I pulled out my cell phone. “I have to call Andrea and tell her not to go home.”
She answered on the first ring. “Kyle? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, my words coming out in haste. “Listen. Don’t go home. Go straight to the nearest police station.”
“What?” she asked, a sudden note of panic in her voice. “Why?”
I felt a lump in my throat when I tried to swallow. “Where are you?”
“Kyle,” she said, her voice small and frightened. “I finished the showing early.”
She was home already.
“Get out of there right away—” I started to say, but there was the sound of breaking glass and Andrea’s scream. Then the phone went dead.
Chapter Eleven
I raced through the streets of Chicago and reached our neighborhood in record time. Having Vanderburgh following me in his SUV with his lights flashing helped, I’m sure. It was a wonder I didn’t get into an accident. All I could think of was getting home to Andrea.
It didn’t matter that we were separated, going through the beginning stages of divorce; I still loved her.
I hoped there was some human part of Lawrence left, and he hadn’t completely turned into a psychopath. If he had any shred of reason in him, he’d realize that his best chance to get to me would be to hold Andrea for ransom. I was more than willing to trade myself for her.
If anything happened to her, nothing would stop me from destroying him.
By the time I got to my street, I saw several police cars, as well as Hollingsworth’s vehicle, arrive just ahead of me. The officers all pulled their guns out while they crept toward the front entrance of my house. The door had been ripped off and was leaning on its face against the frame, which was splintered at the hinges and where the deadbolt had been.
Hollingsworth turned toward me as I braked a few feet from him. I barely remembered to put my car in park before I jumped out. He moved in front of me, blocking me from racing toward the house.
“Let them do their jobs,” he said, spreading his arms around to keep me from getting past him.
I couldn’t think straight, and was going to charge him. If he wouldn’t let me go around, I was going to go through him.
Vanderburgh caught up to us before I launched myself at Hollingsworth and wrapped his arm around my torso to hold me back. Together, the two detectives kept me in place.
“Let me go!” I growled.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two of the police officers near the open doorway.
Two others split up, heading around the sides of the house. As they passed windows, they glanced through, but from their reaction, they didn’t see anything suspicious.
Holding my breath, I watched as one of them leaned close to the gaping hole where the door had once been.
“Mrs. Chase,” the first officer called out. “Are you there? Are you all right?”
There was no answer. Guns held out in front of them, they crept inside.
The wait was driving me crazy, and I tried to lunge forward to break Vanderburgh’s grip, but he was ready for it.
“Let them do their jobs,” Hollingsworth said again. “If he’s in there, they’ll handle him.”
A few agonizing minutes later, one officer stepped back outside and waved to us. “No one here.”
Vanderburgh released me, and I immediately broke into a run. I had to see for myself.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said, hurrying after me. Hollingsworth followed at a slower pace.
The first thing I noticed when I entered the house was that it looked as if a gang on a rampage had trashed it. Almost every piece of furniture in the front room and hall was turned over or broken. My wife had several paintings and decorations on the walls; those that hadn’t been knocked to the floor were tilted at odd angles. A spider web of cracks ran through all the walls.
I raced to the kitchen and saw that it was also in complete disarray. The island had been knocked on its side. Pots and pans were scattered all over. The cupboard doors were open, and the dishes and glasses had all tumbled out, smashing to pieces where they landed.
I saw Andrea’s purse on the floor near the refrigerator. Beside it, her cell phone was crushed.
My mind was numb from shock, and I stared at the debris, not knowing what to do or say.
From behind me, Vanderburgh said, “I don’t see any blood.”
The officer who had entered the house first stood at the archway between the kitchen and dining room. “It looks like she ran upstairs.”
Together, the detectives and I followed him through the dining room to the back stairs. The carpet on the steps was ripped up, and the railing was broken. At the top of the stairs, one of Andrea’s shoes lay on its side, its heel snapped off.
The path of destruction led to the bedroom. The flimsy door separating the room from the en-suite bathroom was in splinters.
“She must have tried to barricade herself in the bathroom,” the officer said. “You won’t believe what happened in there.”
I raced forward first, though I didn’t know if I could have handled it if her dead body was there.
While I felt a surge of relief that the bathroom was vacant, the shock of seeing the condition of the room stunned me.
The bathroom itself looked as if a bomb had gone off. The toilet was shattered into pieces, the water from the pipe spraying everywhere. All of the pictures and the mirror on the wall were knocked off, smashed on the ground. Fragments of the vanity and sink were mixed in with the rest of the rubble.
The entire back wall was blown outwards, lumber and plaster scattered over the back porch and yard below.
“What the hell?” Vanderburgh said in a rush and pointed.
Looking out into the alley, I spotted a large figure. On his back, he carried a woman’s body, though whether she was conscious or dead, I couldn’t tell.
“Andrea!” I yelled, and without thinking, jumped through the opening in the wall and landed hard on the wood planks of the porch. My knee twisted—the same one that I’d fallen on last night—and I cried out. I could still put weight on it; the injury wasn’t serious, though the pain was excruciating.
