“Maybe a little less than a half hour,” he says.
“Seriously?” I ask. “A man who was attacked by a serial killer goes missing for half an hour and you don’t think that’s a good reason to go search for him?”
“Well, we thought, after being attacked, he could have been sleeping…or driving—”
“He has two holes in his hands. While he could drive, I doubt he would be doing it for half an hour.”
“—Or maybe his phone battery died,” the FBI agent finishes. “It’s not an emergency yet.”
“Just like you didn’t think ten murders was an emergency?” I ask. “Tell me…how much time has to pass before you consider this an emergency? An hour? Twenty-four hours? The length of time it takes for someone to die on a cross?”
“Look, we’ll send some guys out right now—”
“You do that,” I say. “I’m going to call my partner and we’re going to handle this like we give a shit.”
“I’m glad we got to meet,” he mutters before pulling out his phone and dialing a number. I get out my own phone and call Lauren. She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she says. “I was just checking on Romano. I’ll be back at the library in—”
“The FBI is here and we don’t know where Hotchens is.”
“Okay, both of those pieces of news are bad,” she says. “Are they trying to find Hotchens?”
“They are now that I told them to,” I say. “I told them we’d look, too. I think we should stick together, though, since this guy seems to be aiming for police officers.”
“You’re probably right,” she says. “Where do you want to meet?”
“I don’t know. Where does a religious sociopath that has the Captain of the Detroit police go?”
“Are there any abandoned churches?” she suggests.
“This is Detroit,” I say. “I’m sure we have an abandoned version of every building here.”
“Then we better get started,” she says. “I’ll meet you in a few minutes, and we’ll check out every abandoned church.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lauren
There are fourteen larger abandoned churches within the city, with two dozen smaller abandoned churches around the city’s border. We concentrated on the ones in the north after traffic camera footage showed Hotchens going that way, but after we didn’t find them there, we searched them all. The killer and Hotchens are in none of them. All Tobias and I found were squatters, rats, raccoons, and, for reasons that we don’t understand, a church filled with mounted trophies and other taxidermied animals. Night is beginning to settle over the city and as we get back into Tobias’s car after the final church, I close my eyes.
“Do you think Hotchens is okay?” I ask.
“Do you want me to lie or…what?” he asks.
“Sure. Lie.”
“He’s doing awesome. He just decided to go on a vacation without telling anybody. He ditched his phone so the FBI couldn’t trace it, so he couldn’t be bothered by them, and…he didn’t tell anyone in his family because he’s having such an amazing, awesome time,” he says. “How was that lie?”
“You almost had me convinced,” I say, unable to prevent a smile. “You know we have to keep looking. We can’t stop just because it’s nighttime and the FBI no longer wants to look.”
“Trust me: the fact that the FBI is tucking themselves in for the night only makes me want to keep looking harder,” he says. “They wouldn’t know hard work if it were dressed in a firefighter uniform and carrying out a two hundred pound man.”
“Well, I’m glad that spite keeps you going through the night,” I say.
“It’s a specialty,” he says. “Some people rely on caffeine. I rely on anger. Where do you want to look next? Should we just keep grouping together abandoned buildings?”
“No, we need to think this through,” I say. “Okay, the FBI figured out that the last place he was in was the post office. He was picking up his mail. The post office didn’t have security cameras, so we don’t know if he left there on his own, or if something happened there, but he went north. ”
“Do we think the killer would have traveled far with Hotchens?” he asks. “I’m thinking he wouldn’t have knocked out Hotchens this time in such a public place, so he was either deceived into going somewhere with the killer, or he was forced to.”
I rub my face. “Come on, Tobias, we have to figure this out. I’m sure the killer is mad that Hotchens got away from him, so he could have less time than the other victims. The killer also has to know we’re looking for him by now. Where is he?”
“Okay. We have to think like the killer,” he says. “Imagine you’re a worthless piece of shit that believes God is commanding you to torture and murder people. You believe your victim is a coveting asshole. Where do you take him?”
“Somewhere that there isn’t a lot of people around,” I say. “So, if Hotchens happens to get a chance to run, I’d be able to catch up to him before he could get anyone’s attention.”
He turns to me, his eyes lit up. “That old auto factory where Christopher Lush killed the three forensic scientists. The team that was collecting evidence and cleaning it up…they would be finished by now, right?”
“You really think the killer would go back to a place that we know his protégé was killing at?” I ask.
He shrugs. “For all we know, that was actually this killer’s place. Old habits die hard.”
“It’s a long shot.”
“We just searched nearly forty churches,” he says. “A long shot would be a step up from what we’ve been doing.”
“Okay,” I say, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “If you’re wrong…”
“Do you really doubt me that much?” he asks.
“No,” I answer truthfully. “I have a lot of faith in you.”
“Why did we break-up then?”
“Because you don’t believe in faith.”
He shakes his head, shifting his car into drive. “Just because I’m not religious doesn’t mean I don’t believe in faith,” he says. “I have faith in you, too.”
