I knew the man she meant. So did Epstein. There was only one individual who fitted that description, who had the resources and, more importantly, the vocation to do as this woman wished.
He called himself the Collector.
22
The envelope had arrived at the offices of the lawyer Thomas Eldritch in Lynn, Massachusetts, by standard mail. Lynn was known in local parlance as ‘the city of sin’, in part due to its reputation for high crime rates during the peak of its industrial boom but mostly because of the ease of the rhyme. Nevertheless such taunts have a tendency to get under the skin not only of individuals but of entire cities, and at the end of the twentieth century it was suggested that Lynn should change its name to Ocean Park, which gave fewer opportunities to amateur poets for unkind rhymes. The proposal was rejected. Lynn had been Lynn for a very long time, and altering its name would be tantamount to a bullied schoolchild admitting that the bullies had won, and moving to a different school to avoid further confrontation. Also, as any schoolchild will tell you, the more you protest about name-calling, the louder the catcalls become.
Eldritch was not troubled by the conjunction of the words ‘Lynn’ and ‘sin’: he found it rather apt, for Eldritch was in the sin business, specializing in those of a mortal nature. He was, though, more prosecutor than final arbiter, assembling details of a case, confirming the guilt of the parties involved, and then passing on what he had learned to his private executioner so that the ultimate sentence might be carried out. Eldritch understood the disjunction between the concepts of law and justice. His response was to refuse to accept this fact unconditionally: he was reluctant to wait for justice to be applied in the next world when it could just as easily be dispensed in this one, with a concomitant reduction in the amount of evil and misery contained in this realm. The possibility that he might be a party to that which he hated rarely, if ever, bothered him, and it certainly did not cross the mind of the one who wielded the blade at the final moment.
But the letter was problematical. The return address was a box number that did not exist, and the envelope contained only two sheets of paper. One was a list of names, the other an unsigned covering note which read:
I have made errors in my life, and I am afraid. I have confessed my sins, and seek to make reparation for them. I believe that the names on this list may be of interest to you and one of your clients. Please believe me when I tell you that it represents only a fraction of the information I have available to me. I know of the Believers. I know of the Army of Night. I can give your enemies into your hands, hundreds and hundreds of them. If you wish to talk further, you can contact me at the number below from November 19 for one twenty-four hour period, beginning at 00.01 a.m. on that date. Should I fail to hear back from you during this period, I will assume that I was mistaken in my approaches. You are not the only ones in a position to act upon this knowledge, and you are not the only ones with whom I have shared it.
Typed below the letter was a cell phone number. When the number was tested, it was discovered not to be in operation. It was still not in operation when November 19 arrived, and passed. This was the source of considerable frustration to Eldritch & Associates, as a cautious investigation of the individuals named on the list, most of whom had not previously come to the firm’s attention, revealed that a number were indeed compromised, and had apparently willingly colluded in their own damnation. Some accompanying documentation that followed by mail a few days later, apparently from the same sender, confirmed this view. They had sold themselves in return for influence and advancement, for favors financial and sexual, and sometimes simply for the satisfaction of secretly doing wrong. The letter had promised a treasure trove of further information once contact was made; instead, there was only silence.
The law firm of Eldritch & Associates was an operation that prized documents, as any good law firm should. It knew the value of paperwork because a thing set down on paper was difficult to erase, and the fact of its existence could not be denied. Mr Eldritch liked to say that nothing on a computer screen really existed. He distrusted anything that did not make a noise when it was dropped, but he was no Luddite: he simply prized secrecy and confidentiality, and the success of the firm’s mission was predicated on its ability to leave no trace of its actions. Dealings and communications conducted through the Internet left a trail that an idiot child could follow. Thus it was that there were no computers at Eldritch & Associates, and the firm did not accept submissions or messages by email or other electronic means.
Even the firm’s phone was rarely answered, and, when it was picked up, assistance of any kind was seldom forthcoming. A caller who contacted that venerable institution in the hope of securing advice or aid relating to difficulties with the law would usually be told that the firm was not accepting new clients at present, and rarely did the name of Eldritch figure in any but the most esoteric of cases: disputes over ancient wills in which some or all of the relevant parties had by then activated wills of their own through the workings of mortality; property dealings that related to houses and plots largely unwanted and generally regarded as unsaleable, often linked by some connection, either peripheral or direct, to crimes of blood; and, most infrequently, offers of representation on a pro bono basis for those involved in the most heinous of crimes, although in each case the defendants had already been found guilty in a court of law, and the approach by Eldritch & Associates typically involved only a carefully worded commitment to investigate the circumstances of the conviction. The interviews would be conducted in person by Mr Eldritch himself, a vision of old world refinement in dark pinstripe trousers, matching waistcoat, black jacket, and black silk tie, all overlaid with a faint patina of dust, as though the lawyer had been roused from the sleep of decades for just this purpose.
Only occasionally did someone comment upon the fact that Mr Eldritch bore a striking resemblance to an undertaker.
Mr Eldritch was a consummate interrogator. His particular interest lay in cases where unanswered questions remained: questions of motivation and, more specifically, of suspicion about the involvement of unknown others in the commission of crimes, men and women who had somehow avoided attracting the attention of the law. He had discovered that self-interest was the great motivator, and the possibility of a sentence reduction, or the avoidance of the needle in a bare room, tended to loosen tongues. True, one had to mine a great weight of lies to uncover a single gem of truth, but that was part of the pleasure for Mr Eldritch: one had to test the acuity of one’s processes on a regular basis if one were not to become physically old
Nobody ever won a reprieve from the death chamber, or a reduction in sentence, because Mr Eldritch took an interest in his case, but then Mr Eldritch never made any such specific promises. In fact, those who spoke with him couldn’t quite recall why they’d agreed to do so in the first place once Mr Eldritch had gone on his less-than-merry way, and eventually they seemed to forget about him entirely, either of their own volition or through, once again, the actions of mortality, state-sanctioned or otherwise.
But those of whom they spoke with Eldritch – accomplices, employers, betrayers – frequently lived to regret the fact that the old lawyer had taken an interest in their existence, although their regret was destined to be as short-lived as they were. In time a caller would come, trailing nicotine and vengeance. He would have a gun, or more often a blade, in his hand, and as their lifeblood warmed his cold skin, his eyes would scan his surroundings, seeking some small remembrance of the occasion, a token of a sentence carried out, for collecting is an ongoing obsession, and a collection can always be added to.
And so it was that when no response could be elicited from the phone number supplied with the list of names, efforts were made to discover the identity of its owner. Although Mr Eldritch had no fondness for computers, he was willing to employ others to use them on his behalf, just as long as their unnatural glow did not sully his own environment. The number was traced to a cell phone that was part of a batch supplied to a big box store near Waterbury, Connecticut. An electronic search of the store’s sales records came up with a date and time of purchase, but no name, indicating a cash payment. Security footage from the premises was stored digitally, and proved to be as easy to access as the store’s inventory. An image of the woman was found: fifties, brunette, rather masculine in appearance. She was timed leaving the store, after which footage from the exterior cameras was examined. Her car was identified, and its license plate checked. The plate led, in turn, to her name, address, and Social Security number, since the State of Connecticut required the presentation of a Social Security card to issue a driver’s license. Unfortunately, by the time Eldritch & Associates had obtained all of this information, Barbara Kelly was already dead.
