The Last Commandment

by Scott Shepherd

  “You are in exactly ten of them,” counted Frankel. “And each time, he’s blotted your face out with a giant X.”

  At that point, the detective noticed what was above the macabre photo gallery.

  He had been so caught up in the candle-lit shrine to Grant’s late wife that he hadn’t noticed the message on the wall above it.

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Frankel.

  “It’s where he’s taken Rachel,” said Grant.

  The four words were scrawled in the same black ink.

  TOP OF THE WORLD

  “That’s where he wants me to go now.”

  V

  Cold as ice.

  It was the first thought that went through her muddled brain when she woke.

  Rachel felt like she was in the middle of a kaleidoscope, surrounded by swirling soft magentas, satin reds, dusky blues, and candy apple greens.

  Once her eyes began to clear, she realized the multicolored hues were coming from a translucent dollhouse completely made of ice. It jutted out from a snowy glacier wall that was part of a seemingly endless ice cavern.

  All that was missing was the Snow Queen.

  She still felt pretty loopy, sitting on a blue-lit narrow path between the frozen walls while thoughts of fairy tale princesses and majestic ice halls danced through her head. And suddenly she realized where she was.

  The ice palace on top of the Matterhorn.

  The one Everett mentioned at dinner on Christmas Eve.

  Everett.

  Rachel shuddered as those moments in the garret rushed back to her.

  Everett was the Commandment Killer.

  She remembered standing in the converted attic, surrounded by all those pictures of her mother. And then her uncle had appeared.

  She had started to back away and stumbled onto the bed. As she tried to get up, Everett had told her to stay where she was.

  “You need to listen to me, Rachel. You need to understand.”

  Frozen in fear, Rachel had stayed on the edge of the bed. Trying to comprehend what Everett told her, all of which sounded like utter madness.

  How he had always loved her mother, how Allison was supposed to marry him, not Austin. How her father had ruined his life by stealing Allison away and now needed to be punished for violating the most sacred of the Commandments.

  “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

  Her uncle, overwhelmed with jealousy and hatred that had rendered him insane, repeated the Tenth Commandment over and over.

  When he’d told her the truth about what happened in the Maida Vale living room, Rachel had wanted to die right there.

  It had been Everett whom her mother had refused to name, the man that Allison made Rachel swear she would never tell her father about.

  No wonder. He would have strangled Everett.

  Rachel had started wailing out loud and that was when Everett pulled the hypodermic out of his wooden box and used it on her.

  She remembered nothing else after that.

  She had woken up the first time in the passenger seat of the car beside her uncle to see him holding the knife inches away.

  “If you ever want to see your father again, you’re going to do exactly as I say,” Everett told her.

  He’d mentioned “a party” and to smile at “the nice man by the cable cars.” It hadn’t made much sense as she was still shaking off the effect of whatever drug he’d given her. Most importantly, she was told the pointed knife he’d used more than a few times that month would never be far from her throat.

  Soon after that, Everett had led her up to an embarking station where a sign read Glacier Paradise. Rachel remembered a kind older man waiting for them beside some cable cars, engaging Everett in a muted conversation.

  Minutes later, she and Everett were inside one of the cars and heading up the side of the majestic Matterhorn. The twinkling lights of Zermatt were just starting to move away when Everett produced the hypodermic again.

  Next thing she knew, she came to on the floor of the glacier ice palace.

  “Awake, I see.”

  She turned her head to see Everett approaching through the cavern of ice. Rachel tried to crawl away but was blocked by the crystal-clear dollhouse.

  “If I was going to hurt you, Rachel, don’t you think I’d have done that by now?”

  Rachel could barely find her voice.

  “Is that what you told all those people you killed?”

  He shook his head. “There wasn’t much chat time with them.”

  Rachel realized that was probably true. And that the best thing was to keep her uncle talking. “What about Prior Silver? You were certainly speaking to him.”

  “Prior Silver? Prior Silver was a fool.”

  Everett chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

  “A fool, but a necessary one.”

  VI

  It had taken Everett a long time to find the perfect person. But when the painstaking search finally unearthed Prior Silver, the man was a literal godsend.

  Someone to take the fall for the acts of vengeance Everett had meticulously planned against those who’d violated the Lord’s Commandments.

  Beginning on what would have been Allison’s birthday with Lionel Frey (“Your father even missed that,” he’d told Rachel), a heathen colleague who’d dared to bow to other gods, and ending with Austin being punished at the Top of the World on the last day of his command for committing the worst transgression of all.

  Silver had met every piece of criteria that Everett demanded.

  A man filled with religious mania. Someone who had committed crimes in the past. A man desperately seeking repentance on the road to salvation. And most importantly, a person who had a bone to pick with Commander Austin Grant.

  In actuality, Everett hadn’t required much from his choice.

  He just needed Prior Silver to be in the right places at what would be the exact wrong times. That meant London for the first three murders, New York for the next two, and then back to the UK until Everett decided it was time to dispatch Prior for good as a martyr who confessed to crimes he didn’t commit.

