by Meg Gardiner
“So’s she. Putting together a ride-share program for her neighborhood, so women don’t have to take the bus or drive alone, especially if they work nights.”
“That’s so damn smart.” She smiled. “God bless Typhoon Sandy.”
“Mainly she’s worried about you,” he said.
She looked past the streetlights into the night. “I’m fine.”
“She worries that you’re fine like I’m fine.”
Their boots scuffed on the sidewalk. Caitlin remembered what her mother had once told her: Most homicide detectives stop taking their worst cases home at night, but Mack never did. Eventually, he lived in the mental house that created.
She thought about the dingy boardinghouse, the creaking halls, strangers living side by side in shells of suspicion and hurt. Loneliness.
“Dad. The Prophet is working his way deeper into hell. What’s the end game? What happens when he reaches the Ninth Circle?”
“What does the Ninth Circle punish?” Mack said.
“Betrayal.”
His eyes couldn’t have darkened, because there was nowhere darker for them to go. But his voice settled into calm depths.
“The world betrays us all. He could do anything.”
He slowed on the sidewalk and pulled Caitlin into a hug. “He’s close to the end. He’s nearing the heart of his fantasy. And you’re a part of it. Caitlin, you have to get away from this.”
For a moment she wanted to pull away. He held on tight. She let out a breath, wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her head to his chest.
“It’s too late,” she said.
41
Miles away, in a hillside house above San Francisco Bay, a man read the latest news. He sat at a desk by the windows. The light from the screen was a blue portal reflecting on the darkened walls. Outside, city lights spilled to the bay and ringed the water.
He saw her name—Caitlin Hendrix. It was so fitting. It was poetic.
It ain’t poetry, his mother would say. It’s fate.
But fate was a myth constructed by fools—people who gamble or follow horoscopes, who believe the stars rule their lives. Who think you have to take it.
Fate was bunk. There was no fate, only sin and recompense. And he was delivering it. He, Mercury, was sending the message.
He was punishing humanity with all the contempt and creativity that poetic justice required. Every sentence fitting the crime, exactly as the book prescribed.
The Inferno. The first horror novel. The epic tale of a journey to the depths of hell. The book that invented the very idea of the “depths” of hell—of a pit where descending levels punish increasingly monstrous sins.
He had now reached the Eighth Circle, where sorcerers and astrologers—who try to see the future through magic—have their heads wrenched backward, so that they can never look ahead. Where thieves have their very identities stolen by writhing vipers, like the dead reporter engulfed by pharaoh’s serpents.
They have no clue, he thought. Not the taken. Not the police, the press, the public—nobody was close to understanding Mercury, much less capturing him. But it was no surprise that they failed to understand. In hell, the damned rage in confusion.
He stood and walked to the window. He spread his arms, inhaled, and beheld the stage.
Titus Rhone was forty-seven, fit, well maintained, well turned out, well-spoken—if he said so himself. Well financed too: a valuable manager for the conglomerate where he worked. Bunk paid. Bunk made sinners pay too.
The moving boxes were mostly unpacked. He had settled back into the East Bay as though he’d never left. This place fit him like a warm latex glove.
He made a mental note to restock his supply.
He returned to the computer and admired Caitlin Hendrix on the screen. His heart beat faster. At last. Mack Hendrix’s own daughter—poetic indeed.
A shiver swept through him. Caitlin Hendrix would need to be crushed, as he had crushed her father. She could not be allowed to derail him. He turned to his bookshelf and selected one of the translations, a newer one, though after all these years, he knew each line of the poem verbatim, in the original language. “Through every city shall he hunt her down, Until he shall have driven her back to Hell.”
His heart beat harder. Soon would come the next epiphany. The next manifestation of Mercury and his poetic justice.
His mother’s hiss again filled his mind. Caitlin Hendrix is a she-wolf. Look at her: Something’s witchy in her eyes. She’ll put a curse on you, Titus. Take a fork and a rusty nail and cross them and stick them in the ground to break the spell.
He ignored his mother’s whispers. Growing up in West Virginia, his ma said he brought a curse on the family. She took his emotional irregularities as a sign that he was hexed. She refused to believe the family’s poisoned luck had anything to do with her own ignorance and bad habits. How many days did she drag him down the hollow to the library so she could check out movies and stand outside smoking and gossiping?
Never mind. The library was where he discovered the books, the ones with illustrations of torments and the damned. He found beauty and purpose. He became a student, of literature and source code and pain. He got out. So, thanks, Ma.
Black magic was bunk. Yet the people getting hysterical about the Prophet thought he was an astrologer, or even satanic? The irony.
He looked at the news story. His palms itched with anticipation. The hours were counting down to the next outpouring of poetic vengeance.
The anger, the heat, the expectant thrill, began to build.
But his masterwork remained obscure to the public. He might need to be bolder. To clarify to the bumblers in law enforcement and the media what his grand plan entailed. What it showed. Whom it punished, and why.
Twenty years. After that final day, he’d thought he was done. After he shot Detective Ellis Saunders. After he drew close and knelt over him, waiting for him to die, that moment of possession . . . until Saunders grabbed him by the throat. Saunders’s hand held death, a chill from empty eternity. His eyes opened on starless voids. His voice was not Saunders’s voice but a hiss from the ceaseless black. You. Will be. Annihilated.
