In the car next to him, a fan wearing a plastic construction hat, emblazoned with the Brewers’ retro ball-and-mitt logo, rolled down his window, screamed, and shook his fist at Czarcik in solidarity.
Czarcik gave him the finger.
The fan recoiled, shocked, as the driver of his automobile sped off, unaware of the exchange.
Czarcik pulled up in front of his apartment building after night had fallen. Storm clouds had marshaled over the lake, debating whether to advance on the city or disperse over the horizon.
Although the evening was cool and Czarcik had driven most of the way with the windows open, his back was still a sheet of water, as he had been in the same position for the better part of six hours.
His body cracked at every flexion point as he stretched, standing on his tiptoes, reaching for the full moon overhead. He needed a good long workout. Getting older was a son of a bitch. He reached into the back seat, grabbed the hard drive that Riley had given him, and shut and locked the door.
His apartment smelled stale, as if he had been gone for a week or even longer.
Worse, he couldn’t shake the uncanny but irrational feeling that since Groucho’s visit, his house was no longer truly his own.
Ridiculous. He was just exhausted. But as desperately as he needed sleep, he also knew he had to work quickly. If he could determine that Daniel had never been to the rest stop, and therefore never targeted Edgar Barnes, then the entire time line would be useless. On the other hand, if Daniel had sought out the trucker, as the security camera would confirm, then Czarcik’s hunch was still accurate. But if it was, the question remained: Why had Daniel not finished the job?
Czarcik was getting ahead of himself.
He powered up his laptop, which was loaded with an image-stripping program. The concept was simple. The user fed various data—words, pictures, numbers, coordinates—into a modified search engine. The software would then match this input with similar data from a video feed. It was how investigators were able to so quickly identify how many times suspected bank robbers staked out a branch. Just upload mug shots of the assholes, and let the computer cull through thousands of hours of video at the speed of light.
Before connecting the terabyte drive to his laptop with a USB 3.0 cord, Czarcik poured himself a drink. Cutty, neat. Just like a glass of warm milk. He allowed his lids to rest as the images from the truck stop flew by on his screen. The program ran silently in the background, its millions of virtual eyes on high alert.
Just as Czarcik was about to slip into that fleeting state of consciousness—not sleep, but not wakefulness either, when thoughts became confused and reality malleable—he was jostled by a loud beeping.
The software had a hit.
There on the screen, the image paused, was good old DAM 347. Czarcik moved his cursor over the image and clicked the mouse. The footage played in real time. On the screen, Daniel’s Lexus pulled into the truck stop and drove out of the camera’s field of view.
Sure enough, Daniel had been there.
Czarcik let his head drop onto the desk. It hit the wood hard, though not hard enough to draw blood, but he was too tired to care.
So he allowed himself to sleep, queuing up the lingering mystery with the hope that his subconscious might gift him the answer by the time he awakened.
Why hadn’t Daniel finished the job?
NINETEEN
Czarcik woke four hours later, inexplicably and completely refreshed.
It was a phenomenon he first noticed in high school, when he would stay out all night drinking beer with his friends. He had no idea whether this phenomenon occurred with everyone or it was a biological quirk specific to him, but without fail, the more exhausted he was, the less sleep he needed to recover.
The process seemed counterintuitive. People were always babbling on about how they were so tired they managed to sleep for ten or twelve hours straight. Not Czarcik. When he reached the point of complete and utter exhaustion, when sleep wasn’t a desire but a physiological imperative, he only needed a few hours to recharge.
And recharged he was. He rubbed his face where the wood from his table had made a deep indentation, stood up, and stretched.
In the kitchen, he powered up the coffee maker and began to brew a pot without changing the filter. Drank it black and hot. Walked to the bathroom to freshen up, and estimated how long it would take him to reach rural Indiana.
It was still early in the morning, before rush hour. If he could make it out of the city and over the Skyway before the daily madness began, he could probably be there in three hours.
Now was not the time to second-guess himself.
Czarcik was certain that Indiana was the next stop on Daniel Langdon’s 2018 Cross-Country Slaughter Tour. But why was it taking him so long? Over a week had passed since his car had pulled in to the Walter Mondale Rest Area.
And again, the niggling question: Why had Daniel allowed Edgar Barnes to escape? Could he still be in Minnesota, waiting? Revenge being a dish best served cold?
That didn’t make sense. According to Mona Travers, Barnes had been home recently. And even if Daniel didn’t want to kill the trucker in his own home, the time frame provided him plenty of opportunities to follow him to another locale. But would he take the time to follow Barnes all the way across the country? To Denver or even San Diego? As Czarcik had learned from Chloe, time was one thing that Daniel Langdon didn’t have.
So many unanswered questions.
He did a bump of coke and lit up a cigarette.
Czarcik contemplated calling Miriam Manor and telling Reverend Seamus Bradley—or whomever answered the phone—to be alert for any suspicious activity.
He wasn’t worried about them fleeing in panic. From what he had read, the cult—and that’s what it was, a cult, not a religious boarding school—seldom left their compound. Once in a blue moon the girls would be taken to a fine establishment like Shoney’s or Golden Corral, just so the reverend could tell the parents of any future residents that their daughter’s stay would be filled with similar recreational outings.
