The professor felt queasy, as if he could vomit at any moment. His leg, drenched with blood, was numb. I’m in shock, he thought to himself.
He turned his head, which was resting on the dashboard, and looked at Czarcik. “Why me? Why after all this time?” he asked.
It was his first genuine reaction since Czarcik had accosted him. The first time he wasn’t trying to rationalize or justify.
“Because ever since I saw your daughter’s face in the newspaper, I haven’t been able to sleep. She haunts my dreams.”
“That bitch,” the professor said. He closed his eyes and turned away from Czarcik. When he heard the driver-side door open, then close, he flinched, but didn’t look back.
Czarcik walked away from the car, the gun at his side. An unlit cigarette in his mouth. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches. Ran a match against the flint with his thumb. Lit the cigarette.
Back in the car, the professor thought he had been given a reprieve. They’ll find me. If I can only last the night, they’ll find me, he thought.
Czarcik took a drag, dropped the cigarette to the dusty ground, and snuffed it out. He raised his gun, leveled it, aimed.
The bullet struck the gas tank.
A fireball exploded into the still night air as the agonizing screams of someone being burned alive echoed through the abandoned wasteland.
The next night, for the first time in years, Czarcik slept like a baby.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Czarcik needed to get from Tennessee to Olmstead, Florida, home to Crystal Lake Ranch, a reform school for boys the system had given up on, as quickly as possible.
He considered taking a plane, as Chloe had done, but with the ticket purchase, airport security, and all the other hassles air travel entailed, he figured it was probably just as fast to drive, an almost straight shot down I-75.
He called Chloe once he was on the road. Told her when he was planning to arrive. She said she was going to find a motel close to Crystal Lake Ranch and wait for him.
Although he still had half a tank of gas remaining, he decided to stop at the nearest gas station. He figured he should eat, even if he wasn’t hungry. Food would metabolize the drug faster than water alone, and besides, he needed the energy.
A dishwater blond whose nametag read Me’Chelle watched him place a package of peppered beef jerky, a banana, and a lemon-lime Gatorade on the counter. He asked her for two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, which he hadn’t smoked for years. For what lay ahead, he needed the strong stuff. She found them behind the counter, scanned them, and bagged up all his items.
“I used to smoke those too,” she offered.
He paid with a credit card and took the bag from her.
“Good for you.” And he was back on the highway.
As volunteers gave way to peaches, the highway signage became more overtly religious. Catholic charities offered safe and confidential options for young women in need, while tiny congregations spent ungodly sums to warn motorists about the infernal dangers of aborting an unwanted fetus.
Some billboards displayed nothing more than a series of numbers. No text, but Czarcik figured anyone familiar enough would already know to which Bible verse they corresponded.
There were also an inordinate number of advertisements for alligator farms, although from the pictures on the signs, it was hard to determine which ones rescued and bred gators, and which ones slaughtered them for meat or clothing.
Having polished off a quart of Gatorade, Czarcik’s bladder was calling. Rather than lose time, he pulled over to the side of the road. As he stood there, pecker in hand, the steaming urine darkening the roadside dirt, he had an image of a massive semi plowing straight into his car. Like a scene out of a Stephen King novel, the possessed truck, animated by an ancient evil, would reduce the Crown Vic to a husk of burning metal before continuing on its quest to sow death and destruction along the blacktop.
Only a few cars drove by, however, giving him a wide berth. He zipped up and got back in the car.
As soon as he was again on his way, he called Chloe. “Where are you?” she asked him. He found it slightly disconcerting that they didn’t need to identify themselves. He blamed it on caller ID, not on their growing familiarity.
“I’ll be there before dark. Where are you?”
“At a Motel 6. Around a lot of people. Website says this is the most popular place to stay for tourists exploring the Everglades. It’s less than three miles from the reformatory.”
“Good . . .” He felt the need to say something.
“I’m scared, Paul,” Chloe admitted after a few seconds. “I can feel him. I know it sounds crazy, but I know he’s already here.”
“You just stay in your room. Stay in your room, and keep the door locked. You’ll be fine,” he reassured her, doing it badly. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He ended the call with nothing more to say.
At the gas station, he had taken the hollow can of shaving cream out of his bag. Now, while driving, he unscrewed the bottom and tapped some coke onto the side of his hand. Seconds later it was gone. He’d needed that. He needed to concentrate.
Something was bothering him, and he didn’t know what. After all, despite Daniel still being alive, Czarcik had been extraordinarily effective in tracking him. There had been no wrong moves on his part. Although Daniel had remained one step ahead, this was due to circumstance, not intuition. Czarcik had beaten him to Father Dyer’s house; he had just been unable to protect the priest.
Both his abilities and his reliance on Chloe had served him well thus far.
Chloe.
It was because of her that he was this close to Daniel. He accepted that. And yet, he still didn’t trust her. Not completely.
She had found the folders and delivered them right to the authorities. She had told him the truth about the insurance money. She had been accessible when needed, but hardly obtrusive.
