“That ain’t exactly a yes, though, is it?”
“I won’t tell a soul what you’re saying.”
I heard him sigh. “Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, my partner. See, we’ve only been together a couple days, so it’s not like we know each other all that well. He had a different partner, but that guy committed suicide.”
I thought of Jack Bittner, and for some reason, the image of the big man just before Malephar had forced him to shoot himself awoke a different set of memories in my head. Something about that wicked newsreel of images that had unspooled when Malephar had grabbed Danny’s arm…
“Nothing to say?” Raines asked. “I guess I get it. I mean, what is there to say? People off themselves all the time. Life goes on for the rest of us. But the point is, I didn’t know Danny very well beforehand.”
“But now?”
“Now I know him a little too well.”
I gazed at the iron grate, through which only the vaguest outline of Raines’s face was visible.
“How do you mean, you know him ‘too well’?” I asked.
“It’s just…you ever hear the phrase ‘kindred spirits’?”
I waited.
He sighed. “Well, I hate to say it, but that’s me and Danny.”
“I don’t take your meaning.”
But I thought I did. Far too well.
A self-conscious laugh. “I need to spell it out for you? Fine, I guess I will. I mean, I’ve come this far, right? It’s like this…” The sound of fingertips tapping. “…when Danny starts talking about what it’s like to kill someone, I find myself getting excited.”
Only with an effort did I keep my tone level. “He actually told you about killing those girls?”
“Oh, no, not like that. At least, not at first. At first, I just asked him if he’d ever had to shoot anybody. He said, ‘Yeah, of course I have. You don’t put in nearly twenty years without using your weapon now and then. Not in this city you don’t.’
“So I asked him, ‘Who’d you shoot?’
“He laughs and says, ‘Half a dozen people at least.’
“I say, ‘Bullshit,’ and he says, ‘Several of them were fatal.’
“Well that got my interest. Big time. See, I’m sorta fascinated by death. My friends think I’m a little morbid, but my favorite shows are about murder. Serial killers and stuff. So I asked Danny about it, and he starts giving me details about the people he shot.” A pause. “Only the details he gives, they don’t sound like shootings at all. They sound like torture killings. Like sex crimes.
“I stop him and say, ‘Hey Danny, what the hell we talking about? I thought this was line-of-duty stuff, defending yourself from some thug who pulls a gun on you.’
“Danny kind of looks away and stares out his car window.”
Raines lapsed into silence. I forced myself to be patient with him, to avoid pushing. That was the quickest way to shut down a confession. Don’t pressure the customer, as Father Sutherland was fond of saying.
At length, Raines went on. “Danny says, sort of smiling at me, ‘You wanna hear something fucking crazy?’”
“That got my attention, cuz Danny never cusses on the job, or at least he hadn’t around me. ‘Sure,’ I says. ‘Let’s hear what’s so fucking crazy.’
“Danny gets a crafty gleam in his eyes and says, ‘What if I told you I knew who the killer was? What if I told you I’ve got a source who knows everything about the Sweet Sixteen?’
“The way he said it meant Danny wasn’t the actual killer, that his source knew someone who was.” A pause. “But I could tell, Father. Anybody not in my line of work would think it’s a load of shit, but I’m telling you, a cop develops another sense, one that goes deeper. And I’m not just talking about intuition here, I’m talking about knowing things on a gut level. Something primitive. It starts to get more honed the more you do this work. And on that level I knew Danny was talking about himself.”
I asked, “What did Danny tell you?”
“Everything,” Raines said. “Every detail you can imagine.”
I felt like I was going to be sick.
“He told me something else too,” Raines added.
I waited, my stomach churning.
Raines said, “He told me about last night’s murder. He told me before it happened.”
¨¨¨
The confession booth around me dropped away. Was Danny the killer after all? Or if Danny wasn’t, and the worst-case scenario was true and I was the murderer of Julia Deveroux, was there some sort of psychic link between Danny and Malephar? Or—and this possibility was so monstrous that it took my breath away—had Malephar purloined the identities of Danny’s future victims and then used me to kill one of them before Danny could?
