The Essence of Darkness Read online

  During each of his field missions, he once again felt that sense of freedom from his childhood, at least the freedom he’d known before boarding school.

  Agent Cooper usually worked alone. His superiors let him choose to conduct his investigations as he saw fit. He was free to use the investigative methods he considered most appropriate. Of course, he’d had to prove himself to reach that point. Like all special agents, his training had been extremely challenging, both physically and psychologically. He still carried the painful memory of a survival training course in Afghanistan that he almost hadn’t finished.

  Cooper was thirty-eight years old. He was in perfect physical condition. He went for a run right after he got up every morning and finished each day with a yoga session. He didn’t smoke, he drank nothing stronger than mineral water or coffee, and he ate only organic products. He lived alone. Well, almost alone: a cat named Clarence shared his loft apartment in St. Johns, the working-class neighborhood of Portland. He’d found Clarence one rainy night, in the alley just outside his front door. The kitten—starving and almost frozen to death—had been letting out small, high-pitched squeaks. Cooper had adopted the cat, even though he’d smelled like an old mop. When Cooper was away on a mission, the cat ate from an automatic dry food dispenser—filled with salmon, his favorite flavor—that Cooper had made by hand. For water, the cat crept along the beam that ran across the loft to a small flap that opened out onto the roof. There, Cooper had made a rainwater collector that provided Clarence with a continuous supply of water.

  *

  October 2

  The day’s first ray of light awoke Cooper. A tentative dawn was breaking. The previous night’s storm seemed to hang above a layer of clouds that weighed heavily on the woods. He had only slept four hours at most. The advantage of these SUVs was that you could actually sleep relatively well in them. He made himself some coffee and began planning his first excursion.

  Northern Pennsylvania is just one immense forest. Human’s presence is almost foreign, improbable, and he must face nature in its most brutal form.

  No homes appeared on the map. The area Cooper was responsible for was fifty miles long and thirty miles wide. He had the support of a surveillance satellite with a camera pointed at the area continuously. An agent was available at all times to inform him of any suspicious movement. He highlighted points potentially usable for clandestine activities in red: rivers for water, rocky areas with crevices that could provide shelter, and the proximity of cultivated fields or herds of livestock. He circled the five forest ranger huts where he would sleep and store his equipment.

  He would spend as much time in these forests as it would take to solve the case. It could go on for months. Usually, individuals involved in these types of crimes made mistakes sooner or later. They couldn’t hide indefinitely without revealing some flaws. Cooper knew how to wait. He knew how to observe methodically with the patience of a predator. The slightest trace of their passage, the most imperceptible sign of their presence, and he would swoop in on them. Eliott Cooper didn’t carry any form of animality within him. He was a calm and discreet man in everyday life. He was the polite, accommodating neighbor who helped old ladies cross the street and never failed to greet neighbors with a smile. The FBI’s training included good conduct and behavior beyond reproach in every respect.

  Although he was nearly forty, Cooper had a strangely youthful appearance. The women of St. Johns nicknamed him “Mr. Cookies,” an allusion to the old St. Lombard Street cookie factory in which he had built his loft. Most of the ladies in the neighborhood would have liked to take a bite. Others thought it was suspicious to see him alone all the time, without a girlfriend. Cooper was a good-looking guy: dark-haired, fairly tall, and slender. He had an angel’s face with serious eyes, topped off with a slight, no-nonsense smile. Always impeccable, very pleasant, but not talkative. Mysterious. He sparked a curiosity tinged with mistrust. Mr. Cookies was too good to be true.

  He didn’t hang out anywhere at night besides the local supermarket, which was open twenty-four hours a day. From time to time, he would go there to stock up on cleaning products, milk, and cat food. People sometimes saw him slip into his van, a dark blue Pontiac Montana Sport, and hit the road. Cooper was, as they say, a guy who didn’t make waves. Sometimes he had formal but friendly conversations with locals who wanted to talk to him. But even though Cooper played the neighborhood-relations game, it was easy to see that it wasn’t his cup of tea. He was a diehard loner. Between missions, he spent his days off fishing north of Portland at Rimrock Lake. He often spent several days there accompanied by Clarence, who, with great delight, got to stuff himself with fresh fish until his stomach was about to burst.

  Cooper deeply loved nature and the simple, pure sense of happiness that these moments brought him. Sometimes he expressed his thoughts out loud to Clarence. “You see, Cat, if all men were cats like you, things would be much easier on our good old planet. Of course, there wouldn’t be as many fish in the lakes.” He had recently had a brief relationship with Barbara, a girl from the forensics department. She was sophisticated but also kind of eccentric. She was an intern. They had met during business hours over a small pile of meat on an autopsy table: what had been left of one of Slash Williamson’s victims.[1] They had laughed a lot and eaten dinner right there: sushi, of course. A few days later, their relationship had deteriorated. Cooper made her come, but he couldn’t satisfy her intellectually afterward. She was fond of pillow philosophy, and he wasn’t very talkative even before making love. One morning, she had slammed the loft door behind her and disappeared. He had called her out of curiosity a few days later. She’d replied that she was tired of his silence and that her corpses were better company than he was.

