The Devil's Labyrinth

by John Saul

  “Who’s her doctor?” Steve Morgan asked.

  “Dr. Conover. Neurosurgeon.”

  “Is he here?”

  “I can page him.”

  Morgan looked to McCain, who shrugged dismissively. “Who’s listed next of kin?”

  Again, the nurse consulted her computer screen and tapped at the keyboard. “She was admitted three years ago for pneumonia. At that time, her next of kin was William McIntyre, her husband.”

  “He’s no longer in the picture,” Morgan said. “Is there anyone else?”

  The nurse looked slightly irked, but went back to her keyboard. “Actually, we recently had a sixteen-year-old named Ryan McIntyre as a patient, whose mother is listed as Teri McIntyre.”

  “That fits,” McCain said. “There’s a boy’s bedroom in the house.”

  “And it’s the same address,” the nurse said, looking up. “But that’s all I’ve got.”

  “It’s a start,” McCain sighed, dropping a Police Department card on her desk. “Thanks. And call us when she wakes up, okay?”

  “Sure.” She took the card and scribbled a note on the back of it. Then, instead of dropping it into one of the desk drawers, she taped it to the monitor, just above the screen so nobody sitting at the computer could miss it.

  Knowing there was nothing more to be done at the hospital—at least right now—McCain turned away from the nurse’s station, and headed for the elevator.

  “So we have a boy named Ryan McIntyre,” Morgan said, as he punched the Down button a second time, “who’s undoubtedly the vic’s kid, but wasn’t anywhere around the house. And we have William McIntyre, who might be an ex-husband, and the boyfriend, Tom Kelly. And we liked Kelly for the assault, but if there’s an ex out there somewhere, we can’t count him out as the perp for either the beating, or the break-in. In fact, he could have done both.”

  “I’ll call it in,” McCain said as the elevator finally arrived to carry them down to the main lobby. “Shouldn’t be hard to get the story on the ex and the kid. But there’s gotta be a million Tom Kellys in Boston.”

  “There’s at least a dozen just in the Department,” Morgan said. “And if he was the perp on the beating, I’ll give you odds he wasn’t using his real name.”

  McCain nodded. “So let’s go back to her house and see if we can find out where the kid and the ex might be. I bet a neighbor knows something.”

  They pushed out through the main door and McCain inhaled deeply the cool salt air that had blown in off the ocean during the night. It was exactly the kind of spring morning that made you glad to be alive. But even as McCain’s lungs sucked in the fresh air, his gut told him not to get too comfortable. Things, he was sure, were about to get strange.

  Archbishop Rand glowered darkly at the telephone on his desk, almost as annoyed by the constant blinking of the line lights as he was by the incessant ringing that began the moment any line became free.

  Line one had the local NBC affiliate demanding more information about the Pope’s sudden—and utterly unexpected—rescheduling of his tour to include a stop in Boston.

  Line two was Arthur Cole, chairman of the Committee for Eucharistic Adoration, offering—actually demanding—that his whole organization be put to work for the Pope’s visit. Perhaps Rand could put him and his committee to work organizing the volunteers, who already numbered in the hundreds, all of them assuming that their work would be rewarded with a personal introduction to the Holy Father. Not that Rand even knew, at this point, exactly what was going to be needed.

  Line three was Mrs. Boothe of the Catholic Women’s College Club of Boston wanting to know how she and her group could be of assistance and, of course, to secure a private audience with the Pontiff.

  Rand had just hung up line four, a reporter from the Boston Herald who said he would wait for the faxed press release, so of course that line was now ringing again.

  A soft knock came on his office door.

  Rand took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose for a moment. What he actually needed was a strategy meeting, so everything that needed to be done could be organized in a logical, orderly fashion, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  There was simply no time.

  “Yes?” he called, instantly regretting the note of impatience that had crept into his voice.

  His seminarian assistant opened the door. “The mayor to see you,” he said, almost apologetically.

