He took a few steps toward the noise, and a strange sensation crept from his fingertips up his forearms, as if ants were running up his arms. He shivered and took a few steps toward the choir loft, the burnished mahogany pews glimmering in the dim light.
As he rounded the corner of the pews, he heard a rustling sound over his right shoulder. He wheeled toward it, but too late. A flash of light blinded him; then a heavy object crashed down on the back of his head. He felt himself falling, and then the blackness closed in around him, cradling him in its dark embrace.
He awoke with the feeling that he was floating above the ground, but as his body regained sensation he realized that he was tied to the heavy wooden cross above the altar. He struggled to move, but he was bound firmly. His arms ached, and his head throbbed. Kathy was stretched out over the altar, and a dark figure in a black robe was bent over her. She was wearing a long white dress. He recognized it as a choir robe.
“Stop it!” Lee cried out as loudly as he could to the figure bending over her. “Leave her alone!”
The man looked up, and Lee saw the face of his mentor and surrogate father, John Paul Nelson.
Nelson smiled up at him. “Nice touch, the robes, don’t you think? I found them hanging in the vestibule.”
Lee looked down at his mentor through bleary eyes. “Please, don’t. I—I understand you.”
“Oh, please! No one ‘understands’ me!”
“No, you’re wrong—I do, I swear it.”
“Nice try, Lee.” Nelson’s voice was harsh, the vowels twisted into diphthongs, consonants sharp as the prongs of a garden rake.
Lee pulled on the ropes binding him, trying to wrest free.
“Why did you have to ignore me?” Nelson said. “I begged you—begged you—not to take on this case! I tried to protect you. Even all that rubbish about your sister—that was to throw you off—but you just had to persist, didn’t you? My God, I never wanted it to come to this!”
Lee craned his neck to peer at Kathy, trying to see if she was still breathing.
“Oh, she’s still alive,” Nelson said. “I don’t kill them all at once, you know…press and release, press and release. You’d be surprised how long you can keep someone alive throughout slow strangulation. But then you know that, don’t you? You know a lot of things about me—except the things that count.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
“Well, my dear old dad was a member of the Westies, after all. You could say violence runs in our family. If you’d bothered to actually profile me, you’d see I have a tidy little history of violent behavior. I’m just very good at hiding it.”
“But the women…why…?”
“Oh, come on, Lee! Haven’t you ever wondered what it felt like? Not just to study them from a distance—but to actually be a killer?”
Nelson’s face was eager, his eyes shining in a way Lee had never seen before.
“Why did you have to kill Eddie?”
Nelson snorted. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? He was getting too close.” He sighed. “I sent you so many warnings, and you ignored them all.”
Lee groaned and struggled to free himself, but the ropes binding him were firmly tied.
Nelson watched him. “You know, I never imagined that sailing class at summer camp would be quite so useful,” he said. “It just goes to show that you never know what’s going to come in handy. I learned quite a few nifty knots. Of course, you have to have a mind for it. Fortunately, I do have a knack—for knots, puzzles, mazes of all sorts.”
He looked up at Lee with an expression of mock sympathy. “I thought you were a puzzle solver yourself, but you seem to have come up a bit short this time, I’m afraid.”
Lee tried again to wrench himself free, but the ropes only cut more deeply into his flesh. His head was pounding, and his whole body ached.
“Save your strength,” Nelson said. “There’s no point in wearing yourself out.”
A drop of sweat from Lee’s forehead fell on Kathy’s face, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Come to think of it, what’s a Christ figure without a little stigmata?” Nelson said, and seized the ornate Greek cross on its long pole. He raked the sharp edges savagely across Lee’s ribs, slashing a wound in his right side. Lee couldn’t help crying out in pain.
“There, that’s better,” Nelson said. “More like the real Christ on the cross.”
Lee groaned and fought to remain conscious.
“Does that hurt?” Nelson snarled. “I didn’t invite you here, you know.”
“Just—let—her—go,” Lee pleaded, the words forcing themselves from his throat. “I won’t turn you in—I won’t tell anyone.”
Nelson snorted. “And if I believe that, I’ll bet you have a bridge in London for sale too.”
He crossed himself and kneeled at the altar.
“Bless this act of deliverance, oh Heavenly Father, as I deliver the soul of your servant into your care.”
He looked up at Lee, who was running out of strength, panting from the effort of trying to free himself.
“I don’t believe in God, of course, but I like saying the words all the same.”
Lee felt the blackness threatening to close in again.
“You know, you should feel honored to witness her transformation,” Nelson said, his voice sarcastic. “That’s what he thought. Poor Samuel—what a nutcase. He thought he was saving them from sin—sending them to God. Poor deluded idiot.”
“Why did you do it?” Lee gasped.
“Why did I strangle nice Catholic girls who never did me any harm?”
Lee nodded weakly.
“You’d be surprised how easy it is. After a while, you develop a taste for killing—you actually get to like it. And the Biblical carving was a nice touch—my idea, of course, but Samuel took to it, and did a nice job of it, I thought, didn’t you?”
