by Tami Hoag
The shoveled walkways to the garage and shed were filling in with several inches of fresh snow. Megan waded through it, cursing. The side door to the garage was unlocked and let her into a space that was disgustingly neat and clean.
Like Fletcher's garage, she thought. God knew he was a more likely suspect than the professor. She was probably just grasping at straws, desperate as she was to make something happen. The note Fletcher had left pinned to his wife's corpse scrolled through her head—Wicked daughter of Eve: Be sure your sin will find you out. Sin was a theme in the messages. Being fixated on his religion gave Fletcher an automatic preoccupation with sin. The question that nagged her was the deacon's sudden trip over the lunacy line. If he was that close to breaking, could he have orchestrated a game a chess master would envy? They had been manipulated from the word go, led one way then another. Clues had been planted to taunt them. Could Fletcher have managed all that, then flipped out over something as trivial as Father Tom putting his arm around Hannah?
Megan backed out of the garage, closing the door behind her. The shed was an older building, maybe fifteen feet deep and thirty feet long. It had probably housed farm equipment at one time. What it housed now was a mystery that made Megan hesitate at the end door. Her cop sense tickled the back of her neck. Logic tried to argue. There was no one here. She would have seen their tire tracks on the road or the driveway.
Unless they had come on foot.
Stepping to one side of the door, she tugged off her right mitten and unzipped her parka. The Glock slid out of her shoulder holster and filled her hand with its familiar weight and shape. Security. Protection. She snicked the safety off. Albert Fletcher had to be hiding somewhere. Christopher Priest's shed was as good a place as any.
Heart thudding slow and hard, she moved along the length of the shed. Her left hand traced over the big front doors. Her right hand held her gun, business end to the sky. Despite the temperature, perspiration filmed her skin beneath the layers of clothes.
At the far end of the building she saw the tracks. Footprints in the snow that came out of the woods of Quarry Hills Park and led across Christopher Priest's backyard to the door on the end of the shed. Her pulse picked up a beat. She stood to one side of the door and knocked with her left hand.
“Police! Come out with your hands up!”
No one answered. The only sounds were the wind singing through the treetops and the creak of old buildings. Her pulse throbbed in her ears, pounded inside her forehead. She blinked to clear her vision as it blurred around the edges.
She pushed the door open, staying to the side.
“Police! Come out with your hands up!”
Silence.
Megan scanned the yard. Electrical wires ran from the utility pole to the house and to the garage. None ran to the shed, meaning no interior lights. Only a fool would go into a dark building alone after a suspect. The dark diminished the advantage the gun gave her. The best thing she could do would be to go back to the car and radio for backup, then sit and wait. If it was Fletcher in the shed and he decided to run, he couldn't get far on foot. If it wasn't Fletcher, they had a trespasser to deal with, and she would rather turn it over to a local.
She flexed her numbing fingers on the handle of the Glock, took a deep breath, and stepped quickly past the open door and around the corner of the shed. Thirty feet and she would be clear of it.
She only made it fifteen.
He hit her from the side. Bursting out through the front doors of the shed, he struck a blow that sent Megan sprawling headlong in the snow. The gun flew out of her hand.
Training and instinct spurred her. Move! Move! Move! She lunged ahead in the snow like a beached swimmer, arms swinging, legs kicking, gasping for air as she scrambled frantically toward the gun.
He was behind her. She could feel his presence like an ominous weight in the air. She imagined she could feel his shadow fall across her, a black apparition, the shadow of evil, as cold and heavy as steel.
One more lunge. Eyes straight ahead, staring at her fingertips as they scraped across the textured handle of the Glock. His weight came down on her. She gasped and twisted her body, rolling out from under him.
His image flashed on her brain like quick snapshots. Black clothing, ski mask, eyes, and a mouth. He dove toward her, swinging a short black club. Megan caught the shattering blow on her left forearm. She scuttled backward, fighting to get her feet under her, to get some balance, to swing her gun hand into position. He rushed her, swinging the club again and again, hitting her shoulder, hitting her a glancing blow off the side of her head, hitting her bare right hand so hard that the pain roared up her arm and exploded in her brain, dimming her consciousness.
