Death By Degrees

by Harrison Drake

  “I think that the holiest of sites in this area is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre along with the Via Dolorosa.”

  “The Via Dolorosa?” I said. He looked at me with a surprised look on his face. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not a believer.”

  He didn’t say a word about that, didn’t cast a disapproving glare or anything. He simply pointed to the map and traced a line. “The Via Dolorosa represents the final walk of Jesus. It’s also referred to as the Stations of the Cross.”

  “That I’ve heard of.”

  He smiled. “It starts here, at the courthouse near the Lion’s Gate or St. Stephen’s Gate and continues to Calvary Hill where Jesus was crucified.”

  “That’s where the church is.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s that say? Golgotha?”

  “A Greek transcription of an Aramaic word. It translates roughly to the ‘place of the skull’. ‘Cavalry’ comes from the vulgate Latin translation. Do we have anyone walking the Via Dolorosa?”

  “We do. The dogs went up and down it too.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, but we couldn’t search everywhere.” I looked at the map again. “And the church, it’s been cleared as well?”

  “Earlier this morning,” he said.

  I shook my head. “It seems like the obvious site as well, maybe too obvious. Any other ideas?”

  He shrugged and shook his head as well. “Not right now.”

  We both looked at the map for a while longer in silence, watching as the officers manning the radios added red ‘X’ after red ‘X’ to the already heavily marked city of Jerusalem.

  The next couple of hours passed in much the same way and before we knew it, it was just past two. If whatever Crawford had planned was going to happen, it was going to be soon.

  My phone rang a few minutes later. I looked at the call display but it was a mess of numbers; my phone wasn’t liking the international numbers coming in and generally just showed me what may as well have been a random string of digits.

  “Detective Munroe,” I said, hoping someone had found something.

  There was no response.

  “Detective Munroe.”

  Maybe they had found him, shot him and left him to die, but not before he’d revealed where he was hiding Kat.

  Still nothing. The room was a bit loud between people talking and the radios constantly buzzing and it made it hard to hear. Perhaps just a bad connection.

  “Hello?”

  I started to walk toward the door, hoping to be able to hear the person on the other end but there was still nothing.

  “Hello?” I said it once more as I stepped into the hall. There was a sudden brightness to my right and as I turned to look I found myself nearly blinded by a brilliant light. In the midst of the light, a distance down the hallway, stood a figure. I could see nothing but the silhouette. I blinked a couple of times and the light and figure disappeared.

  Then I heard her voice calling out to me.

  For all I knew, I was hallucinating again. It seemed the obvious answer considering I had heard Kat’s voice. And it had always happened at high stress times – although I thought I was past the post-traumatic stress disorder and I wasn’t being tortured. Recent events though were more than enough to cause another break from reality.

  It didn’t look like her or anyone in particular. I began to walk toward where the figure had been; there was a large window at the end of the hallway. I looked out and saw what had happened; a crane across the parking lot was lifting a mirrored glass panel into place on another building, the light had been reflecting off of it. Just a coincidence, I thought, although my mind tried to convince me that the light I had seen had been too brilliant to have come off of the glass. There had been an ethereal quality to it, something I couldn’t describe.

  I shook the thoughts away, forced them back and walked toward the conference room. My phone was still in my hand but I had forgotten all about the call. I checked the screen and saw that the call had ended.

  That was too much of a coincidence. Was it Crawford?

  I had to know. The conference room door was just in reach when I turned and walked back to where I’d seen the figure. The hallway connected to another one which led to an exit door out into the back parking lot. My hand stayed on my gun as I walked through the hotel, weary of every door I passed along the way. When I reached the exit door I carefully looked out the window. There didn’t seem to be anyone in sight that matched Crawford so I slowly pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot.

  The most dangerous thing about coming out of a building was what could be behind the solid door, waiting for it to close as you walked through. I drew my firearm and rounded the door quickly, pointing my gun ahead of me into the space between the door and the brick wall.

  Nothing.

  Nobody seemed to have noticed me. I holstered my weapon and went back to looking around the area. As I scanned back and forth at the unfamiliar territory I didn’t see anything, but I felt like I had to keep going. It was all I had to go on. I crossed the street and as I looked down the road I saw the domed roofs of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the distance. It was where Zachariah had thought Crawford would stage his finale, but we had cleared it already. Still, I felt like something had brought me outside and as strange as it was, it was all I had to go on.

  I was operating on autopilot. The idea that I shouldn’t be doing this alone never crossed my mind; all I could think about was getting to the church. When I found myself in front of it, I knew I was in the right place. My mind snapped back into place and I realized I was out of my element in a city I didn’t know chasing hunches all alone.

  I dialed Chen.

  “Link, where the fuck did you go? Everyone is looking for you.”

  I barely even had a chance to say ‘hello’ once he picked up before he was yelling at me.

