There was time to turn around and do this the right way. All he had to do was to pick up his cell phone and make a call. Chief Morrow sat in his prowler and looked at the front door of the house. He could tell it was empty. Empty houses gave off an aura of abandonment and most cops could see it. At least they hoped they could.
He should have called Jeffrey Mark by now. He should have at least brought backup. But it was just a hunch. He was just checking up on a hunch. If it was nothing, then it was nothing. If it was something, well then, either he would be dead or he would be the hero cop who saved the day. He was banking on the latter.
Lying in bed this morning, he had finally remembered Bernard Hugo. He remembered Hugo’s grief. After Robbie Hugo had died, the church and the community had rallied around them in a way Morrow remembered as remarkable. And at the gathering at the Hugo home after Robbie’s funeral, which Morrow had attended in his official capacity, the house had been filled with people. Robbie’s mother Jennifer had been strong, hosting her guests with grace and smiling bravely. Bernard Hugo had sat in a corner staring blankly out the window, his face ashen and tight, eyes glazed. Morrow remembered his face as the very embodiment of grief.
There had been whispers, he remembered now as it all came back, about Bernard’s mental illness and whether he could bear up under the strain of grief. Simon Morrow guessed that he hadn’t been able to. He wondered what he would find inside. He hefted himself out of the car and walked to the front door. He noted that the lawn was overgrown and the house needed a coat of paint. When he knocked, the door pushed open. Morrow stepped inside. From the door he could see the living room and the kitchen. A hallway leading to the bedrooms was to his left.
“Bernard Hugo,’’ he called. “Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.’’
The house answered with silence and he heard his voice echo lightly in the nearly empty room. Most of the furniture he remembered was gone. There was just a television, a recliner, a rickety old card table. He took another step inside and pulled out his gun.
The odor assailed him. Garbage, beer, general filth, and something else. Some other odor lingered, mingling with the others. He pulled a surgical glove from his pocket and deftly slid it on his left hand while still holding his weapon with his right. He wasn’t going to fuck this up. The door had pushed open, so he felt it was within his rights to enter. He wouldn’t touch anything. Just look around. If he found anything, he’d call it in right away. At least he would be the first on the scene.
Keeping his back to the wall, he walked down the hallway and looked in the master bedroom, where a bed was the only piece of furniture. The bed was bare except for a crumpled-up beige-and-green top sheet. There was little else to see except a closet that stood open where a few items of clothing were sloppily hung on wire hangers and old shoes cluttered the rack that hung on the door.
The door across the hall was closed and Morrow tried to push it open with his foot, keeping his back to the opposite wall, but he couldn’t. So he moved to the right of the doorjamb, turned the knob, and pushed the door open fast. It banged against the wall inside the room. He entered gun-first. And when he stood in the doorway, he saw what he had come for. And he wasn’t sure whether to whoop with joy or be ill.
As he slid his cell phone from the inside lapel pocket of his suit jacket, he heard cars pull up the gravel driveway. From the window he could see Jeffrey Mark and Lydia Strong walk up to the door. He walked down the hallway to greet them.
“Chief, what are you doing here?’’ Jeffrey asked.
“I was following up on a hunch that proved to be right,’’ he answered, trying not to seem smug. “What are you doing here?’’
“We got a tip on a vehicle and it led us here. Why didn’t you call for backup?’’
“I wasn’t sure there was anything,’’ he answered. “I came here to ask some questions of this guy Bernard Hugo. I just remembered he was working as a caretaker at the church on and off for the last few months.’’
“Is he here?’’
“No.’’
“But you came in here without a warrant? Jesus.’’
“Relax. I didn’t touch anything.’’
“That’s not the fucking point,’’ shot Jeffrey. “If anybody finds out you were here, you’ll lose anything you’ve found in court and this guy will walk. You wanted to handle this without the FBI, and then you pull a stunt like this that could put your whole case in the toilet. What were you thinking?’’
“I was thinking about stopping a guy who has probably killed three, maybe four people, Mr. Mark. Watch your tone. I’m not a rookie. The door was open and there was a notable stench. I had probable cause to enter.’’
Jeffrey stared at Chief Morrow as the four police officers around him shifted uncomfortably and looked away. He reined in his anger at Morrow’s carelessness. And when he spoke again, his voice was more restrained. “Fine. It’s your case, Chief. Let’s see what you got.’’
Simon Morrow was moved to silence by rage as he walked them to evidence he had found.
“Holy shit,’’ said Jeffrey, as he entered the room.
