Rain Will Come

by Holgate, Thomas

  Daniel tried to wet his mouth. It was hard for him to speak. “You know what this man has done. What his subordinates have done. You’ve read the stories. Even if only a fraction of it were true . . .”

  Czarcik pointed the gun away from Daniel and held up his hands. A gesture of surrender. “Daniel, listen to me. The other ones . . . the judge was a piece of shit. The Fernandezes deserved to die. So did Father Dyer. Many times over. Between me and you, between me and you, Daniel, in some ways you’re a hero. Because we both know that the system wasn’t going to punish those motherfuckers like they deserved to be punished.” He paused. Looked around, disgusted. “But this . . . this isn’t justice. This is mass murder.”

  Daniel smiled. “A rose by any other name . . .”

  At that moment Czarcik realized that Daniel was no longer fully sane.

  The warden moaned softly. Drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. Czarcik looked at the warden, then back up at Daniel. He had tried logic, threats, sophistry, and a little of the old reverse psychology. Now he looked into Daniel’s eyes and tried one final approach. “Daniel, I’m begging you. For Chloe, please don’t do this.”

  Daniel stiffened. He fought back tears. He held the blowtorch over the line of gasoline that led to the main room. “Make sure my story is told. Let the world know why. Only you can do that.” He swallowed hard. “And tell my wife I love her.”

  Czarcik knew this was the end. He watched as Daniel tried to light the blowtorch.

  And then he leveled his gun and blew Daniel’s brains—along with the tumor—right through the back of his skull.

  For a moment, after the echo of the gunshot faded into nothing, there was silence.

  Then screaming from the other room. The naked corrections officers had no idea what the fuck was going on. Just that someone had been shot.

  Daniel hadn’t managed to light the blowtorch—or the screaming would have been much, much louder—and now it just sat there, a lump of cold metal, in the pool of gasoline.

  The warden began to cry. Halting, snot-filled sobs. He looked down at his hand. “That son of a bitch . . . he maimed me.”

  Czarcik looked down at the man. In the warden’s eyes, he was the cavalry. An ordinary cop who had arrived to save the day. “All those things this lunatic was saying, what was he talking about?”

  “Fucking people don’t know what it means to run a jail,” the warden said. He ran his remaining hand across his nose, wiping away the snot. “These aren’t kids, they’re animals. And you need to treat them like animals. Fucking people don’t understand that.” His strength was slowly returning. Anger was replacing fear, now that his life was no longer in imminent danger.

  But the warden was wrong about that.

  He just didn’t realize how wrong until Czarcik shot him in the face.

  TWENTY-NINE

  If it were like this every day, then everybody would want to live here.

  That was the running joke among Chicagoans. Unfortunately you could only use it a handful of times each year.

  But today was one of those days.

  Czarcik wasn’t outside enjoying the weather. He wasn’t at one of his favorite watering holes, hourly motels, or shaking down a low-level drug dealer for some good dope.

  He was sitting in Eldon Parseghian’s office, in the leather chair across the desk.

  Parseghian had Czarcik’s report in his hand. He shook it in the air. “This thing has more holes than Swiss fucking cheese.”

  “It wasn’t a traffic stop, boss.”

  Parseghian dropped his head into his hand. He massaged his temples. Finally, he looked up at Czarcik and shook his head. “I’m going to have a shit ton of cleaning up to do. Not just Chicago PD, the AG, and the governor. But interstate agencies, the feds. This is going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “It’s a good thing you don’t have political aspirations.”

  Parseghian couldn’t help but smile. Then grew serious. “When this all shakes out, even if we come out smelling like a rose—or at least not like a stable full of horseshit—I still don’t know where that leaves us. Leaves you.”

  Czarcik stood up and pushed in his chair. “I always knew that.”

  He was nearly out the door when Parseghian called to him. “Paul?” Czarcik turned around. “We got our man, right?”

  Czarcik reflected for a moment, was ready to answer, and then decided to walk out the door.

  The dust settled. Like it always does.

  And for a while, despite his best intentions, Daniel Langdon was front-page news.

  At first he was placed on a pedestal. The vigilante with a heart of gold. He even achieved something of folk hero status when an Austin-based bluegrass trio wrote a murder ballad about his exploits.

  The inevitable backlash followed. Who was this deranged gunslinger operating outside the rule of law? Some kind of neofascist? In one of those News of the Weird stories, out in Berkeley, some talk show host died of a cerebral hemorrhage after screaming uncontrollably into the microphone, “Charles Bronson isn’t real! Charles Bronson isn’t real!” It was assumed he was referring to the character of Paul Kersey, played by Bronson in the Death Wish films, since Charles Bronson himself was very real indeed.

  A few in the medical establishment latched on to the story in order to plead for increased funding into gliomas.

  There was some talk that a big-name lobbyist was going to make a presentation to Congress using the case to support his argument.

  Nobody could remember what that argument was, but everybody agreed that it was a terrible idea.

  The murders of Luis and Marisol Fernandez were considered closed. There was no direct evidence linking Daniel to either the Fernandezes themselves or the scene of the crime, but even less will within the department to continue looking for a suspect everyone knew was dead.

