Confession

by Carey Baldwin

  “Get back!” The boy yelled bravely, but then he made the same mistake they all make, he turned his back to Scourge in order to run, and that was just the opening Scourge needed to leap on him. He knocked Tommy to the ground. Tommy screamed and tried to crawl away. Scourge grabbed him by the leg and twisted.

  Crack!

  Tommy’s head fell back, and he stopped struggling. Scourge dragged him close and pressed a chloroformed rag over the boy’s mouth and nose. The little fellow never had a chance. His body went limp in Scourge’s arms.

  As he got to his feet, his arms stiffened beneath the boy’s weight. His palms itched. Where was the dog? Looking carefully to his left and right, he saw no sign of the mangy mutt. Probably hiding under the bed with her tail between her legs by now. He hoisted the kid over his shoulder like a bag of flour. He’d stash him in the truck and come back for Faith.

  Scourge’s overalls made a perfectly good disguise. The boy would fit easily into his wheelbarrow, and no one would question the sight of a landscaper wheeling out a pile of trash, dumping it in the back of his truck, and covering it with a tarp. Landscapers were invisible.

  But he had to hurry if he was going to stow the boy and make it back inside before Faith got home. He slipped out the back door, not bothering to close it behind him, dropped the kid in the wheelbarrow, tossed a tarp over him. No time to tie the kid up now. He lifted the wheelbarrow by the handles and heard a long growl behind him.

  Damn dog.

  He stuck his arm under the tarp for a pair of gardening shears. A sharp pain cut into his flesh. Not the shears.

  The kid.

  He should’ve used more chloroform, held the rag in place longer. The kid clawed his arm, sunk his teeth into his wrist. Pain bellowed up the nerves in his arm.

  I am not a shadow.

  As he yanked his hand back, he bit down on his tongue to stop himself from laughing. He was cured all right.

  He looked up just in time to see the dog flying through the air like a missile locked on target. The dog landed on his chest and chomped down on his arm. Penetrating pain seared through to the bone. The kid was out of the wheelbarrow, limping for the gate. Scourge shook his arm, but the dog clamped its jaws tighter, holding on for the ride. Scourge reached down and, summoning all his strength, all his will, pried the dog’s jaws open and hurled her into the bushes. Then he bolted out the gate before the dog could give chase.

  He wouldn’t be able to take Dr. Clancy with him tonight after all.

  Damn kid.

  Damn dog.

  Then he grinned. He’d be back for all of them later.

  TWENTY-­SEVEN

  Thursday, August 15, 7:00 P.M.

  After the third knock, it seemed certain Scourge was not at home. Faith didn’t know how she felt about that. Yes, this had been her idea. No, she didn’t want to turn back, but that didn’t stop her stomach from clenching tight as a fist.

  “You sure this is the place?” Luke asked.

  “I’m sure it’s the address my patient listed on his face sheet, yeah. It’s possible he gave me a false one, of course.” She hurried after Luke, who was headed to the backyard.

  “I sure hope not.” Luke picked up a mammoth rock. “Stand back, Clancy. Waay back.”

  Before she could put two and two together, he’d shoved her aside and hurled the muddy missile through the back window. The sharp sound of breaking glass was followed by the dull thud of the rock hitting the floor.

  “Luke!”

  He wrapped his arm with his windbreaker and cleared out the glass, then scrambled through the window. Over his shoulder, he called out, “I lied about knowing how to pick a lock.”

  Somehow, breaking a window seemed much worse than picking a lock, but she supposed it was all the same in the end. Besides, the damage had been done. She clambered through the window after Luke. With lives at stake, this wasn’t the time to hesitate. This was the time to act. She placed her hand on her protesting stomach. They’d know soon enough if Scourge was the mystery man, Perry the Pervert. They’d know soon enough if Scourge was the Santa Fe Saint.

  “You might’ve waited for me to open the back door, Clancy. I can be a gentlemen when I want to be.” Luke shot her a cocky grin. He signaled her to wait there and strode ahead of her, straight-­arming a pistol he’d pulled from the Spitfire’s glove box. He cleared every room, then came back for her, bearing rubber gloves from the kitchen. No point leaving their fingerprints all over the place.