  “How long have I been gone?”

  “At least twenty minutes. Your phone rang and you stepped outside. Next thing we knew, you were gone. Where are you?”

  “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I thought I saw someone in the hall, Chen. They must have left out the back door so I went to look, then I saw the church. It has to be here, Chen.”

  “You okay, Link? I think you should come back. We’ve got people looking for you. They’ll bring you back to the hotel.”

  “No,” I said. “Look, maybe I am losing it. But I’m here now. That has to mean something. Maybe it was Crawford that called, maybe somehow he led me here. Look, I don’t know, Chen. And I really don’t care. Everything in me is saying this is the place.”

  “They already cleared it. It’s marked off here. Link… are you-”

  “I’m fine, Chen. This is where it’s going to happen. I just know it.”

  Chen knew better than to argue with me. My hunches had always been good, even if they usually were a little strange.

  “Wait,” I said. “So it’s almost time?”

  “Yeah, ten to.”

  “Fuck. Get everyone you can here. Dogs, bomb squad, you name it. We need everyone here ASAP, but come quietly. If he knows the cavalry is coming, he may not wait.”

  “Got it, be there as soon as we can be. No sirens.”

  I hung up the phone and stood outside of the church. Consecrated in the year 325, it had been renovated and rebuilt a number of times in the past seventeen centuries. It remained largely unchanged since the last major overhaul in the mid-nineteenth century. The church was quite large and recognizable from a distance by the large domed roofs. It looked well-built, but given its age I was concerned that if there were explosives inside we could be looking at severe destruction. I wasn’t sure how well the domes and ancient walls would hold up if the worst were to come to pass.
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br />   It didn’t take long after I went inside to spot one of the teams we had stationed within the church – even in civilian clothes they didn’t blend in. Most cops weren’t meant for undercover work. They spent so long learning how to act like a cop that they couldn’t remember how to act normal. They would stand with their back to a wall watching the crowd or adopt the same stance they used in uniform, either with their arms lightly folded or elbows resting on the hips.

  And they often drew too much attention to their concealed firearms. Cops have a habit of checking to make sure their gun is still there. You never want to lose your firearm and be caught in a situation without one. This led to a habitual touching of the gun, a casual pat or tap or a brush with the elbow. It was exactly what the one officer was doing when I spotted him.

  I walked up and introduced myself. His partner glared at him, pissed off that they had been made. Neither one spoke anything more than broken English and it made understanding them very difficult.

  “Have you seen him?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “And the church has been searched? You checked it?”

  They looked at each other before the one nodded.

  “Yes, and dogs too.”

  “Good,” I said. “When was that?” Nothing. I pointed to my watch. “The dogs?”

  “Umm,” the first one said, counting on his fingers. “Nine, ten.”

  “Nine or ten? Okay. And you two have been looking around since then?”

  That was too much.

  “You two, you’ve looked,” I said, gesturing to show them I was asking if they’d been wandering around looking for things.

  “Yes,” the second one said. “Not the Edicule.”

  “The what?”

  He pointed toward another part of the church. “The Edicule. It’s…” he paused for a moment. “Closed.”

  “Why?”

  He pointed at me. Wait, what?

  “You closed it,” he said, then pointed to his radio.

  “What do you mean, like on my orders?”

  He nodded, probably understanding ‘orders’ more than the rest of it. We had a problem. A major one. We knew Crawford could jam the radios, but it seemed like he had one as well. Somehow he’d told them to close the Edicule and they had obeyed. I went toward the part of the church he had pointed to and came to a large domed room with a square building inside, positioned directly below the oculus – the opening in the roof of the dome.

  The building looked out of place, and not only because of the fact that it was a building within a building. The Edicule was the shrine built where the tomb of Jesus was believed to have originally been. It had been rebuilt in the early nineteenth century by the Greek Orthodox church and elements of the exterior reminded me of their churches including the elaborate candelabra outside of the Edicule. The style definitely wasn’t something I would’ve chosen, although I preferred the clean lines of modern architecture.

  “There are two chambers,” said someone behind me. I turned to see another plainclothes officer standing there. “The first holds a piece of the rock used to seal the tomb after Jesus was laid to rest inside. The second is where Jesus was buried by His disciples.”

  “And you can usually go in?”

  “Briefly. They keep everyone moving very quickly since every visitor wants to go in. People will usually go in and say a quick prayer. It’s beautiful inside, but there isn’t much time to look around and admire it all.”

  “People don’t look happy about it being closed.”

  “I was very surprised when they told us you wanted it closed. And the church was far from happy about it.”

  “It had already been cleared though? The bomb dogs and everything?”

  “Yes, about an hour before we were told to close it.”

  I looked at the Edicule and thought I saw someone moving inside. “Is anyone supposed to be in there?”

  “No, there was a priest who had gone in. We assumed that there was no problem there. It was more to keep the civilians out.”