The Glock fell into the snow. Her arm dropped to her side, useless. She stumbled back another step, trying to turn, to run. One thought dragged through her mind—Oh, shit. I'm dead.
CHAPTER 36
* * *
DAY 11
5:00 P.M. 23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: 12°
Father Tom's head throbbed in time to his footsteps as he made his way down the center aisle of the church, cassock swishing around the ankles of his black jeans. Every third step coincided with a booming bass note from the pipe organ.
Several people, including Dr. Lomax, who had tended his head, and Hannah—who had hovered over him in the emergency room—had advised him to skip the Mass that night. He could have called in help from the archdiocese. They would have sent a retired priest or a rookie from one of the large city parishes, where priests actually had assistants. But he had been stubborn in his refusal. He took another step as Iris Mulroony hit that blasted bass note and thought maybe foolhardy was a better word.
He had a concussion. His ears were still ringing with the sound of the brass candlestick bashing the side of his head. Double vision came and went like a camera lens that wouldn't hold its focus. Dizziness buzzed around his head like a swarm of gnats. But he was conducting Mass. He wouldn't stay home and be perceived as hiding out—not only from Albert Fletcher, but from those members of his parish who had jumped at the chance to spread barbed gossip about the circumstances surrounding the incident. He hadn't done anything wrong. Hannah hadn't done anything wrong. She had needed the support and comfort of a friend. The day offering compassion became wrong was the day he gave up on the world.
Guilt nipped its sharp little teeth into his conscience. He had wanted to offer Hannah more than his friendship. He wanted to offer his heart. Was that so wrong, or was it just against the rules?
He took his position behind the altar. Iris mashed down on the keys for a final note he felt in his chest. The small Saturday-night crowd doubled briefly before his eyes.
“The peace of God be with you all.”
“And also with you.”
“Heretic!”
The shout echoed over the crowd. Tom looked up at the balcony, where Albert Fletcher stood on the railing, crucifix in hand, ready to jump.
5:07 P.M. 23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: 12°
Mitch winced at a knot in his shoulder as he settled in behind the wheel of the Explorer. He had spent the better part of the day beating the bushes for Albert Fletcher with Marty Wilhelm dancing around him like a hyperactive border collie and the press swarming along behind them.
“Chief Holt, do you have any comments on the firing of Agent O'Malley?”
“Chief Holt, your truck was allegedly parked outside Megan O'Malley's apartment all night. What do you have to say about that?”
“That it's none of your goddamn business.”
He supposed that remark would warrant more calls from the city council, but he didn't care. His personal life shouldn't have been an issue. The issue here was Josh. He couldn't believe anyone was bothering to zero in on irrelevant details.
Irrelevant. Good word for what had gone on between him and Megan. Finished was another.
Life had been so much simpler when good old Leo had the office down the hall. He had been safe in his emot
ional cocoon, insulated by the scar tissue of old pain.
He wondered how long it would take to seal himself back into a life that consisted of work and Jessie and fending off the matchmakers. Emotional purgatory. The life that hurt less and punished him more.
He looked at himself in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowed with contempt at what he saw. Oh, well, he would go home to Jessie, who was too young to realize what a jerk her father was. He could choke down some supper with her before he took her back over to the Strausses so he could spend the rest of the night looking for Fletcher.
They had covered better than half the town in a house-to-house search. They'd been in basements and potting sheds and back-alley Dumpsters and found not a trace of the man. The choppers had hovered over town like birds of prey until the weather set them down. The most exciting report they turned in was that of a nude hot-tub party going on in the backyard of a Dinkytown frat house.
Mitch found himself giving some thought to Wilhelm's theory of Albert and an unknown accomplice splitting town. The deacon could have been a hundred miles away before they'd even gotten the roadblocks up outside of town Friday—and he could have had Josh with him.
