by Linda Barlow
for them. The records also stated that Fletcher had been “successfully rehabilitated.”
Sam doubted it. People convicted of sex crimes had a very high rate of recidivism.
“So what was the trouble, Jack? Did she come down there? Has she talked to Vico? Where is Annie, Jack?”
“I had to lock her in the crypt.”
“You did.” Sam tried to keep his voice neutral. Long years of training himself to control his reactions were paying off. “Annie is locked in the crypt.”
“Yes, she is. She was fighting me. I had to shut her up in there.”
He was over the edge now. What had he done to Annie? Sam had been planning to take care of her himself.
“Jack. Listen to me. The crypt is where they put dead people. Is Annie still alive?”
He heard a strangled laugh. “Oh yeah, Annie’s alive all right. She was screaming, Sam. But the door of the crypt is real thick, and it’ll muffle her screams real well.”
“Okay, Jack.” Jesus! “Look, leave her in there, okay? Leave her there until I get there, then we’ll figure out what to do.”
“Annie’s not going to be too happy in there, Sam, when she wakes up.”
“No, I imagine she’s not.” She wasn’t going to be too happy when she got out of there, either.
“She’s afraid of the dark, and it’s pitch dark in the crypt.”
“Just keep her there till I come, Jack.”
Had Fletcher raped her? Sam beat down a throb of sympathy for her. Yes, goddammit, he liked her. Liked her a lot, in fact. But he couldn’t afford to get sentimental at this point in the game.
Annie had to go. He’d known it for weeks now.
“Sam?” Fletcher’s voice sounded tentative and uncertain. “Annie says you’re the one who murdered the workman on the scaffolding.”
“That’s bullshit, Jack.”
“Annie says that she and her computer expert friend broke in to your office and hacked in to your personal computer earlier tonight and found proof that you and McEnerney built the cathedral below code. She claims you put her on the job because you didn’t think she’d ever figure it out, and you hired me because you knew I was crooked, and that if anybody ever suspected anything, I’d be the one who got nailed for the fraud.”
He paused to draw a deep breath. “Sam, is any of that true?”
Somewhere in the middle of this incredible recitation, Sam had sat down on the edge of his desk. His legs didn’t feel so good. Neither did his heart.
His voice sounded relatively normal—at least to him—as he answered firmly, “Not a word of it, Jack.”
“She said there were two different sets of blueprints. She’s got them both.”
“She and her computer expert friend broke in to your office and hacked in to your personal computer.”
Christ, if that was true… But he’d deleted the altered file from his computer. And he had a password-protected system, dammit. Annie had to be bluffing. Had to be.
Except that Matt Carlyle was the guy who’d invented the fucking computer software. If anybody could get past computer security, Matt could. And if anybody could recover files that had supposedly been erased from a hard disk, Matt was the man.
“She’s lying, Jack,” he said, trying desperately to stay calm. “Think about it. She and Matthew Carlyle are lovers. He did the murder, Jack. Annie knows it, but she’s in love with the guy. She wants it to be anyone but Matt, and she’ll go to any lengths to misdirect the police. That’s why we need to find Vico. He saw the killer. He can confirm that Carlyle murdered Giuseppe.”
“It’s not true?” Fletcher repeated.
“No, Jack, I swear to you it’s not. Annie will say anything to protect Matt Carlyle.”
“She’s been beguiled by him,” Fletcher said. “He’s twisted her mind and turned her against me. She hates me, Sam. I saw it in her eyes. I wanted to cut that hatred out of her. It’s not smart, letting me see it, you know.”
“Keep cool, Jack, okay? I’m coming over. I’ll be right over. Don’t do anything till I get there, all right?”
“He’s here too,” Fletcher said.
“Who?”
“Carlyle. I think I might have killed him, though. I hit him pretty hard.”
I don’t believe this. “Let me get this straight. Annie and Matthew are both there? And so are Vico and his girlfriend, right?”
“They’re all here. You coming too, Sam?”
“Yeah. Sit tight. I’m coming.”
Chapter Forty
Annie woke up feeling nauseated. She remembered the sweet-sickly smell of the chloroform and figured out what must have happened. But she had no idea where she was, except that she was in total darkness. The air was chilly and stale.
She rolled over and bumped into someone. She heard a groan. Her hands explored him quickly, feeling a pulse and a heartbeat. His body felt almost as familiar to her as her own.
“I feel like shit but I don’t think this is a hangover,” Matt mumbled. Annie flung herself onto him and hungrily kissed his face in the dark.
“I thought you were dead!”
“Nope. But I may be blind. My head feels like it’s being drilled with a jackhammer, and I can’t see a damn thing.”
“It’s pitch black in here.” She shivered, trying to beat down her fear. Now that she knew Matt was alive, her other, less rational anxieties were growing. “I think we’re in the crypt.”
“Terrific. What makes you think that?”
“The floor is polished stone and the wall is marble. I designed this damn thing.”
“So how did we get here? Somebody bashed me on the top of the head, obviously. Vico?”
