Which probably meant he was done with the place.
Jennings’s phone went off. Christ, what now? He pulled it out of his pocket and put it to his ear.
“I told you to stay away from this case,” a voice whispered.
“Who the hell is this?” Jennings said.
“Back all the way off. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Just remember, you were warned.” Click, the caller hung up.
It hit Jennings like a landslide. He spun around facing the building. Oh, Christ, I’ve got to get Myers out of there!
He took one well-placed step back in the direction of the abandoned building when the world came apart.
Chapter 68
The vacant lot in which Laura had parked her car was a small sand-covered field in an undeveloped section of Portland’s waterfront district between Congress and Commercial Streets. From the look of it she guessed that it had once been an athletic field. She could still see the dim recesses in the sand that had been paths between bases. Now it was abandoned and neglected, waiting for the recession to end so that it could be developed.
All the way back to her car she kept stealing uneasy glances over her shoulder, sure that she was being followed. But she saw no one. She was pretty sure someone was back there, though, and in her mind it had to be Cavanaugh. Who the hell else could it be? The bastard was watching Wolf, and now he was watching her. She almost hoped it was Cavanaugh. She’d like to get her hands on the slimy prick, find out just what he knew about her father’s death. But each time she looked back she saw nobody she could identify as suspicious. And the farther she walked the fewer people she saw, so by the time she reached the lot she was alone.
The manner in which her father had died had always been somewhat of a mystery to Laura. Not that her mother had never talked about it, on the contrary, she had, on numerous occasions, but each time it had come up, the explanation had seemed vague and confusing. He’d been trapped in a dead end alley after a long suspect chase and the suspect had hidden there and surprised him, killing him with his bare hands. The suspect had never been captured and her father’s partner had originally been sited for negligence in his death but had later been cleared of all wrongdoing. It was the details of the crime that had never been adequately explained to Laura. Why had they not found the killer? What exactly had her father’s partner seen that day? Why had he originally been sited for negligence and then cleared of all wrongdoing? These were things her mother would never speak of and when Laura pressed her for answers she’d been told to let sleeping dogs lie. But to Laura, her father was not a sleeping dog, he was a dead man, a loving father who had been cruelly taken from her.
She’d never known the name of his partner until this very day and it had knocked her socks off to discover that it was Cavanaugh, a man she did not know but one she instinctively did not like or trust.
A cold and biting wind came off the Atlantic Ocean and fluted up through the canyons of the city as Laura approached her car. She removed her keys and pressed the unlock button. The headlights flashed and the security system chirped as the doors unlocked. The sun had gone down behind stark tenements and shadows were lengthening across the deserted lot. Laura stepped up next to the driver’s door, pulled her coat around her and shivered. Stealing a couple of quick glances around her, she felt that creepy sensation again, like she was being watched. But as far as she could see she was the only one in the lot. To the north there were rows of tenements with their fire escapes slanting down to the ground; in the opposite direction stood a sparse stand of leafless and skeletal oak trees like lonely sentinels overlooking Portland’s dark harbor.
A swiftly-moving shape, like a bed sheet blowing in the wind, sped toward Laura. Then it was gone. Her heart rate picked up. She thought of what she’d seen—or what she thought she’d seen—the night before on her walk home from the Cavern Club. Chills ran down her spine. She whirled as the white flash reappeared and came at her again then sped around her in a circle, as if purposely taunting her. And like it had a moment ago, it simply vanished. Laura blinked her eyes thinking that maybe she hadn’t really seen it, then immediately dismissed the thought. No, she wasn’t crazy. There definitely was something there and it left a residue that felt like evil.
She reached to open her car door when a huge and powerful hand holding a chemical-soaked rag clamped tightly over her mouth and nose. She struggled and tried to scream but it was futile, she could not breathe. Her assailant’s other arm encircled her midriff lifting her airborne and nearly squeezing the life out of her. She kicked back furiously, hitting home several times, but it was as if her antagonist was made of iron. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was hair. Lots of hair, almost completely covering a huge and powerful hand.
Chapter 69
Patrolman Myers was pulling open the bottom drawer of the bureau when he saw the ghost. There was no doubt that she was the same apparition he’d seen at the landfill. She was tall for a woman and she wore a beautiful, nearly transparent white gown, the curves of her fine body a mere suggestion beneath. Her long, black hair fell straight and part of it had fallen over one eye making her look like an actress from the nineteen-forties. She was the most beautiful thing Myers had ever seen. And just like at the landfill, she didn’t do anything, or say anything, she just stared at him, her hands held out before her in a gesture of appeal.
“What do you want?” he asked, but of course she did not reply, even as her dark eyes burned like embers, staring at him with enough intensity to scorch holes through him.
“You know something about this, don’t you?” he said, pointing at the corpse. “You know something about these murders.” The ghost did not react, but Myers knew instinctively that she was attempting to convey a message. He stared back at her for a long moment before she began to fade and finally disappear.
“Don’t go,” he said, feeling a deep and unjustifiable loss. “Please, tell me why you’re here.” But it was too late, she was gone. With hands that shook, Myers went back to the bottom drawer and pulled it all the way out. He heard the click, knowing immediately what it was. Too late, however, for by the time the thought translated to his reflexes he had been vaporized.