Nelson’s eyes were the eyes of a fanatic. He didn’t so much look at Lee as right through him. It was like being looked at by a sleepwalker. His calm was more terrifying than an outpouring of raw fury might have been.
“But—you?”
“Oh, don’t be so naïve, for God’s sake!”
“But why?”
Nelson’s face darkened with rage.
“Because they didn’t deserve to live and serve God after He took Karen away from me!”
“Oh my God,” said Lee. “It was Karen’s death—”
Nelson laughed—an ugly, grim sound, like a rock hitting water.
“Yes, that was my ‘precipitating stressor’—classic textbook case, eh? Except who would have thought the pursuer would become the pursued? Now, if that’s not irony, I don’t know what is!”
The pursuer becomes the pursued…. the phrase repeated itself in Lee’s foggy brain as Nelson leaned over Kathy’s motionless body, his red hair reflecting the single overhead altar light. There was a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, the scalp pink and bare, and Lee was reminded of the tiny pink feet of a litter of newborn mice he had seen as a boy. The color had struck him at the time as sickly, and now, as he tried to keep from passing out, the pink bald spot seemed to shift its shape and grow in size…. Can this be it, then? he thought. This is really what death is? He felt an odd peacefulness settle over him, as if he were watching the entire scene from very far away, through a thick layer of gauze.
“I’m sorry about her, I really am,” Nelson said. “Everyone will think that Samuel did it, of course. He did do some of them, you know—once I convinced him of the rightness of it.”
“You used him,” Lee said, pushing through the fog in his brain.
“I realized early on I needed a fall guy—a patsy, as they so colorfully call it in old movies. He was a good student, one of my best. Little did I know how good he’d turn out to be, actually,” he added, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. “That was the only real gamble I took—but it worked out in the end.”
“Samuel’s dead,” Lee said. “You killed him.”
“I knew you’d track him down sooner or later.”
“Christ, you even smoked a cigarette while he died!”
“Ah, yes—the clove cigarettes. That is a rather distinctive odor, I suppose. But I couldn’t very well let him live, could I? Any more than I could let you live—or her, for that matter.”
Nelson leaned lower over Kathy. Lee saw the glint of metal, and saw the knife descend over her body.
With tremendous effort, Lee shook himself out of his stupor. He felt a roar well up in his throat, and gathered all his strength to rock his body forward. He felt a screw on the wall behind him give way, and he paused for breath, then gave one last desperate lunge forward. There was a crunching sound as the screws tore away from the masonry wall. The cross teetered for a moment, then thundered down over the altar. Nelson stood frozen, as if he didn’t believe what was happening, then tried to dodge out of the way—but it was too late. The heavy wooden cross came crashing down on him.
The last thing Lee was aware of before he lost consciousness was Nelson’s body folding underneath him like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been severed.
Chapter Sixty-five
Darkness…more darkness…hands lifting him up…flashing lights…people scurrying about everywhere…then he opened his eyes to see Chuck Morton’s face looking down at him. They were in the back of an ambulance. Lee was lying in a stretcher, his friend crouched over him.
“Kathy—” he began, but Chuck cut him off.
“She’s going to be fine.”
“Where is—?”
“She’s already on her way to the hospital.”
A paramedic fiddled with an IV bag next to him. The ambulance was sitting behind the church, its doors still open. The paramedic didn’t look unduly alarmed, so Lee figured he’d be okay.
“What about Nelson? Is he…?”
Chuck shook his head. “Pronounced dead at the scene. You’re lucky he broke your fall. You landed right on top of him. Broke his neck.”
Instead of relief, Lee felt a deep sadness. That was no way for a life to end, not even such a twisted one.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I just went where I figured you would go.”
Behind Chuck, Lee heard a familiar voice speaking. “We headed for Dr. Azarian’s house first.”
“Is that…Diesel?” Lee said, and tried to raise his head up to look.
Diesel’s enormous head appeared over him. His metal earring caught the light and reflected silver in the artificial light.
Lee stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I volunteered to help. Rhino came too, but there wasn’t room for us both in the ambulance. He’s over there helping the officers keep people away.”
Lee looked across the street to the cadre of police lining the sidewalk and saw Rhino’s powerful, compact form among them.
He looked up at Chuck. “How did—?”
“They said they knew you—that they were helping you on the case. At that point, I don’t have to tell you, we were pretty desperate.”
“Anyway,” Diesel continued, “there was this old lady in the street.”
“Blue hair and eye shadow to match?” Lee said.
“Yeah, right. We asked if she’d seen anyone matching your description, and she told us to go to St. Mary’s.”
“Sort of like an oracle,” Lee said.
“Yes,” said Diesel. “Instead of the Oracle of Delphi, she was the Oracle of Philly.”
“Oh, something else I have to tell you,” Chuck said. “You’re off the case.”
Lee looked up at his friend, who was smiling. “I don’t get it.”
“Internal Affairs requested that I take you off the case.”
“Really? When?”
“Oh, about three days ago.”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Chuck shrugged. “Guess I forgot. I’m telling you now.”