  A quick perusal of the rooms convinced her they had indeed come to the right address. Not a speck of dust marred the furniture in the living room. The floors in the kitchen gleamed bright as mirrors. She opened a cabinet and found it loaded with cleaning products, all facing the same direction and ordered alphabetically. This was definitely Scourge’s place—­she hesitated to call it a home. It was more like a hospital ward.

  Luke kicked open the hall closet. Empty. They made their way to the bedroom, where she noted a military-­style bed, made with all white bedding, pulled smooth and tight.

  As she thought of how Scourge would react if he could see the way Luke ripped off the covers and dumped them on the floor, she cringed. A thread of hope still remained that her suspicions were unfounded, that there was a perfectly good explanation for everything. The idea that Scourge might be the Saint made her stomach twist and her limbs shiver like an army of ants was marching up her arms.

  Luke lifted the mattress and tossed it aside as if it were featherlight. Then the pillow went flying, and something went with it, landing with a thunk on the hardwood floor. Their eyes met.

  A book!

  Together, they dove for it. Faith grabbed the volume first, and her throat constricted.

  In Cold Blood.

  There it was. The smoking gun.

  Squeezing her eyes closed, she fought for air, then managed to rise from the floor. She clutched her heart and with a sharp inhale, resumed breathing.

  Scourge Teodori was the Santa Fe Saint.

  Maybe this wasn’t all the proof a jury would need, but it was proof enough for her. Her hands balled into fists, and her heart drained of sympathy. A revolting taste flooded her mouth as her eyes fell on Scourge’s clean bedding. She spit onto his sheets.

  When he’d first come to her office, he’d been terrified of blood, and she’d cured him of that fear. If he killed again, it was on her.

  But had she really cured him?

  Her heartbeat amped up.

  Hope rocketed inside her. “Bathroom. Now.”

  “Okay.” Luke’s eyebrows rose. “Any special reason you’re so anxious to get to the bathroom?”

  She’d already filled Luke in on Scourge’s hemophobia on the way over. And now there was no need to withhold his name any longer. She had all the proof she needed. “Because Scourge—­”

  “You’re fucking kidding.”

  “No, his name is Scourge. Anyway, Scourge had his friend the butcher rig a bucket of pig’s blood to fall on him in the shower.” She pulled in a breath. “Never mind why, I’ll explain it all later. But the point is the blood made a huge mess in the tub. Scourge managed to clean outside the tub, but he left all that pig’s blood congealing in the bath. He just closed the curtain and worked around it. He was so overcome by the idea of cleaning up the tub, he’s been bathing in the sink ever since.”

  “Okay. Freaky. But what are we looking for in the bathroom? We already know there’ll be blood in the tub.”

  “I hope the blood is still in the bathtub.” Now her heart was in her throat. “If he’s cleaned it up, it means he really is cured. It means I cured him to kill again.”

  Luke led way to the bathroom and jerked the shower curtain aside. Clean as a whistle. Her throat spasmed as she struggled to bite back a scream. The floors were white, the tub pristine, the wall behind the tub scrubbed clean . . . except for
five letters, all caps, scrawled in blood:

  FAITH.

  Luke pushed Faith out of the bathroom, slammed the door behind them, then turned and punched his fist into the wall. The bastard was primed and ready to kill again. He rubbed his knuckles, then rested his hands on Faith’s shoulders. His blood chilling at the thought of Faith shut away in her office with Scourge, listening to his stories, soothing his anxieties.

  Luke had wanted to save his brother all along, but now he had an even more compelling reason to nail this Scourge bastard. Luke had spent the past few hours learning about the lives of the Saint’s victims. These were real ­people—­not just photos on the news—­and not only had their lives been cut short, the lives of their friends and family had been devastated. Kids like Jeremy were collateral damage, even though they still lived—­and Faith.

  If he didn’t stop Scourge, would Faith be next?

  He couldn’t pull his gaze away from her.