  Rand nodded, unsurprised that the mayor had simply showed up at his office, where he couldn’t be put off as he might have been on the telephone. “Show him in,” he sighed. “And ask Mrs. Boothe to bring her volunteers here tomorrow morning to help with logistics.”

  “Here?” The seminarian’s brows rose and his eyes widened, and Rand instantly realized his mistake: there was simply no room for a dozen women to work, not in the cramped space his offices had been reduced to.

  “Tell her that her first act will be to find a space for her people to work. Perhaps at the Paulist Center.” That, at least, would keep Emerald Boothe well away from him.

  The young man nodded his understanding, then opened the door wide.

  Rand rose from his chair to greet the mayor as he strode in. George Flowers was one of the few men tall enough for Rand to look straight in the eye, and his handshake was firm and blessedly brief. Then the mayor, as always, went straight to the point.

  “Quite a bomb you dropped on my office this morning,” he said, lowering himself into one of the two threadbare chairs in Rand’s office.

  “The same could be said for this office,” Rand replied, glancing at the phone where all four lines were still blinking.

  “There’s no way we can mobilize a security force in time for the Pope’s visit,” Flowers said. “It’s impossible. You’re going to have to reschedule.”

  Rand remembered all too well how he’d gone to the mayor for help when the Archdiocese was drowning in a sea of bad publicity, and Flowers—clearly not a Catholic—had simply shrugged it all off. “The Catholic Church,” he’d dryly observed at one point, “can withstand anything. It’s its own country, for God’s sake, with the Pope as its head, and all you Bishops and Cardinals as his commissioners. You’ll all think of something.”

  Now it was Rand’s turn to shrug off Flowers’s problems.

  “One doesn’t simply reschedule His Holiness,” Rand replied. “As you pointed out to me not so long ago, he is a head of state.” Rand’s bland expression betrayed none of the pleasure he felt at the mayor’s flinch. “I’m afraid he will neither postpone nor cancel his visit to Boston.”

  Flowers took a deep breath and ran his hands through his sparse hair. “Then I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Rand savored the mayor’s discomfort for another moment, then relented. “Actually, you don’t need to do much at all,” he said. “His Holiness will only be here for half a day, and it is to be a very low-key event. The Pope wishes to visit the children at St. Isaac’s school, where he will hold a private Mass. That’s all.”

  The mayor stared blankly at him, as if he must have misheard the Archbishop’s words. “That’s all?” he echoed.

  Rand spread his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “He will need security to and from the airport and around the school. But nothing more.”

  Now the mayor’s face had gone ashen. “Nothing? No public appearances?”

  “That is my understanding,” Rand said.

  The mayor appeared utterly nonplussed, and Rand could practically see the wheels spinning in his mind: having the Pope come to Boston and make no public appearances at all could turn out to be even worse than trying to organize security in the few days they had. Sure enough, Flowers finally found his voice.

  “You mean to tell me that the Pope is coming to Boston, and all he’s going to do is drive to St. Isaac’s and out again? Nothing at the Common? No event? No parade in the Popemobile?”

  Archbishop Rand smiled blandly, thoroughly enjoying Flowers’s co
nfusion. “All I know is what I’ve been told, George.” Then he decided to make things a little worse for the mayor. “But you never know what he’s going to do. He might very well change his mind once he gets here.”

  “That’s what terrifies me,” Flowers replied. “If he does, then what am I supposed to do? We have to have some kind of plan, and if he’s coming here at all, he has to appear in public.” He looked Rand squarely in the eye. “Don’t try to tell me you couldn’t use an appearance as much as anyone else. So how about a Mass in the Common? We can keep it as small as he wants, but at least it will be something.”

  Rand shrugged as disinterestedly as Flowers had months ago when he’d so blithely dismissed the Church’s problems, and Flowers slumped low in his chair. Only when Rand had decided the mayor had suffered enough did he speak one last time: “But you’re right, of course. His Holiness can’t come here and simply be invisible, which I’m sure he understands, and you’re also right that a Mass in the Common can be put together fairly easily, all things considered. Let’s consider it done.” He saw no point in telling the mayor that most of the planning for that event was already underway, and the Vatican had already approved it.