Lee laughed, and felt a stab of fire shoot through his ribs. He remembered the wound Nelson had slashed into his side.
“So—he’s really dead?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Chuck said, without looking at him.
“Dead at the scene, you said?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Lee peered at him. “What do you mean, ‘pretty much?’”
Chuck cleared his throat. “He was still alive when we arrived.”
Lee looked back at Diesel, aware that they were both avoiding eye contact with him.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Chuck’s jaw was clenched, and Lee could hear his teeth grinding. Diesel was looking down at his shoes.
“What? What is it?”
“I think you should get some rest,” Chuck said, getting up and putting a hand on Lee’s shoulder.
“For God’s sake, what is it?”
“Look, we don’t believe him,” Chuck said. “We think he was lying.”
“Lying about what?”
There was a pause, and Lee could hear the sound of car doors opening and closing. Scenes like this always drew far more patrol cars than necessary.
Chuck took a deep breath. “He claimed to know who killed your sister.”
“We think he said it just to upset you,” Diesel added quickly.
Lee’s stomach took a quick dip, like a car lurching down a hilly road. “But if he was lying, why would he tell you?”
Chuck looked him straight in the eye. “Because he knew that sooner or later you’d find out what he said.”
“Did he even know I was alive?”
“My guess is that he gambled on it. You were already being loaded onto a stretcher when he said it.”
“And what did he have to lose, in any case?” added Diesel. “He probably knew he was dying.”
“But people who are dying don’t usually lie,” Lee protested. “What if he was telling the truth?”
“Then he’s taken the truth to his grave,” Diesel replied.
“Come on, Lee, think about it!” Chuck said. “What does your experience and training tell you? What are the chances he’d know who—”
“You’re right,” Lee agreed, but a tiny doubt had lodged itself in his mind and was sprouting, a dark seedling stretching its roots downward, taking hold of his imagination.
“We called your mother and told her you were okay.” Chuck rubbed his palms together, a gesture he made when he was uncomfortable or embarrassed. His nails were pink and manicured. Lee imagined Susan sending Chuck to a manicurist, when he would rather be playing golf or doing yard work. Susan liked everything just so—ironed shirts, starched collars, perfectly organized closets, manicured nails. He imagined Chuck submitting meekly to her prodding.
Thinking of Susan made him think of Kathy, and that made his stomach go hollow inside. He sank back into the stretcher and watched the rotating lights of the ambulance spin around and around, cutting through the darkness like a red blade.
Chapter Sixty-six
Two weeks later, Lee Campbell stood in his apartment looking out the window at the first buds of spring struggling to open in the March frost. The sidewalks were damp from a recent rain, and the late-afternoon sun bounced off the wet pavement, turning the concrete into a mirror, reflecting the street scene on East Seventh Street. The return of the sun had finally lost its terror for him, and he felt the swelling of the earth in his own breast, a gradual awakening as the warmer weather opened the pores of the maple trees, the sap flowing freely again. All the earth’s transitions struck him as blessed. All four seasons had their unique charms, and they were all irreplaceable. Like people. No one would ever take his sister’s place. He knew that, but now he felt closer to accepting the irretrievable loss.
He turned to the small, dark-haired woman beside him.
“How are you feeling?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Kathy said, leaning her body against his. “How about you?”
“Fine.”
&
nbsp; “You sound like your mother,” she said, frowning.
“Not exactly, I hope.”
“Pretty close.”
“Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said it is every woman’s tragedy that they become their mothers—and every man’s tragedy that they don’t.”
“That sounds like him. Wonder what kind of mother he had?”
“A hellion, no doubt.”
“That’s a word you don’t hear everyday.”
“What?”
“Hellion.”
They stood looking out the window together for a while. Below them, the middle-aged couple from the back building strolled along Seventh Street, hand in hand, the woman resting her head on the man’s shoulder. Her curly gray hair was abundant and shaggy. With the sun behind her, her head was framed in a silver halo.
Kathy and Lee were doing a delicate dance around the topic on both of their minds—her abduction and its aftermath, his betrayal by a man he loved like a father.
He turned to her. “Did you have nightmares last night? I don’t remember you waking up in the middle of the night.”
She continued to gaze out the window. “The sleeping pills help.”
“Be careful—they can be addictive. I wish you’d reconsider seeing someone.”
“Your therapist?”
“No, someone else. A specialist in post-traumatic stress.”
“Maybe I will…soon.”
She had been unable to talk about it for several days, and then, slowly, in the course of the past couple of weeks, the story had come out, of how Nelson had ambushed her on her way to her father’s house—right in front of the church, just as darkness was falling—and dragged her inside. How she’d called out for Lee until she lost consciousness, and awakened to see him on the cross. The nightmares that came now were surreal, but no more so than the experience itself. The cuts on her chest were healing, but the scars—both internal and external—would remain. Fortunately, Nelson hadn’t gotten very far—only a capital T, which was presumably the beginning of the phrase “Thine is the kingdom and glory forever and ever.”
Amen, Lee thought, looking down at Kathy, her catching the early spring sunlight as it crept through the French lace curtains.
Silent Screams Page 34