He shot Saunders again and fled.
He scrubbed himself clean. Moved away. And he might have stayed away forever. But a new whisper rose in the wind, clearing the fog and fear from his mind. Your work is incomplete. You haven’t evened the score yet.
So he started again.
He picked up where he left off, amid the Sixth Circle. He began his final descent with a statement of purpose. The Messenger Appears. He scatters the fallen. Nobody can now stand against him in the depths of hell.
You are unstoppable, the whisper had said. Don’t pause for breath. Finish it.
That same whisper now said to him: Caitlin.
Yes. She brought herself into this. The daughter of one of the two men who hunted him, now a cop herself. Trying to redeem her father’s failure. So avaricious for glory. Her hunger was a sin. For this, she would pay.
On his laptop, he opened the RAT. After twenty-five years as a programmer, he knew plenty of dirty tech tricks. The RAT—remote administration tool—was spying software. It let him access other people’s computers. With the RAT, he could open disk drives. He could track people without their knowledge. He could silently turn on webcams and observe people.
Like the math teacher, and the Coffee, Tea & Tarot women, and the drunken reporter.
The new millennium had opened his world in many ways, and the silent approach via spying software was one of them.
It wasn’t like the first time. Not like the jogger in Peñasquitos Park.
The First. She who became the marker of the Vestibule of Hell. Giselle Fraser, the Tease. The jogger who smiled at him, who said hi to him, then ignored him. Hot and cold. Leading him on, then running with anoth
er man and never speaking to him again. Whispering with the other guy, and laughing . . . at him, undoubtedly.
He was ready by then. He had grown beyond killing animals. Even though he laughed now, thinking of the stapler and his schoolmate’s hamsters. That was goddamned funny. Not as satisfying as the hammer and the rabbits, but funny.
Those things had helped him get through. The verb slaked wasn’t used often enough these days, but that’s what those animals had done. Slaked his rage, slaked his thirst. For a time.
And after he saw a video about the circus freak with the piercings, the nails through her private parts . . . and the report of the nail bombing . . . so frightening, so freakish. So exciting.
Pieces. Ideas. They were all eventually assembled for his vast canvas.
It was as yet incomplete. Unperfected. When he first began, Giselle the Tease had lured him into acting out of season. But since then, he had worked within the confines of the Inferno’s chronology. If the Sullen Bitch had not escaped from the water treatment pond and erased the message on her arm, he would have acted on Good Friday that year.
And if Bart Fletcher had not taken information from the Sullen Bitch, and held on to it, he could still have acted. Fletcher had taken what was not his, and kept it. The Thief.
This month it had been frightfully simple to lure Fletcher within his reach. He simply contacted the Thief anonymously, claiming to be a source within the Alameda Sheriff’s Office. He fed him juicy tidbits about the investigation. Invented tidbits, yes—but the Thief gobbled them up, and held them quiet, hoping to spin them into a shocking exposé. And when he said he could free the Thief from the constraints of his ankle bracelet . . . the man was on the hook.
Titus Rhone was in the midst of his masterwork. The poetic beauty of displaying the damned with their sins so explicitly portrayed. Part of him wanted Caitlin Hendrix to figure it out. To apprehend his blinding genius.
But this yearning was his own sin. His desire to let his light shine—that was his failing. His quest was pure, but he was not. He should scourge himself of it. Rid himself of this competitive urge.
But not yet. He would destroy Caitlin Hendrix before she could stop him. When she fell, he wanted her to die understanding his plan’s perfection.
So it was time to up the volume.
He had planted malware in one of the sites that he knew the authorities would access during their investigation—the site he’d given to KPDX News in his letter to the television station. The malware had downloaded to Caitlin’s computer and mobile devices.
He looked at the information on his next targets. Circle Eight. Soon. He stared at the image of Caitlin Hendrix. Deep in the night, he turned on her webcam. O lucky day. Her laptop sat open on her living room coffee table. His heart hammered.
It’s time, come round at last, Caitlin.
42
When Caitlin got home, the wind was up. The street was silent, houses dark. She sensed that everybody else had hunkered down behind locked doors. Shadows scraped the sidewalks beneath the streetlights.
She felt frayed. She’d turned in her report to Lieutenant Kogara. Fourteen typed pages that only confirmed everything she’d feared: The Prophet’s game was escalating. It was designed to terrorize—and it was succeeding. Because no matter how hard she tried to read through the poetry in the Inferno, she couldn’t see where in the pit the Prophet planned to drag them.
She parked on the driveway and ducked under the purple wisteria, ghostly in the dark. Beyond the gate, she heard Shadow’s tags clink as she raced out of her doghouse, whimpering with joy.
“Hey, girl.”
Caitlin opened the gate and knelt to greet her. Shadow yipped, jumped, and put her paws on Caitlin’s shoulders. She snagged Caitlin’s satchel. It fell and spilled on the walk. Her phone clattered on the concrete. It was silently vibrating with an incoming call.
