times without any response by the time Vogel and O′Reilly arrived.

′There′s another black-and-white out back,′ Vogel told Irving. ′If you need them on the back stairway—′

′Tell them which apartment,′ Irving said. ′Tell them to stay silent, that we may not need them to access, but be alert for anyone trying to leave.′

Irving banged on the door again, called Costello′s name, identified himself, waited patiently for any sound from within.

Five minutes later, he nodded to O′Reilly. The officer had brought the hydraulic punch from the car, came forward to position it over the lock. He switched it on, and there was a whining sound for a few seconds before it lit up green on top.

Irving stepped back, hollered Costello′s name one more time, waited for a handful of seconds and then gave the go-ahead to O′Reilly.

O′Reilly fired the punch, and with a sound like a gunshot a hole was driven through the door. O′Reilly stepped back, and the section of door containing the lock fell through into the interior of the apartment. The door, however, remained rigidly in place.

′Deadbolts above and below,′ O′Reilly said, and Irving stepped back as he reached through the hole and felt along the doorframe.

Within a moment Ray Irving stood on the threshold of John Costello′s world, looking down the clean and undecorated hallway, the walls bare of pictures, a strip of featureless linoleum on the floor. The place was cold, and for a moment Irving wondered whether a window had been left wide somewhere within the place. Thankfully, the smell of the dead, that cloying and unmistakable odor that filled the nostrils, the mouth, the throat, the chest, was absent. Neither could he smell the precursor - the rich, coppery haunt of blood, pooled and drying somewhere close.

Irving turned and looked back at the uniforms. Guns drawn, all three of them made their way down the hallway toward the doors at the end, one to the left, one straight ahead. Irving indicated that he would go through the door directly facing them, that Vogel should take the left, O′Reilly acting as cover for both of them in the event that defensive action was required.

But Irving sensed that the apartment was empty, and so it was with something less than his usual caution that he opened the door and stepped through into John Costello′s living room.

At first it was difficult to appreciate what he was seeing, and even after some moments - turning back to look at O′Reilly, O′Reilly frowning, looking puzzled, almost bemused - Irving still wondered whether there was some trick being played, some trompe l′oeil, for ahead of him was a series of metal bookshelves, erected so close together there was barely space to stand between them, and upon those shelves were the spines of some sort of journal, literally hundreds of them, side by side, spanning the room from one wall to the next. In each corner of the room was a small device rather like a computer modem, a series of lights on its top, a number of holes in its fascia, and these devices hummed, and somehow served to emphasize the restful, almost timeless atmosphere in the room.

′I think they′re ionizers,′ O′Reilly said. ′My wife has one of them . . . something to do with purifying the air or something. I don′t really get it . . .′

Irving backed up to where Vogel stood in the small and pristine kitchen. The work surfaces were spotless, uncluttered with any of the usual accoutrements and utensils one would find in such a room, and when he opened one of the eye-level cabinets on the wall Irving was somehow not surprised to see every can sitting beside its neighbor, label faced forward, stacked one on top of the other by content, and then he noticed something else. Apricots, borlotti beans, cannellini beans, chicken soup, clam chowder . . . The cans were alphabetized.

A further door led through to Costello′s bedroom, and an en suite bathroom where the character of the man was further exemplified. The bathroom cabinet contained eight bars of boxed soap, all the same, stacked end to end, beside them four tubes of the same toothpaste. Behind the toothpaste, carefully arranged, were Bufferin, Chloraseptic, Dristan, Myadec Multiples, Nyquil and Sucrets, again in alphabetical order. This time there was a further detail in that each container carried a small label that had been carefully stuck to the front in such a way that all the labels were not only of the same size, but they were positioned at precisely the same height. The labels gave the expiration date of the product.

′What the hell . . .′ Vogel started, but didn′t finish. There was nothing to say.

Irving headed back to the front room, but before he started looking through the binders on the bookshelves he noticed a small alcove at the rear of the room. Here a desk had been placed in front of a window and the edge of the window frame sealed with some kind of heavy-duty white tape. The desk surface was clear, and each of the drawers was locked.

Irving turned back and lifted a journal from the shelf behind him.

Newspaper clippings. Pictures from magazines and pamphlets. Diagrams. A seemingly unrelated series of random mathematical shapes. A full page where the word simplicity had been cut from fifty or sixty different publications, different sizes, different fonts, different colors, and glued side by side from one edge of the page to the other and right to the bottom. The next page was nothing but a single word printed very carefully right in the middle, centered with unquestionable accuracy:

 

 

Irving returned the journal to its place and selected another. Here he found a similar thing - images, diagrams, symbols, apparently random shapes drawn around letters and words in the middle of newspaper cuttings, but all of it executed with the greatest precision. A third journal was full of the neatest handwriting Irving had ever seen, penmanship so accurate it could have been printed on a computer. Some passages read like diary entries, connected and rational; others were continuous variations on some subject or word:

′What the hell is this?′ Vogel asked, looking over Irving′s shoulder.

′I think it′s someone′s mind,′ Irving replied. He closed the book and returned it to its rightful place, wondering if he hadn′t made the most serious misjudgement of his entire life.

 

Within fifteen minutes Irving had determined that there were in excess of three hundred and fifty journals in the room, each of them unique, each of them following its own vague sequence or subject matter. From what he could surmise they contained the thoughts and conclusions of John Costello from his late teens to the current day. The journal nearest Costello′s desk, placed within arm′s reach of his chair, was incomplete, though the last entry, dated November 11th, was very clear:

Irving′s heart seemed to slow in his chest. He felt nauseous and disoriented.