  CHAPTER 53

  RYAN DID HIS best to focus both his eyes and his mind on the math book on the table in the library, but knew it was hopeless.

  Something was wrong—with his body, his brain, his soul. His belly kept churning as if he was about to throw up, but every time he’d felt like he’d better bolt from the room and try to make it to the boys’ room down the hall before he puked his guts out, the nausea subsided just enough to keep him in his seat.

  It wasn’t just the nausea, either—it was like his whole body was revolting; when he’d first come into the library, he’d thought someone must have forgotten to turn the heat on, but a couple of minutes later he’d started sweating so bad his shirt was wet. Then, just as he was sure he was going to burn up from the heat, he’d suddenly turned cold again. It was like he had some kind of fever, but at the same time it didn’t feel like a fever at all. Besides, if he had a fever, they’d have kept him in the infirmary, wouldn’t they?

  And how had he gotten to the infirmary in the first place? The last thing he really remembered was following Father Sebastian in the tunnels below the school. After that, it was all like a half-remembered dream: some kind of cross hanging above him, and something on his chest and—

  And what? The next thing he remembered was waking up in the infirmary, and being told he’d gotten sick last night. But they’d let him go, and most of the morning he’d felt—

  Actually, he’d felt weird. At least half a dozen times he had the sensation that someone was standing behind him—really close behind him—but when he turned around to look, nobody was there. Then it had gotten even stranger; it was like somebody was actually inside him. He had a weird feeling like he was being crowded out of his own body. But that was stupid—nothing like that was even possible.

  Yet the feeling kept getting stronger, and now he was starting to wonder if maybe he was going crazy. He clamped his eyes shut for a moment as another wave of the strange nausea rose in him. He heard whispering voices all around him, which wasn’t surprising considering that as the news had spread through the school that the Pope was coming—not just to Boston, but to St. Isaac’s—even the nuns had barely been able to keep order in the classrooms. But as the nausea subsided and Ryan opened his eyes again, he saw that no one was talking at all.

  All around him, heads were bent over textbooks, and pens were writing on pads of paper.

  No one was talking.

  Yet the buzz—like an incomprehensible babble of voices—went on.

  And then he felt a new sensation: a pressure in his head, as if some strange force was trying to push him out of his own mind. He grabbed his head with both hands as if holding on to the outside of his skull would help him control the chaos that was suddenly going on inside it.

  He concentrated on Melody Hunt, who was sitting at the table behind him. The weird thing was that even though she was behind him, if he closed his eyes, he could actually see her just as clearly as if he’d turned around.

  And he could feel her, too.

  Giving up on trying to study, Ryan put his math book in his backpack and zipped it closed, and when he stood up, he wasn’t surprised to find Melody standing next to him.

  She reached over and took his hand.

  It was as if an electric current surged through him and he reflexively jerked his hand away.

  The sensation faded, leaving only an adrenaline rush.

  Melody smiled at him—a strange, almost cold smile, as if she knew exactly what had just happened to him—and then she took his hand again.

  The electricity shot up his arm like lightning.

  “There’s something we have to do,” Melody said.

  Except she hadn’t said it. She hadn’t spoken at all.

  Yet he’d heard her words—heard them perfectly clearly.

  “Come on.”

  Silently, Ryan followed her out of the library and through the corridors until they came to the empty dining room. When she opened the door that would lead them down to the underground tunnels, Ryan felt no fear at all.

  But he felt the strange presence—the peculiar “other” inside him—stir.

  He wanted to turn away from the door, but as Melody started down the stairs, he felt himself being drawn to follow her. He took one uncertain step down, and then another.

