Reprisal ac-5

by F. Paul Wilson

  Don't make me do this, Lord. Don't ask this of me. Take this matter into Your own hands. Heal him or take him. Spare us both. Please.

  But when he pushed through the door he heard the hoarse, sibilant, whispered moans, found Danny still writhing on the bed.

  Closing the door behind him, Bill allowed one sob to escape. Then he leaned against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt more alone than he had ever thought possible—alone in the room, alone in the city, alone in the cosmos. And he saw no choice but to go through with what he'd been planning all day.

  He went over to the bedside and looked down at Danny's thin, tortured, ghastly white face. For an instant the boy's pain-mad eyes cleared, and Bill saw in them a fleeting, desperate plea for help. He grabbed the thin little hand.

  "Okay, Danny. I promised to help you, and I will." No one else seemed to be able or willing to—not the doctors, not God himself. So it was up to Bill. "It's just you and me, kid. I'll help you."

  * * *

  Bill waited patiently through the change of shift, until the incoming nurses had been briefed on each patient by the outgoing crew. The reports were completed more quickly than usual, and with wishes of a happy New Year to one and all the three-to-eleven shift was on its way out of the building in record time. It was party time for them.

  Bill made some small talk with Beverly, the head nurse on eleven-to-seven, as she checked Danny's useless IVs during her initial rounds. Then he waited a while longer.

  At 11:45 he scouted the hall. No one in sight. Even the nurses station was deserted. Finally he found them. The entire shift was clustered in the room of one of the older children, a twelve-year-old boy recovering from an appendectomy, all watching as Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve show geared up for the traditional countdown to the drop of the illuminated apple above Times Square.

  Bill slipped back to the charge desk and hit the OFF switch on Danny's heart monitor, then hurried back to his room. Working feverishly, he peeled the two monitor leads from the boy's chest wall, then removed the IV lines from both arms and let the solutions drip onto the floor. He untied the restraints from Danny's wrists and slid his painfully thin chest out of the posey. Then he wrapped him in the bed blanket and in an extra blanket from the closet.

  He checked the hall again. Still empty. Now was the time. Now or never. He turned back to the bed, reached to lift Danny, then paused.

  This was it, wasn't it? The point of no return. If he carried through his plan tonight there would be no turning back, no saying I'm sorry, I made a mistake, give me another chance. He would be accused of a hideous crime, branded a monster, and hunted for the rest of his life. Everything he had worked for since joining the Society would be stripped from him, every friend he had ever made would turn against him, every good thing he had done in his life would be forever tainted. Was what he was about to do worth all that?

  Bury me… in holy ground. The words seared his brain. It won't stop… till you bury me…

  There was no other way.

  He lifted Danny's writhing, blanket-shrouded form.

  Good Lord, he weighs almost nothing!

  He carried him along the empty hall to the rear stairway, then down the steps, flight after flight, praying he'd meet no one. He'd chosen this moment because it was probably the only quarter hour out of the entire year when, unless they were in the middle of a crisis situation, almost everyone's mind was more or less distracted from his or her job.

  When he reached ground level Bill placed Danny on the landing and checked his watch: almost midnight. He peeked out into the hall. Empty. At its end, the exit door. And just as he'd hoped—unwatched. The guard's seat was empty. And why not? Georgie, the usual door guard on this shift, had always seemed fairly conscientious, but even he'd have to figure that since his job was to screen the people entering the hospital instead of those leaving it, and since no one could get in unless he opened the door for them, what was wrong with leaving his station for a few minutes to watch the apple drop?

  Bill lifted Danny and started for the exit. Up ahead he heard voices through the open door of one of the little offices. He paused. He had to pass that door to get out. No way around it. But could he risk it? If he got caught now, with Danny wrapped up in his arms like this, he'd never get another chance.

  Then he heard it: the countdown. A mix of voices, male and female, began shouting.

  "Ten! Nine! Eight!…"

  Bill began to walk, gliding his feet, gathering speed until he was moving as fast as he could without actually running.

