I opened my mouth, but she cut me off. “There’s more, Jason. More no one is talking about. They think of the killer like some movie monster, but he isn’t. He’s a man.” She paused, shaking her head. “I hate him, but… I think he’s in terrible pain. Something from his past. I think that can be used against him.”
I studied her face. “What’s the real reason you’re fixated on these crimes?”
She was thoughtful for a moment. Then she shuffled through the printed pages, found the one she’d been after, and handed it to me.
My stomach performed a queasy somersault. The photograph showed a girl in a school uniform. Julia Deveroux. The newest victim of the Sweet Sixteen Killer.
But I had seen the girl already. When Malephar had come forward during Danny’s attempt to murder me, Julia was one of the faces I had glimpsed in the cesspool of Danny’s thoughts. Just a giggling schoolgirl walking with her friends. An innocent kid with no idea of the beast stalking her.
And now she was dead.
Could I have prevented it?
“For her,” Liz said, tapping Julia’s picture. She turned toward the wall to my left, the one I hadn’t seen yet because I’d entered through that doorway. “And for them.”
I beheld the faces of the seven prior victims of the Sweet Sixteen. Each of the girls was smiling, each excited about her future life. About a career, about friends. A family.
But now they were corpses, minor players in a greater tragedy, the macabre handiwork of a serial killer who sought to outdo even Jack the Ripper in infamy.
I despised Danny Hartman.
Yet even more, I hated myself for making the deal with Malephar, for agreeing to allow Danny to remain free.
I had to stop Danny, no matter the cost.
My eyes shifted back to the board above the computer, to the purple and orange highlighted text.
What if Danny wasn’t the only murderer?
My body went motionless. My thoughts screeched to a ragged halt. The thought that had been clawing at me ever since Liz told me the Sweet Sixteen had struck again had finally stepped into the light.
“Where was last night’s murder?”
“Farris Park,” Liz said.
Oh my God.
She put a hand on my arm. “Are you okay? You don’t look very well, Jason.”
And I wasn’t. Had, in fact, never been worse in my life.
Because there had been another person in Farris Park last night, a person with intimate knowledge of the Sweet Sixteen’s habits, a person who had, for a moment, inhabited the depraved monster’s mind.
Please, Jesus, I almost sobbed, please let it not be true.
It wasn’t possible, was it?
Could I be the copycat killer?
Chapter Eleven
My mind spinning, I sped away from Liz’s house.
No, I thought, my hands shaking on the wheel. Please, God, no.
From the depths of my bosom, I heard the demon’s laughter.
My muscles tensed. Tell me the truth, I demanded.
More laughter.
Tell me, damn you!
Untoward language for a holy man, Malephar taunted.
Did you take control of me without my knowledge?
Are you worried you enjoyed it?
I nearly missed my turn, applied the brakes, and cut the wheel as a truck horn blatted its disapproval behind me.
I have to know if—
You delighted in the slaughter, Malephar said.
My hands gripped the wheel so tightly that, were I a stronger man, the whole assemblage would have snapped. What slaughter?
In the store.
I relaxed infinitesimally. That wasn’t me.
You lying little shit, Malephar said.
I would not be drawn in. I permitted you to seize control. I honored our agreement. I allowed you to sate your desires, and in doing so I saved—
You’re plotting to shatter our pact, you worthless cumstain.
I signaled a left turn onto the rectory road, my mind racing. Only twenty minutes earlier I’d resolved to unmask Danny as the killer, but I had clung to a feeble hope that Malephar would remain unaware of my resolution. How naïve that desire had been. The demon was part of me now, a constant companion. I could no more deceive him than I could deceive myself.
So I answered Malephar, Thinking isn’t the same as doing. You can’t harm me for considering a course of action, only for taking it.
I can and will do what pleases me, sodomite. I can harrow your puling face with razor blades. I can seize a pair of kitchen shears and snip your pathetic little penis off at the root. I can make of you a castrate, a disfigured abomination.
My hands were shaking again, not only at Malephar’s words, but at the frightfully vivid images he projected while he uttered his threats. I saw my face as it would be when Malephar was done with it, the gory red-black hole in my abdomen, the shriveled rind of my member as it lay discarded on the kitchen floor.
No more, I thought, turning into my cottage driveway.
I’ll decide when you’ve had enough, eunuch.
I climbed out of the car. I needed to clean up the cottage and return to work. Normalcy, or some semblance of it, might soothe the relentless clanging of my nerves.
I entered my cottage and beheld the blood-spattered living room.
Cleaning it would be a terrible job. One that would require hours.
Yet this, at least, was a mindless enough task to divert my attention from the dire question circling in my brain.
Had I killed Julia Deveroux?
Thrusting the thought away, I strode into the kitchen and prepared a bucket of hot, soapy water.
¨¨¨
It was well past two that afternoon when I finished cleansing my living room and bathroom of blood. I performed the task in the nude, deciding it would be best not to stain any more of my already spare wardrobe. When I’d completed my tedious and largely ineffectual ministrations, there still remained several dark splotches on the hardwood floor, an armada of indelible stains on the furniture and walls. But what could I do? Move? Commit arson? And after all, why should the presence of so much of my own blood unnerve me? I had been the victim, not the perpetrator.