A bad knee wasn’t going to stop me, however, and neither were the calls from Vanderburgh and Hollingsworth warning me to stop.
Chapter Twelve
Pushing through the pain, I broke into a jog through the back yard and into the alley. I sensed someone following behind, but I didn’t turn around to see if it was one of the detectives or uniformed officers. I wasn’t about to wait for them to catch up.
By the time I hit the back alley, I was able to put more weight on my leg, though I ran with a limp. I didn’t know whether the initial fall hadn’t been as bad as it felt, or that my adrenaline was suppressing the ache and the pain would come back on me later.
Lawrence was nearly a full block ahead of me, and though I was hobbled by my knee, he was carrying a person on his shoulders, slowing him down somewhat.
The uniformed officer who had brought us upstairs appeared beside me, and then passed me at a flat-out run. He wasn’t hampered by any injury, and it looked as if he would be able to catch up with the fleeing fugitive.
Lawrence rounded a corner and disappeared. The officer reached the intersection well before I did and didn’t pause as he continued his pursuit. By the time I got there and turned, there was no one in the alley. The short stretch of gravel road ended at a street, and I couldn’t see anyone in either direction.
It was possible Lawrence had either run through someone’s back yard, or had run across the street and ducked down one of the back alleys on the other block.
Cursing, I turned around at the street, looking and listening for any sign of them. A siren from a squad car grew louder. If there were any sounds of the pursuit, they were drowned out.
The police officers, however, had an advantage I didn’t; they were in contact with each through their radios. The squad car raced past me and
then squealed its tires as it took a sharp turn into the alley a block down. Assuming the officer on foot had told the others which direction his suspect was heading, it was possible the squad car was trying to flank Lawrence.
I raced across the street and to the next side alley, following the wail of the siren. Halfway down, the pursuing officer was standing, legs wide in a firing stance, his gun held out in front of him.
“Stop! Police!” he yelled.
At the other end of the alley, the squad car stopped, and two other officers jumped out, one of them mirroring the firing stance, the other leaning over the hood of the car with his weapon pointed at Lawrence, who was standing in a half-crouch halfway between the police car and me.
“Stay back,” the officer who’d been on foot said to me.
Mindful not to get in his line of fire, I stopped to the side and tried to catch my breath. My knee throbbed.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Andrea. She was slumped over Lawrence’s shoulder, her arms and legs dangling lifelessly. If he’d killed her…!
“Get out of my way,” Lawrence said in a loud, authoritative voice, in complete contrast to how he’d spoken last night before the incident, “or you will all die.”
As if only then realizing I was there, he turned toward me.
Though he'd been lying on a gurney in the lab last night, I'd been able to tell he was a large man. During the struggle with him, I had spent most of the fight on my knees, or running around.
Now, with Andrea’s body providing perspective, I judged he was bigger than I’d thought. He was nearly seven feet tall, and probably weighed closer to three hundred and fifty pounds. It would be easy to believe that he was capable of ripping doors off their hinges and knocking down walls by his own power.
Explaining his grotesque appearance, however, was another matter. Where once scar tissue had run from the side of his face, down his neck, and over his arm, now there was a kind of sick-looking, black and red growth. Resembling fungus in its consistency, it pulsed and moved in a snakelike fashion.
I felt my stomach tighten at the sight of it, and a kind of primal fear crept through me.
“You.” Lawrence pointed at me with his blackened arm. “I’ve been looking for you. Come with me now and I’ll let the bitch go.”
The officer beside me held his ground. “We can’t let that happen. Put the lady down, then get on the ground.”
Instead of complying, Lawrence took a menacing step toward me, and the two officers near the car fired. I saw a spray of blood come from Lawrence’s thigh.
With a roar, he spun around, somehow managing to keep from falling over, but he lost control of Andrea, and she fell to the gravel in a heap of arms, legs, and hair.
I cried out for her, but before I could run to her side and see if she was alive or dead, a massive earthquake hit, knocking me to the ground.
The fence beside me shook, the boards coming loose. A tree branch in a nearby yard snapped and fell. Garage doors bent as the buildings shifted. Car alarms wailed, and several neighborhood dogs began to bark uncontrollably.
Even as I tried to get back to my hands and knees, I couldn’t stabilize myself, and saw that the officers had also been thrown off their feet.
Lawrence roared, and the ground in the alley split wide open. The police car tumbled into the chasm, crashing against the walls before ending up at the bottom. The siren made a pitiful sound before falling silent.
I saw Lawrence coming toward me, his gait unhindered by the bullet wound in his leg. It was as if he were oblivious to everyone else around him. He wanted me.
I knew, instinctively, if he got his hands on me, he wasn’t going to question me about the OrganKnit; in his psychotic state of mind, he was simply going to kill me.
Frozen with fear, I could only crouch where I was, awaiting the inevitable deathblow.
Like a flash, a dark sedan raced past me, barely missing the officer on the other side of the alleyway, and slammed grill-first into Lawrence.