′We got anything on where he might be?′ O′Reilly asked.

′No idea . . . he could be anywhere.′

O′Reilly indicated the rear of the apartment. ′Vogel′s going through some stuff back there, see if there′s any clue where he might have gone to. What′s the deal with this guy? Flight risk, or what?′

′I thought he might have been a victim,′ Irving replied. ′He′s been working with me on this case.′

′Working with you on the case? Jesus, the look of this place, it seems like he′s the one that should be investigated.′

′You′d think so, wouldn′t you?′ Irving replied, and he smiled tiredly, and didn′t know what to think, or how to express what he felt.

He didn′t want to consider that he′d made a mistake. He didn′t want to consider the consequences of his most recent decisions if Costello proved to be who he was now imagining he might be.

This was not the apartment of a normal person, not by any stretch of the imagination. The things he was seeing defied reason and explanation, except in some strange and fractured reality occupied by John Costello, serial-killer survivor, apparent savant, possibly unhinged and blowing in the breeze . . .

Was this man capable of these monstrous killings that had been happening? Was he that good? That smart? Had Costello broken into the Allen house with a rifle and killed six people?

What now? Where did he go from here?

Irving had no time to consider what he would do next, for someone was coming through the front door of the apartment and before he had a chance to employ standard protocol, O′Reilly was out ahead of him, gun drawn once again, and Irving reached the front hallway only to find O′Reilly had wrestled someone to the ground, was demanding a name, an explanation of their presence . . .

And Irving heard the breathless response, the awkward sound as John Costello struggled beneath O′Reilly′s weight.

′I live here,′ he gasped. ′This is my apartment . . . I live here for God′s sake . . .′

A
t three-eighteen Ray Irving was called from the interview room by Bill Farraday. Apparently Karen Langley had been in the lobby for over an hour, had told several officers to go fuck themselves when they requested her to leave. She was waiting for Irving. She would not go anywhere until Ray Irving came to speak with her. And if they ejected her forcibly she would write up such a fucking shitstorm about you assholes that you won′t know which fucking day it is, you understand me?

Whatever friendship might have been burgeoning between Ray Irving and Karen Langley seemed already to have died a swift and definitive death - more than likely within the first five minutes of her being informed of what Irving had done.

The fact that he had John Costello in an interview room, the fact that he was actually questioning Costello, with the implication - direct or not - that Costello was in some way involved in these killings, was as far from acceptable as could be imagined.

′You, Ray Irving,′ she hissed as he walked toward her, ′are an asshole of the most extra-fucking-ordinary dimensions.′ Red-faced, fists clenched, her eyes narrowed, she was all but ready to roundhouse him. Visions in her mind of Ray Irving, his face bloodied, kneeling on the floor, pleading for her to stop hitting him. ′I cannot believe . . . I just cannot fucking believe that you could be so insane, so fucking ignorant—′

Irving raised his hands, conciliatory, placatory. ′Karen. Listen to me—′

′Karen listen to me?′ she echoed. ′Who in God′s name do you think you are? You have any fucking idea what something like this is going to do to him? God, you have done nothing but cause chaos in my fucking life ever since I met you—′

′Hey, that′s not fair . . . and could you please get the fuck out of the lobby and have a proper conversation with me?′

′A proper conversation? What the fuck are you talking about?′ she snapped. ′And did it even cross your mind for one fucking second that I might appreciate some kind of forewarning of what the hell you were going to do, eh?′

′Karen, this is a murder investigation, for God′s sake!′

Her eyes widened. ′Don′t you dare raise your voice at me, and no, I will not have a proper conversation with you. I′m giving you the same consideration that you gave me. You went and broke into his apartment . . .′ Karen Langley, her fists still clenched, stepped back a couple of yards, turned on her heels and walked toward the desk as if trying to prevent herself from physically laying Irving out. When she headed back, it was with that cool and distant look of disdain and contempt that she could so effortlessly muster when required.

′Are you going to charge him with something?′

′I′m not going to answer that question, Karen, and you know it.′

′Is he a murder suspect?′

′I′m not answering these questions.′

′You understand that I′m planning on never fucking speak to you again—′

Irving was beginning to get angry. He didn′t believe that she had the right to make him feel so small and apologetic. ′What the fuck do you think is going on here, Karen?′ He reached out, took her elbow, led her away from the middle of the lobby to the right-hand wall. ′You think I went in there guns blazing for my own health, eh? You think I wanted to do this? I went to find him because he was missing. I went to find him because I actually give a fuck about where he is and what he′s doing, you know? I actually give a damn about the guy. He helped us, did what we asked him to do, and then he vanishes. To all intents and purposes the guy has just walked off the face of the earth. So we go down there. We knock on the door and there′s no answer. Now I′m beginning to worry. Now I′m thinking that the last little paragraph in that letter, the thing about getting personal . . . I′m thinking that maybe, just maybe, it might have been directed at John, you know? That this fucking madman got it into his head that it might be a good idea to finish up where Robert Clare left off. To go over to John Costello′s apartment, and, just to prove that he′s the best of the best, he′s gonna finish up what some other sick psycho fuck left incomplete, and hammer the guy′s head to bits. You following me so far?′