I said, “He talked about the Deveroux girl?”
“Bingo, Father. He told me he was going to do some surveillance on her because his source had tipped him off. Said she was going to be the next one to get hacked up.”
I scowled at the silhouette on the other side of the screen. Raines’s choice of words had been, at the very least, wildly inappropriate. What was more…
I shook off the thought. “Danny told you he was going to kill her last night?”
“He might as well have. Talked about her looks, about her… you know, her breasts. That sort of thing. He even made mention of this necklace she always wore, an emerald-lined crucifix. It was a sixteenth-birthday gift from her folks. The stones run up the sides of it. Thing’s probably worth some money.”
“Emerald-lined crucifix,” I murmured, thinking of Danny’s habit of collecting a precious object from each of his victims. Was the crucifix even now residing in Danny’s apartment?
“Any other details?” I asked. “Think hard.”
The silhouette swiveled its head. “You’re pretty keen on hearing about this. Any particular reason you’re so interested? Or are you like me? You know, kind of spellbound by this stuff?”
“These crimes are national news. Everyone is interested in seeing the killer brought to justice.”
A soft chuckle that froze my blood. “‘Brought to justice.’ People love to say that. But you know what? This isn’t Hitler we’re talking about. Not Bin Laden. It’s just…people get urges, you know?”
The thought I’d had moments earlier resurfaced, but this time it refused to be displaced. “You’re telling me you can relate to the killer.”
“Something wrong with that, Father?” he asked, his tone drumskin tight. If I said the wrong thing, he’d bolt.
I took a breath. “There are darker regions within all of us, Officer. Places in our hearts we’re not proud of. Shadow sides.” I hesitated, then added, “Priests are no different.”
“You’re not kidding there, Father,” he said with an ugly giggle. “I’ve heard things about priests that make the Sweet Sixteen look like Santa Claus.”
I suppressed an urge to punch him through the screen. What I did do was ask, “How do you relate to your partner?”
From his silence, I feared I’d overstepped my bounds. After a time, he said, “How do I relate? Now that’s a hell of a question, Father. That’s a cut-the-bullshit, get-down-to-brass-tacks question. Am I right?”
I listened.
He stifled a yawn. “Well, I’ve told you this much. Maybe it won’t hurt to tell you a little more. I can promise for sure Danny didn’t kill that girl last night.”
“But you said he’d identified her. You said—”
“I know what I said, Father. What I’m telling you is Danny didn’t do it. At least not that one. He was busy with that thing at the 7-11. You might have heard about it.” A sharp intake of air. “Hey, I bet you even know the priest that was involved! He’s a friend of Danny’s, Father Crowded or Coward or something like that. I met the guy last night.”
Which erased one of my niggling worries. I had entertained, several times during our session, the notion that Raines knew who I was and was taunting me by showing up today. But fr
om his tone I could tell he hadn’t connected me with the vigilante priest he’d met last night. After all, a city this large, what were the odds?
“You were saying that Danny committed the other murders,” I prompted, “but not yesterday’s.”
“So who did, huh?” The silhouette nodded. “Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question, Father. If the Sweet Sixteen didn’t do it, who did?”
“Perhaps a copycat?” I suggested.
“Perhaps,” he repeated in a mock-proper tone. “Or perhaps it was somebody else, someone who knows Danny.”
One of my temples started to twitch. Did he, after all, know who I was and believe me to be the murderer of Julia Deveroux? Had he come to arrest me?
I began to reach for the door handle. I grasped the cool iron surface. I wouldn’t let him apprehend me. I would leap from atop the cathedral before I let them take me to prison.
“Or maybe,” he went on, “Danny isn’t really the Sweet Sixteen after all, and he’s telling the truth about his source.”
