“That’s why I want you with me,” he confirmed. “You’re safer that way.”
“Safer from whom?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. They had been through this all before. Daniel, while clearly dangerous, was not a danger to her. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” She was slightly alarmed by his sudden concern.
For a nanosecond, he considered coming clean. Telling her all of it. Groucho’s visit to his apartment. The late-night phone call. The mustache on his pillow. But again, he held his tongue, not exactly sure why, although if he managed to frighten her into staying, that wasn’t exactly a bad thing.
When Czarcik didn’t answer her, Chloe posed another question. “Is it because of last night?”
He snorted condescendingly. “Last night was because of last night.” He paused, allowing her to grasp the seriousness. “This is about your safety.”
She continued brushing her hair. “I need to go home to Chicago.”
He wasn’t in the mood to argue with her. He could tell his ploy was futile; there was nothing he was going to say to convince her.
He was surprised how badly he wanted her to stay, regardless of whether or not she was actually in danger. And this frightened him more than anything about Daniel.
TWENTY-FIVE
Daniel wasn’t a religious man. He wasn’t before his illness and certainly not now.
He was aware, however, that being faced with one’s own mortality turned many secular men to God. But Daniel thought, like a child first discovering the inconstancies of faith, that if God was so great—or even just a little bit compassionate—he never would have allowed him to get sick in the first place.
His atheism didn’t preclude spirituality. Far from it. Throughout his life, he had taken profound pleasure in higher powers. They were just of the more worldly variety. The ocean’s fury. A mountain’s permanence. A city’s sprawling scope. He was struck by the grandiose, whether forged by nature or by the hands of man. Ayn Rand by way of Thoreau.
Was this the catalyst for his actions, even more than the tumor itself? He didn’t know, which was both his curse and his saving grace.
But now, at death’s door, Daniel longed for transcendence. He stood on a stone ledge, staring up into the maelstrom. Nearly fifty feet above him, Eagle Creek spilled over a ledge of granite and crashed into the Cumberland River.
Daniel was completely naked. His clothes were scattered around him on the rock. Privacy wasn’t an issue. Any hikers were probably at the nearby and better known Cumberland Falls. And even if they stumbled upon him, he didn’t care. Because right now, he couldn’t imagine anything more sublime.
He had been on his way to Tennessee when he was forced to pull over. The pain had been so excruciating he could barely see the road ahead. He had slowly made his way off the highway at the very next exit. That was when he spotted the sign for this place. Something about it called out to him. Something all the pills, treatments, and panaceas couldn’t fix.
Now, as he stood as natural as God intended, he momentarily forgot about the army of abnormal cells attacking his brain.
The water was cold and hard and almost painful. The perfect salve.
Daniel spread his arms toward the sky. Leaned backward. Inviting the cascade to wash over him. To wash away his pain.
He ran his fingers through his hair, marveling at the feeling. He wiped the droplets of water away from his eyes and looked down at his hands. The water was a sickly brown color.
He gasped in fear, then thought about the ramifications. What did it matter? The worst this could portend was death, to which he was already resigned. Part of him still recoiled at his body’s deterioration.
He watched the dirty water stain his hands and then laughed out loud. Another of his body’s systems wasn’t failing. It was just the hair dye washing out, returning his dark locks to their natural color.
Oh, how he would have loved to be holding Chloe under that water. Embracing her body as the goose bumps warmed under the touch of his fingers. He would run his lips across her neck, then chew lightly on her earlobe. When they were younger, this had driven her wild. He thought about all the little details he cherished. The little hollow just below her throat. The way her hip bone protruded slightly when she would reach for an item on her nightstand. The soft blond hairs at the bottom of her tailbone. All of it indubitably her.
Daniel knew he had been a fool to believe that this detective, Czarcik, might have understood him. Understood that he was doing God’s work. The work of Lady Justice. Of Travis Bickle. “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” He thought they were compatriots. Maybe.
Driving through the bluegrass, before the debilitating pain had forced him off the highway, Daniel had wondered to himself whether he could really kill the detective in cold blood. Could he snuff out the life of an innocent—relatively speaking—man in order to ensure he could avenge so many others?
He stepped back, out from underneath the direct trajectory of the falls, until just the spray washed over him, and ruminated on the question. There was historical precedent, of course. On a grand scale, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many millions of lives had the vaporization of a few thousand saved?
Daniel lowered his head and watched as the water dripped down his face and fell into the pool below. It was so dark. Dark and beautiful. Timeless, eternal.
Jimson, Tennessee, was unaccustomed to such fuss. But ready or not, its close-up was now at hand.
Founded as a mill town in the second half of the nineteenth century—a snuff mill town to be precise—its fortunes had risen and fallen with the health of the industry on which it was built. Since the Second World War, Jimson had been in a downward spiral. The nearby city of Chattanooga had stolen most of its residents with the promise of both employment and a more exciting life. The growing suburbs had pilfered the rest.
Jimson was left to die of neglect, like so many other forgotten towns on the Hiwassee River.