If insanity had a bedroom, this would have been it. The metal gurney where Bernard Hugo had removed the hearts of his victims was scrubbed clean and stood in the middle of a room that looked to have been a baby’s nursery. Beside it was a tray of surgical implements – scalpel, bone saw, and other horrible metal tools Jeffrey couldn’t name but hoped would never be put to use on his body. Powder-blue curtains hung on the window frame, and a wallpaper border with ducks and balloons could still be seen edging the ceiling. The rest of the wall was covered, however, with newspaper articles and photographs. The maniac collage that papered the walls included images of Lydia from the media, articles written about her and by her, covers from her books, articles about Juno, about the death of Robbie Hugo, baby pictures, some of the very articles that Lydia had clipped from the newspaper at the beginning of her interest in this case. Over it all, the rantings of a demented mind were scrawled in blood. Jeffrey saw immediately the message they had found on Lydia’s bedroom mirror among the rest of the deadly graffiti, including: Sinners must die…I am God’s warrior and evildoers shall feel my wrath…She will bring the message of God.
“Holy shit,’’ Lydia said as she walked in the door.
“His name is Bernard Hugo,’’ said Chief Morrow, “and he’s been a volunteer caretaker on and off at the church for the last six months. He used to be an orderly at the hospital, but after his son died and his wife left him, he lost it, stopped going to work, got fired.’’
“I know. His son died after a failed heart transplant,’’ said Lydia; “Juno visited him, supposedly attempted to heal him. And the boy died hours later.’’
Morrow thought on it a second. “You’re right. I had forgotten about that.’’
Lydia wanted to jump on him. How could he have not made these connections earlier? But she knew it wasn’t really fair. The whole thing was so insane.
“The guy doesn’t even have a speeding ticket, you know?’’ Morrow said, as if reading her mind. “There had always been rumors about him, according to my wife. Apparently he had been on track to become a surgeon years ago. But he’d had some kind of mental breakdown. He was on so much medication that he couldn’t even become a nurse after that. So he settled for being an orderly at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“I remember when the kid died. My wife and I went to pay our respects and he was destroyed, I mean he could barely function. Then I heard a couple of months later from my wife that his wife had left him, went back to her family in Colorado. Then he lost his job. I wondered how he would survive but then I heard that he was doing some volunteer work at the Church of the Holy Name and I figured he’d found God.’’
“But maybe he was just looking for victims,’’ said Jeffrey.
“Or both,’’ said Lydia. “I think we have some more gardening to do.’’
Juno sat alone in the back pew of the church. His hands were neatly folded in his lap and his head hung low. The glow around him that Lydia had always perceived, seemed dim and she was not sure how to approach him. He was fragile and fading like a specter. She stood watching him, listening to the police shuffling around her, speaking in low voices as though mass were in session.
There was a horrific amount of blood splattered on the walls that contained the garden, across the flowers, and even on the face of the Virgin. A rosary lay near the door. Lydia didn’t hold out much hope for Father Luis. She had asked the police to hold off on digging up the garden for a few minutes, until she talked to Juno. And now she stood wondering how she would begin, his fear radiating off him like a visible aura. She approached him slowly.
Juno heard Lydia’s footfalls and sensed her hesitation. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he already knew. But his voice failed him and he sat silent and waiting. She could not know that he had lost not only his uncle this day, the man who raised him, but his mother and father as well.
Sitting in the last pew, praying, Juno had become invisible to the police. They’d rushed into the church just minutes after his call. He heard them run through the living area behind the church and then move out to the garden, where, he noted, the rushing ended and voices became hushed. He could only imagine what they found there, for no one had told him. So he waited. Whispered phrases floated to him on the wind that blew in from the open door; phrases like “blood splatter,’’ “handprint,’’ “blood-soaked cloth.’’
Then, as two officers walked passed him, he overheard one of them whisper, “This poor guy has had nothing but tragedy in his life. His uncle was the only parent he ever had. I’ll tell you about it later.’’ He recognized the man’s voice as someone he knew from childhood, a boy named Jimmy O’Neill who had attended catechism classes at the church.
At first he was confused and wondered who Jimmy was talking about. Then he realized that he meant him, Juno. He almost laughed in disbelief as he thought, Until now I have never known any suffering. He couldn’t imagine what the man meant. His blindness, maybe?
But a cold dawning was moving over him. Then Juno remembered a day long ago on the playground behind the church. In a downward spiral of thought, he remembered Jimmy taunting him one day when they were children, making fun of his parents, saying that they had died in some horrible way. He remembered his conversation with his uncle. And then he remembered nothing else about the incident. It was a blank wall in his mind that he could not pass through. He remembered his uncle’s words: “Jimmy has told you something and I have told you something. You must look into your heart and decide what you believe. If someone told you that God did not exist, would you believe them?’’
He could not remember what he had decided that day. He could not remember thinking about what had happened to his parents ever again. He knew he had sewn his uncle’s story of his parents into his soul, like a jewel in the seam of a coat. The knowledge of it, though he never saw it or touched it or thought of it after that day, was a secret treasure that he owned, one that defined him. Now it was as if he’d ripped open the seam and found not a gem, but a lump of clay.
