The Inquisitor

by Peter Clement

  He stared at the computer screen, fear swelling through him as the blood in his veins congealed with cold.

  If her not coming home had to do with the killings after all, could her going to see J.S. tonight have spilled the beans? Because J.S. may have warned whomever she'd been protecting-

  Oh, God!

  He jumped up from his seat.

  He never would have even considered such a thought if he hadn't already found the man's behavior suspicious. No, that can't be, he told himself.

  But suspicious it had been.

  His hand trembling, he reached toward the computer keys and downloaded the on-duty roster for chaplains provided to ER, going back until the beginning of the year. Then, dreading what he was about to do, he typed in JAMES FITZPATRICK.

  The number for him came out at 80 percent.

  An icy hollow formed in his stomach.

  Okay, now, that meant nothing, since Jimmy worked all the time anyway. Especially attending to his many charges at night. Some of the residents had nicknamed him the "Prince of Darkness" because of his hours. Any cluster study on this man would be ruled invalid.

  But a smart killer might count on that.

  What about motive? Why would someone like Jimmy want to kill patients?

  "Oh, God," he repeated, this time out loud. The answer, in a word, was pain.

  He called locating at the hospital. "Can you find Jimmy Fitzpatrick for me, please?"

  "Believe it or not, he signed out tonight, a half hour ago. I can get you his replacement-"

  "No, that won't be necessary."

  He called Jimmy's cell phone number.

  Turned off.

  He called ICU. "Did Jimmy Fitzpatrick ever turn up to see J.S.?"

  "Yes, about forty-five minutes ago."

  He stiffened. "Can I speak to him?"

  "Oh, he's been gone for a good half hour."

  Shit. "What about J.S? Is she all right?"

  "Of course. At least, she's sleeping now, but she was fine earlier-"

  "What about her vitals? She's still on the monitor?"

  "I'm looking at her screens right now. Pressure, pulse, respirations- everything seems good." She sounded puzzled. "Is something wrong?"

  "Just go check her yourself, will you? Make sure she can be roused."

  "What?"

  "Just do it."

  He slammed down the receiver and fished out the card Lazar had given him. She picked up after one ring.

  "My wife is missing," he said, "and it may have to do with Stewart's murder." His words seemed to come from far away.

  Five minutes later he grabbed a large flashlight, left a puzzled Annie standing in the study with a teapot in her hands, and, in a fury, roared his van down the street. Buffalo's finest would only promise to inform him if Janet turned up in an accident. No APBs, no search, no watchful eye of the law on the lookout for her car being driven God knew where.

  He plowed through yet another small lake, peering over the sides of the road into a sodden night, his strategy pathetically simple- scour every foot of pavement between here and St. Paul's until he found her. And if that failed, expand the hunt.

  He sped up the access ramp to the expressway that led into Buffalo and saw the inky expanse spread out ahead of him. Here and there speckles of emergency lighting sparkled like phosphorescent foam on a dark sea, and in the distance the larger buildings at the downtown core shone pale blue, as if they were obelisks planted to mark a far shore. Between him and them loomed a blackness that hid twenty miles of urban clutter, parklands, and ditches. What little hope he had of finding Janet disappeared into the vastness of it, and a clamminess befitting a corpse filled the core of his bones.

  Chapter 18

  She shivered nonstop.

  Both shock and cold had weakened her, until she could only lie in the dark.

  And her contractions came on top of each other now. She'd barely recovered from one when the next hit. There was no preparing for that pain.

  Earlier, with more time in between them, she'd still tried to force the door or break open the roof. The windows were a lost cause, none of them big enough to let her through.

  But escape by any route had become impossible now. She no longer possessed the strength. It took all her willpower just to stay conscious in the intervals between contractions.