“No. It was Fletcher.” She could hear her voice shaking. “He was always a little off-center, but now he’s seriously disturbed.”
Matt rolled over and wrapped his arms around her. “What happened?” he whispered. “Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”
Annie steeled herself. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t going to think about it. This was not the time for it. She would deal with it later, when they were out of here.
If they got out of here.
“Did we find Vico?”
“Not yet,” said a new voice in the darkness. Annie sucked her breath in sharply as she vainly sought out its source in the blackness. “But Vico has found you.”
Introductions were quickly made by the light of a strong flashlight. Vico appeared just as cocky as always, although his skin was pale and his face was dirty. He seemed quite prepared to take charge of the situation.
“Come. There’s a way out. I got Paolina out already. Now it’s your turn.”
“How?” Annie asked. “The interior walls of the crypt aren’t finished, but the foundation walls for it were laid in months ago.”
“When I was working here I was friends with the guys who were doing the crypt,” the boy said calmly. “They told me that most of the old churches and cathedrals in Europe had priest holes and secret passages. It was tradition, they said, for the stonemasons to leave small passages in certain places in the walls. They were making one in the crypt, and they showed it to me. It is a small and secret exit behind a loose piece of marble veneer. Later, when I needed places to hide, I remembered.”
“So you’ve been living down here under the cathedral for the past two weeks?”
“Three weeks, actually,” Vico said proudly. “Ever since the police first came after me.”
“Does Fletcher know how to find you?” Matt asked.
Vico scoffed. “He has tried, but it was a joke. He’ll never find me. Down here, I am king!”
Annie remembered the image that had gone through her mind when Vico had stormed into the youth center and seized Paolina—Hades abducting Persephone. The Lord of the Underworld. They were in his realm now.
Vico showed them the small square hole in the wall, just big enough for a person to wriggle through. He had disguised it behind one of the new marble panels, although there was so much const
ruction debris in the crypt that a bit more mess and confusion was not likely to be noticed.
Vico was wearing heavy dark clothing and a hard hat with a miner’s lamp. He carried a big flashlight and was obviously well equipped for subterranean living. When Annie questioned him about it, he told her that the church had had a program last year for inner-city kids to participate in Outward Bound. They had been taught some of the techniques of spelunking for a planned trip to a cave about two hundred miles outside the city.
Vico had missed that trip, but he had attended the classes and learned about caving techniques and equipment. Someday, he said dreamily, he would go to New Mexico. There were many wonderful caves there.
Under Vico’s direction, Annie and Matt crawled out of the crypt through the narrow opening and found themselves in the larger darkness of the cathedral basement. Since they were under the elevated sanctuary area at the east end of the cathedral, the basement here was a full one, with a ceiling that was well above their heads. It was completely unfinished, though, and the floor was concrete poured directly onto the stony dirt of San Francisco.
At one end of the basement was the room that contained the cathedral’s physical plant—furnace, water heater, oil tank, air-conditioning units, electrical panels, and telephone and data communication lines.
The rest of the basement area was storage space, as yet unutilized.
“We’re not safe here. There’s access to this part of the basement through the sacristy,” Annie said, picturing the CAD drawings.
“For safety we must go into the crawl space under the main section of the church,” Vico said. “It is vast and there are many good hiding places.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” The thought of crawlingaround in darkness where the floor was dirt and the headroom was unlikely to be more than two or three feet gave her the willies. There would be rats and other creatures living there.…
“It’s fun,” Vico said buoyantly. “It’s like a live game of Dungeons and Dragons.”
Annie thought of Jack Fletcher with his gun and his mad eyes. “This is not a game.”
“No,” Vico agreed, suddenly sounding mature and serious. “Not a game since they murdered my uncle, and now since they have tried to harm Paolina.”
Matt and Annie exchanged a look. They would have to question Vico about the murder, but finding a place of safety was now the higher priority.
Vico handed Matt his flashlight and switched on the miner’s light on his hard hat. Then he led them west through the main basement. The ceiling sloped sharply under the steps that led down from the high altar to the sanctuary. A little farther west, the ceiling sloped at a more gradual angle where, above, the stairs descended from the sanctuary to the area where the north and south transepts crossed the center aisle of the cathedral. There the basement ended and the crawl space began.
“Come,” said Vico, dropping to his hands and knees. “I will take you to the place where I have hidden Paolina. We’ll be safe there.”
Matt must have sensed her reluctance, since he pulled her into a quick, hard hug. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered.
“There are rats,” she said with a shudder. She didn’t want to tell him she was deathly afraid, not of rats but of the yawning blackness itself.
“Don’t worry—they’ll be scurrying away as soon as they sense this group of lummoxes venturing into their terrain.”
Calm down, Annie. Think of something else. “How’s your head?” she asked.
“Hurts, but I’ll live. Come on.”
Annie crouched down and gingerly began to crawl after Vico. The dirt felt cool against her palms and knees. “I feel like Jean Valjean fleeing through the sewers of Paris,” she muttered.
“Don’t worry. That Fletcher character is no Javert.”