  "Seven! Six! Five!…"

  He whisked past the office door, then began to run.

  "Four! Three! Two!…"

  As he reached the door he slowed for half a second, just long enough to allow him to hit the lever bar at the same instant the voices shouted, "One!"

  The noise of the opening door was lost in the ensuing cheers as he rushed headlong into the parking lot. He had parked St. F.'s station wagon illegally, hoping his clergy sticker would buy him some leniency. The last thing he needed now was to find that the wagon had been towed away.

  He sighed with relief when he saw it where he'd left it. She was a rusting old junker but at that moment she looked like a stretch limo. Gently, he laid Danny on the back seat and arranged the blankets loosely over him.

  "We're on our way, kid," he whispered through the folds of fabric.

  Then he heard a slurred voice behind him.

  "That him? 'S he the one?"

  Bill whirled and saw the two ragmen from earlier this evening, one big, the other shorter and slight. How had they got into the lot?

  "No, that's not him," said the smaller of the two. "Hush up about that."

  The big one stepped closer to Bill and peered into his face. His beard stank of wine and old food.

  "You the one?" Another moment of too-close scrutiny, then, "No. He's not the one."

  He turned and lurched away.

  The little one scampered after him for a few steps.

  "Walter! Walter, wait!" Then he hurried back to Bill. "Don't do it!" he said in a harsh whisper. "No matter what you've been told, don't do it!"

  "I'm sorry," Bill said, shaken by the man's intensity. "I'm in a hurry."

  The little man grabbed his arm.

  "I know you! You're that Jesuit. Remember me? Martin Spano? We met long ago… at the Hanley mansion."

  Bill jolted as if he'd touched a live wire.

  "God, yes! What—?"

  "Not much time. I've got to catch up to Walter. I'm helping him search for someone. Walter was a medic once. He sometimes can cure people but he can't cure that kid. He can't cure anybody when he's drunk and he's drunk almost all the time these days. But remember what I said. Don't do it. An Evil power is at work here. It's using you! I was used once—I know how it is. Stop now, before it's too late!"

  And then he was off, running after his fellow derelict.

  Thoroughly shaken, Bill got in the front seat and sat for a moment. Martin Spano—hadn't he been one of those crazy people who'd called themselves the Chosen when they'd invaded the Hanley mansion back in 1968? Spano had been crazy then and was obviously crazier now. But what had he meant—?

  Never mind. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted now. He shook off the confusion and drove out of the lot, forcing a smile and waving as he passed the guard in the booth. He drove north, toward the Bayside section of Queens, toward a place he'd spent much of the early evening preparing for Danny.

  Renny slammed the phone down and threw off the covers. "Damn!"

  "What's the matter?" Joanne asked from the other side of the bed. They'd spent New Year's Eve at home, catching up on their lovemaking.

  "The kid's gone!"

  "The one in the hospital?"

  "Yeah," he said as he pulled on slacks and a sweater. "Danny Gordon. The nurse went in to wish Father Bill a happy New Year and found the room empty."

  "The priest? You don't think—"

  "Th
ey were both in the room before twelve, they were both gone after. What else can I think?" He gave her a quick kiss in the dark. "Gotta go. Sorry, babe."

  "It's okay. I understand."

  Did she? Renny sure hoped so.

  The priest! he thought as he raced toward Downstate. Could he have been the one who cut up on that kid?

  Nah! Not possible. No way.

  And yet…

  Renny thought again about how everyone he'd interviewed at St. F.'s had mentioned good old Father Bill's attachment to little Danny, like father and son. How Danny would always sit on his lap. What if that attachment hadn't been entirely on the straight and narrow? You heard about fag priests, about priests molesting kids. It hit the papers every so often. What if the thought of giving the kid up for adoption had scared him? What if he'd been afraid Danny would talk to his new parents about things he'd had to let Father Bill do to him?

  Renny increased his speed. He squeezed the steering wheel as he felt his insides tense up.