I cup my chin in my hand and look out the window because I don’t want him to see my face. I can still see it, though—reflected in the window—and all I see is an uncertain woman, outlined by the darkness of the city where doubt speaks with conviction. I can barely turn away from its words.
Or, at least, I can’t turn away until Tobias begins to talk about what we’ll need to do if Hotchens is alive in the auto factory. I realize that doubt may be a great orator, but the one thing that can silence it is the knowledge of human agency and its connection to humanity. When our purpose is to save people, there’s no room for doubt. We have to keep reaching out, pulling people away from the danger. Any hesitation could be fatal.
* * *
The tension in my body is so high that I can imagine how a person could snap and do the unthinkable. Tobias and I use a bolt cutter to cut through the padlock that locks the auto shop and sneak inside, trying to keep our footsteps as quiet as possible. Everything feels surreal. It’s as if I’m reliving the nightmare of the day Christopher Lush held a gun to my head, and Tobias shot him. Everything is too similar, but if they same thing happened again, I don’t think we’d be so lucky that we’d both get out alive.
“If there’s a group of people dead on the floor again, I’m going to actually check if they’re dead this time,” Tobias mutters. “I don’t want a crazy serial killer to grab one of us again.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because I’d be checking that they’re dead, so if one of them isn’t, we can save their life.”
“And that’s why you’re going to Heaven,” he says. “I’ll be in Hell, making sure everyone’s actually dead and shooting anyone that isn’t.”
“You’re not going to Hell.”
“I don’t know, if you weren’t here, I would think I’m already there,” he says. “This place looks exactly like I’d think Hell would look.”
Inhale, listen, exhale.
Tobias barely breathes as we reach the last office. There’s nothing here except a chalk outline of where the young female forensic scientist had been killed.
“I was so sure,” he says, running his hands down his face as if he could wipe away the stress. “It makes the most sense he would come back here. It would be a bit stupid, but he’s a cocky serial murderer obsessed with ritual. Where else would he go?”
“Well, if we look at his pattern specifically, it’s been behind my apartment and in a junkyard—”
“That’s not a pattern,” he says. “That’s a place of convenience and a place to scare the shit out of you.”
I look up as I hear a soft tapping sound. “Is that rain?”
Tobias looks up at the ceiling too. “I don’t remember seeing any dark clouds.”
“It’s not rain,” I muse. “Something is on the roof.”
Our eyes lock for one second before we run back down the stairs. We run outside and I follow him as he goes to the left side of the building. Without missing a beat, he jumps onto the exterior ladder and begins to climb. I watch him, trying to figure out how the killer would get somebody onto the roof. The person—Sean Hotchens—would have to be under duress and climb up on his own. But I’m certain Sean would be able to outsmart most people and disarm the killer once the killer reached the top of the ladder.
Behind the building is a freight train that looks like it hasn’t moved in at least five years, the whole side of it covered with graffiti. It’s not something I would normally notice, but there’s a spray painted picture of a lion on the side of one of the freight cars and the center of the lion’s face is crooked. As I begin to walk closer to it, I realize the door is barely cracked open.
I stand in front of it for a second before I wrap my fingers around the edge of the door and pull it open.
I jerk back as at least seven birds come flying out. At first, I think they’re cardinals or finches, but as I turn around to watch them fly away, one of them lands a few feet from me. It’s not a cardinal or a finch—it’s a dove that has been streaked with red paint.
Or blood.
I take a step closer, but the bird flies away. I turn back to the freight car. Inside, all I can see is white and red feathers. I pull myself up into the car.
“Jesus Christ,” I curse.
Sean is nailed to the cross that seems to be screwed into the floor of the freight car. He’s missing his shirt and there are lashes across his chest still trickling blood.
“Sean,” I call to him. I press two fingers against the side of his neck, checking for his carotid pulse. After a second, I can barely feel it, but at least it’s still going. I pull out my cellphone as I hear someone step into the freight car.
I spin around, getting ready to grab my gun.
“It’s just me,” Tobias says, raising his arms in surrender. He walks up to Sean. “We need to get him down now.”
“If we take the nails out, he could bleed out.”
“The strain this puts on his body could kill him faster,” he says. “We need to at least get these screws out and lay this cross down. You also need to be ready for the killer to come back. We have no idea where he could be.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” I say. “Considering all those doves were in here, he wouldn’t return—”
“Just be ready,” Tobias interrupts. “Don’t be willing to risk your life on an assumption.”
He pulls out his car keys and kneels down at the bottom of the cross. He uses the keys to undo the screws at the bottom. I hold onto the cross so it doesn’t suddenly drop, while still keeping an eye on the door in case the killer returns, and telling the 9-1-1 dispatcher via speaker phone where we are.
By the time we get Sean lying flat on top of the cross, my adrenaline is fading and exhaustion is taking over. I rest my hand over Sean’s heart, careful to avoid the lash marks. Tobias’s eyes linger on my hand for a second before he preoccupies himself with the nails in Sean’s feet.
