The Narrows - Michael Connelly [85]
The Dutch detectives never got much further with the investigation. They never found the mechanism by which the killer got to the men, controlled them and killed them. Backus would have never even made a blip on their suspect radar if he hadn’t wanted to be noticed. He sent the police the notes that asked for Rachel Walling and led to his identity. The notes, according to the summary report, contained information about the victims and crimes that seemingly only the killer would know. One note contained the passport of the last victim.
To me the connection between Amsterdam’s Rosse Buurt and Clear, Nevada, was obvious. Both were places where sex was legally exchanged for money. But more important, they were places where I assumed men might go without telling others, where they might even take measures to avoid leaving a trail. In some ways this made them perfect targets for a killer and perfect victims. It added an extra degree of safety to the killer.
I finished my survey of McCaleb’s file on the Poet and started through it once more, hoping that I had missed something, maybe just one detail that would bring the whole picture into focus. Sometimes it happens that way. A missed or misunderstood detail becomes the key to the whole puzzle.
But I didn’t find that detail on the second go-round and soon the reports just seemed repetitive and tedious. I grew tired and somehow I ended up thinking about that kid handcuffed in the shower. I kept picturing that scene and I felt bad for the kid and angry for the father who did it and the mother who never cared to know about it.
Did this mean I felt sympathy for a killer? I didn’t think so. Backus had taken his own tortures and turned them into something else and then turned it on the world. I had an understanding of that process and I felt sympathy for the boy he had been. But I felt nothing for Backus the man but a cold resolve to hunt him down and make him pay for what he did.
28
THE PLACE SMELLED HORRIBLE but Backus knew he could live with it. It was the flies that repulsed him the most. They were everywhere, dead and alive. Carrying germs and disease and dirt. As he huddled under the blanket, his knees drawn up, he could hear them buzzing in the darkness, flying blind, hitting the screens and the walls, making little sounds. They were out there, everywhere. He realized he should have known that they would come, that they were part of the plan.
He tried to block out their sounds. He tried to think and concentrate on the plan. It was his last day here. Time to move. Time to show them. He wished he could stay to watch, to bear witness to the event. But he knew that there was much work to do.
He stopped breathing. He could feel them now. The flies had found him and were crawling on the blanket, looking for a way in, a way to get to him. He had given them life but now they wanted to get to him and eat him.
His laugh broke sharply from beneath the blanket and the flies that had alighted on it scattered. He realized he was no different from the flies. He, too, had turned against the giver of life. He laughed again and he felt something go down his throat.
“Aaaggh!”
He retched. He coughed. He tried to get it out. A fly. A fly had gone down his throat.
Backus jumped up and almost tripped as he climbed out. He ran to the door and out into the night. He shoved his finger down his throat until everything came up and came out. He dropped to his knees, gagged and spit it all out. He then pulled the flashlight from his pocket and studied his effluent with the beam. He saw the fly in the greenish yellow bile. It was still alive, its wings and legs mired in the swamp of human discharge.
Backus stood up. He stepped on the fly and then nodded to himself. He wiped the bottom of his shoe on the red dirt. He looked up at the silhouette of the rock outcropping that rose a hundred feet above