With a tightening of the chest, I thought of the clothes I’d worn the night before. What if there were not three sets of bloody DNA there—those belonging to Randy Connelly, Marlon Meeks, and me—but four? What if the damning evidence were lying in a ball on my bathroom floor?
I rushed into the bathroom and snatched up my blood-crusted clothes. As I stood debating what to do, I caught sight of my naked body in the mirror. The vanity was situated high enough so that only the top of my pubic region was visible. From that perspective, I looked like the castrate Malephar had threatened to make of me, and all at once, a feeling of body-racking frustration gusted through me, a teeth-gnashing desire to prove my manhood, to assert my masculinity.
A white-hot flash of memory scorched my mind’s eye. I saw myself from a distance, as though I were watching myself on a movie screen. My other self was grasping his penis in a dark, tree-filled setting. Farris Park, I realized. There was a savage grin on my other self’s face, a rictus of cruelty, and I was telling someone to Lick it, lick it.
The brightly-lit bathroom disappeared around me, and I stood in the park with my other self, my vicious double, who now growled, “Suck it, bitch. Gag on it.”
And not wanting to, I gazed down at the figure pinned beneath my vicious other self, and it was Julia Deveroux, it was that poor, unsuspecting girl, writhing in terror, unable to fend off her bestial attacker. That other me grasped his engorged penis, snarled at Julia to take him in her mouth, and then I was screaming “NO!” in my bathroom, screaming and weeping and thrashing my head.
The vision was gone, but my heart was thundering, my body lathered in cold sweat. I stared at my harried reflection and whispered, “It can’t be. Please say it isn’t true, Malephar. Please tell me you conjured that v
ision. It wasn’t a real memory, was it?”
The demon laughed softly.
¨¨¨
To escape my cottage, which now felt like a torture chamber, I showered, dressed, and returned to the cathedral. I feared a confrontation with Father Patterson—would the incident in the convenience store provide further ammunition in his mission to defrock me?—yet of this confrontation, at least, I was spared. According to my secretary, Father Patterson had been called away on important business and would not return until later in the day.
I had been scheduled that afternoon for the confessional, but Father Richards, another senior priest, had entered the booth in my stead. I knew Father Richards to be a decent but lazy man who would no doubt welcome relief from confession duty, so I made my way to the upper wing of the cathedral and rapped softly on the booth.
“Yes?” came the voice from within.
It sounded like Father Richards, but I had become understandably paranoid in the past week and was beset with visions of Patterson opening the booth door, or even worse, of Danny Hartman springing forth to slash at me with his lethal carving knife.
I took a breath. “Father Richards, it’s me, Jason. I’ve come to resume my duties.”
A pause. Then the door opened and Father Richards peered out. “We heard about last night,” he said, his watery eyes unblinking. He was sixty or so but looked a decade older. I’d always suspected him of drinking too much, but his haggard appearance could just as easily have been a product of inactivity. His indolence was legendary at St. Matthew’s.
I stared down at my black loafers. They were old, a pair I only kept around for emergencies. Like when my better shoes were caked with blood.
“Last night was terrible,” I said, which was true enough.
“Father Patterson is displeased, though I don’t suppose that comes as a surprise to you.”
“No,” I answered. “It doesn’t.”
As though something had been decided, Father Richards climbed out of the booth and winced at the cracking of his backbone. “Need to get more exercise,” he said with a hint of apology. “Quiet day. Only one penitent so far.”
Despite myself, the antiquated word brought a grin to my face. Father Sutherland had always referred to those who frequented the confessional as customers.
“I can use the calm,” I replied. Which was decidedly not the truth. My quieter moments lately had proved my worst. In them, Malephar seemed to sense his opportunity to wreak havoc on my emotions. Or to implant false memories of my sordid deeds.
Oh, how I prayed the scene Malephar had shown me in the park was false!
Father Richards hesitated. “You’re sure you’re okay, Jason? What happened in the 7-11 must have taken a toll on you.”
“I need the distraction.”
When Father Richards only continued to watch me, I assured him, “I’ll be fine. This is the therapy I crave.”
Though he didn’t appear convinced, he nonetheless departed, and I stepped into the confessional and closed the door with a sense of relief. It wasn’t long before I heard someone approaching up the stairwell. Then, the softer pad of footfalls on carpet. I readied myself with a prayer, secretly hoping my customer’s sins would be minor enough to be forgiven with minimal fuss. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to confront any weighty spiritual matters in my current state.
The door to the penitent’s half of the booth opened, and whoever it was stepped inside and shut the door. I heard the deep clearing of a throat.
“Hello, friend,” I said. It was the way Father Sutherland had taught me to greet parishioners. “Have you come for forgiveness, or would you rather just talk?”
A sigh. “Little of both, I guess.”
The voice sounded familiar. I placed the man in his twenties, though he sounded a bit careworn for such a young person. Perhaps this would not be a simple matter of counting Rosary beads.
“Well then,” I said, leaning forward with my palms on my knees, “whenever you’re ready, I’m here to listen.”
