Nature of Evil

by Robert W. Stephens

  “You okay?” she asked. Maybe she should be asking herself that question, she thought.

  “You seem to be asking me that a lot these days.”

  “You can understand why. Can’t you?”

  “I’m fine, Angela.”

  Angela knew Marcus was anything but fine. But she didn’t want to press him, so she took a sip from her beer.

  “Did you see the way Ramsey looked at me this morning?” Marcus asked. “Like I had lost my mind.”

  Angela didn’t know how to respond. Ramsey had indeed looked at Marcus that way. But she couldn’t admit that, and she knew she couldn’t bullshit Marcus by stating the opposite. So she said nothing.

  “You think I’m losing it, too,” he said.

  “I think you’re exhausted. I think you saw shadows on the floor. It’s no wonder you thought it was a snake. I can’t get those damn things out of my head either.”

  Marcus pondered her statement. Maybe the snake on the floor had been a shadow. But what about Leah Grey outside his apartment? She certainly wasn’t a shadow. He had chased her down the street. But she had vanished in the alley where there was nowhere for her to escape. God, maybe he was losing his mind.

  “The journal, what do you think it means?” Marcus asked.

  “Exactly what you think it means. It’s the same as the message in the snake. He’s bored, so he’s leaving us clues. Only I’m worried we’re too far behind to ever catch up. And yes, it creeps the hell out of me that he’s been in your apartment. I’m sure he knows where I live too.”

  “So why hasn’t he tried to take us out?” Marcus asked.

  “That’s what scares me even more.”

  Marcus finally grabbed his beer and took a long gulp.

  Angela looked around the bar. It was getting even more crowded. A large woman, who had obviously had too much to drink, flung the bathroom door open. It slammed against the wall, and the noise rattled the teeth in Angela’s head.

  “Why do you like coming here? It’s too crowded,” she said.

  “Easy to get lost.”

  Marcus took another drink.

  “Richard called me this morning,” she said.

  “That’s interesting.”

  Marcus put his beer down.

  “What did he want?”

  “He wants to see me again. Said he thinks we broke things off too fast.”

  “Are you going to see him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Marcus took another drink. He looked out at the crowd.

  “That means you’ve already decided to and now you’re trying to figure out a way to justify it.”

  “That’s not what it means. The truth is I was never really crazy about the guy.”

  “Then why the uncertainty?” he asked.

  “I’m just tired of being alone. Tired of going back to an empty house and having nothing to do but think about work.”

  “I understand.”

  “Have you ever thought about doing something else?” she asked.

  “Every damn day.”

  “I used to love this job. Never wanted to do anything else,” she said.

  “And now?”

  “Now I just wonder what the hell else I could do to earn a living.”

  Angela looked at Marcus’s left hand, which was wrapped around the beer bottle.

  “I noticed you stopped wearing your wedding ring,” she said.

  It was more of a question than a statement, and if she had thought of it for more than a split second she probably wouldn’t have opened her big mouth.

  “Seemed kind of a stupid to keep wearing it,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. It was the first thing that impressed me about you.”

  “That I wore a wedding ring when my wife was dead?”

  “That you were still committed to her.”

  Committed. Marcus thought of the word and what it meant. He was anything but committed to his wife. He had slept with prostitutes, and one of them was now rotting on a steel shelf in the city morgue. Had the killer seen him enter the motel with Eva? Was he the one who called the room and played the classical music on the phone? Was Marcus the reason Eva was killed? He assumed he was, and the guilt was eating him alive. He wanted to confess to Angela at that moment, wanted to tell her that he had been with Eva, wanted to tell her the death was his fault. He parted his lips to speak but no words came out. He couldn’t tell Angela. Any degree of respect she held for him would vanish with that confession. She would be ashamed of him, like he was of himself. She would demand to be partnered with someone else. That would be the end of their friendship, and he couldn’t deal with that. Not now.

  “You think I’m not committed anymore?” Marcus asked.

  “That’s not what I meant. You can still love someone who has passed, but maybe you’re ready to let someone new in,” Angela said.

  Marcus laughed.

  “That’s what it means if I stop wearing the ring? Maybe I was late for work and just forgot to put it on. Maybe I just lost the damn thing.”

  Angela was stung by his laughter. It sounded cruel. He probably didn’t mean it to be, but that’s the way she received it. The hurt and embarrassment had slipped inside, and she couldn’t push it out of her body.

  “How come you get to ask me about my relationships all the time, but I’m not allowed to ask about yours?”

  “Because there are no relationships with me. Change the subject. Talk about the case,” he said.

  Marcus’s mood was growing darker by the second. He looked past Angela to the television sets above the bar which were broadcasting the professional basketball games for the night.

  “Or talk about the god damn game,” he continued. “But don’t talk about the ring.”

  Angela quickly finished her beer. She reached into her wallet and removed a five dollar bill. She tossed it on the center of the table.

  “Sometimes you can be a real asshole,” she said.

  Angela stood and headed for the door. It was obvious she couldn’t get out of the bar fast enough.