Yet there it was. Doubt, which made no logical sense. And still he was unable to ignore it.
As soon as Czarcik hit the state line, he pressed harder on the gas, as if the arbitrary boundary somehow increased his urgency. He turned the radio to a local news station, but there was no mention of a massacre, or any disturbance, at Crystal Lake Ranch. With time to ruminate, Czarcik wondered whether he was making a mistake. Everything thus far had been linear, with only minor deviations from Daniel’s original plan. But now Daniel was aware he was being followed. True, he had still continued to Tennessee after the episode in the diner, but that was for a single man. This was something bigger. A lot bigger. The grand finale of his sprawling opera.
Then again, maybe this was the genius of it. He was a serial killer who exhibited none of the defining characteristics. While most mass murderers pined for recognition, Daniel accepted anonymity, even preferred it.
The radio melted into white noise. Real estate ads, Rays scores, deals for Walt Disney World and Busch Gardens. There was a shoot-out at a nearby trailer park, but the cops on the scene had already classified it as “gang related.”
The distance between strip malls grew as the first hint of the Everglades, with its distinctive foliage, came into view. Until now, Florida might as well have been New Jersey, or LA. Someone once described the entire state to Czarcik as a giant sponge with the Everglades in the middle. It was a description he now found apt.
Years ago, back in Chicago, following a tryst with an Asian escort when he was so high on coke and uppers that he was practically bouncing off the ceiling, he had tried to relax by watching a documentary on the flora and fauna of southern Florida. What he once assumed was nothing more than a vast wasteland of mangrove swamps and a dump zone for the Florida mob was in actuality one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. Home to a menagerie of colorful birds, endangered panthers, pythons, and a rodent the size of a small pig, which supposedly made for good eating. It was also the sole habitat of the Florida manatee, the gig
antic aquatic mammal that gave birth to the mermaid legend, and was a favorite feeding ground for bull sharks, one of the most aggressive shark species, which thought nothing of visiting freshwater estuaries to find a meal.
From the car, none of this was evident. The huge cypresses that bordered the road were excellent sentries. The highway was nothing more than an ugly scar, man’s incursion into God’s country.
His BlackBerry rang. He picked it up without looking and held it against his ear. “Almost there.”
“You want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Parseghian. His voice caught Czarcik completely off guard.
“Just doing my job, boss.” He tried to sound casual.
“Tell me you’re still in Illinois.” Czarcik didn’t answer. “Goddamn it, Paul,” said Parseghian. “I get a call from the lady sheriff of some Podunk county across the state line in Indiana. Seems they got a fucking bloodbath down there at some orphanage. They’re still trying to make heads or tails of what the fuck happened. She remembered talking to you. Said you just disappeared. She’s wondering if you might know anything that could help them.”
“OK.”
“OK? OK?” repeated Parseghian, incredulous. “You want to tell me what the fuck all this has to do with your case?”
The Motel 6 sign beckoned from above the tree line.
“Can’t right now, boss.”
A sigh. “Where are you, Paul?”
“Can’t tell you that either.”
“I could have Corrine trace the call.”
“Knock yourself out. I’ll be back in a few days.”
Czarcik ended the call and then pulled off the road into the parking lot of the Motel 6. His phone rang again. Parseghian. And then it kept ringing some more.
Chloe walked out of the motel office and across the gravel parking lot to meet him.
She kissed him firmly on the lips. “I was worried.” He nodded, then kissed her back.
“You got directions for me?”
She held up a piece of paper. “Only a few miles west of here. Maid at the motel said it’s a single road.”
“You know I don’t want you coming.”
She smiled. “And you know I couldn’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you. Not again. Not now.”
He knew there was no use arguing. “You ready now?”
She nodded. But she didn’t look it.
As he was driving, Chloe took the cigarette from between his fingers and took a drag.
He looked at her. “Since when do you smoke?”
She shrugged. “I don’t. But I really needed that.”
“Were you able to get on the internet at the motel?”
“I was.”
“Find anything interesting?”
She shrugged again. “Nothing that wasn’t in the file. Paul, this place is evil. There have been hundreds of complaints over the years. And not just the usual stuff you hear about in juvenile-detention facilities. We’re talking torture, solitary confinement, assaults, maybe even murder. I mean, if I wasn’t a cynic before . . . Investigations have never proved anything. Witnesses won’t talk, or they disappear. It’s like East Germany.”
“It’s worse. It’s Florida.”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
Fire. His brain was on fire. Just last night, for the first time, he had soiled himself as he lay in his motel bed. He would not let that happen again.
This was the point at which he knew he should be taking stock of his life. But he had already taken care of that months ago. To do so now would seem almost . . . indulgent. He wasn’t sure that was the right word. And then, the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was absolutely perfect.
He wished he had the answer for the question that everybody would want to know: How much were his actions the result of a purely physiological condition, and how much was choice?
But he didn’t have the answer. Or if he did, he was in no condition to retrieve it.