Over half a century later, a curious phenomenon began to take root. The burned-out mills, once home to flying rodents and other opportunistic vermin, found new life as craft breweries. Grand old homes that had been abandoned rather than sold because there was no market for them were suddenly prime real estate. “Fixer-uppers,” the local real estate agents would tell wealthy young buyers from Nashville and Memphis. An Esso gas station was transformed into a market for locally sourced meat and produce, and a foundry became a warehouse for high-end baby furniture.
According to the full-color brochure now available in every municipal building, shop, and restaurant, road trippers were encouraged to spend the day in a “charming town of yesteryear filled with all the modern flourishes of today—home to a wine bar, two antique shops, and one of the most acclaimed farm-to-table restaurants in the South.”
What the brochure didn’t advertise was that Jimson was also home to America’s most prolific rapist.
Father Andrew Dyer was accustomed to being shipped all across the country. Since the midseventies, when he tasted his first child, a seven-year-old boy he lured into the rectory with promises of hard candy, he had been shuttled from parish to parish, from diocese to diocese, from city to city, whenever allegations of his “predilections”—which is how the Church-appointed psychologist referred to them—were brought to the attention of the local authorities.
It was a nice and easy racket, run like clockwork. There would be an accusation, the boy’s parents would be told that their son must be mistaken and warned against bearing false witness, and Dyer would be moved to another place to carry out the will of God.
The only problem was that Dyer didn’t believe in God and had become a priest because it gave him access to young boys. It wasn’t until Milwaukee in the early aughts that the wheels really came off.
A documentary filmmaker rounded up a bunch of Dyer’s accusers. All had similar stories, all passed a polygraph, and all, now in their forties, were no longer content
to remain silent. After the film aired, premiering on HBO and then running weekly for nearly six months on MSNBC, dozens of other victims came forward.
At first, the Church obfuscated, equivocated, and stonewalled. Then when the breadth of Dyer’s crimes became impossible to deny, officials blamed a single fallen priest, not an institutional failing endemic to their chosen calling. They also tried to paint the accusers as either bitter lapsed Catholics with a grudge against the Church or as mentally unstable apostates. The Catholic League predictably rallied around the Church, arguing that no other religion would have been so erroneously persecuted in modern-day America.
In the end, the Church’s insurance company paid out nearly $80 million to the survivors. Some were thrilled at the settlement; others called it hush money. The only ones really punished, however, were the shareholders of Midwest Mutual.
Once it became clear that Father Dyer was going to escape any form of prosecution for reasons as capricious as an embarrassingly short statute of limitations, one of his victims, a former altar boy named Jimmy O’Bannon, tracked him down to a cushy retirement community and tried to put a bullet in his brain.
Unfortunately, O’Bannon was a longtime junkie who wasn’t fit to hold a conversation, much less a high-powered revolver, and he only succeeded in shooting a nurse in the leg before being subdued by the orderlies.
The retirement community, previously unaware of Dyer’s history, quickly determined they didn’t want an unrepentant pederast in their midst, so they released him to the authority of the Church. The Church, which by this time just wanted the whole ordeal to go away so they could continue to fill their pews and coffers, shipped him off to his current home in Jimson. The father-in-law of the organist at the local church owned the house and agreed to rent it to Father Dyer for next to nothing. To serve his fellow man was (almost) payment enough, he claimed.
On this day, Father Dyer woke up feeling so well that he thought it might be safe to detach his oxygen, at least for an hour or so. Fifty years of heavy smoking had left him with emphysema. Every time one of his victims sent him a letter—or nowadays, an email—wishing him an agonizing death, he would think, Your prayers have been answered.
The priest got out of bed, his old bones creaking like the floorboards under his feet, and slowly made his way to the front door. He stepped out onto the porch and bent down for the newspaper, delivered hours before by a nice dark-skinned boy with a strong work ethic. Years ago, Father Dyer might have invited him in for milk and cookies. But nowadays, he didn’t mess with those boys. He wasn’t prejudiced. Far from it. He loved the look of their young black bodies. But their parents weren’t worth the hassle. No matter what, those parents didn’t blame their own children. They’d blame him, and him only. And they would seek retribution faster than you could skin a cat.
Dyer picked up his paper, straightened up to the usual harmony of crackles and pops, and found himself staring into the eyes of a very intense gentleman.
“Don’t worry, Father. No need to rack your brain,” the visitor assured him, reading the priest’s mind. “I’m not one of the many you’ve raped over the years.”
Dyer knew that nothing good could ever come of projecting weakness. “What can I help you with, my son?” he asked.
The visitor laughed. “Actually, you dirty old lecher, I’m here to help you.”
The entire house smelled of piss. Of piss, old deli meat, and fetid water, the kind that might accumulate in the catch tray of a broken humidifier.
That was Czarcik’s first thought as he sat across the cheap wooden kitchen table from Dyer, looking into his eyes.
His second thought was that he could easily snap the priest’s birdlike neck before the man knew what happened.
Father Dyer was slumped in his chair, plastic tubing running into both nostrils. The pathetic spectacle didn’t imbue Czarcik with sympathy. In fact, he had an urge to throw the old priest to the floor, put a boot across his neck, and finish a cigarette as the light in his eyes dimmed to nothingness.