  The laundromat and all their remaining assets were sold, with the money going to the foster children. A silver lining.

  The murder of Judge Robertson was more problematic. Because he was, well, a judge. But that was down in Texas. Aside from a few phone calls with Lance Ringland, who always seemed unnaturally cheerful and didn’t appear particularly upset about the judge’s death, Czarcik didn’t have much to do with it.

  The wife and kid—the one with MS who was beaten by the judge—made the talk show circuit. Both demonstrated the requisite amount of sorrow and toed the company line: Judge Robertson was a bad man, but one who didn’t deserve this ending.

  Carlee Ames eventually killed herself. One night, while watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie on TCM, she unplugged her breathing tube and never woke up. Life had simply gotten too hard. Her mother wept uncontrollably and then endured, never once admitting to herself that this was best for the both of them.

  Edgar Barnes died without ever knowing how close he came to being killed. He never returned to Duluth and never saw Mona Travers again.

  His death wasn’t caused by Daniel but just a little bit of good old-fashioned cosmic justice. Changing a tire on the side of I-76 out of Denver, he was struck by a semi on its way to an Amazon distribution center in Des Moines. According to highway patrol, pieces of him were found smeared on the highway for miles.

  Miriam Manor was closed for good, and its remaining buildings completely razed almost as soon as the last interviews were conducted. The land reverted back to the county, which turned it into a soybean field. Best forgotten, was the general consensus—especially by the authorities who had turned a blind eye for so long. But even the girls thought so, except for a hardened few who returned every year to piss on the graves of Reverend Bradley and his family.

  Czarcik took some heat for Father Dyer, mainly because the crime scene was such a mess and his recollections about what happened were so hazy. His hair and DNA were everywhere—from the attic, to the bathroom, to the living room—and some local sheriff who wanted to make a name for himself was screaming to the powers that
be in Nashville that there was some kind of Yankee cover-up. But in the end, no one thought it was a good idea, for any reason, to come down on the side of a prolific pedophile.

  For his handling of the Crystal Lake Ranch Massacre—as the press dubbed what transpired at the reform school—Czarcik was lauded as a hero for preventing an even greater tragedy. The official story was gleaned from the surviving guards, expanded upon by Czarcik, and corroborated by investigators who had no reason to think differently.

  Daniel had arrived at the property and immediately taken the warden hostage. He ordered the release of the prisoners and then demanded the guards strip. To show he meant business, he sliced off the warden’s thumb. Other digits followed when his demands weren’t immediately met. Like the White Knight, Czarcik arrived in the nick of time. Although he was unable to stop Daniel from killing the warden, he was able to incapacitate him before he could light the gasoline that would have incinerated the guards. He then killed Daniel with Daniel’s own unmarked gun.

  A mass murderer was dead at the hand of a law enforcement agent. All was right in the world.

  Nobody bothered dusting the gun for prints. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. After shooting Daniel and then the warden with the unmarked gun, Czarcik placed the piece in Daniel’s limp hand and squeezed his fingers around the metal. Then he left the gun on the ground.

  Chloe had been waiting for him outside. Despite his warning, she had gotten out of the car. She met him coming down the steps, right by the body of the dead guard who had been brained with the nightstick, and the two of them walked off into the sunset.

  THIRTY

  They lay in bliss, their bodies covered in sweat and other fluids.

  They had no reason to move. Neither of them had any other place to be.

  The sounds of traffic from outside his window drifted up from the Kennedy. It was late afternoon; rush hour imminent.

  “There is no word for it, is there?” she asked.

  Her head was on his bare chest, and he looked down at her. “For what?” He was still drunk with sex.

  “For the fact that I just made love to the man who killed my husband.”

  “At the last moment, before I pulled the trigger, I saw his eyes. It’s what he wanted. You have to believe that.”

  “I do,” she admitted. “It’s just . . .” She laughed. “Like I said, there’s no word for it.”

  “Salvation,” he offered.

  “That’s good enough for now.”

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Chloe slipped out of bed nude, stretched, and began picking her underwear up off the floor.

  Czarcik sat up in bed, against the headboard, and reached over to the nightstand for the remote. He began flipping through the channels, mainly out of habit, not really wanting to watch anything.

  Chloe was on her way to the bathroom.

  He stopped when he came across a badly restored version of Horse Feathers on a local public access station. He began to laugh.

  Chloe came back into the room. “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just . . . oh, man . . .” He took a deep breath and sighed.

  Chloe glanced at the TV, watched for a few seconds. Gave a little chuckle of her own. And on her way out the door, with a mixture of relief and regret, said, “I guess it really is goodbye.”

  She paused. No more than a split second, as if she forgot something, or made a mistake, and then continued to the bathroom.

  Czarcik shot up in bed. Heart racing. Blood pumping. The synapses firing on all cylinders. He could barely breathe. The Rush.

  The sound of the shower from the bathroom.

  Think, think, think . . .

  But he couldn’t think. It had hit him too quickly. All at once.

  “My God . . .” he said out loud, watching the open door as if he expected Chloe to materialize at any moment.