  What if Danny had told the Loms something on Christmas Eve? And what if in their shock and disbelief, in a misguided attempt to give this wonderful and gracious man an opportunity to defend himself, they'd called Father Bill first instead of the police? And what if he cracked when they told him? What if he said he'd come right over and talk this thing out? What if he went completely berserk in the Lorn house? -J

  "Jesus!" he said aloud in his car.

  It didn't explain everything. Nobody—nobody—was ever going to give Renny a satisfactory explanation of what had happened to Herb Lorn, so he stuffed that incident into a mental limbo. But the bogus Sara—what was her angle? Was she a red herring? Or was she somehow in league with the priest in some plot to get Danny away from St. Francis to a place where the wonderful Father Bill could have freer and more discreet access to the kid?

  And suddenly all the pieces started falling into place.

  The priest had spent every waking hour by the kid's side, even slept in a chair in the boy's room. Renny had been taken by this show of such deep devotion. But what if it hadn't been anything like devotion? What if the priest had just wanted to be there when Danny started coming out of it? What if he'd wanted to be the first to know if Danny was going to talk again?

  And there was more! The priest had been fighting the endless round of tests and procedures all the docs wanted to perform on the kid. Renny had assumed it was for the kid's sake… until now. What if he was really afraid they'd find a way to bring him out of it, or at least get him to the point where he could name his attacker? And now, with the legal machinery moving toward making Danny a ward of the court, the priest was facing certain shutout from having any say in Danny's care. That might have been the last straw. He must have gone into a panic tonight and took off with the kid.

  Maybe to finish him off.

  Shit!

  Renny swerved into the entrance of one of the Downstate parking lots and jumped out of his car. A couple of winos were there. They fairly leapt on him.

  "He took the boy!" the shorter one said.

  "Who?"

  "The Jesuit! He took the boy!"

  "You saw him?"

  Before the little guy could answer, the bigger wino pushed forward.

  "Are you the one?" he said, staring into Renny's eyes.

  Renny turned away. He'd heard enough. He flashed his badge at the guy in the guard booth and grabbed the phone. It took a while—he had to go through the hospital switchboard—but he got a line to4he desk at his precinct.

  "I want an APB on a Father William Ryan. He's a Jesuit priest but he probably won't be dressed like one. He's wanted for kidnapping and for attempted murder. He'll have a sick seven-year-old kid with him. Get his picture out of the file now and get it to all the papers and all the local news shows. Do the usual bridges and tunnels thing. Have anybody and everybody looking out for a guy in his forties traveling with a sick kid. Do it now. Not ten minutes from now—now!"

  Renny stepped out of the booth and slammed his fist against the hood of his car.

  How could he have been such a jerk? The cardinal rule in this sort of crime was to put the first heat on the people closest to the victim. The esteemed Father Ryan had been the closest but Renny had allowed himself to be lulled by the Roman collar, by the fact that he'd come out of St. Francis himself. He'd let that bastard priest sucker him in and squeeze him for all he was worth.

  I'm so fucking stupid!

  Well, no more. Ryan wasn't getting out of this city tonight. It was New Year's Eve and the shift was spread a little thin, plus the usual bunch of cops was tied up doing crowd control at Times Square, but Ryan wasn't getting away. Not if Renny had a damn thing to say about it. The priest had made him look like a jerk, but Renny realized that wasn't what really mattered, what really burned him. It was how he'd started thinking of the priest as a friend, someone he wanted to hang around with. And Renny didn't offer his friendship easily.

  He was hurt, dammit.

  Something cold and wet landed on his cheek. He looked around. It was beginning to snow. He smiled. The weatherman had predicted a snowstorm tonight. That was good. It would slow traffic, make it easier to spot a guy and a sick kid trying to leave the city.

  We're gonna meet again real soon, Father fucking Ryan. And when we do you'll wish you'd never been born.

  St. Ann's Cemetery was small and old and crowded, some of the headstones dating back to the early years of the last century. Bill had chosen St. Ann's because it was out of the way and it was consecrated ground.