  “I’m fine.” She read the unspoken question in his eyes and jerked away from him. “Let’s not waste time talking about my feelings.” And then she was off, moving quickly through the bedroom, searching for more evidence, more answers.

  “Look at this.” Faith motioned him over to the dresser, where she was busy going through the drawers. “Bottom drawer is locked.”

  A minute later, he returned with a butter knife and a mallet for pounding meat. He turned it over in his gloved hand and hoped like hell it had only pounded meat. Crack! The latch on the drawer split and flying shards of wood stung his arms. He yanked the drawer open with such force it careened off track, landing sideways on the floor.

  Faith gasped though she couldn’t have been surprised. There, spilled on the carpet were rosaries, maybe fifty, maybe more. He used his cell to snap a photo.

  With Faith on his heels, he headed into the kitchen, where they’d placed the book on the kitchen table. Still gloved, he lifted the book. The pages gaped in the middle, and the novel fell open to reveal a folded paper. Faith unfolded the sheet while he snapped away with his camera. Turned out to be not one but two sheets of waxy paper, stapled together. On the top sheet, someone had sketched the floor plan of a three-­level home. A satellite photo was taped to the bottom sheet . . . along with GPS coordinates.

  He began taking close-­ups of each section of the sketch and photos. Faith went back to the bedroom and returned with an ebony box. “I found these in the box. I jimmied the lock myself,” she added although there was no pride in her voice, only sadness. “Looks like a journal, and look at these pictures.”

  He thumbed through the photos and with each successive one his pulse pounded harder in his ears. The first shot captured a stately farmhouse, then came four years’ worth of Donovan family Christmas cards. Scourge had been stalking this family for years, and he’d clearly been inside their home on a number of occasions.

  “They’re next—­the Donovans are next.” Faith shook her head and touched the corner of one of the Christmas cards. Blinking hard, she looked away.

  He rested one hand on her forearm, unable to forget that just a few yards away, her name was scrawled in blood on the bathroom wall. “Probably. But, I’m not entirely following this. Our theory, and it’s a hell of a good one, is that Scourge is emulating Perry Smith and re-­creating the In Cold Blood murders.”

  “Yes. Scourge has a very meager sense of self. Several times, over the course of therapy, he’s talked about feeling like a shadow, like he’s not even a real person. The parallels between Scourge’s life and Perry Smith’s are uncanny. I think Scourge only feels real when he’s acting as Perry. In a nutshell, he’s stolen the man’s identity because he doesn’t have one of his own.”

  “But why would he choose to re-­create a crime that was originally carried out by two men? And the Clutters were murdered en masse, inside their home. Scourges’ victims were taken elsewhere and slaughtered one by one, spread out over the course of time. He’s already killed a stand-­in for each member of the Clutter family.”

  Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “Practicing. Of course, he’s practicing! Scourge is compulsive, a perfectionist, and exasperatingly plodding. He doesn’t want to be caught. Perry Smith was executed for the Clutter murders. I think Scourge is practicing on surrogate victims, as a way of building his nerve and honing his technique. It’s far easier to take on one person at a time, and it’s also a way of testing potential pitfalls.”

  Luke nodded. “Scourge isn’t replicating the Clutter murders so much as perfecting them. He’s trying to commit the perfect crime.”

  “Goddamnit, Johnson, I’m handing you the Saint on a silver platter, and you say you’re not hungry.” Mouthing the word asshole, Luke turned to Faith, who sat beside him in the Spitfire. The trunk was full of evidence, and they were parked a few blocks east of Scourge’s place.

  “I said”—­Detective Johnson’s tone on the other end of the line was patronizing—­“I’ll get an officer out there as soon as one’s available. This is about the most cock-­’n-­bull story I’ve heard in all my years on the force, but I promise I’ll check into it. I’m perfectly capable of handling things from here.”

  “I hope you do handle it and soon, because if I get the chance to take this guy out, I just might do it.”

  “Hold up, Luke.” Johnson struck a more conciliatory tone. “Don’t even joke about going vigilante on me. Surest way to get yourself killed.”