  This one seemed to seize her harder than all the previous ones, spreading down her abdomen and into her groin, a malignant iron fist that would burst the baby prematurely from her womb. Her scream began as an involuntary screech, then built to a howl of rage, her fury at the unnaturalness of what assaulted her and the infant exceeding even the pain. These weren't normal uterine constrictions- the gradual crescendo of compressions, the incremental forcing of the fetus against the birth canal to progressively dilate the cervix and ultimately expel a live newborn. These were violent convulsions that could crush the fragile head and limbs, compress the still vital umbilical flow of blood and oxygen, tear the life-giving membranes and sacs that surrounded him, and rupture her uterus, explode it from within, killing her and the child.

  She continued to writhe, one second defiant that she would hold on, beat this, and save them both, the next overcome by despair. Yet even then she shrieked every curse she knew rather than yield to sobs.

  The ripping forces inside her increased. "How dare this happen!" she roared. She'd be damned if she'd break. After all, Dr. Janet Graceton, who'd brought the benefits of modern childbirth to thousands of women, would not end up in mud and darkness dying with her infant.

  At the pinnacle of her agony she remembered.

  They'd been driving at a crawl along the expressway where it skirted the campus of Buffalo University, a section that cut through parklands with occasional clumps of large trees. The two of them were straining to see through the wash of an ever harder rain. Where he'd driven too fast going in, now he drove as slowly as possible, almost unnecessarily so. But she'd said nothing about it and the whole way had been explaining why Earl thought Stewart had been murdered and how she could use the cluster study to find whomever J.S. might be protecting. But when they'd come to the ravine where a shallow creek meandered through the grounds, the car had lurched forward.

  "What are you doing?" she'd screamed. His foot must have jammed the accelerator, she recalled thinking.

  But their speed couldn't have been more than forty when they hit the tree. The impact threw her forward, yet didn't knock her unconscious. No air bags inflated on the passenger side, not in a car of a decade ago, but the frame crumpled as it should, protecting them, and the shatterproof glass fractured into a silver mosaic before her eyes at the instant the front lights went out.

  She'd sat there, stunned, hearing Thomas unclick his own seat belt.

  "What happened?" she'd asked.

  No answer.

  She'd felt a pair of hands reach for her.

  His, to help her, she'd presumed.

  Until they'd grabbed her head and smashed it, repeatedly, against the side window.

  Thursday, July 17, 12:20 a.m.

  Earl had tried to keep his speed down- he'd driven through car washes with more visibility- but a slower pace gave him too much time to imagine the worst. His stomach churned, and the sense of foreboding in his chest grew as big as a bowling ball for fear of what he'd find in one of the many darkened ditches or around the next slick curve. As long as he kept moving, giving himself one dark roadside pocket after another to peer into, he could keep visions of her broken body out of his head.

  At the same time he couldn't stop from thinking, This is useless, useless, useless!

  He'd made the trip toward St. Paul's in record time despite the storm, scanning the darkness across the divide for any sign of Janet's car. As that proved futile, he tried to postpone the acknowledgment that he could miss her altogether even if she was there, telling himself he'd have a proper look into the green space once he crossed over and headed back in the other direction. Bent grasses and bushes
where the car went through ought to be pretty visible.

  Now, already three-quarters through the return trip, he'd been forced to admit the truth that had initially overwhelmed him when he first drove onto the expressway.

  If she'd skidded or been rear-ended and rolled down an embankment in the built-up districts, somebody would have already spotted her car, even with a blackout, because it would have landed in a backyard. But where gullies, tall grasses, brush, and trees lined the dark route, anyone, himself included, could easily miss such a small vehicle. And forget bent grasses and bushes showing him where the car had gone. They drooped every which way, sodden with rain.

  Worse, if foul play was involved and someone had hidden her, his odds of finding her were nil. He fought desperately not to think of that possibility at all, otherwise the things he'd seen creeps do to women swarmed through his head.

  And the more he dissected his moment of insight about Jimmy, the more the whole notion fissured, one flaw cracking through it after another. Everything fell apart over motive. Why, for instance, would the priest set up Stewart and kill to do it? And sheer instinct rejected the idea that man would ever hurt Janet.