As he sat in the pew, Juno’s knowledge of himself and his life turned to quicksand. He was afraid to speak as Lydia approached him. He was afraid he would not recognize the sound of his own voice. She sat beside him and placed her hand on his.
“I know how you are feeling right now. And what I am about to tell you is not going to comfort you,’’ she said softly.
He nodded.
“Outside, the wall is splattered with blood. A lot of blood. It appears as if the garden has been disturbed as well. In a few minutes, we are going to start digging there. And I am not sure what we’ll find, but…’’
He just nodded again and held up his hand. Eventually, he mustered his voice and whispered, “Do you know what happened to my parents?’’
“Your parents?’’ she asked, after a pause, hoping he hadn’t lost his mind. “Do you mean your uncle, Juno?’’
“No. I mean my parents. Do you know what happened to them?’’
“Yes…’’ she said, unsure where he was leading.
“Will you tell me?’’
“Are you saying you don’t know?’’
“Yes.’’
“What have you thought all these years?’’ she asked, incredulous.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Or you’d think I’m insane.’’
“Try me.’’
In the lilting voice one would use to tell a fairy tale to a child, Juno told Lydia the story he had believed all his life.
“My mother was a beautiful angel held prisoner by an aging wizard. For sixteen years, he kept her hidden in a dovecote at the top of a tower with a hundred steps. Her hair was as black as the bottom of the ocean and her eyes as blue as ice. And the wizard loved her in his own twisted way. But because she was stolen from God Himself, he hid her among the doves. He fed her only the finest fruit and honey.
“Serena, my mother, was not unhappy. She loved the company of the birds and the wizard was kind to her. And she had been in the tower for so long that she considered it her home. She had no desire for freedom, she could barely conceive of what that would mean. The wizard told her the world was a dark and dangerous place, and he kept her there to protect her from the evil forces that would surely try to harm her. She was grateful.
“In the evenings when the moon was full, Serena would sing for the doves. Beautiful songs in an angel’s voice that would carry over the trees and up to the stars. One of these nights, a handsome young shepherd, named Manuel, was walking home from tending his sheep when he heard Serena’s song. He followed the sound of her voice and saw her in the window at the top of the tower. Instantly, he fell in love.
“He called to her. But she was frightened and backed away from the window. He walked around the tower, looking for the door, and finally found it but it was locked.
“He stood there awhile calling to her. But she did not reappear. Despairing, he sat against a tree and tried to figure out a way to make her open the door. Soon he fell asleep. Later that evening, he was awakened by the sound of someone walking through the woods. Quickly he hid himself and watched as the old wizard pulled a golden key from a chain around his neck and opened the door. The shepherd heard the wizard lock the door from the inside. He decided this might be his only chance to get into the tower. So he picked up the heaviest, biggest rock he could manage and stood by the door, waiting for the wizard.
“When the wizard emerged, the shepherd hit him on his head with the rock and the wizard fell unconscious.
“Manuel ran as fast as he could to the top of the tower, where he found Serena sleeping on a bed of dove feathers and gold dust. He sat beside her to admire her beauty, his heart aching with love for her. When she woke and saw his kind and handsome face, she, too, fell instantly in love with him.
“‘Come away with me, Serena. I am only a poor shepherd but I will love and care for you all your life,’ he said.
“She said she would and he kissed her passionately. It was a kiss so full of love, that a baby was made and appeared beside Serena on her bed. They called him Juno, and that was me. Overjoyed, the young lovers carried me from the tower. But when they stepped outside, the wizard was waiting for them. Enraged, he pulled a sword from its sheath at his side and ran my father through, killing him instantly. My mother was stricken with grief and wailed with all the pain of her broken heart. It was a cry so loud that God Himself heard it and recognized it as the voice of His lost angel.
“He appeared to her and the wizard as a blinding light. He cast the wizard straight to hell. Then He spoke to my mother.
“‘Weep not, my lost little angel, I have come to take you and Manuel home.’
“She saw Manuel’s soul rise from his body into the light and soon she was beside him. They were going to God.
“‘But what of our child?’ they asked.
“‘He has a life to live before he can join us. He has many things to do on Earth. One day, you will all be together again.’
“And I was blinded by the light of God.’’
Lydia didn’t say anything, trying to understand what kind of person you had to be to believe a fairy tale all your life. How innocent, how trusting, how pure he had to be never to imagine that his uncle had lied. What kind of world did he imagine, where the mystical existed so believably? “And you believed this until when?’’
“I think until just now. You must think I am an idiot. Someone like you, always searching for the truth. I have hid from it all my life in this little church. The world is nothing like I have believed it to be. I think on some level, I knew. But I just never examined it. I didn’t want to know the truth.’’
