most valuable pieces. Such an apparently casual attitude to security might not have been considered wise in this day and age, and it was true that the pawn shop had been burgled once, back in 1994. The burglars had beaten the Sister badly, although she presented no threat to them. The attack, more than any other factor, had precipitated her massive gain in weight, and her reluctance to explore an outside world capable of producing such individuals.
The Collector had found those men. They were never seen again.
Actually, this was not entirely true.
Parts of them were seen again.
After that incident, the business of the Sister and the Brother remained untroubled by crime or the fear of crime. Why, then, was there still a need for security cameras? Well, for the same reason that a deserted building at the other end of the street, unoccupied and apparently not for sale or lease, had small, discreet cameras hidden behind bulbs on its façade, and the liquor store down the block operated two surveillance systems running in parallel: because, between them and the cameras in Eldritch’s now ruined building, they offered a full panorama of the street.
Just in case.
Now, on a small computer beside the safe, the Collector logged on to the digital recording system linked to the computer, found the feeds for the two cameras on the pawn shop’s building, and split the screen between them. He used the mouse to move the cursor back to the minutes before the explosion – and now here was the man, his head down, walking toward the camera, looking over his shoulder, turning, raising his hand. Suddenly a flash, and twin bursts of interference on the screen as the explosion shook the cameras. When the pictures cleared, the man was running, his head no longer down, and he vanished from one screen, then the other.
The Collector rewound and slow-forwarded, back and forth, over and over, until he had one image on the screen. He enlarged it, adjusted the area under examination, and enlarged again. The Brother stood behind him, taking it all in.
‘There,’ said the Brother.
‘There,’ said the Collector.
The man’s features were revealed to him. The Collector leaned forward, and touched the face on the screen with his fingertips.
I know you.
41
Later that mornng, Angel, Louis and I traveled to Falls End with two intentions: the first was to find out if there was anything more that Marielle Vetters could tell us about the location of the plane, anything that she might have remembered, however irrelevant it might seem. If she could not help us further, then there was someone else I might ask, although it would mean leaving Falls End temporarily. Marielle had not returned my call from the previous night, but I had not yet started to worry.
Second, we had to plan for the eventual expedition into the woods. With that in mind, I’d called Jackie Garner and asked him to head up to Falls End as soon as possible, because Jackie knew the woods. Andy Garner, Jackie’s old man, had left his wife when Jackie was just a kid. There were irreconcilable differences between them: she thought Jackie’s old man was the biggest asshole who ever lived – a serial screwer of women, a deadbeat who had never met a steady job he liked, and an oxygen thief – and he disagreed, but he’d continued to be a part of his son’s life until he died, and his wife had continued to love him, despite her better judgment. Andy Garner had that rare gift of charm, a charisma that enabled him to skate over the pain his failings caused others, and inspired a degree of tolerance, and even forgiveness, in those whom he hurt. Jackie’s mother, who knew his weaknesses better than anyone, had sometimes been known to take him back into her bed after they had divorced; it was she who had nursed him during his final illness, and she remained his widow in all but name.
Andy Garner kept his head above water by working as a guide in the Great North Woods during hunting season. He was a premium hire, with regular sports who came back to him year after year. They were wealthy businessmen and bankers, and Andy always ensured that they returned to their city lives content with their hunt, and boasting of the animals they had killed. In lean years, where others struggled to find bear or trophy bucks for their clients, Andy Garner would break records, and his