  … bury me… in holy ground…

  Now as he drove the deserted street running along the cemetery's north wall he wondered if it mattered.

  Consecrated ground, he thought. What does that mean?

  A week ago he'd have had no trouble answering the question. Now the whole concept struck him as senseless.

  But then, nothing made sense anymore. His whole world had been turned upside down and ripped inside out during the past week. He could smell the rot in the very foundations of his faith, could feel them crumbling beneath him.

  Where are you, Lord? There's evil afoot here, pure distilled evil that can't be explained away by happenstance or coincidence or

  natural causes. This isn't fair. Lord. Give me a hand, will you?

  Only one other time in his life had he come across anything even remotely resembling what had happened to Danny. That derelict… Spano… had reminded him. Almost twenty years ago, in a Victorian mansion on Long Island Sound, he'd seen Emma Stevens die not ten feet in front of him with an ax in her brain. He'd watched her lie in front of him, as lifeless as the rug that soaked up her blood. And then he'd seen her rise and walk and kill two people before slumping into death once again.

  He'd explained that away by telling himself that if doctors had had a chance to examine Emma while she was lying on the rug with the ax protruding from her skull, they would have found that she only appeared dead, and that whatever spark of life was left in her had flared long enough to allow her to finish what she'd started just before she was killed.

  But an entire medical center staff had had a week with Danny. They all said he should be dead, but somehow he wouldn't die.

  Just like Emma Stevens. Except that Emma had hung on for only a few minutes. Danny had been going for a week and showed no signs of weakening. He might possibly go on forever… it won't stop… till you bury me…

  Bill wondered if there could be a link between what had happened to Emma and what was happening to Danny. Spano the wino seemed to have hinted at that in the parking lot.

  He shook himself. No. How could there be? He was grasping at straws here.

  He pulled to a stop in the deep shadows under a dead street lamp. Dead because he'd killed it. He'd bought a CO2 pellet gun yesterday, come out here last night, and shot the bulb out. Took him a whole cartridge before he finally scored a bull's-eye.

  And earlier tonight, shortly after dark, he'd returned to this spot with a pick and a shove
l.

  Bill leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel. Tired. So tired. When was the last time he'd had two consecutive hours of sleep? Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a little while here he could—

  No! He jerked his head up. He couldn't hide from this. It had to be done and he was the only one to do it, the only one to realize that this was the only thing anyone could do for Danny. There were no other options. This was it.

  He'd heard it from Danny's own lips.

  With that thought to bolster him, Bill put the wagon in gear and drove up the curb and across the sidewalk until the passenger side of the wagon was hugging the eight-foot wall under an oak that leaned over from the far side. He got out, opened the rear door, and lifted Danny out of the back seat. With the boy's swaddled form in his arms, he stepped up on the bumper, then the hood, then up to the roof. From there it was a short hop to the top of the wall. He swiveled around on his buttocks until his legs were dangling over the inside edge, then dropped to the ground on the other side.

  Okay. He was inside. It was dark. The glow from the streetlights didn't reach in here, but he knew where he was going. Just a few paces to the left, against the wall. That was where he had spent a couple of hours tonight after darkfall… hours… with a pick and shovel…

  Oh, God, he didn't want to do this, would have given anything to pass this cup. But there was no one in the wings to take it from him.

  Bill paused an instant at the edge of the oblong hole in the ground, then jumped in. When he straightened, the frozen grass on ground level was even with his lower ribs. He would have liked the hole to have been deeper, six feet at least, but he'd exhausted himself here earlier getting it this deep, and there was no time left now. This would have to do.

  He knelt and stretched Danny's form out on the floor of the hole. He couldn't see the boy's face in the darkness, so he released his writhing body, and pulled back the folds of blanket. He administered the final sacrament, called Extreme Unction when he was in the seminary, now called the Anointing of the Sick. During the past week he had administered it on a daily basis to Danny, and each time it had lost an increment of its meaning. It was little more than a collection of empty words and gestures now.