  *

  He made his backpack and got going. The sky was still overcast, but so much rain had fallen, it was very unlikely that the storm would return. The path wound through the trees and disappeared under dead tree trunks and a carpet of moss. The dampness added to the bitter cold of the dawn. The scent of the woods that filled his lungs was intoxicating, and he relished it.

  Cooper was in his element. He had grown up in the woods. He knew how to listen to the birds and animals and understood their language. He could feel the flow of life, unaltered by man since the dawn of time. Here, there were no obstacles to the proliferation of species, no real limits to this primitive social symbiosis. Life, death, and justice were notions that didn’t exist for the inhabitants of this place. They survived or they died, and they didn’t ask themselves all the questions that haunt man.

  The path led up to a large, shaded clearing with a log cabin in the middle. Daylight could hardly penetrate the thick growth of the woods. Cooper took a rusty key out of his pocket; it was a passkey from the forestry service. The cabin seemed to be in good condition from the outside, but he preferred to look inside before forming an opinion. He climbed the old pine steps that creaked under his weight, inserted the key in the lock, and managed to unlock the door with no problem. Methodically, his eyes swept the two hundred square feet of the only room in the house. Clearly, no one had been here for months, judging from the network of cobwebs that covered the walls. But the cabin had all the essentials: cut wood, a cast-iron stove, running water, and a rustic but comfortable bed.

  He ditched his backpack and sat down on a wooden chair. His shoulders were burning after his four-hour hike. He sat for a few minutes, deep in thought.

  Somewhere in these woods, those children might still be alive. Their captors could be keeping them locked up, fed, and cared for like young plants kept from wilting. He couldn’t stop thinking about them. Abduction traumas remained engraved in victims’ memories, especially when they were so young and vulnerable.

  It reminded him of a case he had worked on for his exams at the FBI Academy: that of an eight-year-old girl, Erin Sullivan. The child had disappeared from an amusement park in Santa Monica one summer afternoon, even though her nanny had accompanied her. An abdu
ction had been more than likely, as no body had turned up on the seawalls surrounding the park, which was right on the ocean. After over a year with no clues found, investigators had exhausted all possible leads. They’d closed the investigation. Fourteen years later, the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters had received an emergency call: the informant had heard several shots on a street in a normally quiet residential neighborhood. When the police forces had entered the house the witness had indicated, they’d found the bullet-ridden body of a fifty-eight-year-old man lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. A young woman had been lying face down under a table, gripping a .45 AutoMag Smith & Wesson in her hand.

  That twenty-two-year-old woman had been none other than Erin Sullivan, kidnapped fourteen years earlier by the man she had just shot. It had taken psychologists and medical specialists over two weeks to get her to say a few words. She had then fallen back into silence and retreated into the reality she had invented to keep herself together during all those years of captivity. The psychopath who had abducted her had brainwashed her with tranquilizers and intensive confinement. He had managed to convince her that he was her father and that all the atrocities he inflicted on her on a daily basis were a normal part of family life. The flash of lucidity Erin Sullivan had experienced when she had grabbed his weapon to kill him had lasted only a few seconds, according to psychiatrists. For the next twenty years, she’d continued to evoke the memory of this monster with tears in her eyes, until she had taken her own life in a room at Rosemead Psychiatric Hospital in Los Angeles.

  Cooper got up and went to fill the stove with logs, less to warm himself than to chase away the darkness engulfing him. Whenever his feelings took over, he quickly reminded himself that hatred and all other emotional impulses were obstacles to clear thinking. He had to keep his mind free of any obstruction. Now he needed to act quickly and efficiently. With each passing hour, the chances of finding the children safe and sound were diminishing.

  He rinsed a pan under the ice-cold, sputtering tap water so he could cook some rice.

  One question had haunted him since he had reviewed the file last night. This thought had followed him all along his journey, like a silent shadow: the Pearsons had turned up dead and burned in their vehicle, and the people who had staged the accident had kidnapped Timothy. But nothing could establish the exact circumstances of the murder.

  Their deaths had remained unexplained.

  The investigators had focused on Timothy’s disappearance because that was the priority. Timothy was the only lead to follow—the only lead that could take them to the other children.

  Cooper poured the rice into the pan bubbling over the fire and pulled off his sweater. He went to crack open one of the two dormer windows to clear the steam out of the cabin. He drained the rice, grabbed a skillet, and threw in the onions he had just chopped. Then he broke three eggs into a bowl and stirred them. He was cooking mechanically without really being there. The question of the Pearsons’ death kept coming back to him.

  It wasn’t his job to answer it. His mission was to find the children, alive if possible, and to prevent the kidnappers from doing more harm. But something else about this question was bothering him more than usual. He knew himself perfectly well. He knew he wouldn’t get any sleep if he didn’t find the answer.