“Thanks, Father.” A long pause. “I guess I should get to it, huh? No point in waffling.”
I waited.
A soft chuckle. “I know how I’d feel if I was you. I’d think I was crazy. But you get like that, you know? The whole city’s gone crazy this spring.”
In the semidarkness of the booth, I frowned.
“But just because the city’s going nuts,” he went on, “that don’t mean I gotta lose my mind too, right?” He laughed, but there was a strain in the sound. “At first, I told myself, ‘You’re imagining things. The thought you’re thinking, it’s just bonkers. No way in hell is it—forgive me, Father—no way in heck is it possible that…” He trailed off, laughed his nervous laugh.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I suppose I should tell you I’m a cop.”
Ice water doused my spine.
“Relatively new to it, but not a rookie, you know? I got assigned to this new partner, a guy everybody loves. One of the most popular fellas in the precinct.” A chuckle. “Hell, who am I kidding. He is the most popular guy in the precinct.” A pause. “There’s just one problem.”
“And that is?”
“I think he might be the Sweet Sixteen Killer.”
Chapter Twelve
I clenched my fists at my wretched luck. How foolish I’d been to think I could escape my problems in this darkened booth! Was it possible Malephar had orchestrated this torture as well? I didn’t see how, yet the coincidence seemed too great.
“Father?” the policeman who I now knew to be Tyler Raines said. “You still with me? Because I gotta say, if I just worked up the nerve to spill my guts and found out you’d nodded off on me, I’d be pretty peeved.”
With an effort, I answered, “I’m here.”
“You’re there, huh. Well, that’s something, I suppose. Could you maybe give me a little feedback? It’s not like I just gave you a traffic report or something. This is serious stuff.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So say something, Father. I need some guidance. I don’t figure out what to do soon, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
My thoughts carouseled wildly. Could this be my way out? Could this be an opportunity to connect Danny to the murders without breaking my pact with the demon?
Deep inside me, I felt Malephar coiling into a furious knot. I heard, as beneath a thick layer of soil, his insidious voice raving.
Careful, I told myself. Be very careful. You might nudge Raines in the right direction, but you have to do so in the natural course of your interactions. Give him the same counsel you’d give anyone who came to you with such an important problem. You’d encourage the person to do the right thing, would you not?
“Let me get this straight,” I said, choosing my words cautiously. “Your sin is the fact that you haven’t gone to your superiors with your misgivings? You feel guilty for not having said something before last night’s murder, and consequently, you feel like the most recent victim’s blood is on your hands?”
He uttered a harsh laugh. “Man, Father. You don’t mess around, do you? You’re like everybody else in the city.” He lowered his voice in a parody of mob justice. “‘We want that bastard caught!’”
“I didn’t intend to impugn your character.”
“I wish the only thing I had to feel bad about was silence. If that was the case, I probably wouldn’t even be here this afternoon.”
“There’s more you’re not telling me?”
“Give the man a prize,” he muttered. “Real Simon Freud, aren’t you?”
I didn’t bother to correct him. “Listen—” I froze, biting my upper lip hard enough to draw blood. I’d nearly called him Tyler! And in doing so I’d have given away my identity.
Heart thumping, I said, “Listen, friend. I need you to tell me everything. Only with a complete unburdening of your conscience can God’s healing love do its work.”
I felt a twinge of guilt at using God as a means to
gain information. For perhaps the thousandth time since all this began, I contemplated what His opinion of me might be. After all, I still believed in Him. In a bizarre way, my faith had never been stronger. The existence of Malephar proved, unequivocally, the reality of supernatural evil. And didn’t such a discovery render very likely the existence of a transcendent goodness as well? I thought it did.
But I quailed to imagine what He thought of my behavior, my consorting with a demon.
Most of all, my unholy pact.
A sly paranoia crept into Tyler’s voice. “If I share this stuff, you’re not allowed to tell anyone, correct? I need your guarantee on this, Father, or I’m not saying another word.”
I leaned forward. “It’s confidential. I would no more break my vows than I’d take my own life.”
“Funny thing about that. I once heard priests have a high suicide rate. Sort of makes you wonder about things, doesn’t it?”
It did, I decided, but I kept this opinion to myself. “You were saying…”
“All fired up to hear something juicy, huh?” An ugly laugh. “Well, I don’t blame you. You probably get sick of hearing about husbands looking at porn and wives lusting after the cable guy.”
I waited.
“Like I said,” Raines went on, “if it were just about my partner and what he was doing to those girls, that’d be one thing. It’d be cut-and-dried, right? Just go to the chief and spill my guts. Popular guy or not, if my partner’s the killer, he deserves to pay.”
“The best scenario would be your partner—if he is indeed the murderer—experiencing a crisis of conscience and turning himself in.”
A derisive laugh. “Yeah, right, Father. ‘Crisis of conscience’? A guy’s gotta have a conscience for him to have a crisis about it. And Danny don’t have a single shred of—aw, hell. You’re sure you aren’t gonna go to the police with this?”
My pulse raced. “I am bound by the highest possible authority to honor your privacy.”
Exorcist Falls Page 23