  Several times Earl left his van and slid down an embankment to probe into the foliage of overgrown areas, but the rain severely cut visibility, and everything- wet leaves, stems, trunks, blades of grass- glistened like polished steel in the beam of his flashlight.

  He continued to drive, soaked to the skin, sick with dread, and swallowing to keep his stomach from heaving. Up ahead he saw a pulsing glow the color of flame and soon arrived at an array of orange flashers where several hydro trucks had congregated. The white beams from a half dozen spotlights captured a group of men in hard hats who hung off a hydro pole amid a coil of wires. Wearing tangerine jumpsuits, they looked like an act out of Cirque du Soleil.

  Earl pulled to a stop and got out. "Any of you guys seen an accident along here involving a green Mazda convertible?" He yelled through cupped hands to make himself heard above the rain and a loud stream of static-laced dispatches over the vehicles' radios.

  "Nobody's stupid enough to be out here except you," one of the workers suspended in the air yelled back.

  Nice.

  A few of his mates laughed.

  Clenching his fists, Earl walked up to the man who seemed to be doing the least, figuring he'd be the one in charge. "Listen, asshole, I'm looking for my wife. She's hours overdue, and right about now I'm not in the mood for jerks." He'd spoken loud enough that a few others on the ground would hear. Reaching inside his breast pocket, he retrieved a hospital card and shoved it at their boss. "That's got my cellular and the number for ER at St. Paul's, where I work. Ask for the chief. I want news if you hear of anyone who saw a green Mazda convertible, understand?"

  The guy immediately frowned. In the illumination of the orange flashers, the veins on his beefy cheeks were a purple scribble, drawn by years of drink and exposure to cold. "You're chief of ER at the Saint?"

  His crew also looked concerned.

  Earl nodded. He'd known these bozos would respond to his pulling rank. They weren't about to piss off the person who'd be staring down at them the next time a jolt of electricity fried their hides.

  The man's sour expression became unctuous. "Sure, Doc. And sorry for the crack. The boys are really stressed out tonight, with the storm and all. There's transformers blown from Cleveland to the Falls."

  Earl stayed silent a moment, long enough that the smart ones in the bunch would also start to worry. Maybe the chief of ER at the Saint could hold a grudge. When he figured he'd put them all sufficiently on notice that it would be in their interest to give him a call should useful information about a green Mazda come their way, he nodded again and returned to the van.

  "Good luck in finding her," one of the other men called after him.

  "Don't worry, we'll keep an eye out," added another. "We expect to have the lights back on before dawn."

  "And you be careful too," their boss added. He gestured toward the faint luminous shine on the horizon that marked Earl's part of town, where the lights still blazed. "Between here and there we found live wires draped across trees, the free ends dangling in midair, some not too far off the ground. Watch it in case we missed a few."

  A mile farther he entered the largest expanse of parkland he'd have to check, three hundred acres of protected green spaces near the university. By now the sheets of water pouring down his windows made it impossible to see much of the asphalt in front of him, let alone the embankments on either side. He turned on his flashers and pulled over to the shoulder, parking at an angle to direct the harsh glare of his headlamps toward the meadow and its undergrowth below.

  But the deluge cloaked the range. The cones of white light penetrated a few hundred feet, then got swallowed up in the dark.

  Putting on the parking brake and leaving the motor running so as not to run down the battery, he picked up his flashlight and once more set out on foot.

  The rain pelted his face and, having already soaked through his clothing several outings before, ran in cold rivulets down his back, chest, and stomach, pooled briefly at the waistband of his trousers, then streamed the length of his legs to end up sloshing about in his shoes. He squished with every step and slipped repeatedly on the wet grass as he descended the slope, his leather soles not at all conducive to a cross-country hike in a storm.

  The air had cooled enough that his breath steamed white and luminescent in the glow outside the beam of his torch. But he didn't feel cold. The exertion quickly took care of that.