  “Then send someone out to the Donovan farm before it’s too damn late already.”

  “According to you, this guy’s been planning this for years. He’s not going to act hastily. If he’s got the nerve to act at all, that is—­why hasn’t he done it already?”

  “Because he didn’t have the nerve to act. We’ve been all through this. He lost his edge. An incident at the blood lab where he worked traumatized him, and he developed a fear of blood.”

  “Right. Good old convenient hemophobia. The serial killer was afraid of blood, but now he’s cured. Dr. Clancy, bless her heart, cured him. Now he’s off to murder the Clutter family all over again, only this time he’s gonna do it up right. Commit the perfect crime. Does that about sum it up?”

  “Look, I know it sounds crazy. But once you see the evidence . . .”

  “Evidence that you might have planted.”

  Luke’s knuckles were white. He loosened his grip on the phone. “Listen to me, Johnson. I’d do almost anything to get my brother cleared of a crime he didn’t commit, but I would not frame an innocent man.”

  “How about a guilty one? Would you frame a man you believed to be guilty in order to get your brother out of jail.”

  He silently counted to ten . . . then twenty. He rubbed the back of his neck. “You think I’m even capable of concocting a scenario like this—­that I’d come up with something this wild to cast suspicion on another man? You’re not making sense. The Saint’s victims are all stand-­ins for members of the Clutter family—­and you can’t deny that. Or at least you won’t be able to when you see the evidence. You’ve got a witness who says one of the victims was last seen with a guy who called himself Perry. And that man fits the description of Dr. Clancy’s patient, Scourge Teodori. I can’t plant those facts.”

  Johnson waited a beat, as if mulling things over. “You say the victims are stand-­ins for the Clutters. But I have to look into that, I can’t just take your word. Besides which, you could’ve found that book—­what’s it called again?”

  “In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.”

  “First off, you could’ve found a copy of In Cold Blood among your brother’s things, and you could’ve planted that same book and those Christmas photos of the Donovans in Scourge’s house. Or maybe you’re just saying you found them there. And who has a name like Scourge, anyway? Second, third, and fourth, you expect me to believe that Dr. Clancy had the extremely bad luck of having two patients in her p
ractice, one of whom confessed to being the Saint and the other who actually is the Saint. The odds of that’s happening are astronomical. A coincidence like that isn’t just hard to swallow, it’ll choke you dead. So I gotta believe there’s something else going on here. Maybe the good doctor is helping you frame this poor Scourge schmuck.”

  He pulled the phone from his ear, then replaced it. “Faith wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “Tell me the truth: You fucking her or what?”

  And that was absolutely none of the detective’s business.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Luke controlled his voice by speaking very slowly. “Accuse me later all you like, but in the meantime, you’ve got to get someone out to the Donovan place. Scourge could be there right now while you’re standing around speculating about my sex life.”

  “Even if I wanted to, I can’t send someone out there just like that. Not my jurisdiction. I gotta call Rio Arriba County, and I’ll make a case as good as I can, but I can’t promise how fast they’ll move on it. Depends on their manpower.”

  “That’s just not good enough.”

  “You think I want to see more innocent lives lost, you’re dead wrong. I’ll make sure we get someone out in the next twenty-­four hours to do a wellness check on the Donovan family. Meanwhile, you ever think you could give them a call?”

  He had a point. Luke hung up and dialed Torpedo. After a brief conversation, during which Torpedo provided him a landline number for the Donovans—­no cell ser­vice in that corner of Rio Arriba—­he turned to Faith. “Torpedo’s on it. He’s applying all the pressure he can to get the authorities moving on this. He’ll try to get the police out to the Donovan place tonight, but it might take longer.”

  “I can’t sit around and wait for the wheels of justice when I know a family may be in grave danger.”

  That made two of them. “We’ll give them a call, but if they don’t pick up, or if they don’t believe me.” He paused, and they exchanged a glance. Who in their right mind would believe a crazy story like that coming from complete strangers? “If they don’t believe me, I’ll drop you at your place and head out to warn them in person.”