Something in his tone made me ask, “But you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t,” he said at once. “I think the other killer is someone who knows Danny. Someone who has a lot in common with him.” His voice went ragged, husky. “Someone who gets rock hard when he hears about the blood.”
My muscles clenched, a blinding wrath taking hold of me. I was a fool for not seeing it before. I’d been too paranoid, too guilt-ridden to recognize the obvious truth. Tyler Raines was just as much a monster as Danny.
He was going on. “Someone who fantasizes about ramming those honeys—”
“Officer,” I warned, my fingers closing on the doorknob.
“—who almost comes in his pants when he thinks about those sweet bodies getting ripped apart—”
“Murderer!” I shouted, throwing open the door. I stumbled out. Raines was already flinging wide his door and wheeling toward the stairs. I gave chase, my mind a maelstrom of fury. Malephar was hurling invective at me, but the demon’s words scarcely registered. Raines was agile, had nearly reached the stairs leading down, but my body was surcharged with a vigor and a clarity I had only experienced one other time, the moments when Sutherland and I were banishing the demon from Casey’s body.
I barreled forward, already gaining on Raines as he descended the staircase. I had agreed to keep Danny’s identity a secret, but I would not do the same for Tyler Raines. Somewhere, under the strata of rage, I realized that Raines’s confession meant I was not the author of Julia Deveroux’s gruesome death, and that knowledge filled me with an indescribable relief.
But my outrage eclipsed everything.
I clattered down the stairs after Raines. Below me, he rounded a corner, continued down, but I was leaping the steps four at a time, moving with an athleticism of which I wouldn’t have believed myself capable. Raines scampered down the last few steps, nearly overbalanced when he reached level ground. Only fifteen feet behind now I vaulted from halfway down the last flight of stairs and landed nimbly on the carpeted corridor floor. Raines threw a terrified glance over his shoulder and kept running, but in moments I would ride him down. I hadn’t thought any further than that, I only knew this was the chance for which I’d been craving to do some good in this world, to atone, if only a little, for my inexcusable complicity in last night’s killing. I heard a shout from behind me but didn’t spare a glance toward the person who’d uttered it. Because I was five feet away now, closing, closing. I leapt.
And crashed down on Raines. Together, we skidded to the floor in a flailing heap. The young cop was strong—I could feel his muscles writhing beneath me—but I was galvanized by rage. This monster had raped and murdered a child. Julia Deveroux would never breathe again, smile again, infuse the world with light again because of this depraved fiend.
Raines yelled for me to Get off, get off. He rolled over, but I straddled his bucking body, reared back, and swung. The blow caught him flush on the nose, eliciting a wet grunt and a cherry-colored spurt of blood from one nostril. Again came the shouting voice behind me, closer now, and to my right a door opened and a shape emerged. I knew they were converging on us, but I refused to relent. If I did, Raines might escape, and the crimes would continue in their new, two-pronged state. I couldn’t allow that to happen.
Raines had raised his arms in an attempt to ward me off, but I swatted his hands aside, tore down with a looping fist, which smashed into his face just above the eye socket and whipped his head sideways. There were rough hands buffeting my upper body, but I was taking aim, meaning to unleash one last punch.
Then I was lifted away from him, someone with immense strength raising me as effortlessly as a child’s doll. I was tossed aside, and as I scrambled to regain my feet and resume my punishment of Raines, the towering form of Father Patterson filled my vision.
Patterson’s dark face was tinged with purple. “Father Crowder!” he thundered.
I glared at Raines, who was being helped to his feet by a secretary and a workman I didn’t recognize. Raines was gawking at me.
I pointed at him. “He’s a killer. He has to go to prison.”
“He’s lying,” Raines shot back. “I told him some stuff in confidence and he took it the wrong way.”
“You despicable—” I started to say, but before I could get further, Patterson seized me by the shoulders, drove me backward into another room. The women’s restroom, I realized when an elderly lady at one of the sinks gasped at our abrupt intrusion.
“He’s getting away!” I yelled.
