The Last Commandment

by Scott Shepherd

  Given the recent news courtesy of her doctors, Rachel wasn’t surprised. Even someone as stoic as her mother would have to be inhuman not to be shaken.

  “Oh darling—I d-didn’t realize you were coming tonight . . .”

  “I texted you the flight information before I left,” Rachel said as she crossed over and wrapped her arms around her mother.

  “I-I never looked. It’s been a crazy d-day as you can only imagine,” Allison said, looking unsteady on her feet.

  Rachel hugged her mother tight. And felt her actually shuddering in her arms. “Oh Mom—I’m so sorry . . .”

  She kissed Allison and took her hand.

  “Shhh, shhh,” hushed her mother. “We’ll all get through this.”

  Leave it to her mother. She’s the one who just got diagnosed with stage three lung cancer and I’m letting her comfort me.

  Rachel started to respond, then noticed blood on her hand—and that it wasn’t her own. “Mom! You’re bleeding!”

  It was oozing through a bandage on her mother’s arm that wasn’t sturdy enough to staunch whatever had happened.

  Allison shook her head. “It was a silly accident. I broke that unicorn you made in the living room . . .”

  “I saw it—by the fireplace.” Fraught with concern, Rachel took a closer look at the wound. “We should take you to the emergency room.”

  “Nonsense—it’s just a bad cut.”

  “It’s a huge gash and should be looked at!”

  A debate ensued, the sort Rachel never got an upper hand in. It ended with Allison agreeing to let Rachel remove the bandage, clean, and redress the wound.

  She helped her mother straighten the living room and then, despite insisting she wasn’t hungry, Rachel allowed her mother to heat up some leftovers.

  They sat in the kitchen for an hour. Every time Rachel tried to broach the reason she’d raced across the ocean, Allison would steer the subject in a different direction—wanting to know about Rachel’s job, if there was anyone new in her life, what they should do for the upcoming holidays now that she was home.

  The closest thing to an acknowledgment of the elephant that had taken over every room in the Maida Vale house had been when her mother uttered the same sentiment she’d spoken on the phone. “There will be time to discuss all that later.”

  Finally, Rachel just tried to convince herself to be content keeping the woman she loved unconditionally company.

  But a few hours later, after she’d finally gotten her mother to bed, Rachel was still sitting wide awake in the same kitchen chair. Whether it was the time change, the jet lag, or overriding concern for a rotten diagnosis dumped on her mother by some Harley Street practitioner, Rachel was keyed up beyond belief.

  And totally positive her mother hadn’t told her the complete truth about what had transpired in the living room earlier that day. She couldn’t stop thinking about the unlocked door, the half-cleaned mess in the fireplace hearth, and the startled look on her mother’s face when Rachel stepped into her father’s study.

  A few minutes later, she was clicking keys on the laptop. She looked at the search history and the last few entries almost made her keel over.

  Sexual Assault Evidence Kit. Rape Kit. Sexual Assault Examination. Sexual Assault Definition.

  Rachel heard someone start to whimper and realized that it was her.

  She sobbed and sat in her father’s chair completely paralyzed.

  Her first instinct was to call and wake her father in Glasgow, but there was no way she could do that without talking to her mother first. The next thought was to barge into the bedroom and confront her, but the woman was exhausted and on the verge of who knows what kind of breakdown because she’d kept everything buried for so long.

  So she did nothing. Except wait for the sun to come up.

  An hour or so after dawn, her mother walked into the study to find Rachel still sitting behind the desk. Allison glanced at the grandfather clock and then out the window, where a wintry gray light had begun to seep through.

  “You’re up early,” she said to Rachel.

  “I actually never went to bed.”

  Allison shook her head. “I hate those transatlantic flights.”

  “Did someone attack you, Mom?”

  Rachel watched her mother stiffen—and felt her own heart break into a million pieces.

  “Attack? What?”

  “Did someone break into this house and sexually assault you last night?”

  Before she’d let her mother try and utter another denial, Rachel opened the laptop. “I read through the search history.”

  “I really should learn how to work that thing properly,” her mother said, indicating the computer. “I thought we raised you better than to go snooping into others’ private affairs.”

  “It’s what I do for a living for Christ’s sakes!” Rachel shook her head and rose to her feet. “Jesus—why am I even explaining this to you? Mom—please! Were you raped?”

  Her mother moved over to the sofa. Rachel could see her hand trembling slightly as she gripped the arm for support and lowered herself onto the cushion.

  “It never got that far,” Allison murmured.

  “Didn’t get that far?” Rachel did everything possible not to scream at the top of her lungs. “What the hell are we talking about here?!”

  “What happened—and it’s not what you’re imagining I assure you—was as much my fault . . .”

  “Your fault? What the fuck . . .!”

  “Rachel—”

  “Okay, okay, okay!” Rachel, who had never sworn in front of her mother, tried to stomp down all the bewildering emotions encircling her. “Explain to me how I shouldn’t be concerned to come home and find you bleeding all over the place, lying to me when I ask about it, and then find you’ve been combing the net about sexual assault!”