  Marcus watched his partner and friend push her way through the crowd. He regretted what he said. She was the last person in the world he should be coming down on. She had always been there for him, and he had just crapped on their friendship. He thought about running after her, but he didn’t have the energy to chase her down and apologize. He would have to do it in the morning. She would probably be more receptive to it then anyway.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Problem of Suffering

  Father Moore looked out across his congregation. The church was full this morning. He wished it was because of his engaging sermons. But he knew it was the unrelenting murders that had befallen the community. Many people had flocked back to the churches, hoping for some degree of comfort and reassurance.

  ‘Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them,’Father Moore quoted from the Book of Job.

  “God asked Satan where he had come from, and Satan told him he had been walking the Earth. God asked Satan if he saw Job, who was God’s greatest servant. And Satan replied that Job only worshipped God because God had blessed him with so much. And then God does something surprising. He tells Satan it’s okay for him to do anything he wants to Job’s family and his possessions. He says that even if everything is taken from Job, he still won’t curse God. And that’s exactly what Satan does. He destroys Job’s home, his crops, his livestock. He even kills all of Job’s children. Still, Job praises God’s greatness. And Job says something interesting. He says that he must not only worship God when things are going right, but also when evil is presented into our lives. Satan goes back to God and says that God must now let him inflict a terrible illness on Job. Surely that will cause Job to curse God. Again, God agrees to Satan’s wishes. Job is stricken with painful boils. Still he remains loyal to God. But Job does begin to question God by now. He can’t think of a sin that he comm
itted. So he asks how God could allow these terrible things to happen to him. God speaks to Job and tells him that Job has no right to question his actions since only God knows the true secrets of the universe. God says ‘Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?’”

  After the service, Father Moore walked back to his office and put his notes into the top drawer of his desk. It was an impossible message to explain the existence of pain and suffering. How could a kind and righteous God allow so many innocents to suffer? The truth was he didn’t know the answer himself. He was just as confused, just as scared as everyone else. Suffering was the one thing that made him question his faith. He pushed the doubts into the back of his mind, trying his best to hide them.

  He debated whether to take his customary walk after the sermon. The weather was damp and windy. But he decided he needed to get out and clear his head.

  Father Moore’s church sat only a hundred yards or so from the stone walls of Fort Monroe. It was the oldest stone fortress in America and had been recently turned into a national park by the president. Moore passed through the low, narrow tunnel that led into the fort. He enjoyed walking through the fort and gazing at the old homes and the magnificent oak trees that lined the meandering sidewalks. He passed the massive black canon known as Lincoln’s canon and came upon an old wooden church that was still active. Despite being the priest at the church just outside the walls, he had never taken the time to enter this church and meet its pastor. He regretted his insensitivity and vowed to do introduce himself in the coming week.

  Moore passed the Casemate museum that occupied some of the rooms and hallways inside the stone walls. He entered into a second tunnel that would lead him to the outside of the fort. That’s when he saw it.

  The tall white mannequin stood in the corner of the tunnel. Moore, thinking it was a person, was startled at first. Once he realized what it was, he approached it. There was an odd mask that covered its face. Moore walked up to the mannequin. There were holes in the mask where the eyes should be. Moore could see the white, lifeless mannequin’s eyes through them. He slowly reached out to it and slid his finger across the cheek of the mask. The texture was dry and rough. Suddenly he realized the mask was made of human skin. He reached inside his coat pocket and yanked out his cell phone. He pressed 911 as fast as he could.

  Father Moore still had Marcus’s number programmed into his cell phone, so he called him the second he got off the line with emergency services. Marcus then called Angela, and in under an hour they drove past the security gate at the entrance to the fort.

  Marcus sat on the passenger seat. They had not spoken since she picked him up. The tension was not necessarily high. They both just seemed worn out and exhausted and eager to put last night’s argument at Donnie’s Bar behind them. Angela parked her car alongside a police cruiser. She and Marcus exited the car and nodded to a nearby police officer.

  The fort was mostly deserted because the Army had decommissioned it, but now it was crowded with several police cars and forensics investigators. Marcus and Angela made their way inside the tunnel and were temporarily blinded by the bursting light of the Nikon camera’s flash bouncing off the white stone walls.

  Angela walked up to the flesh mask on the mannequin.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to run a DNA test to figure out which victim it belongs to.”

  Angela turned to see Dr. Greene approaching.

  “It’s Eva’s face,” Marcus said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The mole on her face.”

  Marcus turned and headed out of the tunnel as Angela and Dr. Greene watched him leave. He didn’t care if he was giving himself away. Maybe they assumed he had studied her mug shot so many times that he simply remembered the distinguishing characteristic. Or maybe they could tell it was much more than that. Either way, he was worn out. If Angela asked him about it he would come clean.

  Father Moore walked up to Marcus.

  “Is it human skin?” Moore asked.

  Marcus nodded.

  Moore turned away from him. Was he crying? Marcus couldn’t tell.