What he was worried about was the safety of the girls. But then he recalled Chloe’s story about her husband’s unwillingness to adopt. Someone so concerned about his ability to properly love a child not biologically his would take every precaution to ensure no harm would come to the girls of Miriam Manor.
And although it was Czarcik’s job to protect the reverend and his family, too, he didn’t think a couple of hours would make a difference. He wanted the element of surprise, which was far more important for his ultimate goal—stopping Daniel.
He didn’t need any additional cocaine for the drive. He was now well rested enough that coffee alone would get him through. Just to be safe, however, he stashed a gram in a hollowed-out mini shaving cream canister that he kept in his Dopp kit.
The road was slick with dew, and Czarcik was careful not to spill his coffee as he walked over to the Crown Vic. He placed the mug on the roof of the vehicle and opened the door.
As if he were in a sitcom, the coffee slid across the roof, down the windshield, and all over the hood. The mug bounced off the tire, onto the ground, and somehow didn’t shatter. “Motherfucker!” Czarcik kicked the mug in anger against the curb. This time it did shatter. Across the street, a woman walking her dog glared at him. He glared back and bared his teeth. She hurried along.
Fuck the coffee. Just get on the highway and go, he said to himself.
Coffee. No coffee. None of it mattered.
What Detective Paul Czarcik could never have known was that by the time he had been asleep for two hours the night before, into his second cycle of REM sleep, it was already too late.
Across the Chicago Skyway, past the belching factories of Gary, into God’s—or the Devil’s, depending on your predilection—country, and finally into the sleepy and sleeping hamlet of Bridgeport, Daniel Langdon had arrived.
Daniel sat in his car, parked in the deserted lot of a long-ago-aba
ndoned asbestos factory.
The car was as dark as the windows of the factory. They looked like the dead eyes of prisoners, rows and rows of them, peering out from inside their cells. A few of the windows were broken, and the moonlight glinted off the glass shards, giving the appearance of life.
From his vantage point, Daniel could see the entire south side of Miriam Manor. He didn’t need to use the military binoculars that rested on his thigh.
The compound occupied about five acres of land. The main building, a low-slung concrete structure, held the girls. According to the stories he had printed from the internet, there were probably thirty to forty of them at any given time.
As a private facility, not operating under the guidelines established by the Indiana Board of Education, Miriam Manor was under no obligation to disclose to anyone just how many “students” were currently enrolled. Or being held prisoner. As long as the building met the fire code and was up to health department standards, the school could operate with impunity.
A newer addition connected to the main building was home to Reverend Bradley and his family. Constructed badly, out of cheap materials, the structure had been built a few years after Miriam Manor was founded.
The staff ladies stayed in the main building with the girls, although they had their own shared room.
On the south side, where Daniel waited, the property line was defined by a narrow brook that curved along the eastern flank until it petered out into a large sewer pipe. The western edge butted up against the backyards of modern homes, complete with decks, swing sets, tree houses, and barbeque pits. Daniel wondered what these seemingly normal residents thought upon gazing over their back fence and seeing a squadron of young girls, wearing long dresses no matter the weather, working the land like indentured servants.
The front of Miriam Manor was colonial, if only by default, as secular concerns such as design and architecture had no place in the cult’s belief system. A long dirt road—really just a county highway—wound its way from the front porch to the main road.
There was no need for gates or fences. These broken girls would never attempt to escape. The threat of eternal damnation, beaten into them daily, was stronger than their thirst for freedom.
The entire compound was dark. Lights out for the girls was ten o’clock, no exceptions, and the reverend, his family, and the staff ladies usually turned in soon after. Not even a single bulb remained lit. Should a frightened girl awake in the middle of the night and need to relieve herself, she would have to wait until morning. And if by chance she wet the bed, as many of the young ladies were prone to do as a result of nerves, malnourishment, and sexual abuse, she could look forward to a morning beating followed by laundry duty where she had to handwash the soiled undergarments of the other residents.
The saga of Miriam Manor, mostly firsthand accounts from former students and staff, was voluminous. Daniel had needed days to read through them all.
What he was most concerned about was the presence of so many innocent women, children really. He had to be even more thorough than usual with his preparations so none of them would get hurt or, God forbid, killed.
For days he had scoured the property from every angle and perspective imaginable. He knew its rhythms better than he knew his own.
As companionship during these interminably long stakeouts, Daniel had downloaded some of the reverend’s sermons. Most of it was the usual religious drivel preached from pulpits all across the country—part inspiring, part chastising, all of it contradictory and hypocritical.
Then he came across one called “A Harlot’s Repentance.” The gist of the sermon was that any woman who had been abused, especially sexually, should look into her heart to better understand the reasons for her assault and to ask forgiveness in the eyes of the Lord. The reverend related a particular story about a female parishioner of his, when he was still active in quasi-mainstream churches, who was accosted by a pickup truck full of local boys while walking home from a school dance. They dragged her into the woods and took her innocence unnaturally—as he put it—with both their bodies and nearby tree branches. The girl had nearly bled to death before her mother, worried because she hadn’t returned, went out to look for her daughter and found her crawling along the side of the road.