  “She knew . . . she fucking knew . . .”

  A half hour later, after a shower as hot as it was long, Chloe walked into the bedroom to find Czarcik fully dressed and smoking a cigarette.

  They locked eyes as she went over to the bed and began to dry herself off. “Just tell me how long. From the beginning?” he asked.

  Her body was wrapped in one towel and her hair up in another one. She took the towel off her head and began to dry her hair. “Of course.”

  “It was Daniel’s idea?”

  She put the towel down next to herself. Her wet hair fell across her shoulders. “Do you really want to do this?”

  Chloe had slipped up. And then the pieces had fallen into place. While she was in the shower, Czarcik had worked through it.

  Chloe had recognized the relevance of Groucho. But how? He had never mentioned it to her. In fact, he had made a concerted effort to keep that part of the story secret. But she knew anyway. And there was only one other person who could have possibly told her.

  “So where should we begin?” she asked him.

  “How about when you first came to see me. At the office.”

  She nodded.

  “Daniel told you to?”

  Again she nodded.

  “But why? You still had his folders. What could possibly have made him think that I was on to him?”

  “You connected the judge and that Hispanic family from Chicago. That really freaked him out. He couldn’t imagine how you could have done that.” She lay down on the bed and propped herself up on her elbow. “How did you connect them?”

  “I didn’t. IDA did.”

  “Ida who?”

  “Not who, what. The Integrated Database Aggregator. Sort of a supercomputer that analyzes crime scene evidence. Daniel used the same type of knot in both those crimes.”

  A smile played at the corner of her mouth. Czarcik was unsure which of them she was impressed with, him or her husband.

  “So you knew he came to see me,” he confirmed.

  “I knew. He came away . . . impressed. But uncertain. He wasn’t sure that you would listen to him. That his threats would be effective. So he needed a way to keep track of you.”

  “And who better to do it than the one person he trusted above all else,” Czarcik finished.

  Chloe rocked her head from side to side. Her still-damp hair smelled like Czarcik’s own shampoo. Not like hers. He surprised himself by already recognizing her scent.

  “What I don’t understand,” he continued, “is why he—why you both—allowed me to get close at all. To figure out the correct pattern. Why not send me on a wild goose chase?”

  “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Daniel was afraid that if I simply misled you, you’d quickly lose faith in me. He needed you to trust me completely. And the only way to do this was to ensure that my information was accurate. That it was helping you.” She took the cigarette from his fingers. Took a drag and returned it. “Daniel said that the only thing worse than having you on his heels was not knowing where you were.”

  Czarcik’s eyes went wide. Remembering. Playing with the time line in his mind.

  “You . . . you never really went back to Chicago after Indiana, did you? You went to Tennessee. To the priest’s house. And from there, Florida. You were there the entire time. Waiting for me.”

  “The ranch was Daniel’s Waterloo. He knew that. But I had to make sure that he could finish his work.”

  There was one more thing that Czarcik wanted to ask.

  And then the Rush brought him the answer. It was so incredibly simple and yet so profound.

  They were back in Dnieper, the Ukrainian restaurant they’d gone to after they had first met. Chloe had leaned across the table and said to him, “. . . you’d do anything for the one you loved.”

  And with that, he understood.

  Czarcik was silent. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray on his nightstand. “You know, I never really trusted you,” he said finally.

  “And you shouldn’t ha
ve. Almost everything was planned out. Preordained.”

  “Almost everything?”

  She said nothing. She didn’t have to. He looked into those blue eyes. And both of them knew exactly what she meant.

  Czarcik felt as if he were on an existential game show.

  Behind door number one was truth. Behind door number two was justice. Behind door number three was reality.

  Czarcik was forced to balance his needs against his nature.

  “Well?” Chloe asked him.

  “You knew about his crimes. Well ahead of time. You helped him plan them and were intimately involved with their implementation. At the very least, that makes you an accessory to murder.”

  She wasn’t remotely afraid. She looked at him, defiant. “You have a decision to make.”

  Czarcik considered this. He considered why he had pursued Daniel so tirelessly. He considered the crimes of those whom Daniel had selected. And he considered his actions at the end of the standoff at Crystal Lake Ranch.

  He took her hand and pulled her toward him. The towel fell from her body. She stood before him. He looked up into her eyes and smiled.

  “Actually . . . I made that decision long ago.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote the first draft of Rain Will Come on my own, with no help from anybody else. And the truth is, it wasn’t something you would have wanted to read.

  Now it is (hopefully), thanks to the following people.

  My incredible agent Anne-Lise Spitzer, who is as smart as she is indefatigable, as well as everyone else at the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency, especially Philip Spitzer and Kim Lombardini, who provided me with early and indispensable advice.

  My entire team at Thomas & Mercer, including Jessica Tribble, for whose enthusiasm and counsel I’m eternally grateful; Laura Barrett; Sarah Shaw; and Mike Heath.

  My editors: Clarence Haynes, Wanda Zimba, and Valerie Paquin. They are truly the unsung heroes of this book. So here, it’s time to sing their praises.