The other man cried out and leapt back.
“Who the hell are you?”
Renny reached for a lamp switch and turned it on.
And gaped. Maybe he had made a mistake. The bearded, silver-haired guy before him looked nothing like Father William Ryan. Had a ponytail, for chrissake! Then Renny took a closer look and recognized him.
Their eyes locked.
“Remember me, Father Bill?”
The guy stared at him, obviously confused, and more than a little frightened by the gun in Renny’s hand. Then the confusion cleared.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Jesus ain’t gonna help you, you bastard. In fact, I think he’d be the last one who’d want to.”
Renny had expected fear, terror, desperation, pleas for mercy, offers to buy him off. He’d been anticipating them with relish. He did see shock and fear in the priest’s eyes, but it wasn’t fear of Renny. He was afraid of something else. But overriding it all was a look of exasperation.
“Now?” Ryan said. “Now you catch up to me?”
“I may be slow, but I get the job done.”
“I haven’t got time for this now, dammit!”
Renny was shaken for a second or two. Haven’t got time? What kind of a reaction was that? He raised the pistol.
“You know the saying: Go ahead—make my day.”
“Listen, I’ve got to get back to New York!”
“Oh, don’t worry. That’s exactly where you’re going. But by way of Raleigh, first.”
“No. I’ve got to get to New York now.”
“Uh-uh. You’ve got to be extradited first.”
Renny was doing this by the book. He wasn’t about to give some legal snake a chance to screw up this collar. He stared hard at the priest, waiting for the hate to surge up in him, to make him ache to pull the trigger. But it wouldn’t come.
Where was the rage he’d saved and nurtured all these years? Why wasn’t it making him crazy now? How could he look at this sick bastard and not want to kill him on the spot?
“That will take too long,” Ryan said. “I’ve got to go right now.”
“Forget it. You’re—”
The priest turned and headed down the hallway toward the bedroom. Renny hurried after him, aiming his pistol at the back of Ryan’s head.
“Stop right where you are or I’ll shoot!”
“Then shoot! I’m going to New York, and I’m going now. You can arrest me there. That way you won’t have to worry about extradition or any of that.”
Renny watched in a daze as Ryan pulled off his work shirt and slipped into a long-sleeved striped jersey. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. What was Ryan up to? A trick of some sort? He had to be extra cautious now. Ryan was a big guy, and crazy as a loon.
Suddenly he noticed him reaching into a slit in the fabric of his box spring. He cocked his pistol.
“Don’t try it!”
Ryan pulled his hand out and flashed a wad of bills.
“My savings account.”
He grabbed a rumpled sport coat from the closet and brushed by Renny, heading for the living room again.
“Stop, goddammit, or I swear to God I’ll shoot!” He lowered the barrel. “You know what it’s like to get shot in the knee?”
Ryan stopped and faced him. His eyes were tortured.
“Danny’s still alive.”
“Bullshit!”
“Just what I would have said. But the person who told me may know what he’s talking about.”
“Don’t give me that! You snatched him and killed him!”
His eyes turned bleak. “I thought I did. I buried him in St. Ann’s Cemetery in Queens.”
He’s admitting it! He’s confessing to murder!
Now the rage was coming, rising, filling Renny’s mouth with a bitter, metallic taste.
“You bastard!”
“I did it to save him! If I hadn’t, he’d still be in a hospital somewhere with tubes coming out of every orifice, still suffering the torments of the damned with a bunch of white coats clucking over him! You didn’t really think I’d do anything to hurt that boy, did you? He was damaged beyond all hope of repair!”
“Damage you did to him! You were abusing him and you couldn’t let him go, so you mutilated him!”
He watched the priest’s shoulder’s slump.
“Is that the accepted theory?” He shook his head sadly. “I guess I kind of expected that.”
“You got what you deserve, and you’re going to get more—a lot more. And don’t think any bullshit stories about the kid being alive will let you cop an insanity plea. No way.”
Ryan didn’t reply immediately. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then he straightened and looked hard at Renny.
“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? We’ll have to go back and dig him up.”
The idea staggered Renny. Was Ryan crazy enough to lead him to the spot where he’d buried the kid? That would clinch the case against him.
The priest picked up his car keys.
“You coming? I’ll drive.”
He headed out the front door. Renny ran after him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Queens, NY
1
He thinks I’m crazy, Bill thought, glancing over at Detective Augustino in the passenger seat. He guided the rental car out of its stall in the Avis garage at LaGuardia and onto the eastbound ramp of the Grand Central Parkway.
Maybe I am.
He’d explained it all to Augustino on the way up. He’d told him about what he had done on New Year’s Eve, and why he had done it. He also told him about Rafe’s resemblance to Sara, about the anagram of the names. But as he listened to himself speak he realized how utterly deranged his story sounded. Even he began to have his doubts, and he’d lived through it.
Danny alive? Why did he even consider it? Even for a second? Of all his ravings, that had to be the most lunatic.
Yet Rafe had told him. Rafe! How could Rafe know anything about it if he weren’t directly involved?