The distraught girl had of course blamed the boys for her ordeal. She wanted to go to the police to press charges until she met with the reverend, who convinced her that walking alone at night dressed in a short skirt was all the permission the boys needed. Who did she think she was to deny the urges put into the hearts of men by the hand of God?
Although the girl could never regain her innocence, she was saved, according to the reverend, after accepting Jesus and begging forgiveness of the boys. So sayeth He. The reverend had paused there, allowing his congregants to bask in His grace.
Later in the sermon, there was a bizarre interlude in which the reverend spoke about siblings laying down with siblings. At that moment, Daniel knew that the reverend fucked his own daughters. He had again felt the bile rising in his throat, burning his esophagus. He rolled down the window and spit the acidic sputum onto the dirt.
Unless the residents of Miriam Manor played musical chairs, or beds, every night—highly unlikely considering how regimented everything was—Daniel knew exactly where everyone was. He had been in the compound the night before, a benign dry run, to make sure everything would go down as planned. Risky but necessary.
He had gained entry into the main building through an unlocked storm door that led down into the basement. There was no alarm. Most homes, especially ones that catered to children, were designed to keep danger out. Miriam Manor was built explicitly to keep people in. The absence of an alarm reinforced just how completely the wills of the girls had been broken.
One of the few newspaper articles that had been written about Miriam Manor told a story about one girl who mustered the courage to escape. She managed to make it to the county sheriff. Bloody and beaten, weak from exposure and dehydration, she pleaded with the sheriff for assistance. A few hours later, she was delivered back to Reverend Bradley—her current legal guardian—who had immediately contacted the sheriff upon her escape, completely devastated that one of his wayward girls might be lost and confused. The following week, the girl’s parents received a phone call. Their daughter had been killed in a freak farming accident. There was no autopsy. The reverend had counseled against it. Such desecration of the body, created in His image, would be an affront to the Lord.
So as not to arouse any undue suspicion, Daniel hadn’t cut the telephone line on his reconnaissance mission. He planned to wait for the next night. It would only take a few seconds, and he had already identified where the single wire ran into the compound from the wooden telephone pole in the street.
From the dank basement, Daniel had ascended the steps—making sure they could support his weight—to the first floor, which housed the girls and the staff ladies.
The sleeping quarters were as expected. The girls were packed like sardines into a combination of bunk beds and single mattresses on the floor with no frames or box springs. Although he knew it was an inappropriate comparison, Daniel’s mind had flashed to the blueprints of slave ships he remembered from history books, where men considered mere chattel were crammed into the belly of a vessel for a transatlantic trip to hell.
In the adjacent room, through a doorless arch, slept the three staff ladies. Here Daniel had decided to diverge from his original plan. He had always planned to kill them. Painlessly, most likely with a single gunshot, but kill them nonetheless. But he increasingly had second thoughts. Although these women were adults, they were also stuck in some strange, perpetual adolescence. All had been raised in extremely religious and undoubtedly abusive households, where they had been inundated with the same poisonous rhetoric preached by the reverend. To them, being plucked from obscurity and given a purpose under the exalted auspices of Reverend Bradley would have been like being handed the ball in the nin
th inning of the World Series. An opportunity you didn’t squander. An opportunity you embraced with every fiber of your being. They would no sooner question his authority than spit in the face of God.
So while blind devotion didn’t necessarily absolve them of their sins, Daniel decided to consider the extenuating circumstances and show mercy. Their real penance would be their joyless, loveless lives.
Right off the main room was a locked wooden door that provided access to the addition where Reverend Bradley and his family lived. From what Daniel could tell, the family now consisted of just three children: thirty-year-old Roger, twenty-eight-year-old Sarah, and twenty-six-year-old Clarice. He recognized them from their photos in the Miriam Manor recruitment pamphlets he had studied. Each slept in their own room. Each was old enough to know better. Although they were under the absolute control of their father, and on occasion even incurred his wrath, they also took their own personal pleasure in meting out abuse. The girls had told countless stories of being alone with a Bradley child, far from the prying eyes of the reverend, only to be subjected to the same merciless torment.
Tiptoeing down to the far end of the hallway, Daniel had silently turned the knob on the door that led to the marriage bed of Reverend and Mrs. Seamus Bradley. The reverend was sleeping on his back, his white hair still perfectly coiffed, wearing some kind of old-school pajama getup, the kind people wore in silent, black-and-white movies whenever there was a scene of someone getting woken up in the middle of the night. In fact, Daniel was certain the only reason he wasn’t wearing a goofy sleeping cap was because it might mess up his hair, of which he was obviously very proud. The reverend’s hands were folded across his chest, and his snores were punctuated with an annoying whistle.
On her stomach, her long, unkempt hair spilling around her like some sinuous squid, was his morbidly obese wife, Dorothy. She also snored, although hers were of the more traditional, slovenly variety. The snort of a pig combined with the hacking cough of a longtime smoker.
Rain Will Come Page 16