  If necessary, he'd park and do this every three hundred yards, until he had walked the whole damn grounds, all the way up to where they ended at Ellicott Creek.

  Chapter 19

  I knelt in the darkness, watching.

  Not that I could see much.

  I more listened and waited.

  The rain tingled my skin, heightening my senses.

  If I could just get through this, I'd be in the clear. The idea left me incredulous, heady with relief. The obsession that had infested half my life would be lifted, the chasm it created filled, the hunger sated. It had seemed so overwhelming for so long, been so entwined in my psyche like a malignant tumor, I couldn't quite believe I'd finally excised it. But by hoisting Stewart Deloram into the noose and standing him on the brink, ruined and sentenced to death by hanging, I had accomplished exactly that, and more. Because unlike Jerome, who had faced doom with a determined courage, Deloram had screamed and sobbed for pity. Had he also uttered Jerome's name and begged forgiveness in all his garbled talk? I wanted to think so. That would have amounted to a confession- an unexpected bonus- and made his execution all the more perfect.

  I started to tremble, not from cold, but at the freshness of the memory.

  My plan had initially been to let Deloram endure the agony of a destroyed reputation for weeks, perhaps months, maybe even take his own life, just as Jerome had. But then I realized that I couldn't afford to wait, not with that damn cluster study in the works. Still, the justice of quietly stealing up the stairs and leaving that simpering coward to die a prolonged death alone in the darkness had filled me with exactly the tranquillity I'd hoped for. It reached back through all the scars and deep into the fissure I'd felt open on that November night in 1989, and salved it closed. At this instant of healing, the spectacle of him teetering on his toes, crying and struggling to draw breath, became an epiphany, one that I knew would displace the corrosive nightmares of the past fourteen years.

  I also thought of the farmhouse surrounded with gardens and green hills where the shattered woman who'd never recovered from her loss of Jerome spent most of her days, self-confined with the blinds drawn, while my aunt cared for her.

  Perhaps she would finally find solace as well, now that I had ended her long wait for vengeance. But she would still insist I feed her "all the tiny details" to let her "smell, taste, see, hear, and touch" how I'd destroyed his killer. She'd always claimed
her catharsis wouldn't be complete unless she experienced every stage of that retribution herself, even if through my telling of it.

  I'd little time to savor the possibility. Glancing in the direction of Janet's car, even above the storm I could hear faint traces of her screams. Definitely in labor now. And the heparin would be making her bleed. I'd injected it intravenously at the site of an abrasion where no one would notice the puncture wound. Nor would anyone have reason to do toxicology studies. They'd find her bled out, the consequence of a tragic miscarriage caused by accidental trauma. Of course I'd be there to manipulate everyone's interpretation in this direction.

  I fingered the tire iron that I'd removed from the trunk of the car and used to break the door handle, jam the lock, and bend the roof latch so it wouldn't release, making sure she wouldn't be going anywhere. But Garnet should soon come looking for her. Take-charge Earl wasn't one to sit at home and wait for bad news. I'd counted on it, having no option but to silence him as well. He had a talent, more than anyone, for figuring everything out, and no way would he buy that Janet died here accidentally.

  It wouldn't be easy to kill him.

  I raised the tire iron in my right hand and sliced down with it. A menacing whoosh cut through the rain. That would be the force of the blow it would take.

  I looked up in the direction of the highway and scanned a landscape I couldn't see, imagining the slope leading down from it. Occasionally a car or truck glided by, the sound of tires and motor drowned out by the hiss of the downpour, but the running lights, floating through the night like UFOs, gave me a sense of the terrain.

  No way could a man slip and kill himself here. So I'd need to stage yet another credible accident, one that would make everyone think poor Earl had died of massive head trauma while trying to save Janet. At the moment I hadn't a clue what that mishap might be.

  I would also have to take Garnet by surprise.

  There I had an edge.

  He wouldn't arrive the cool, rational, man in control who normally commanded ER with such a heads-up, steady-handed calm. Instead he'd be frantic to find Janet and not at all cautious.