Chapter 70
Jennings felt the heat even before he heard the explosion. When the shockwave hit him he was blown over, rolling several times before coming to rest on his side. The abandoned building came apart in an ungodly explosion of fire and light. The concussion was deafening. Debris fell all around him. He ducked face down, pulling his smoking trench coat over his head.
By the time he got to his feet the building was reduced to burning rubble. The air was filled with smoke and dust and debris. He scooped up the purse he had taken from the basement room, along with the scorched bible, and holding the items close to his body, protecting them, he ran toward the destruction. But it was no use. He could not get anywhere near the place. It was an inferno. In the distance sirens blared.
PART FOUR
THE SANCTUARY
Chapter 71
Wolf began feeling the strangeness come over him as he walked home from the shrink’s office. It was subtle at first but real, and worrisome. By the time he reached Washington Avenue he was feeling sick, by the time he reached Congress Street he’d begun seeing the crosses. Like ugly red slashes they were everywhere, beneath everything, as if the world he’d come to know and understand was a thin skim-coat over something more complex and evil, and the skim-coat had been removed for his eyes only. At the same time he understood that thoughts like these were almost certainly signs of insanity. But that didn’t change the fact that he was seeing them, if only in his mind; they were everywhere, on the sides of busses and buildings, on street signs and store fronts and in restaurant windows. Real or not he was seeing them.
Cross my heart and hope to die.
His mind flashed brilliantly as he saw the words written on the wall beside the crucifi
ed woman.
No! He thought. I can’t do this anymore. But it was too late. He was fully immersed in the vision. Although it was all just a momentary blur of motion, he clearly saw the livid cross carved on the woman’s body and the ugly stab wounds surrounding it.
Wolf was staggering now, barely able to walk, the images bright and ugly in his psyche as his head throbbed with intense pain.
Horrified and frantic to get home, he upped his staggering pace, so afraid that people passing him on the street might witness his insanity.
By the time he arrived back at his apartment building he was sure his head would explode. He grasped the door handle, pulled it open and staggered up the stairs, bouncing off walls.
He put his key in the lock with a trembling hand. He was barely able to function. He staggered into the room and fell forward onto the floor, landing on his hands and knees. A blazing flash shattered his psyche like a bomb blast, blinding him with its intensity, and as he lost consciousness the blue light engulfed him.
Chapter 72
He awoke face down on the rug, the terrible visions gone, his head splitting as if struck with an ax.
He knew that something terrible had happened. He’d seen the body and the blood and the cross, and he’d felt the explosion and the heat as if he’d been there. He also knew that Laura had recently been in his apartment. He could smell her, he could sense her. He picked himself up off the floor and followed her scent into the bedroom. It was much stronger in here and he surveyed the room at a glance. Yes, she’d definitely been here. He could see the leftover trails of her aura crisscrossing as she’d moved from closet to bed to bureau and back again, knowing what she’d touched and what she’d seen. He went to the window and lifted it, putting his head out. He could see the trail of her aura as she’d exited the alley. And there was something else. She was not alone. Someone or something was following her; something dark and terrible. But he could not be afraid. He must catch her before it was too late.
Wolf stepped out through the window and moved quickly down the fire escape taking the steps three at a time. He traversed the alley on a dead run. Out on the street he stopped, looking both ways before instinct told him which way to go.
He followed her scent across side streets and through back alleys until he reached the vacant lot, knowing that something evil had passed this way.
Wolf spotted them as he approached the lot. Laura stood next to her car helpless in the grip of a monster. He had his right arm around her midriff, his left hand over her mouth and she was struggling futilely. Wolf moved swiftly up behind them and dealt a fisted blow to the monster’s right kidney, powerful enough to cause it to drop its quarry. Laura fell, striking the ground hard enough so that she bounced before coming to rest on her back. With a mighty roar the monster spun and charged at Wolf. That’s when Wolf saw that it wasn’t actually a monster at all but a giant man, nearly three meters tall with a bulk that would cause most professional wrestlers to quake in their boots. The man was covered in hair, copious amounts of it. On his face, on his hands, on what Wolf could see of his arms, for he wore an overcoat that billowed out around him and appeared to have been constructed by a tent maker. The rest of his clothes were quite pedestrian, even sloppy; gray sweat pants, a white food-stained t-shirt beneath the overcoat. There were no shoes on his feet. Like his hands and arms, the giant’s feet were completely covered in a coating of thick, black hair, the toenails long, thick and yellowed. He had small piercing brown eyes that were filled with menace, but upon seeing Wolf he stopped his advance, and the menace began to evaporate from his eyes, replaced by something else; curiosity, perhaps recognition. The giant stared at Wolf, cocking its head like a curious dog. It grunted several times as if it was attempting to communicate.
“Who are you?” Wolf asked. “What do you want with Laura?”