  He set the skillet aside, with the omelet still crackling in it, and went to get his cell phone from his backpack. His finger swept down the list of business contacts and quickly found the one who would be best able to fill him in. He placed the secure call.

  “Hey, Cooper; it’s been a while!”

  It was his old buddy Matt, who worked at FBI headquarters.

  “Hey, Matt; everything okay with you?”

  “Everything’s good. You owe me twenty bucks on the last Bears game.”

  “Ha ha! You never miss a thing,” Cooper joked.

  “Nope. I’m a guiding light, buddy.”

  “Duly noted. Listen, I’m calling you about something serious. Does St. Marys mean anything to you?”

  “I saw the file go through—Pennsylvania, several child abductions. It’s awful,” Matt replied.

  “Really grim.”

  “Are you working on the case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How can I help you, bro?”

  “Do you still have access to the central file?” Cooper asked.

  “Let’s just say I can answer a lot of questions on a lot of different subjects.”

  “There’s one point I want to clear up.”

  “Hold on. I’m opening the file,” Matt said, placing the phone on his desk

  A few seconds passed.

  “Here it is. I’m listening. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “The St. Marys investigation is divided into five separate disappearance cases,” said Cooper. “Go to the last case, dated September 27.”

  “Here it is. Timothy Pearson, reported missing by our services at 12:38 a.m. Both his parents died in the accident that occurred at approximately 10:30 p.m. Their vehicle went off the road and hit a tree before catching fire, et cetera.”

  “Okay, now go to the autopsy report the forensics team submitted on the bodies of Garett and Kaitlyn Pearson.”

  “I’m there. What are you getting at, Cooper?”

  “Tell me word for word what it says in the conclusion of that report, Matt.”

  “It’s just a technical report, no frills.” He read it:

  The bodies’ advanced state of calcination does not allow for reliable analysis. Level of uncertainty estimated at eighty percent. The two DNA fingerprints are no longer readable, erased by combustion.

  Cannot establish cause of death. No thoracic contraction and no ante-mortem lung lesions, therefore, no asphyxia. Cardiac arrest occurred prior to vehicle burning.

  Hypothesis of probable causes of death for both victims: intravenous injection (or forced ingestion) of a lethal neurotoxin. Again, impossible to identify the neurotoxin due to combustion. Subject to validation and pending the documents of the appended file classified 5d.

  “An appended file?” Cooper asked in surprise.

  “Yes, it appears they sent some forensic documents to another department.”

  “What ‘other department’?”

  “Can’t get that info. That file is classified 5d. Do you know what that means?”

  “Vaguely,” Cooper shot back. “That you need special clearance to view that type of file. You don’t have access to it?”

  “Only a handful of our most senior officials can access it.”

  “That kind of restriction isn’t used very frequently, is it?”

  “No, it’s extremely rare. I’ve only seen four of them since I’ve been working for the Bureau. What’s bothering you, Cooper?”

  “I’m in charge of this investigation. They should have informed me of these documents before classifying them, that’s what’s bothering me.”

  “This type of procedure is a high priority,” Matt responded.

  “Right—that’s exactly what I have a problem with.”

  “Anyway, Cooper, the internal department is hearing our conversation. It’s kind of like you’ve made the problem official.”

  “Obviously, but I don’t know if it will help me get answers,” Cooper replied, without bothering to hide his disappointment.

  “I personally can’t give you any more information than that.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in touch, Matt. And I haven’t forgotten your twenty bucks.”

  “Sounds good. Talk to you soon, Cooper. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  Cooper put the phone on the table and went out on the front porch to get some air. The stars were sparkling in the clear sky with a few lingering clouds. Sharp as a scythe, the rising crescent moon looked to him like a fatal smile. He sat down on an old rocking chair rotting in a corner. He rocked back and forth slowly at first, to make sure that the seat would hold up, and then gradually increased the range of m
otion. He tried to relax but couldn’t. The forensic documents that had disappeared into an ultra-confidential 5d file were rolling around in his head. Cooper was organized and methodical; starting a mission with incomplete data was interfering with his process. He took a deep breath and tried to let himself go in the movement of the chair. Internal Affairs no doubt had good reasons to initiate this procedure. The FBI was a perfectly oiled machine that left nothing to chance.

  But beyond that, he sensed something was fundamentally abnormal in this investigation. The impression hadn’t left him since he’d arrived in St. Marys. Now that he was in these woods, the feeling of some hidden evil was gradually gaining the upper hand over the technical questions. The nature of the facts alone went beyond the usual parameters of such cases. Aside from instances within a single family, serial child abduction cases were countable on the fingers of one hand. What kind of monster could plan the kidnappings of such young kids, and most importantly, for what purpose?

  Cooper got up to reheat his omelet and went back outside to eat it. The last clouds had drifted away, revealing in the night sky all the constellations that space could offer the eye. He consulted the forecast for the next day, which predicted stable, sunny weather. He finished his meal and went to bed. A good night’s sleep to restore him was ultimately all he needed.