  Next, Everett worked out a scenario to get the man back and forth from America. There had been a few hiccups along the way but Everett had gotten good at coming up with alternate solutions when needed.

  Just ask Sergeant Stanford Hawley.

  Everett slowly reached out to Prior through a series of seemingly random emails—posing as Deacon Jeremiah, founder of the Church of the Repentant Soul, an organization made up by Everett. He’d designed an appropriate website and gone online with it just before he first contacted Prior Silver.

  Within a few days, Deacon Jeremiah had reeled in the Church of the Repentant Soul’s newest (and, unbeknownst to Prior, only) congregant. It was really quite simple; all Everett did was feed into the religious mania of the born-again soul who was desperately craving salvation.

  Then, in one-on-one text chats (with burner phones for Everett), he filled his mark with the proper mix of scripture and sermons of repentance until Prior was primed to do anything Deacon Jeremiah asked.

  So when Jeremiah told Silver he’d been handpicked to speak at the Church of the Repentant Soul’s first annual conference in New York City during the third week of December (with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations included), Prior didn’t need to be asked twice.

  Everett kept his website-built-for-one current with a fictitious calendar of events, arranged for Prior’s ticket to be ready when the man got to Heathrow, and made sure Silver arrived in New York on that Saturday, the day before Father Adam Peters would meet his maker in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

  That part had gone off without a single hitch.

  Things had gotten a touch trickier on Monday morning when Deacon Jeremiah received a frantic text from Prior Silver about the conference having been canceled. Of course, Everett had been prepared, having himself sent an alert to Prior’s phone about the cancellation and
it being rescheduled for May.

  That was when Everett had gone to the Hotel Penn and met his disciple Prior Silver for the first time under the guise of Deacon Jeremiah. The confused and distraught Prior was grateful to be with his mentor, who spent an hour convincing him to take advantage of being in New York at this most blessed time of year.

  Everett informed Prior there was enough in the Church’s coffers to pay for his time. Prior took the thousand dollars out of Everett’s hands in a flash. Everett found that amusing and telling—repentance only seemed to go so far.

  Once a thief, always a thief.

  Prior Silver would eventually pay the price for violating the Lord’s Eighth Statute. Just not yet.

  Everett still needed him to stay in the city until the end of the week when he would dispatch Timothy Alan Leeds. After that, Prior could return to the British Isles.

  With cash in hand, Prior Silver eagerly agreed to stay.

  Prior held up the stack of pamphlets and small wooden crosses he’d taken to carrying since his prison release and told Jeremiah he was happy to continue his work in the Lord’s good name.

  Everett had asked if Prior would give him a few pamphlets and crosses to hand out on his own. Everett had tossed the pamphlets in a trash can shortly after leaving the Hotel Penn. But he had held on to the crosses.

  One eventually made its way to the wall of a room in a condemned hospital in Far Rockaway. The other ended up above the bed in the Hotel Penn after Everett convinced a housekeeper he’d forgotten something in his room when he had checked out a little earlier.

  Everett had been concerned when Rachel and Sergeant Hawley stumbled onto Prior Silver’s connection to Austin quicker than he’d anticipated. But back in London, Everett had gotten lucky when Prior spotted constables surrounding his East London flat and gotten in touch with Jeremiah, the only man he trusted.

  Deacon Jeremiah had assuaged Silver’s fears—whatever the Yard was accusing him of was a mistake. He even arranged for Prior to stay under an assumed name in an out-of-the-way hotel near Wimbledon, advising him to lie low until the situation could be rectified.

  When Prior Silver’s name had finally been released to the media, Everett realized the end of the road had come for Deacon Jeremiah’s one and only disciple.

  Silver had called in a panic, realizing he’d been set up for a murder spree he didn’t commit. He even accused Jeremiah of being behind it.

  Everett convinced Prior to let him explain and the man agreed to meet him at the warehouse in East London. It was there that Everett had revealed his true colors. He told Prior what a fool he’d been and that it was finally time for him to be punished for repeatedly violating the Lord’s Eighth Commandment years earlier.

  By that time, he’d laced Prior’s coffee with a healthy dose of strychnine.

  He packed the dead man in a crate, got in touch with Monte Ferguson and used him to get an “interview” published in the Daily Mail . All that remained after that was delivering a package to his brother on Boxing Day and putting the reporter on ice.

  Scotland Yard and the world had gotten the Commandment Killer with a confession wrapped up in a giant bow as a belated Christmas gift.

  And the only person who knew the real truth?

  The man Everett had vowed vengeance against from the very start.

  VII

  Grant wasn’t sure how long he would be able to keep his eyes shut.

  “Just don’t look down,” Frankel urged.

  Easier said than done.

  Grant felt sick enough with the discoveries made inside the garret at the Zermatt cottage. As they ascended the Matterhorn in a cable car all their own, Grant could feel his fear of heights kick in—even though they’d just begun to climb.

  “I’m trying not to.”

  He finally managed to open his eyes and concentrate on Frankel.

  “Not quite the party I expected when he invited us to Switzerland.”