“Shut up for a second,” Patterson answered, his hands still clamped over my shoulders. He cast a glance at the elderly woman, who was clutching her chest in fright. “Please excuse us, Mrs. Merten. We have urgent business to discuss.”
Mrs. Merten, whom I now recognized from her regular position in a third-row pew each Sunday, stood immobile.
“Please, Mrs. Merten,” Patterson urged, a little hoarsely. “I wouldn’t make such a request if it weren’t of paramount importance.”
“You can’t let Raines go,” I said.
“Just… shut… up,” Patterson said through clenched teeth. He shoved me backwards.
Mrs. Merten glanced from the broad-shouldered priest to me, then evidently concluded she’d better escape while she had the chance. When she’d exited, Patterson bolted the door and rounded on me. “What in the hell are you thinking, Crowder?”
I wasn’t to be intimidated. Not anymore. “It’s Father Crowder, and you need to move aside.”
Patterson opened his mouth to rebut me, but I stepped closer, jabbed a finger in his chest. “And don’t give me this crap about privacy, Patterson. Our duty is to stop more girls from getting hacked to pieces!”
“Jason, listen,” he started, but I made to elbow past. Without warning, he thrust out his arms, sent me skidding on my rear end into one of the stall dividers.
I scrambled to my feet, charged at Patterson, this time with my fists raised, but before I could swing at him, he growled, “I agree with you.”
He could not have surprised me more had he sprouted wings and fluttered around the room. “You never agree with anything I say.”
“Drop the self-pity, it’s one of your worst traits.”
“And your relentless legalism is one of yours,” I countered. “You want Raines to get away so you can preserve our reputation for good Catholic rectitude. While he’s out there victimizing another child.”
Something dangerous flashed in Patterson’s eyes. “I’m gonna let that one go—the last one I do, Crowder—but if you say something like that again—”
“Then why not stop him?” I demanded. “If you believe he deserves punishment—”
“Do you have evidence?”
“I have a confession.”
“That no one heard but you. And did he even come out and say it? Or just imply it?”
I balled my fists, my body trembling with pent fury. “Let’s keep him here until the cops can p
ick him up.”
“He is the cops,” Patterson said. “Or have you forgotten? You think they’re gonna arrest one of their own unless they’re absolutely positive he’s the killer?”
I thought of Liz’s colored highlighters, remembered the light green one. “There’s a theory the Sweet Sixteen is someone on the C.P.D.”
“Oh there is, is there? Where’d you get that information, Crowder? The tabloids? Or do you have a criminology background I’m not aware of?”
“A cop would know better than anyone how to evade capture, how to hide evidence.”
Malephar snarled, I’ll stop your heart, Crowder. The moment you utter the accusation, you’ll fall dead on this floor.
Patterson waved a dismissive hand. “If you go to the authorities with something a cop said in the confessional, you’ll not only be ignored, you might very well lose your job.”
I reached up, ripped off my Roman collar, tossed it at Patterson’s feet. “Take it then. I’d rather get fired trying to do the will of God than keep my job by staying silent.”
Patterson rubbed his temples. “Raines will have gotten away by now.”
“Bet that pleases you, doesn’t it? As long as we adhere to the very rituals Christ came to undo, you’ll be satisfied.”
Patterson gave me a stern glance. “That’s heresy.”
“Heresy is not using the brain God gave you. Do you really think a husband should have three wives, Patterson? Or that it’s sinful to do God’s work on Sundays?”
Patterson ignored that. “I suppose this Raines killed all of them, huh? And you’ll be able to prove it in front of a jury?”
I stalked toward the sink, which dripped persistently. “He didn’t kill the others.”
Patterson made a scoffing sound. “There are different killers, huh? How many? Three? Four? Maybe we should accuse a whole basketball team.”
I faced him. “There’s only one other.”
Careful, craven, Malephar warned.
“I suppose you know the other guy’s identity too.”
“I do.”
If you DARE utter his name, Malephar began.
Exorcist Falls Page 24