She’d silenced it at work and hadn’t turned the ringer back on. She grabbed it. Deralynn Hobbs. She answered.
“Deralynn? Is something wrong?”
“No. Why?”
“It’s midnight.”
“And now I know you’re a night owl too.”
Shadow licked her face, bright-eyed, tail wagging. Caitlin stood up and pushed the gate open, but instead of coming when Caitlin whistled, Shadow bolted for the street in a blur of black fur and white paws.
“Dammit.”
“Sorry,” Deralynn said.
Caitlin ran down the driveway. “That wasn’t for you. My vixen of a dog just made a getaway.” She jogged up the street, whistling. “What’s going on?”
“Wanted you to have a heads-up. I’m chasing a lead. This Zodiac Match thing. Me and another member of the message board.”
“What kind of a lead? Can you give me details?” She couldn’t see Shadow. She whistled again.
Deralynn said, “Got all night. Walt took the boys camping at Mount Diablo Park, so I’ll talk to him . . .”
“In person? A guy from the message board? Not a good idea.”
“Online. We know each other from the forum.”
“Assume that the Prophet monitors the forum.”
“This guy’s vetted.”
“Still, be careful.” Caitlin reached the corner. “Hang on.” She lowered the phone. “Shadow. Come.”
She listened to the wind. For a minute, there was nothing but the shiver of the leaves, and acorns hitting the ground. Then Shadow appeared from the neighbor’s bushes and trotted toward her, perky and satisfied.
Caitlin grabbed her collar. “Great escape, you little mutt.”
She led Shadow toward her house and returned the phone to her ear. “What exactly is this lead you’re following?”
Nothing.
“Deralynn?”
The call had gone dead. Caitlin tried to call Deralynn back but couldn’t reconnect. All she got was a Call Failed message.
“Dammit.”
She shoved the phone in her pocket and awkwardly led Shadow home. When she shut the gate behind her, the dog bounded up the steps to the back porch while Caitlin fished out her keys. The house was dark. She opened the door and Shadow scurried into the kitchen. A second later, Caitlin heard her slurping from her water bowl.
Caitlin shut the door and flipped the switch for the under-cabinet lighting. She dropped her satchel on the counter. And stopped. On the kitchen island was an envelope.
It was cream colored. Good stationery. Looked like heavy vellum.
She went absolutely still. She listened to the house. Shadow’s head popped up. The dog pricked up her ears and ran from the kitchen toward the back of the house.
“Sha—”
Caitlin stopped herself. Heart pounding, she reached under her jacket and drew her gun.
She sidestepped through the kitchen, edged up to the wall, and reached around to flip a light switch in the living room.
Living room clear. Front door locked, dead bolt secure. She opened the coat closet. Clear.
Shadow hadn’t come back.
Silently she advanced down the hall, both hands on the gun, half turned to present a smaller target to anyone who might lunge from a doorway. She swung into the guest room and flipped on the light. Nothing. Window secure. Closet clear.
She spun and continued down the hall to her bedroom door. She swept through the doorway, hitting the light switch as she entered. Saw nobody. She threw open the closet and flipped back the duvet and crouched to look under the bed.
A noise clattered in the bathroom. She crept close and threw it open, SIG raised.
On the bath mat Shadow lay with her paws in the air, gnawing a chew toy.
Caitlin holstered her gun and stalked back to the kitchen. Heart thudding, she put on latex gloves and picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. Carefully she lifted the flap.
Out fell
a note. She unfolded it.
You’re going to get this done. Then you can wash it out of your system courtside. Sean
Along with the note were tickets to a late-season Warriors game.
“God. Crap.”
She checked her phone—three missed calls from him.
“Goddammit.”
She dropped the note and bent over the counter. Surprise me. She’d actually told him that. Can’t wait.
The phone rang. She jumped. Sean. She clamped her jaw tight, trying to calm herself enough to answer.
Outside, the gate creaked open.
Spinning, she drew her SIG and hit the switch to turn off the kitchen lights. Her phone kept ringing. In the dark outside, a shadow passed beneath the wisteria.
She threw the door open and charged onto the porch, weapon aimed at it. “On the ground. Now. Do it. Do it.”
A man threw himself down, rolling as he landed. “Cat—”
She swung her weapon. He rolled deeper into the darkness and jumped to his feet again, hands spread.
“It’s me!”
Her phone kept ringing. So did the cell the shadow held in his right hand. She trained her SIG on him, disbelieving.
Sean shouted louder. “Caitlin.”
Chest heaving, she lowered her gun. Stared at him.
“What are you doing here? Why’d you call when you were at the gate? The sound . . .”
He continued to stare at the SIG. Though the barrel was pointed at the ground, she held it two-handed. Her finger was still on the trigger.
“You came into my house and left a letter?” she shouted. “Like the Prophet? What were you thinking?”
He took an actual step back.
Her hands were trembling. Her arms. All the heat in her body seemed to have poured out through her palms and evaporated.
“You freaked me out.” She heard the corroded panic in her voice. “I almost . . .”
He crossed the yard, long slow strides, and climbed the steps. He looked pointedly at the SIG, held tight in her hands.
“Caitlin, for Christ’s sake.”