The best answer, he thought, was the second half of that Robert Frost poem.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Czarcik slammed on the brakes. Walking along the side of the road was a young boy—fifteen at the most—wearing standard-issue reformatory pants and no shirt. He looked dazed. Czarcik pulled up and rolled down the window. He leaned across Chloe to talk.
“You OK, son?” The kid looked right through Czarcik. “It’s OK. I’m a police officer.” Czarcik realized how ridiculous he sounded considering where the kid had come from. “You want to tell me what happened?”
The kid scratched his head. He didn’t appear injured. He didn’t even appear particularly frightened. What he did appear was completely and utterly confused.
“There was some shooting, man. Lots of screaming and lots of shooting. And then they came. The guards. And started letting us all out.” He looked at Czarcik, and his eyes focused for the first time. “Letting us out.” It was as if he wanted Czarcik to explain it to him. Then he continued walking down the road.
Czarcik turned to Chloe. Neither one of them said anything. They drove on.
The enormous and immaculately maintained lawn in front of Crystal Lake Ranch looked like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead.
Hundreds of boys wandered aimlessly around the grounds. A handful of guards were there but looked as if they didn’t know what to do either. There were a couple of fights, which no one seemed interested in breaking up, and a few boys lying facedown on the grass, either unconscious or dead.
A small dirt road, big enough for a single vehicle, hugged the west side of the lawn and led up to the ranch’s main building.
Czarcik pulled to a stop. He pointed his finger at Chloe. “Stay here in the car, and keep the doors locked. And don’t argue with me.” He took his gun from the holster and handed it to Chloe. “You know how to use this?”
“Just point and pull the trigger?”
“Exactly. But only if someone tries to get in. Otherwise, just sit tight. I’ll be back soon. But if they do . . . don’t think twice.”
She nodded. “What about you?”
He reached over and popped the glove compartment. Inside was an untraceable revolver. “I’ll be fine.”
The air smelled of madness. There was no other way to describe it.
On the steps leading up to the main building sat a young black man, seventeen or eighteen years old. In his hands he held a wooden nightstick, dripping with blood.
At his feet, sprawled out on the steps, arms and legs twisted at wrong angles, was a middle-aged man in an officer’s uniform. The entire left side of his head was caved in. Blood and bits of hair everywhere.
The young man looked up as Czarcik approached. “He raped me. And his buddies raped me. And the chick guard raped me with her nightstick because, well, you know . . .” He didn’t seem angry. Or sorry. Just . . . lost.
Czarcik nodded in quiet understanding and walked up the few steps to the main door. “I wouldn’t go in there,” the young man called out to him.
Czarcik motioned to the building with his gun. “What’s in there?”
“Hell,” he replied.
When he opened the door, the smell inside was easy to discern. It was the distinct and overpowering scent of gasoline. The room reeked of it.
And as soon as Czarcik stepped inside, he saw why.
There were a dozen guards, ten men and two women. They were all completely naked and spread out equidistantly around the room.
He couldn’t figure out why they were all just standing there, until he noticed that each of them was standing inside a circle of gasoline. On closer inspection, they had all been thoroughly doused. The women’s hair was soaked. The liquid dripped off their bod
ies, from their breasts to their feet.
All the circles were connected to each other by a line of gasoline.
“Who the fuck are you? Help us!” screamed one of the guards as Czarcik entered the room.
Another guard cried out, “He said if any of us move, if any of us try to escape, we all go up like candles.”
Czarcik tried to reassure them with his calm demeanor. “Where is he?”
A female guard pointed to a door in the back of the room. “He took the warden in there about half an hour ago. We heard screaming.”
Czarcik followed the trail of gasoline that led to the back office. Daniel wasn’t fooling around. One dropped match, and a river of fire would engulf the building and turn everyone inside into human torches.
He reached for the doorknob, trying not to step in the gasoline pooled underneath the door. “Daniel, it’s Czarcik. Don’t shoot. I’m coming in . . .”
The warden didn’t look good.
He was probably in his late fifties—closely cropped, steel-gray hair, Stalinesque mustache, pale-blue eyes.
But this wasn’t why he didn’t look good. He didn’t look good because his left hand was missing all its fingers.
They were on the ground in front of him in a pool of blood, but not a pool as big as Czarcik would have expected. Then he saw why. Daniel was holding a small blowtorch; he had cauterized each of the finger stumps after removing the digit.
The warden was tied to a chair, his injured arm hanging listlessly at his side. Minus fingers, it looked weird. Like the thalidomide hand of a boy with whom Czarcik was friends in elementary school.
Czarcik looked at Daniel and shook his head. “My god, Daniel. The fuck did you do?” Gestured around. “This is not revenge. This is . . . chaos.”
As he waited for a response, he realized Daniel didn’t look good either. His eyes were shadowed and seemed to have retreated deeper into his skull, like two caves. He appeared thinner than he’d seemed in Tennessee, if that was possible. And his skin looked bad. Waxy. Like a mannequin’s.
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