Despite his gigantic size, he was no match for the heavy car, and flew at least twenty feet back. Landing on the gravel just shy of the chasm at the other end of the alley, Lawrence was nothing more than a tangled mess of broken and disjointed limbs.
One of the police officers, who had scrambled away before being swallowed by the crack in the earth along with the squad car, got to his feet and took a tentative step toward Lawrence’s fallen body. Gun in one hand, he reached out with his other hand to check for a pulse.
Lawrence’s meaty arm shot out, and he wrapped his fingers around the man’s neck. Screaming, the policeman dropped his gun and tried to pry himself out of Lawrence’s grip with both hands.
Lawrence reached out with his other hand and grabbed the officer’s face. In horrifying fashion, the man’s body began to twitch and vibrate, as if suffering a major epileptic seizure.
Though he was more than twenty feet away, I could see Lawrence’s bones straightening. It was as if he was sucking the health out of the officer. Before my eyes, I saw the black growth on his arm recede.
Standing, Lawrence dropped the officer on the ground.
Hollingsworth and Vanderburgh both jumped out of the sedan. They trained their guns on Lawrence while, at the same time, the two other officers managed to regain their bearings, and held their weapons out as well.
The growing sound of additional police sirens must have convinced Lawrence that he would soon be outnumbered.
With a scowl at me filled with pure hate, he turned and ran.
Vanderburgh fired two rounds at him, both shots missing and ricocheting off a garbage can. He and the two officers took off after him in pursuit.
Hollingsworth stayed back. He hurried over to me and helped me to my feet.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I must have taken a blow to the head or something.”
“No.” Hollingsworth glanced down the alley at the fallen cop. “I saw it, too. He just … fixed himself.”
My voice was shaky. “How is that possible?”
The detective shook his head, eyes widened in awe and fear.
Looking at the police car in the chasm, I stated the obvious. “That was an earthquake.”
The detective looked at me, then looked at the splintered fences, knocked-over trash cans, and leaning telephone poles.
“It must have been Lawrence,” he said. “More evidence of the extraordinary.”
“So…” I couldn’t believe I was saying it. “…he’s possessed by one of these Watchers, like the Casanova Killer.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Father Webber told me to expect to see things I couldn’t explain.”
My attention quickly turned to Andrea, and I raced to her side. Falling to my knees, ignoring the pain, I reached down to pull the hair back from her face.
Her cheek was bruised, there was a cut along her jaw, and a nasty bump was forming above her eye, but I saw right away that she was breathing.
My medical training took over, and though I wanted to pull her off the ground and into my lap, I resisted. If she’d suffered any spinal injury, the sudden motion would only make it worse.
Carefully, I ran my fingers over her limbs and behind her neck to feel for swelling, or any other sign of breaks. Even though I didn’t detect anything, there could still be trauma. She’d have to get x-rays at the very least.
Within half a minute, two paramedics arrived.
“She’s unconscious,” I said. “She took a bad fall.”
Nodding, the paramedic did an initial examination. “I think she’s all right, but we’ll put her in a neck brace to be sure.”
Hollingsworth came up behind me and watched as the paramedics maneuvered Andrea onto the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance.
“I’m going with her,” I said.
“You look like you should take a look over here first,” he said.
I frowned. What could be more important than making sure Andrea was all right?
The horror in his eyes gave me pause.
I nodded to the paramedic. “I’ll take my car and be right behind you.”
As I watched the ambulance drive off, I followed Hollingsworth.
Vanderburgh and the other officers were approaching from the end of the alley.
“Did you get him?” I asked.
Shaking his head, Vanderburgh said, “He’s slippery, for a man his size. And fast.”
We all arrived at the fallen officer at same time, and then I understood the look Hollingsworth had given me.
The officer on the ground was dead, but I’d suspected as much. Though I should’ve expected it, I was still shocked to see that—as with Tim and Phil Bellows—tendrils of skin had begun to grow out his face and neck.
Chapter Thirteen
“What happened?” I asked Andrea in as gentle a voice as I could muster.
She lay back in the hospital bed, a bandage on her forehead and a splint on her left wrist. Several other cuts had been cleaned and dressed. Most of the physical damage had been superficial.
Psychologically, Andrea was a wreck. She had grown up in a well-to-do family in a safe neighborhood in Madison, and though I’d seen the results of a violent society, I’d always tried to keep it at work. Now, however, the terror of it had found its way to our home.
Andrea gave a small shake of her head, then winced as if the action had caused her some pain.
“It happened so fast,” she said. “At first, I thought a truck had run into the house. Everything was rumbling and shaking. The noise was deafening. Then I saw … him. He looked like something out of a horror movie. Who was he?”
She regarded me, her eyes narrowed with concern.
“His name is Lawrence, a psychopath. He’s the one who killed my father.” I looked down and took a sharp breath. “Last night, he killed Tim and his father.” After a moment, I added, “It looks like he killed a homeless man earlier.”
Her voice shaky, she asked, “Why did he attack me?”
Feeling like a heel, I put my hand on hers. “For some reason, he wants me. He thinks I have something he needs.”
The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels Page 48