Czarcik had long since stopped trying for justice on behalf of the victims. The futility of it was deadening. And yet, watching Father Dyer just sit there, as if he had the same right to freedom as Czarcik himself, infuriated the detective.
“Father, I have a confession,” Czarcik said, trying to contain himself. The priest nodded, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “I’m having a hard time understanding why you’re not the least bit worried that I might reach across this table and choke you to death.”
Father Dyer opened his yellow, cataract-clouded eyes. “Because you would have done it already. Those with true urges can’t contain themselves. Trust me, I know.”
“Don’t you dare compare my restraint to your sickness.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that, Detective. But we both have compulsions, do we not? I need boys. Young boys. You need to catch demons. Yours is just socially acceptable, no matter your methods.”
Czarcik tried to figure out whether there was some twisted logic to the priest’s argument and realized there wasn’t. He leaned across the table. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he removed the cigarette from his lips and poked the air as he spoke. “Father, I’m seriously considering letting him have you. And I promise, in your wildest dreams of penance, you can’t imagine the hell he’ll put you through.”
Father Dyer sucked on his oxygen tube like a smoker savoring a final cigarette. Unfortunately, Czarcik didn’t think he seemed particularly nervous. Maybe, after managing to get away with his crimes for so long, he had some sense of invincibility.
“You keep referring to this man,” Dyer said. “You say I haven’t wronged him, nor anyone in his family. And yet he intends to kill me. Horribly in fact. I’d like to know why.”
He spoke the last sentence with such entitlement that, again, Czarcik was forced to make a concerted effort not to strike him.
“Why isn’t remotely important. What’s important is that he not only intends to kill you, he will kill you if you don’t do exactly what I say. You’re not dealing with a broken man who wants revenge for you diddling him in the confessional. You’re dealing with a killing machine who will reduce you to a shivering piece of meat. Are you understanding me?”
Father Dyer looked as if he could be a part of the house itself. Not a human being inhabiting it, but a fixture, no different from the filthy rugs, peeling wallpaper, or corroded pipes. He could die here, and nobody would know; the house would simply consume him. Eventually, a cleanup crew would find his bones picked clean by various scavengers.
Finally, he spoke, the house come to life. “Why do you want to help me, Detective? You obviously detest me.”
Czarcik knew this answer so well he wasn’t even aware when it escaped his lips. “It’s what I do.”
The priest inhaled. His chest rattled as if he had swallowed a bag of pennies, or carpenter nails. It was a sound no living thing should make. “What would you like from me?” he asked as if he was doing Czarcik a favor.
Czarcik took out a business card and flicked it across the table. It landed under the priest’s elbow. “I want you to keep the doors locked. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. And I want you to call me if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
There was a faraway look in Father Dyer’s eyes. He was remembering things that Czarcik didn’t even want to imagine. Slowly, enunciating every syllable, he said, “Nothing about this is ordinary.”
Both men knew the priest was speaking of things other than his current predicament.
Czarcik got up from the table. His head throbbed. He needed something, something chemical, to neutralize the pain. He thought about lighting up a cigar, detaching the priest’s breathing tube from the oxygen canister, and blowing the smoke directly into it. But instead, he showed himself to the front door.
“Detective . . .” Czarcik stopped but didn’t turn around. “We’re not so different, you and I. I think that’s what bothers you most.”
Without acknowledging the voice behind him, Czarcik took the cigar from his breast pocket. He lit it, then blew the smoke into the air where it simply hung in an almost impossibly well-defined cloud.
“Father,” Czarcik began, “I will do my best to protect you. But if I fail . . .” He paused and took another deep pull of the cigar. “I hope he kills you slow.”
The night was unseasonably cool. Czarcik waited in the car, with the window open, at the end of Father Dyer’s block.
From here he could see the priest’s front door and the entire west side of his house. Although it was possible for Daniel to come in cold, Czarcik was convinced that he would first do some rudimentary reconnaissance. Drive up and down the street. Maybe even take a stroll with a newspaper. Get a lay of the land and really try to understand the pulse of the neighborhood. After all, that’s what Czarcik would have done.
The only light in the car came from the tip of Czarcik’s cigar. Killing time, he blew thick rings into the still air, savoring the taste of the burning Connecticut wrapper. Although the quiet thrill of a stakeout had long ceased to excite him, as he’d gotten older, he had begun to appreciate more and more the simplicity of inertia.
Over the next few hours, a handful of cars drove up and down the street. A few pulled into adjacent homes, the rest passed through. None stopped, slowed, or paid him any mind. He stared at his phone, alone in the passenger seat, trying to will it to ring. Finally, when the wait became unbearable, he picked it up and dialed her number.
She answered almost immediately and didn’t try to hide her concern. “Where are you?”
He almost hung up. Like when he was a teenager and finally got up the nerve to call a girl, only to have her actually answer.
“In Tennessee. I’m watching the priest’s house.” He paused to gauge her reaction. She said nothing in return. “Where are you?” he asked.
“In bed,” she answered, without a hint of subtext. “I was tired from the drive.”
Rain Will Come Page 22