“God, why would you? The world can be a twisted, fucked-up place. What a gift you had all these years, to live like you have. You had something that I’m not sure even exists anymore. Pure faith.’’
“Blind faith. If everything you believe in is a lie, then you’re a fool, not a saint.’’
She marveled at the change in him. The monklike demeanor he had held was gone, and an ordinary man, angry, confused, and grief-stricken, sat beside her, clutching her hand. He’d lost his glow of inner peace. And she grieved for that loss, almost more than for his other losses.
“Just because your uncle told you a story meant to protect you doesn’t mean that everything he taught you was false. Plenty of people who are not fools have faith
– faith in God, faith in the basic goodness of human nature. You don’t have to give those things up.’’ “What about you, Lydia? What do you have faith in?’’
She searched her mind, wanting to come up with something to satisfy them both. But she didn’t know. She didn’t want to say what she’d realized in that moment, that she had been searching for faith in him. She’d started to convince herself that he could heal the pain she had been carrying inside her since the death of her mother, that he held the truth that could set her free. It was that search that had been drawing her to him.
“Because you see the truth,’’ he said, when she didn’t speak, “you don’t need faith.’’
“Because I see the truth, I need it even more; faith that there is something larger, something better than what we see. There are people who believe you healed them. What about that?’’
“I never healed anyone. People lied to themselves. And I was starting to believe it, too. They were searching, just like you were. For something larger, something that could fix the injustice of suffering. They let themselves believe a fairy tale. Just like I did.’’
“But I saw you in my dreams,’’ she said.
“I can’t explain that, Lydia.’’
“And that’s the space that faith occupies. In things we can’t explain and can’t understand.’’
Now he sat silent, trying to grasp at the fading concept of himself and his world. He wondered who he would be, now that everything he had known was slipping away. “So, do you know what happened to them?’’
“Yes. Do you want me to tell you?’’
“Yes.’’
As carefully as she could, she relayed the fate of Serena and Manuel Alonzo, giving him the whole truth as she had learned it from archived articles from the newspaper. She felt he deserved that. “Your parents were poor, living here in the barrio of Santa Fe. Your father worked in construction and your mother was a nurse’s aide at Santa Fe General Hospital. They married very young and it was an abusive relationship. Your father beat your mother, Juno.
“When she found out she was pregnant, she became afraid for your life. She was afraid you would not survive the beatings. She was too afraid to divorce him or leave him, fearing that he would find and kill her anyway. So she killed your father, set their house on fire while he was passed out from drinking.
“She went to trial and was found guilty. She gave birth to you in prison and died in labor.’’
Lydia told the story in all its earthly ugliness. And when she was done, she told him about Bernard Hugo and what they had discovered. And Juno wept, feeling grief and pain for the first time in his life. She sat beside him with her hand on his back and nodded to the officer standing by the door, who had stood waiting for her signal to start digging up the garden. Lydia was certain it was here they would find the victims’ hearts. She wasn’t sure why Hugo had buried them here, she wasn’t sure what his message was, but she had a vague sense now of the way the killer’s mind worked, of his essence. And though she didn’t know what his ultimate goal was, she knew he intended to have vengeance against Juno for not saving his son. The only thing she really didn’t understand was why he chose the victims he did. Was it just a matter of opportunity? Were they just unlucky enough to fly into his radar?
“Juno,’’ Lydia said gently, a thought occurring to her suddenly.
He had lifted his head from his hands and seemed to be staring off at the altar, lost in his grief. He came back to himself when she spoke to him.
“Did any of the victims ever come to you for counsel? Did you heal any of them, Juno?’’
He seemed to deflate even further as he considered her question, and realized the implications of the answer he was about to give. In that moment he truly had lost everything he believed to be true.
“I’ve seen all of them,’’ he said softly. “Christine and Harold came to me a year ago to help them overcome their addictions. Shawna came to me to help her with her anger. And Maria, she came to me when a doctor found a lump in her breast.’’
“And what happened with each of them?’’
“Christine and Harold seemed to have beaten their addictions when they disappeared. Shawna became involved in the church and that seemed to give her some peace. When Maria’s tumor was removed, after her visit, it was found to be benign. She claimed that before she had seen me, she was sure she was about to die from breast cancer, and that as I played my guitar, she could feel the cancer leaving her. She was quite vocal about it.’’
“So you helped all of them. In ways, you healed all of them. That should mean something to you, Juno. Each of their lives was better for your interaction with them, whether it was divine or not.’’
“Lydia,’’ he said, “if your question implies what I think it does, then all of their lives were ended because of their interaction with me.’’
“No, Juno, all of their lives ended because of their interaction with Bernard Hugo. Don’t confuse that. Do not take that on. You acted in a way that was true to yourself and true to your belief in God.’’
“So did Bernard Hugo.’’