Augustino’s explanation for the whole convoluted mess: “You imagined it all—because you’re nuts.”
Nuts. This wasn’t the first time Bill had considered the possibility, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. But tonight he sensed he was approaching some sort of watershed that would either confirm or confute his sanity.
As he drove through the dark first hours of Saturday morning, he wasn’t sure which he was hoping for.
They found an all-night Shoprite Superstore and bought a pick and shovel in its garden department; they added a flashlight to the bill, then drove the final leg to St. Ann’s Cemetery. Bill cruised slowly along the north wall. They’d long since replaced the bulb he’d shot out all those years ago, but the old leaning oak was still there. The detective had been quiet most of the way, but when Bill drove over the curb and onto the grass, he began shouting.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“This is it,” Bill said, braking and turning the engine off.
“This is nothing! What are you talking about?”
He opened his mouth to speak but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t believe he was back here, actually talking about it with a stranger. A cop, no less. He tried again.
“This is where I buried him.”
Had he? Had he actually done that? It seemed ages ago, a bad dream.
“I thought you said in the cemetery.”
He looked at the detective. “We can’t exactly cruise through the front gate at two in the morning, can we?”
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Augustino said. “I can get an exhumation order—”
Bill shoved the flashlight into his coat pocket, opened the door, and stepped out. He opened the rear door and grabbed the pick and shovel.
“Go ahead. Meanwhile, I’ll be on the other side of that wall, digging.”
In his heart, in his mind, he was sure that Rafe had been lying. He had convinced h
imself of that during the trip north. But long-suppressed doubts had been set free and were worming through his gut, welling up in the back of his throat. Bill needed to be sure. Waiting for an exhumation order was out of the question. He wanted to put this horror behind him once and for all. Tonight. Now.
He stepped up onto the hood of the car, threw the pick and shovel over the wall, then climbed after them.
2
Renny hesitated as he watched Ryan haul himself up to the top of the wall. This was getting crazier by the minute. He was letting a madman, a defrocked priest who was a child molester and child killer to boot, lead him up and down the East Coast. And now he was supposed to follow Ryan into a deserted cemetery?
I must be crazy.
Especially to go unarmed. He’d left his pistol in Ryan’s car in the airport lot. No choice about that. He wished to God he had it now, or had thought to stop home for his backup, but it was too late to turn back.
“Shit!”
He slammed his fist against the dashboard. Then, muttering a stream of curses, he followed the priest over the wall.
The dark on the other side seemed impenetrable, and for an instant he was mortally afraid. Somewhere nearby was a mad killer with a brand-new pick. He dropped into a crouch, ready for fight or flight.
Then he saw the beam of the flashlight a dozen feet away. Ryan stood there like a statue, shining the light on a patch of ground before him. Renny approached warily.
“This is the spot.” Ryan’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.
“There’s no marker. How can you be sure without a marker?”
“I know where I dug it. You don’t forget something like that. And look—no grass.”
Renny stared down at the bare patch of ground. Thick, winter-browned grass surrounded the area, but not here.
“Has this been dug up?” Renny scuffed his feet on the bare earth. “Somebody beat you to it?”
The priest bounced the business end of the shovel off the hard, cold earth.
“Not recently.”
“So there’s no grass there. So what?”
The priest’s voice was barely audible. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this.”
Renny couldn’t see Ryan’s face, but he sensed real fear in the man. Suddenly he became aware of how cold it was here in New York in February. He very much wished he were back in NC right now.
“Let’s get this over with.”
He held the flashlight while the priest did the digging. Tough work breaking through the granite-hard topsoil and at times Renny was tempted to help out, but he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t turn his back on this man and let him turn this spot into a double grave—if indeed it was a grave at all.
The priest made quicker progress in the deeper layers below the frost line. When he got the hole hip-deep, he tossed the shovel aside and sank out of sight.
Renny moved closer. Ryan was on his knees, scooping up the dirt with his bare hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to hit him with the shovel.”
He’s not going to feel it, you jerk!
But Renny was struck by the reverence in Ryan’s tone. That little boy seemed to matter an awful lot to him—even dead.
And after twenty-or-so years at the bottom of that hole, Danny couldn’t be anything but dead. But his body could still tell stories. Recovering it would put a whole bunch of nails in Father William Ryan’s legal coffin.
“Almost there,” the priest said, panting. “Just a little bit fur—”
He jerked back.
“What’s wrong?” Renny said.
“Something moved.”
“Come on, Ryan!”
“No … under the dirt there. Something moved. I felt it.”
Renny stepped up to the edge and shone the light into the bottom of the hole. He didn’t see anything moving.
“Probably just a mole or something,” he said, trying to sound calm.
“No.” The priest’s voice so hushed Renny could barely hear him. “It’s Danny. He’s still alive. Oh, God, he’s still alive!”
He began to paw at the earth, frantically.
“Easy, fella. Just take it easy.”
Christ Almighty, don’t go to pieces on me now.