  I walked toward the Edicule and the figure presented himself. It was an older man wearing the robes of a Greek Orthodox priest – long, flowing black robes and what looked to me to be a cap like the one graduates wear, only taller. Had this been the figure I had seen? The dark robes and the way they moved gave the appearance of something ethereal, like a shadow or a shade. Or had it all been a trick of my mind and the light?

  He had a long, gray beard and glasses on, as well as bushy grey eyebrows. He looked the part, the elderly priest who was devoted to his calling.

  And then he spoke.

  “Hello, Lincoln,” he said, taking the glasses off first. He walked toward us, stepping out of the Edicule and walking across the room to us. He stopped about twenty feet away and took off what I now knew were a fake beard and eyebrows. When the hat came off, it was obvious that it was Crawford.

  I had my gun out and on him within milliseconds.

  “Not so fast, Lincoln,” he said, slowly raising his hands. I saw it then, a small device with a red button on top – a detonator.

  “Make sure they’re coming, we need the bomb squad,” I whispered to the officer standing beside me. He withdrew carefully, stepping backwards without taking his eyes off of Crawford.

  People had started to notice what was going on, and the sight of me pointing a gun at a man in priest’s robes was not going well. Some panicked, some were yelling. The first officer came and began shouting in Hebrew. It took some time and a lot of screaming, but people began to turn their attention from me to getting out of the church.

  “I can’t let them all leave, Lincoln. You must know that,” Crawford said. His eyes turned toward the detonator as he moved it in front of his body – he was preparing to press it.

  I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t. I already had the gun up and on him, all I needed to do was aim and pull the trigger. It wasn’t an easy shot and I only had one chance to hit, if I missed he could still trigger the bomb.

  I gently squeezed out one round and it seemed as if everything went into slow-motion. The bullet entered Crawford’s throat just below his Adam’s apple and exited out the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord. He slumped to the ground, the detonator rolling out of his hand onto the floor.

  It was the only option, a hit elsewhere could have still given him a chance to detonate the bomb, or it could have caused his hand to clench automatically. Total paralysis was the only option.

  I holstered my gun and ran up to Crawford who was bleeding from his neck. He was sputtering as blood dripped from the sides of his mouth.

  He tried to speak, but couldn’t. What came out was a series of guttural gasps, but if I focused I could tell what he was trying to say.

  “You failed. My heart,” he said. “The bomb.”

  “What?”

  “If I die… you die.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but as he repeated himself I understood. The detonator wasn’t the only way to trigger the bomb, he had it wired to a heart monitor as well. If his heart stopped, the bomb would go off.

  We didn’t have much time. Chen and Kara came running up behind me and stopped when they saw us, me kneeling over Crawford.

  “The bomb is in there,” I said, pointing to the Edicule. “I shot him before he could detonate it, but it’s rigged to a heart monitor.”

  Chen knelt down and pulled up the sleeves of Crawford’s robe. On his left wrist was something that looked like a watch, but must have been the device he was talking about.

  “It monitors his pulse,” Chen said. “We can’t let him die. Clear everyone out!”

  The officer began yelling directions in Hebrew. People were already in a panic from my shooting Crawford, and now the
y began to truly panic. They pushed and shoved each other trying to get out of the crowded church. Some fell and I could hear their screams as people trampled them. Self-preservation was a powerful thing.

  I didn’t care anymore. Crawford was the only person with the answers I needed and he was dying in front of me. I had no intentions of leaving.

  “Where is she?”

  He sputtered some more, his eyes started to roll back. I shook him, slapped his face, and brought him back to attention.

  “Where the fuck is she?”

  “Not here… France.”

  “Where?”

  “You won’t,” he stopped and more blood trickled out of his mouth, “find her.” The next word chilled me to the bone. “Underground.”

  “Is she alive?”

  The sound he made sounded like a harsh mix of laughter and death rattle. I was losing him.

  “Is she alive, Crawford?” I was screaming at him, shaking him, doing everything I could to keep him present.

  He looked me in the eyes, his cold, hard stare meeting mine, and spoke. Whether or not it was clear, I heard him clearly, like we were having a normal conversation.

  “You’ll never find her. Not before it’s too late.”

  With that his eyes rolled back once more and I could see the life leaving his body.

  “No, you’re not dying yet. Tell me where she is!”

  I started doing CPR, pushing down on his chest as hard as I could to keep the blood flowing. More than anything, I wanted to bring him back. Staying alive was secondary. Every time I compressed his chest it pushed blood past the monitor he wore on his wrist, every compression bought us a few more seconds.

  “Fucking tell me,” I yelled, screaming at a dead man. “Tell me where she is.” Tears were streaming down my face, my blood was boiling and all I could see was images of her locked away somewhere wasting away to nothing.

  “You fucking son of a bitch, wake up! Tell me.”