Sam was driving to the cathedral when the cellular phone in his car rang. He grabbed it, expecting new information from Fletcher.
“You blew it,” said a harsh voice in his ear. “The cops just paid me a call. They’re suspicious. They’re asking questions about how well we know each other and how often we’ve done business together.”
Sam sat up straighter, holding the receiver. Outside, the world was still dark. “What the hell?” he muttered.
“It’s over, asshole,” the voice said. “I’m cutting you loose.”
Cold as dry ice. Click. He was gone.
Sam sat hunched in the dark, the receiver still in his fist.
“It’s over, asshole.”
McEnerney. He never should have gotten into it with him. He was probably tied to the mob.
Sam thought about the conversation they’d had last week. Met at that Mexican joint that McEnerney favored. Watched him stuff tamale after tamale into his maw and wash them down with four bottles of Dos Equis. Four. Swallowed the stuff like tap water.
“It’s starting to come down just like I was afraid it would,” McEnerney had said, chomping and scowling. “Serves me right for getting mixed up with a fuck-up like you.”
“Watch it, Paul.”
“Fuck you, Brody.” The words had exploded across the table. “I should known better than to do a deal with an amateur. You need somebody like that workman dead, you go to the people who know what they’re doing. The experts. You don’t try to take care of it yourself.”
“There was no choice. It happened too fast.”
“You let things get outta control, Brody. You never let things get outta control.”
“Nothing’s out of control,” Sam had insisted.
“It better not be. You’d better take care of it. I’m not going down because of a pissant operation like this.”
Pissant operation.A profit of $3.8 million split two ways wasn’t what Sam would have termed “pissant.” True, it wasn’t the couple billion he might have snagged if he’d married Francesca, but two million was still a lot of money to most people.
Now Sam realized that their deal was nothing new to McEnerney—he’d probably been making similar ones for most of his career.
No matter how good you are, there’s always someone better.
No doubt McEnerney had a plan for covering his own ass. And the first step in that plan probably involved hiring one of those experts.
He almost had to pull over. His face in the rearview mirror was haggard, and his guts felt like water.
He reminded himself that he too had a contingency plan. He had prepared for something going wrong, and going wrong big time.
If it happened, he knew what he would have to do.
But—hell. He was still hoping there was another way.
Chapter Forty-one
Fletcher waited in the pulpit for Sam Brody to arrive. He liked the pulpit. It gave him an excellent view of the entire breadth and depth of the cathedral.
All he could see tonight were shadows, since the light from the candles he had lit in the sanctuary didn’t extend to the main body of the church. Out there, where the congregation would sit, the pews were cloaked in darkness.
He turned back to look once again at the high altar. Briefly, oh so briefly, he had spread Annie out there. It had been a glorious moment, but too short. He should have tied her hands first, of course. And her legs so she couldn’t kick him. Next time he would do it right.
His eyes were still hurting. He could see pretty well now, though. Her jabbing hadn’t blinded him. She had gained nothing but an increase in the torment she would suffer.
He had to kill her now. Now that she hated him, she would have to die. He had believed that her body and soul were his to master, but she had given them both to another man. If she couldn’t be his, she couldn’t be permitted to live.
“I knew nobody would ever believe me,” Vico said. The four were nestled in a reasonably cozy spot under one of the chapels on the north wall. The ceiling—which was really the cathedral floor—was higher here because the tiny chapel upstairs was elevated four steps above the nave.
The space was warm because a heating duct ran
along the north foundation wall. Vico had covered the dirt floor with a layer of insulation that he’d found somewhere in the construction site. Over it he’d laid blankets. He had a couple of battery-operated lanterns that Paolina had smuggled in for him. There were also several bottles of water and some food that he kept in a metal box to secure it from the rats.
Paolina was lying on a mound of quilts and blankets that obviously served as the young couple’s bed. She looked serene and happy, despite all the excitement, and her fingers kept brushing Vico’s shoulder.
“Sam Brody is the big boss. The architect. My uncle taught me that a construction project is like an oceangoing vessel. The builder and the craftsmen are the workers, but the architect is the captain of the ship.”
Right, Annie thought. Sam would love that metaphor.
“Who would believe me if I told my story?” he went on. “I had been fired. I was a fugitive already, and the cops were after me. And Mr. Brody was a well-respected man. Everybody who worked on the building liked him. If I’d named someone else they might have listened, but not Sam Brody. It’s like he was God.”
“But it was Sam you saw that night?” Matt asked. “You’re sure?”
Vico nodded. “It was Mr. Brody. I’m positive. He came into the church. He went directly to the scaffold. I was watching from the sacristy stairway and I could see everything he was doing. He climbed up there. He had a wrench, and I could see that he was working on something high up on the scaffolding. Of course, I never imagined that he might be doing anything bad. I figured someone had complained and something was loose and he was fixing it. The only thing I wondered about was why the big boss would be attending to it personally instead of sending in an ordinary repair guy.”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing. He climbed down. I figured he was leaving. I thought, well, maybe he couldn’t sleep that night or something. People do funny things when they can’t sleep.