“I feel him!” The priest was shouting as he tossed huge handfuls of dirt into the air, showering Renny and himself with cold, damp earth. “I feel him moving!”
And damned if the dirt in front of the priest didn’t seem to be heaving and rippling, as if something was squirming and struggling beneath it. Renny swallowed what little saliva remained in his mouth. A trick of the light. It couldn’t be anything but—
But then something broke through the surface and writhed in the light. At first Renny thought it was some sort of giant white worm, then realized it was an arm, a thin little arm, twisting and flailing in the air. But not a whole arm. It looked tattered and moth-eaten, the skin stiff and dry, the flesh rotted away in areas to expose the underlying bone.
Renny gagged and almost dropped the flashlight, but the priest kept on digging, sobbing as he clawed at the earth. Finally he uncovered the remnants of what looked like a blanket. He grabbed two fistfuls of the fabric and yanked upward. The material ripped with a soggy sound, the overlying layer of earth parted, and what was left of Danny Gordon sat up in his grave.
Or maybe it wasn’t Danny Gordon. Who could tell? It was child-sized, but whatever it was, it had no business moving and acting alive. It belonged in a grave. It belonged dead.
Renny felt the strength rush out of him as he watched the thing in the jittering beam of the flashlight. Where its head and upper torso were exposed the flesh was as tattered and rotted as the arm that still writhed in the air like a snake. It reached for the priest and Father Bill didn’t hesitate. He took the worm-eaten thing in his arms and clutched it against his chest. Then he raised his head and cried out to heaven in a voice so full of anguish and despair that it damn near broke Renny’s heart.
“My God, my God! How could You allow this? How could You allow this?”
Renny probably would have been able to handle it if he hadn’t seen the eyes. He’d managed okay through the smell, through the sight of a dead thing moving like it was alive, but then came that moment when it turned its face toward the light and he saw the perfect blue eyes, moist, bright, shining, untouched by rot. Little Danny Gordon’s eyes, fully alive and aware in that decaying skull.
Renny’s nerve snapped then. He dropped the flashlight and ran. A part of him hated himself for bolting like a panicked deer, but a larger, more primitive element had taken hold, shrieking in fear, overruling any action but flight. He reached the cemetery wall and leaped but couldn’t get a grip on the top. He caromed off and ran to the leaning tree nearby, scrabbled up its rough bark, swung to the top of the wall, and leaped down, landing next to the rental car. He slumped against the fender and heaved, but nothing would come up. So he stood there panting and sweating, his eyes closed.
He’d been right! The priest had been right! The kid was still alive—buried for all those years and still alive! Decades in the ground! This couldn’t be happening.
Yet it was, dammit! He’d seen it with his own eyes. No question about it—something hellish going on here.
From the far side of the wall he could still hear Father Bill’s voice, ranting at the empty winter sky.
And then he heard something else. Footsteps approaching.
Renny straightened and looked around, stiffening at the sight of a bundled-up figure limping toward him across the frozen ground. A big guy, supporting himself with a cane in one hand while something boxlike dangled from the other and bounced against his leg as he walked.
“Get out of here,” Renny said, his voice tight and raspy. For want of something better to say, he added, “Police business.”
The old man didn’t even slow his pace; unperturbed, he continued forward. When he stepped into the glare from the streetli
ght, he stopped and stared at Renny. He wore a heavy topcoat. The brim of his hat kept much of his face in shadow, but from what Renny saw of his white beard and lined cheeks, he could tell he was old.
“You’ve opened the grave, I gather.”
Christ, who else knows about this?
“Look,” Renny managed to say, “this is none of your business. If you’re smart, you’ll go back to wherever you came from and stay the hell out of this.”
“You’re quite right about that, but…” He paused and almost seemed to be considering taking Renny’s advice. Then he sighed and held up the object he was carrying. “Here. You’ll need this.”
Renny saw now that it wasn’t a box but a can—a two-gallon gasoline can. Its contents sloshed within.
“I don’t understand.”
The old man jerked his head toward the cemetery.
“For whoever was buried in that unmarked grave. It’s the only way to end it.”
Instantly Renny knew he was right. He didn’t know where this old guy had come from, but he realized this was the solution.
But it meant going back over the wall, seeing that thing that was all that remained of Danny Gordon. He didn’t want to do that, didn’t know if he could.
Quiet now on the other side of the wall. Father Bill was alone in there with that thing that had been—and in a way still was—Danny Gordon. Alone. Because Renny had run out on him.
Renaldo Augustino had never run out on anyone in his life. He wasn’t about to start now.
He grabbed the gasoline can and hopped up on the car hood. As he straddled the top of the wall, he looked back at the old man.
“Don’t go anywhere. I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll wait in your car, if you don’t mind. A friend dropped me here.”
Renny didn’t say anything. He looked down at the dark side of the wall—the last place he wanted to be. But he’d come this far; had to see it through to the end. He slid over the edge and down. As soon as he hit the ground he spotted the flashlight, pointing toward him from where he had dropped it. Setting his jaw, he took a deep breath and hurried toward it on rubbery legs.
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