  The door closed behind him, enfolding them in complete darkness, and he felt the first tendrils of panic reaching out to him. But even as the panic rose, that strange “other” within him shrugged it off as if it were nothing, and Ryan found himself following Melody on down the stairs and into the tunnels themselves.

  As they started off into the darkness, Melody again took his hand, and once more he felt the stream of energy that seemed to flow from her body into his.

  And with her energy came her calm.

  Her single-minded purpose.

  And suddenly the darkness was no longer his enemy. It was as if there was a bright beacon directing them through the dark tunnels; they needed no flashlight—not even so much as a glowing match.

  They needed only to follow the energy that guided them.

  Together they walked in silence through the blackness, down more steps, through more tunnels, never hesitating at an intersection, moving confidently through the labyrinth.

  Then, from somewhere ahead, Ryan saw a light. A pale, greenish glow emanating from an open door.

  When they came to the door, Ryan saw the source of the light, and a memory rose from his subconscious. He was gazing at the sarcophagus that held the corpse of Jeffrey Holmes. Indeed, the strange green light glowed right through the cold stone, and he could see Jeffrey offering him the same cold smile Melody had shown him only a little while ago.

  Ryan tried to pull away. He willed his feet to stop, resisted the urge to go into that tiny chamber from which emanated the icy chill of death.

  The “other” drew him forward, into the room until he and Melody stood on either side of the glowing tomb.

  Against Ryan’s own will, his hands reached out and touched the cold stone, and as Melody’s hands joined his own on the lid of the sarcophagus, the slab of marble slid aside.

  Ryan gazed down upon the bloated, rotting features of the boy he’d never met, and once again nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He struggled to turn away—at least to step back—but found himself watching helplessly as he and Melody joined hands, then reached down and touched Jeffrey Holmes’s naked chest.

  As their palms came to rest on the boy’s bony torso, a new rush of energy gushed into Ryan, and for a moment he thought he must be going crazy. Ice flowed in his veins, and he felt a terrifying power surge through him, chilling first his hands, then his wrists, moving steadily up his arms and into his chest.

  Then it reached his heart.

  He wasn’t going crazy
at all—he was dying.

  He knew he was dying—knew it with a certainty as strong as the agonizing pain that tore at his body.

  Then it was over.

  But he wasn’t dead.

  Instead he was glowing.

  The same pale, greenish light that had come from Jeffrey Holmes only a moment ago now seemed to be emanating from the flesh of his own body, and when he looked over at Melody, she, too, was surrounded by the pale aura.

  Whatever had been in Jeffrey Holmes’s body was now in theirs.

  Leaving the stone casket cover askew, Ryan took Melody’s hand and together they left the empty body in its stone coffin and began walking back through the darkness, guided only by the cold light that now dwelt within them.

  CHAPTER 54

  RYAN QUIETLY SAT in the library. The nausea of the morning gone; after he and Melody had come back up from the tunnels he’d felt much better. His mind felt far sharper, too, and even his senses seemed keener than they ever had been. Indeed, as he stared at the neck of the boy who sat at the next table—kind of a geeky guy named Peter Wise—Ryan could almost see right through his skin to the muscles, arteries, and veins that lay beneath the skin. Now he envisioned a blade…

  A razor blade?

  No. The blade of a knife.

  A long, thin blade tapering to a point so sharp it would slip through Peter Wise’s skin so easily it would be almost as if nothing were happening at all. Maybe a little trickle of blood, but not much.

  Not much until the knife sank deeper, cutting through the thick cords of muscle supporting Peter’s head, then slashing into the carotid artery.

  Then the blood would gush, spurting through the wound as Peter’s head pitched forward. As the life began to bleed out of him, Ryan would plunge the blade deeper still, jabbing the point between two of the vertebrae and cutting the spinal cord. Peter would collapse then, but would still be alive, maybe even still conscious. Then—

  “Ryan?”

  Ryan’s face flushed hot and he jerked his gaze away from Peter Wise’s neck. Jesus! What had he just been thinking? What was the matter with him?