  “Did you see anyone around the tunnel?” Marcus asked.

  Father Moore turned back to him. His eyes were dry, but they were filled with rage.

  “I saw a tall man walking a little black and white dog.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “I’ve seen him walking around here many times. I don’t know his name. But he seems nice enough.”

  Father Moore looked past Marcus towards the entrance to the tunnel.

  “The skin, does it belong to one of the victims?”

  “We think so.”

  “Who could do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, Father. I don’t know.”

  Father Moore entered his apartment. It was small but quite nice, and he’d done a good job of decorating it and painting the original white walls with warm, inviting colors. The priest removed his overcoat and laid it on the edge of the sofa. He then removed his priest’s coat and collar and placed them gently on top of the overcoat.

  The discovery of the mannequin in the tunnel had shaken him greatly. He had talked to Marcus for another ten minutes before he left. Moore had then walked back to his church and spent the rest of the day praying. He couldn’t get his sermon out of his mind. Just that morning he had spoken about trusting God even in bad times. But were they just words? How could God have let something like this happen to that poor woman?

  Father Moore walked over to a small round table in the corner of the room. He was one of the rare few who had an answering machine. The handful of people who visited him in his apartment never ceased to make fun of him for it. Why didn’t he just get voicemail, they would ask? Why did he even have a home phone at all? But Moore liked the answering machine. He liked coming home and seeing the red numbers blink. It reminded him of his childhood. It was always the first thing his mother would do when they walked in the door. Go check the answering machine.

  This evening the number 1 flashed on the screen. He assumed Marcus had called him and wanted to ask him more questions. Moore pressed the play button and a few seconds later he heard the scratchy and popping sound of classical music playing on the machine. He looked at the machine, puzzled. Who would leave that as a message? It must be a wrong number. That was the only explanation. Father Moore deleted the message and walked down the hallway to his bedroom.

  Father Moore entered the dark room and flipped the light switch on the wall but nothing happened. The bulb must have blown. He would have to get a spare from the kitchen.

  “Priest,” the voice in the darkness said.

  It was a deep voice, and it startled Moore. It was completely unexpected, and he was too confused to run. His mind could not comprehend what was happening. Everything was moving in slow motion, like a dream where you run and run but your legs never seem to get you anywhere.

  The man in black walked out of the shadows and slowly moved towards the doorway where Father Moore stood. His face was partially hidden under a black hood. But Moore could make out parts of his face well enough to realize the man was disfigured. The flesh hung on his face at odd angles, and his eyes were dark pits.

  Father Moore finally began to accept the reality of the danger he now faced. He took a step backwards towards the bedroom door, but he walked right into the door frame, and his progress stopped abruptly.

  The man in black stepped towards the door and stood a few feet from Moore.

  “Dear God, please help me,” Father Moore whispered.

  “You will deliver a message for me, priest,” the man in black said.

  Angela navigated her way through the congestion of cars in front of Father Moore’s house. The street he lived on was narrow, and the cars parked on both sides of the streets made it even tighter. The police had put up a road block and frustrated neighbors were arguing with the police, no doubt proclaiming they were late
for work. Angela could never understand how heartless people could be. If it didn’t happen to them, it didn’t matter. The insatiable media was also there in full force. She was so tired of having cameras shoved in her face. At least the Fort Monroe location had been nearly deserted, and they hadn’t had to deal with the local news.

  She parked as close as she could, and she and Marcus climbed out of her car. Seconds later two paramedics exited the apartment building. They were pushing a gurney. The patient was covered with a thin blanket and an oxygen mask, but Marcus and Angela knew it had to be Father Moore.

  Sergeant Ramsey stood near the ambulance. Marcus and Angela followed the paramedics over to the ambulance and watched them load Father Moore into the back.

  “Is he going to make it?” Angela asked Ramsey.

  “He was cut up pretty bad, but they think he’ll pull through.”

  Ramsey looked up to the window of Moore’s apartment. He turned back to Marcus and Angela.

  “There’s something you need to see inside. It’s not pretty.”

  Marcus and Angela followed Ramsey into the apartment. It was another scene of controlled chaos.

  “Did Father Moore tell you anything?” Angela asked.

  “He was unconscious when we got here. His housekeeper found him.”

  “Attacking a priest doesn’t fit the pattern,” Angela said.

  “The pattern was only partially broken,” Ramsey said. He motioned towards the bedroom. “In there.”

  Ramsey stepped aside and allowed Marcus and Angela to pass. Apparently he had no desire to see what he had already seen. It must be beyond gruesome, Marcus thought. He had never known Ramsey to back away from anything.

  Marcus and Angela entered Father Moore’s bedroom and witnessed another terrifying crime scene. A woman had been nailed to the wall above the priest’s bed. Her arms and legs were placed in the crucifix position. Her face had been removed like the other victims. The letters MAI were carved into her stomach. On the wall above the victim, words had been scrawled in red paint. Or was it the victim’s blood? Marcus assumed the words were in Aramaic like the journal.