“What do you think was up with the birds?” I ask. “You passed by them, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Well, you should know. Doves have a lot of significance in the Bible.”
“He’s never used them before,” I say. “And they’re a symbol of the Holy Spirit, which was Mary’s whole role in this, and peace because of the dove from Noah’s ark. But neither of those things have anything to do with Captain Hotchens.”
“The birds also had red on them,” he says. He gestures to the red stains on the floor of the freight car. “I’m not sure if they were made to look like that or if they just got blood on their wings from being here. That could have some symbolism.”
“Honestly, from my knowledge of past serial killers…I think he’s just toying with us,” I say. “You know, taunting us.”
Tobias looks up at me. “We’re also forgetting that only one dove means peace. Two usually signifies romantic soul mates.”
His green eyes seem so bright in the darkness of this car. An urge to reach forward, to touch him, and feel everything that he’s feeling burns in my chest. But I have to keep my hand on Sean’s chest to keep track of his vitals, and I need to monitor my own heart as well. I can’t simply pretend we didn’t break-up for a reason.
The sound of distant sirens breaks through this oddly silent part of the city. Usually, a siren is a warning, but this time it means salvation. I know what the sirens mean, but my heart can’t differentiate the dangerous from the necessary in my personal life, and it might kill me to figure it out.
Chapter Nineteen
Tobias
An hour and a half later, Lauren, Jack Hamlin, Annette Harris, Jared Lambert and a few other policemen have bowed their heads in prayer. I truly did not know I was surrounded by so many Christians, but, statistically, it makes sense. I keep my head down—staring at the ghastly pale blue floors of the hospital—but I don’t pray. Instead, I plot.
If Captain Hotchens lives, the killer will go after him again. It may be immoral to use a man who has been attacked twice as bait, but in the long run, it could save many more lives. The biggest obstacle will be convincing Lauren to go along with it.
She’ll never go along with it.
“Amen,” Lauren murmurs. The seven of them lift their heads, their eyes fluttering open as if they’re all one entity. I can appreciate the positive aspects of religion—like the Bible states, these people are all brothers and sisters while I’m just the neighbor, but I’ve never felt compelled to build a family made of strangers.
Lauren turns to me, leaning against the armrest of her chair.
“You seemed pretty deep in thought,” she says.
“Just sending all my good thoughts to Captain Hotchens,” I say. “Which is not the same as a prayer.”
“I wasn’t going to say that it was,” she says. “I just wanted to know how you’re dealing with all of this.”
“I’m pissed that the killer got away from us again,” I say. “How are you doing?”
“Just worried about Hotchens,” she says.
“The killer will come back for him,” I say.
She catches my eye and frowns. “We’re not going to use him as bait.”
I shake my head. A surgeon in light blue scrubs walks right over toward us. It’s the same surgeon who operated on Romano, so he must recognize us by now.
“Hey, officers, detectives, and…other friends and family,” he says. “I’m going to tell you this as straightforward as I can—”
“Oh, God,” Annette blurts.
“—He’s alive and medically stable,” the surgeon continues, raising his hand as if he could stop everybody’s negative thoughts. “But the
excessive blood loss caused him to go into a coma. We’ve been transfusing blood, but he has no eye, motor, or verbal response to anything we do.”
“What’s the likelihood that he’ll wake up?” I ask.
He hesitates. “I can’t give you a definite answer.”
I don’t need Lauren’s ability to read body language to know that the surgeon has doubts that Hotchens will ever wake up. I turn to Lauren. Her face is pale and her bottom lip seems to be trembling. I want to wrap my arm around her, but I also don’t want to cross a line that I’m not supposed to cross.
The surgeon bows his head. “I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can to take care of him.”
“We know,” I say.
He nods before pivoting on his heel and walking away. Lauren reaches out to me, her fingertips cold against my skin. Her skin is usually so warm, it’s a strange contrast.
“There’s nothing we can do here. We should go back to the crime scene,” she says.
I grimace. “I told my father I’d go see him today.”
She nods. “You should do that then.”
“I can reschedule.”
“No,” she says. “You need to go see him. If this, all of this that has been happening, teaches us anything, it’s that we should spend as much time with our loved ones as possible. I’ll try to get ahold of Sean’s parents and anyone else that might have been close to him.”
“Are you sure you don’t want help?” I ask.
She forces a smile. “You know I’ve always been better at this part than you.”
I wrap my arms around her, crossing the line I shouldn’t cross. Her vanilla scent, tinged with something spicy, wafts over me and it feels like I’ve walked into a home I’ve had forever. I’ve heard men talk about missing their ex-girlfriends, usually along with something sensual she used to do, but this is what I miss. This scent, this softness, this piece of comfort that I could never replicate.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say, stepping back. “Be careful.”
Vengeance of the Son (A Trinity of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 3) Page 9