The radio blasted out a staccato burst of garbled static as he reached to turn the ignition.
“All units: 415 in progress at St. Elysius Church. Repeat—disturbance in progress at St. Elysius Catholic Church. Possible 10-56A. Repeat—possible attempted suicide. Be advised: suspect is Albert Fletcher. Chief, if you're listening, they need you.”
We have a treat for you, clever girl.”
The voice was soft, a whisper, disembodied, unrecognizable. Megan opened her eyes and saw nothing. Blackness. The irrational thought that she might be dead went through her like a lightning bolt. No. Her heart wouldn't race if she were dead. Her head wouldn't pound. She wouldn't feel pain. Then light as faint as shadows slipped beneath the blindfold. She looked down. Her lap. A small wedge of concrete floor on either side of her. She was sitting on a chair. Correction—she was tied to a chair. Her arms were tied to the arms of the chair, her ankles bound to the legs. She didn't think she would have been able to sit on her own. She felt woozy, as if her soul and her body were attached by only the thinnest of threads. Drugs. He had given her something. They had given her something.
We have a treat for you, he had said. Odd, but it didn't feel as if there were more than one other person in the room. Her captor was standing close to her, behind her, but she didn't sense anyone else.
“Clever girl,” he whispered again, tracing his fingertips around her throat. She swallowed, and he chuckled to himself, a sound that was little more than a breath. “You think we're going to kill you? Perhaps.”
He tightened his hands slowly, fingertips pressing on her larynx until she coughed. He allowed her half a breath, then pressed harder. Her head swam and what vision she had went dim. Panic spurred her to struggle. She jerked and choked. When he released the pressure, she sucked in a wheezing breath, and another and another, while he laughed his breathy laugh.
“We could kill you,” he murmured, his mouth brushing against her ear. “You wouldn't be the first by a long, long way.”
“Did you kill Josh?” she mumbled. Her mouth felt as if it were coated with rubber cement. Saliva pooled beneath a tongue that felt bloated. Effects of the drug or the choking.
“What do you think?” The voice floated around her like a cloud. “Do you think he's dead? Do you think he's alive?”
Megan struggled to focus, to use anger to keep herself lucid. “I . . . think . . . you're a lunatic.”
He struck her right hand and pain shot along her nerve pathways, the shock of it taking her breath away. He struck her again, hitting her fingertips with what felt like the narrow edge of a steel ruler. The pain ripped through her and tore up out of her throat in a scream that trailed off into shuddering sobs.
“Respect.” The voice seemed to come from the center of her forehead. “You ought to respect us. We're so far superior to you. We've fooled you all along, so easily. It's a game, you see,” he said. “We've calculated all the moves, all the options, all the possibilities. We can't lose.”
A game. A chess match with living pieces. Megan shivered. Her coat had been taken. And her sweater. Finally she realized she was clad only in the black silk long underwear Mitch had chuckled at. The .380 A.M.T. Back-Up she wore in her ankle holster must have been discovered and taken. Not that she could have used it if she had wanted to.
“Did you kill Josh?” she murmured.
Her tormentor let the question hang. Megan didn't know if two minutes passed or twenty. The drug had warped her perception of time. For all she knew, days had gone by since she had driven out to Christopher Priest's house. She could still be there, but she had vague memories of riding in a vehicle of some sort. The smell of exhaust, the rumble of an engine, the feeling of movement.
The dizziness swirled around her. Nausea crawled up the back of her throat and she swallowed it down.
“The game isn't over yet,” he whispered. Winding a hand into her ponytail, he pulled her head back slowly. Megan opened her eyes wider, tried to see more of the room, but all she could see was a strip of gray the color of concrete. Basement. “We can't lose. Do you understand me? You can't defeat us. We're very good at this game.”