  “But I’m sure it’s the one he’d always planned on having,” countered Grant.

  Party.

  That’s what the older man who operated the cable cars at the foot of the Matterhorn had called it when they had arrived twenty minutes earlier. “But he only left the name of one guest,” said the man, whose own name was McCreery, checking his list. “Would one of you be Austin Grant?”

  Grant had identified himself with his Scotland Yard credentials that were still legitimate for a few more hours. Then he had introduced NYPD Detective First Grade John Frankel.

  “What do you exactly mean by ‘guest’?” Grant asked.

  A suddenly extremely nervous McCreery had explained. A man had paid a significant amount of money (twenty thousand euros to be precise) to rent out the Glacier Palace atop the Matterhorn for a private New Year’s Eve party. It wasn’t a normal request but the corporation that operated various attractions on the Swiss Alps’ most famous mountain was not immune to sudden windfalls while not asking many questions.

  McCreery had thought it odd that the guest list totaled three. But with the unspoken Swiss credo being “money is money,” McCreery said he didn’t make the rules and just minded his own business.

  After ascertaining that the gentleman in question had also been named Grant, they’d asked if he’d been with a younger woman. McCreery nodded but said she hadn’t seemed well. The man had told McCreery she was just suffering from altitude sickness and then gave him the commander’s name.

  At least Rachel’s still alive, Grant thought.

  Grant told McCreery to call the Swiss authorities and have them waiting for him and Frankel when they came back down the mountain.

  “Have I done something wrong?” asked the worried McCreery.

  “Not you.” Frankel had shaken his head. “Can’t say the same for the man up top, though.”

  Then they had climbed into the car and begun the forty-five-minute ascent to the Glacier Palace.

  “Why here of all places?” asked Frankel now, regaining Grant’s attention.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Grant answered.

  His stomach lurched again—so he tried to distract himself by remembering the one and only time he’d been up this mountain. The trip mentioned at Christmas Eve dinner—their first journey abroad from Liverpool when he and Everett were young boys.

  Austin couldn’t remember ever having felt colder and it had seemed like a year to reach the top. The boys had run amok in the glacier caves, then stopped to take a family picture. They convinced their folks to let them head outside the cavern where they found a snow-covered plateau with a view that stretched forever.

  “It’s the top of the world!” Austin had cried out.

  “Top of the world!” echoed Everett, who loved to mimic everything his big brother would say and do.

  Then the two brothers had gone and built the snowman.

  They rolled the snow into two big balls and placed them atop each other, forming “Mr. Frosty.” Austin had found a few twigs sticking out of the snow and some stones he could use for a pair of eyes, nose, and a mouth. He’d just finished filling in Mr. Frosty’s face when he felt a tug at his parka sleeve.

  Everett was standing there with a woolen cap in his hand.

  “Mr. Frosty needs a hat,” his baby brother said.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “On the ground,” Everett had told him.

  No sooner had Austin placed it on Mr. Frosty’s head, when a little girl came running up behind them with her mother.

  “There’s my hat!” the little girl had screamed, pointing. “They stole my hat!”

  “No, we didn’t!” cried Everett. “I found it!”

  What followed was the sort of screeching argument only two children can have, the girl repeatedly accusing him, while Everett denied having taken it on purpose. Finally, Austin and Everett’s father appeared. When the girl’s mother explained the situation, their father turned to his youngest son and asked if he had stolen the girl’s hat.


  Everett had denied it once again.

  Their father had turned to Austin.

  “Did your brother take this little girl’s hat on purpose?”

  Austin had looked from his father to Everett. His younger brother was staring up at him with a mix of sibling hero worship and a plea in his eyes.

  “Maybe,” Austin answered. “I don’t know. I was fixing Mr. Frosty’s face.”

  His father had nodded, then removed the hat from the snowman and returned it to the little girl and her mother.

  The moment the three Grants were alone, their father had slapped Everett across the face and admonished him in the harshest tone Austin had ever heard.

  “It’s a sin to steal, Everett! Don’t you know that the Lord punishes sinners?”

  Over five decades later, sitting in the cable car heading back up the Matterhorn, Grant recalled that previous trip down the other way.

  Everett had whimpered the entire time. And never said a single word to his older brother until right before they reached the bottom.

  “You always get what you want. I never do.”

  “I didn’t want the hat,” Austin had told him.

  Everett had shaken his head with tears in his eyes. “I meant you want everyone to like you more.”

  Everett hadn’t spoken to him for almost a week after that.

  “That’s pretty much how I remember it,” said Grant, having finished the story. “You asked me why we’re here? That’s all I can think of.”

  Frankel glanced up at the Matterhorn’s peak towering above. “Sounds like that day made quite the impression on your brother.”

  Grant hadn’t realized how much until he’d just remembered the story and told it to Frankel.

  “Your father sounds like he was quite the religious man.”

  “He would occasionally get into these fire and brimstone moods but none of it ever really rubbed off on me,” said Grant.

  “That doesn’t seem to have been the case when it came to Everett,” observed Frankel.

  “Apparently.”