  “Because it has nothing to do with you,” her mother quietly responded.

  Rachel pointed to the hallway outside the door. “What about the person who did whatever they did to you in there?”

  “What about him?”

  “How about who the hell is he?” Rachel felt her fury rising again. “Is it someone you know? Someone that I know?”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything more, Rachel. It’s over and done with. And that’s all you need to know.”

  “But you were bleeding . . .”

  “Like I told you, things got a little out of hand. That’s all.”

  “Then why were you looking up all that stuff on the computer?”

  “Consider my situation, Rachel. I’ve just been diagnosed with cancer. I’m going to get poked and prodded by more doctors than I’ve seen in my entire life. I simply want to know if they’d find any sort of bruising I’d need to explain away . . .”

  “Bruising? I thought you said you weren’t raped!”

  “I told you I wasn’t, didn’t I? Do I need to spell it out more than that for you?”

  Rachel started to respond, then stopped. Between the total embarrassment and shame her mother was feeling, and the imploring look on her face, Rachel started to piece the rest together.

  “He tried—but then stopped,” Rachel realized.

  Her mother nodded slightly, then glanced at her bandaged arm. “That’s when I stumbled backwards into the table and cut myself on your figurine,” Allison said. “He realized things had gotten out of hand and was gone moments later.”

  Rachel sat there in stunned silence and stared at her mother.

  How much is this poor woman supposed to endure? First, she’s given a practical death sentence and now this?”

  “What are you going to tell Daddy?”

  Rachel watched her mother go totally pale. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Allison sat a bit straighter, reached out, and took her daughter’s hand.

  “And you can’t say a thing either.”

  “Mom . . .”

  Allison stopped her with a plea in her eyes that Rachel knew ri
ght then would haunt her long after her mother was gone—probably the rest of her life.

  “You have to promise me that, Rachel. You can never breathe a word of this to your father. It would absolutely kill him.”

  “So, I’ve kept that promise ever since,” said Rachel as she concluded her story. “And while it didn’t kill my father, I’m convinced that by my not telling him, it ended up killing her instead.”

  Frankel had held on to Rachel’s hand for the entire gut-wrenching tale.

  He didn’t know which of the Grants he felt sorriest for—the woman who had taken her secret to her grave, her husband who still grieved every single day, or the girl he had hopelessly fallen in love with.

  Frankel realized that the answer was all three of them.

  “Your mother had already been given a terminal cancer diagnosis. She was going to pass away one way or another.”

  “I understand that.” Rachel nodded. “But it happened so much sooner than necessary.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “She started withering away immediately. The doctors wanted to enroll her in all these trials and test studies, but my mom refused treatment, despite how much me or my father would plead with her. She’d just say she was in too much pain and wanted to be left in peace.”

  Rachel let go of Frankel’s hand and pointed to her chest.

  “But I’m certain that she willed herself to die quicker for fear my father would somehow find out about what happened that day.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “But I do,” Rachel said. “She said as much the one time I dared to bring it up. I was alone with her in an examining room and I said not telling my father the truth was literally letting the cancer eat away that much quicker.”

  She glanced out the window where it had begun to snow again. From her tortured look, Frankel imagined Rachel was reliving that moment.

  “She made me promise again to not breathe a word to my father. I reluctantly agreed but said that shouldn’t stop her from telling my dad the truth.”

  Rachel turned back toward him.

  “She gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen and said it was a choice she had to live with.”

  She shook her head.

  “She was gone only a few days later.”

  “No wonder there’s been all this tension between you and your father.”

  “When she was still alive, I could barely bring myself to be in the same room with him. I was so worried I’d say or do something that would break my promise. And as it got worse, I found myself spending more time back in New York and at the end I was forbidden to come back and even see her—which I now feel completely shitty about.”

  “She didn’t leave you much choice.” Frankel took a beat. “And you have no idea who the man was who did this to her?”

  “Not in the slightest,” said Rachel. “And now all I do is beat myself up because I feel like if I’d gone ahead and told my father, maybe he could’ve said something to make her try and fight back.”

  “Sounds to me like you mother’s mind was pretty made up.”

  “That was Allison Grant in a nutshell. She didn’t often take a stand, but when she did, she was an immovable object.”

  Frankel nodded. “And look what it’s done to you and your dad.”

  “At least we’re speaking to each other.” She offered up a slight smile. “I probably have you to thank for that.”

  “So maybe it’s time to tell him the truth,” suggested Frankel.

  “And break the last promise I ever made her? Not to mention run the risk of him hating me forever because I didn’t tell him the truth before this?” She vehemently shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Your father could never hate you, Rachel. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re the only thing he still really cares about in this world.”

  “Even more reason I’m not willing to take that chance—especially now with things so much better between us.”

  Frankel chewed on this a moment, then uttered one word. “Stubborn.”

  “Like mother, like daughter.”

  He shook his head. “I hate you carrying this burden.”