Megan was in no position to argue, and antagonism seemed unwise after her last attempt. Killing her would be a simple chore. She wouldn't be the first, he had said. Not by a long way. Fear skittered through her—for herself and for Josh, wherever he was. They had known almost from the first they weren't dealing with the average criminal, but she had never imagined this—a multiple murderer who would play with the lives of people like a cat with a mouse.
He let go of her hair abruptly and her head fell forward, the motion bringing another wave of nausea. A shoe scuffed against the floor. A single black boot came into view beside her right leg, then vanished. The chair tipped back and spun around—or she imagined it did. She imagined parts of her flying out away from her body and snapping back in place like something from a weird cartoon. Her consciousness swam in a thick black morass and white noise pressed in on her eardrums like a clamp tightening around her head. She couldn't tell if she was awake or in a nightmare, didn't know if there was a difference.
Then everything went still, the sudden absence of movement and sound as disorienting as the assault of sound and movement. She was floating on nothing in a black void. Then came a lighted image, just a glimpse, so brief it registered in the subconscious and came forward into the conscious mind one detail at a time: a face, a boy, brown hair, striped pajamas.
“Josh?”
Another glimpse. Freckles, a bruised cheek, blank eyes.
“Josh!” She tried to move but couldn't, tried to reach out to him but seemed to have no control over her body at all.
The image flashed again. He stood like a statue, like a mannequin, his arms outstretched toward her, his face expressionless.
“Josh!” she screamed, but he didn't seem to hear her at all.
The blackness fell again like a curtain. She drifted on it. So tired, but her heart was pounding out of control and the pain came at her from all directions—bam! bam! bam! bam!—hitting her everywhere at once like a dozen rods wielded by twelve angry men.
The voice vibrated against the top of her head.
“You wonder who we are, clever girl?” he whispered. “You wonder why we play this game?”
He settled his hands on her shoulders and sensuously stroked the aching, knotted muscles. A shudder of revulsion rippled through her, provoking his laughter.
“We play the game because we can,” he said, sliding his hands down over her breasts. “Because no one can catch us. Because no one ever suspected. Because we're brilliant and invincible.”
He squeezed a breast in each hand until she whimpered. “You came too close, clever girl. Now you get to play, too.”
Megan tried to think who or what she h
ad come close to. Names and faces floated through her mind, but she could grasp none of them.
“What will I do?” she asked as she tipped forward again.
He leaned so close she could smell the mouthwash on his breath. When he spoke, his lips brushed her cheek. “You're going to be our next move.”
5:15 P.M. 23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: 12°
Albert Fletcher stood on the balcony rail, his left arm wrapped around a column. In his right hand he clutched an ornate bronze crucifix, which he brandished high over his head as he shouted at the people below him.
“Beware false prophets who come in sheep's clothing! They are ravening wolves!”
The congregation had been ushered out of the church, replaced by police and sheriff's deputies. Father Tom remained behind the altar, his gaze fast on Fletcher, as if it would hold him in place. He prayed it would. Guilt twisted like a knife in his belly. This situation was his fault. Right or wrong, his feelings for Hannah had been the trigger.
“Albert,” he said, the microphone clipped to his vestments picking up his voice clearly. “Albert, you have to listen. You're making a big mistake.”
“Wicked spawn of hell!”
“No, Albert. I'm a priest,” he said quietly, hoping he was punching the button that would make Fletcher listen instead of push him over the edge. “I'm your priest. You have to listen to me. That's what you've been taught, isn't it?”
Fletcher shook his crucifix angrily; the railing shook with him. “I know where Satan's throne is!”
“Satan's throne is in hell, Albert,” Tom said. “This is the house of the Lord.”
“I will cast you out, demon!” Fletcher's left foot slipped on the railing. Everyone in the church held their breath until he regained his balance.
In the silence Mitch could hear the nerve-tightening sound of wood cracking. Crouched low in the shadows at the head of the stairs, he had a clear view of Fletcher, and through the spindly carved balusters of the railing he could see the vast open space beyond the balcony. Slowly he straightened and moved out into the light.
