Thinking about what he’d said, he wished he’d said it differently. It was too ominous, too obscure. It needed context, explanation. He was tempted to call back and leave a longer message, but he was afraid he’d end up making the situation worse.
He called Hardwick’s number and got voice mail. He left a message saying that he was currently en route to Walnut Crossing. He asked if there’d been any casualties in the Cooperstown fires, or any sign of Bincher. And, regarding the crazy shooter, what had he found out? He ended the call, making sure his phone was still on, and went back into the food court for another coffee.
It wasn’t until he was up into the rural hills above Barleyville that Hardwick finally got back to him. “We’ve got some seriously insane shit going on here, ace. Three big houses, three big piles of ashes. Lex’s house, plus one on each side of it. Six people dead—none of them Bincher. Two bodies in the house on his left, four in the house on his right, including two kids. All trapped in the fires. Guys on the scene are saying it happened sometime after midnight, went up real quick. The arson unit guy is saying probable SIDs—small incendiary devices—four of them, one at each corner of Bincher’s house. No effort by the arsonist to make it seem like anything but arson.”
“And the other two houses were just collateral damage? You sure?”
“I’m not sure about anything. I’m outside the yellow tape, blending in with the asshole gawkers—just picking up what the local cops are telling their buddies. But the word is that the gas chromatograph tests were positive for incendiary chemicals at Bincher’s, not at the others.”
“But Bincher’s house was empty? I mean, there were no bodies in that one?”
“None so far. But I can see the techs still crawling around down there in the wet ashes. Quite the fucking mob scene. Fire department, BCI, arson unit, sheriff’s department, troopers, local uniforms.” He paused. “Christ, Davey, if this is supposed to be … to be a way of warning Lex off the case …” His voice trailed off.
Gurney said nothing.
Hardwick coughed, cleared his throat. “You still there?”
“Still here. Just thinking about your ‘warning’ comment.” He paused. “I’d say that cutting your power lines was probably a warning. The mutilation of Gurikos’s head was probably a warning. But this … this Bincher thing … this feels like something more. Like war. With zero concern for who gets killed.”
“I agree. The little fucker has an appetite for serious destruction. And arson seems to be a recurrent theme.”
“Recurrent theme?” Gurney slowed down, pulled onto a grassy bluff overlooking the reservoir, turned off the engine, and opened his windows. “What do you mean, recurrent theme? What did you get from Interpol?”
“Maybe a lot, or maybe a lot of nothing. Hard to say. The thing of it is, the information they’ve pieced together in their database may or may not refer to a single individual. The current stuff, from the past ten years or so, is probably accurate—most of it anyway. But before that—earlier than ten years ago—it gets shakier. Also more bizarre.”
Gurney wondered how much more bizarre it could get than hammering nails into someone’s head.
Hardwick explained. “The guy in Ankara decided to talk to me on the phone rather than create an e-mail trail, so I took notes. What he gave me amounts to two little stories. Depending on how you look at them, they can seem very connected, or maybe not connected at all. The stories go backwards in time, starting with the material assembled in the last decade or so on the assassin who goes by the name Petros Panikos. You ready for this?”
“All ears, Jack.”
“The Panikos name, used as a primary search link, led back to an event that occurred twenty-five years ago in the village of Lykonos in southern Greece. There was a Panikos family there that owned a gift shop. There were four sons in the family, the youngest of whom was believed to have been adopted. The gift shop, along with the family home, was destroyed by a fire that killed both parents and three of the sons. The fourth son, the adopted one, disappeared. Arson was suspected but never proved. No formal birth certificate or adoption papers were ever found for the missing son. The family was very private, had no close relatives, and there was even some disagreement in the village about the missing son’s name. But—get this—the two possible names mentioned were Pero and Petros.”
“How old was he?”
“No one could say for sure. According to the old arson investigation file, his age at the time was estimated to be anywhere from twelve to sixteen.”
“No information on his birth name or where he came from originally?”
“Nothing official. However, in the arson investigation file there’s a statement from a priest in the village who thought the boy came from a Bulgarian orphanage.”
“What made him think that?”
“There’s no indication in the file that anyone bothered to ask. But the priest did give the name of the orphanage.”
Gurney let out a short laugh. It had nothing to do with humor. If he had to explain it, he probably would have called it an overflow of energy. There was something about the tracking process, the movement from one bit of information to another, the steps across the stream, that charged the circuits of his brain. “And I’m guessing that the trail to the orphanage takes us to another relevant event?”
“Well, actually, it takes us to a bleak communist-era orphanage for which there are no extant records. Wanna guess why?”
“Another arson?”
“Yep. So all we know about its residents at the time of the fire—in which most of them died—comes from a skimpy old police file, actually from one interview in that file, with a staff nurse who survived the blaze. By the way, there was no problem establishing arson as the cause. Apart from the orphanage’s four buildings going up in flames at the same time—and apart from gas cans being found in all four—the outer doors were jammed shut with wooden wedges.”
“Meaning the goal was mass murder. But it sounds like the fire was the end of the story. What was the beginning?”
“According to the nurse’s statement, a couple of years before the fire, a strange little kid was discovered one winter morning, literally on the front steps. The kid appeared to be mute and illiterate. But then they discovered that he was fluent not only in Bulgarian but also in Russian, German, and English. This nurse got the idea that the kid was some sort of idiot savant with languages—he was that good. So she got him some basic grammar books, and sure enough, during the two years he was there he learned French, Turkish, and God knows what else.”
“Did he ever tell them where he came from?”
“He claimed total amnesia—no memory of anything prior to arriving there. His only link to the past was a chronic nightmare. Something involving a carnival and a clown. They ended up putting him in a separate room at night, away from the other kids, because of how often he’d wake up screaming. For some reason—maybe because of there being a clown in the dream—the nurse got the idea that his original mother had been in some kind of creepy little traveling circus.”
“Sounds like quite the unusual child. Any big red flags pop up before the fire?”
“Oh, yeah. Big one.” Hardwick paused dramatically.
It was one of his habits that Gurney had learned to live with. “You want to tell me about it?”
“A couple of kids made fun of him, something about the nightmares.” Another pause.