The giant man grunted again, pointing urgently at Laura and making wild gestures with his hands. At first the gestures seemed random and clumsy, but the more gestures he made the more Wolf began to recognize structure in the movements. And then it struck him. The giant was signing. Was he deaf? Or was it that he just couldn’t speak?
Wolf frowned. What was this guy trying to tell him? “Can you understand me?” Wolf said.
The giant nodded and again he began to sign frantically and point urgently at Laura.
“I don’t understand sign language,” Wolf said.
The giant grunted again and shook his head in frustration, and then he backed away, turned and lumbered across the lot toward the woods beyond.
“Holy shit,” Wolf whispered, feeling a strange empathy for the creature. “What the hell was that? What the hell just happened?”
He went to Laura, knelt down, taking her wrist and checking her pulse. She was alive. He opened the car door and picked her up. Her jacket fell open and he saw the shoulder holster and gun. The sight of it so startled him that he almost dropped her. He put her on the front seat and closed the door, his mind reeling. Who was she? Why was she wearing a gun? The truth of her struck him like a bolt of lightning and he wondered how he could have been so stupid. No matter. He had to get her to a hospital. He meant to take her to St. Mary’s emergency room, which was just around the corner, but by the time he had the car in motion Laura was coming around.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Whaahaapened?” Laura moaned.
“You were attacked. Do you remember anything?” Wolf was maneuvering out of the lot and onto Congress Street.
Laura’s head lolled and her eyes rolled up into her head. “Sum’ bitch grabbed me. Put somefin’ over my mouth. Strong!” She was having trouble talking around her swollen tongue.
“Want me to take you to the hospital?”
“No!”
“You sure?”
“I’m okay.” And Wolf saw that she was. Her head was back but she was breathing okay.
He knew from the smell that some sort of chemical, probably chloroform, had been used to subdue her. “Did you see him, Laura?”
“What?”
“Did you see him? He was a giant.”
Laura shook her head. “Hair. All I saw was hair. Asshole! Tried to kill me.”
“I don’t think so,” Wolf said. “Something weird happened.”
“No shit.”
“I mean it was almost like he knew me or something. Like I knew him. Like I’ve always known him but somehow forgot about him.”
“Doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“I never saw him coming,” Laura said. “One minute the lot was empty and the next thing I knew...”
“The lot wasn’t empty,” Wolf said.
“What?”
“There was something else there too. And it was watching you.”
“It was him.”
Wolf shook his head. “No. It was something else. Something I couldn’t see.”
Laura put her head back breathing deeply, knowing that Wolf was right.
“By the way,” Wolf said. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Who the hell are you and what the fuck were you doing sneaking around my apartment?”
Chapter 73
When Jennings left the station after filling out his report he was still in a state of shock. One officer was dead and two were injured. The crime scene was a total loss, including the body of Kaleigh Jarvis. If not for the purse with her ID he’d carried out with him and the photos he’d snapped with his cell phone, they would have had a very difficult time identifying the victim.
The bible with its burnt edges sat on the seat beside him. He kept glancing at it, running its hand-written passages over in his head. He had not turned it in as evidence. Nor had he turned over the band fliers. And neither had he mentioned the phone call he’d received just prior to the explosion. He could not bring himself to do it. Something was wrong in the department. He felt it like a weight.
Jennings had been trying to contact Laura since leaving the scene. Once again he picked up his ph
one and dialed her number. It rang four times before her answering service picked up. “Christ, where are you?” he said before pressing his thumb against the off button. He knew she was planning on searching Wolf’s apartment. Had she already been there and gone? If so then why wasn’t she answering her goddamn phone? God, what if Wolf catches her and he is the killer? He never should have allowed her to go up there alone. He dialed her number again and this time when the answering service kicked in he said, “Laura, we found the place Wolf told you about. It was real. There was a body and a bomb. Don’t go near Wolf! He’s dangerous. Call me as soon as you get this message.”
Jennings turned on his running lights and stepped on the accelerator, weaving his car through rush hour traffic.
Chapter 74
He had no sooner hung up when the phone went off. Anxious, he picked it up. It was Robeson informing him that the body of Patrick Byrne, head of the local Catholic archdiocese had been found moments ago in bushes beside the rectory.
“Jesus,” Jennings said. “What happened?”
“Stabbed in the throat.”
“When?”
“Looks like last night. I don’t have to tell you what this means.”
“I don’t know what it means,” Jennings said.
“There’s a federal agent named Spencer here in my office wants to talk to you.”
“Me? Why?”
“He has information might help with your investigation.”
“Tell him he’ll have to wait. I’m on my way to Wolf’s apartment right now.” He could not tell Robeson that he was afraid for the life of Laura Higgins because Robeson didn’t know Higgins was working on the case. Or maybe he did know and he was playing coy. Cavanaugh knew about Laura and he’d already proven he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Cavanaugh seemed to be Robeson’s lapdog, something Jennings had not realized until recently. Jennings felt strangely alienated by everyone in the department. Laura had been right when she’d pointed out that Jennings didn’t trust anyone on the force. Hell, he didn’t even trust Robeson. Over the years there had been too many contradictions, too many cover-ups when it came to that man. Jennings hated bought-and-paid-for cops.
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