  “Imagine what it feels like in my shoes.”

  Frankel finally offered up a smile. “Might be a little tight.”

  She returned a similar grin. “Might be interesting to give it a try.”

  He took her in his arms and hugged her. Then whispered in her ear. “Just tell me what I can do for you, Rachel.”

  She stayed in his arms for a moment before she finally whispered back.

  “Just hold me tight and keep wishing me Merry Christmas.”

  So that’s exactly what he did.

  They ended up taking a walk in Hyde Park.

  Even though the snow continued to fall, it felt warmer, certainly more than the sleet-ridden streets that dominated Manhattan at this time of year. Despite it being Christmas morning, they found a vendor selling hot chocolate—a no-brainer for Frankel, the self-confessed chocoholic.

  They sipped them side-by-side in a white-covered grove and even took time to build a small snowman. But when the snow began to fall a bit harder, they decided to head back to the hotel.

  As they exited the park, they spotted a crowd of Londoners huddled on a street corner around a newsstand. The proprietor had a stack of newspapers beside him that was dwindling rapidly.

  Even before he saw the headline, Frankel got a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, convinced that while he had been on a literal walk in the park, a thief somewhere in London had become the Commandment Killer’s eighth victim.

  So both he and Rachel were shocked when they finally had a copy of the Mail in hand.

  I’M ON A MISSION FROM GOD screamed the headline.

  “It’s a one-on-one interview with Prior Silver,” realized Frankel. “Given directly to Monte Ferguson.”

  27

  I’M ON A MISSION FROM GOD

  As told to Monte Ferguson

  When one sits across from Prior Silver, one swears they are talking to your average garage mechanic, the forty-five-year-old’s former profession, not the man responsible for a string of robberies two decades ago in London’s Financial District, or one of the most notorious serial killers to ever prowl across two continents.

  Having contacted this reporter directly, Silver expressed a desire to discuss the multiple murders—but only with an assurance that no one else be present, in a place of his choosing, undisclosed to Scotland Yard or any other law enforcement agency.

  Mild-mannered, polite, and soft-spoken, Silver could just have been delivering a treatise on the workings of the Alfa Romeos he used to service instead of discussing the murder spree that has recently terrorized London and Manhattan.

  Ferguson: Let’s start with why you wanted to conduct this interview.

  Silver: I thought it was time to set the record straight.

  Ferguson: Why? Were there false accusations being made against you?

  Silver: Not so much false as misleading.

  Ferguson: You don’t deny that you brutally murdered eight people, two in New York and six here in Greater London?

  Silver: I’ve been doing the Lord’s work.

  Ferguson: How so?

  (At this point, Prior Silver pulled out a Bible and read from a marked passage).

  Silver: Ezekiel chapter 18, verses 21 and 22. “If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.”

  Ferguson: It sounds like you felt driven to commit these crimes out of some desire for repentance.

  Silver: Yes. For crimes in my past.

  Ferguson: The bank robberies in the Financial District twenty years ago.

  Silver: Exactly.

  Ferguson: But isn’t
that what prison was for? That you would repent while you served your time and might possibly find salvation?

  Silver: That was only the first step. I vowed that upon my release I would continue my commitment to the Lord’s statutes and seek to punish those who did not.

  Ferguson: And by statutes, I take it you mean the Ten Commandments?

  Silver: That is correct.

  Ferguson: And thus anointed yourself judge, jury, and executioner.

  Silver: I was only doing the Lord’s bidding.

  Ferguson: By slaughtering them in cold blood.

  Silver: By sending them to eternity marked for their transgressions.

  Ferguson: Marked? Marked how?

  Silver: With a Roman numeral on their brow to wear until the End of Days.

  “So much for holding that piece of information for ourselves,” said Frankel.

  “It’s hard to believe we kept it quiet this long,” remarked Grant.

  Silver’s confession laid out in black-and-white newsprint was the last thing Grant would have expected to find at the bottom of his Christmas stocking.

  By the time Rachel and Frankel had arrived at the Maida Vale house to show him the story, Grant was already combing through it online for the umpteenth time.

  His mobile and email had blown up with its release. Deputy Commander Stebbins had been among the first to contact him and wasn’t pleased to say the least.

  “That couldn’t have been a very pleasant conversation,” said Rachel.

  Not only did the story make the Yard look like “complete fools” (Stebbins’s words), beaten to the punch by “that thorn Ferguson” (Grant’s words), the fact that Silver was still running amok in London was way beyond the pale.

  “At least this takes a lot of guesswork out of things,” Frankel said, holding up the paper. “Silver walked Ferguson step-by-step through each murder and it lines up with everything we know.”

  Indeed, the story was a grisly recital of the killings—from lying in wait for Lionel Frey in the British Library’s third-floor WC to ending the lives of Elizabeth Dozier and Jared Fleming in the master bedroom of the mansion in Esher.

  At least Ferguson had the good graces to call out Silver on what Grant considered the man’s greatest sin, the one that would haunt the commander for the rest of his days.