Ben was not at all keen on the idea of our keeping the dinner date we had arranged with Austin for this evening; but in the grander scheme of things, that was actually the least of his concerns. What provided his strongest point of consternation was the fact that Felicity and I had refused to abandon our home in the face of my being the target of a serial killer. While at first I was almost inclined to go along with his cautionary actions; after some thought I knew for certain that if this killer wanted me bad enough, he would find me wherever I holed up. Hiding away at Ben’s would most likely only prolong the inevitable, and that would guarantee to tip my internal scales even farther from center in the process.
As frightening as the entire prospect was, I mused aloud that this might even be the break we needed. There was next to nothing in the way of useful evidence thus far, and in my own opinion I had been no real help to the investigation either. If the killer was after me, then perhaps we could set a trap with me as the bait. My friend wasted no time informing me that I had seen too many television shows and that this was real life and not an episode of the latest cop drama. It simply didn’t work that way.
For a moment, I made a grab for the diaphanous skirts of a long shot and partially allied myself with Ben to make a half-hearted attempt at convincing my wife to follow his advice and stay with he and Allison for a while. I knew better than to even make the suggestion, especially considering that being pulled away from her photo shoot and escorted to the police station by a pair of uniformed officers had already set her mood at an oblique angle to the rest of the world. My bid for the brass ring ended as soon as she rolled her eyes, while turning to face me, and then slowly cocked her head to the side. From behind a spiral fall of fiery auburn curls, her jade green eyes subjected me to the Felicity O’Brien trademark I beg your pardon glare. Her message was received free of any distortion or ambiguity whatsoever, and no further word was spoken on the subject-from me at any rate.
Better than an hour passed by while Ben continued to demand, argue and even plead with both of us, but as sound as his contentions were, we remained steadfast in our decision to stay put. In the end he finally conceded grudgingly but only under a specific condition. We were to be afforded the same protection as the other individuals that were believed to be on the killer’s list.
We agreed with the compromise, and then Felicity dropped the other shoe-our dinner engagement with her brother. Before my friend could even begin to object, she outlined in no uncertain terms that there was no room for negotiation on this point.
Ben had let out a resigned sigh as he automatically massaged the back of his neck. After a trio of short phone calls, he laid out his own non-negotiable terms.
One, he would be pulling the first watch with us personally.
Two, we were to eat at a busy, very public restaurant with valet parking, and he wanted to know which one it was before we left so we could be tailed.
Three, we were to go straight there and come straight home.
And finally, four, we were to meet him at our house no later, but no earlier, than eleven p.m.
Had the service at the restaurant been slower or had we encountered a little more traffic on the streets, we just might have been able to comply with the last point.
The fact that the glowing digital clock on the in-dash radio read 10:13 p.m. at the moment we exited the highway didn’t really register-even though I looked directly at it.
“Aye, Rowan, an’ you’re sure now you wouldn’t want to be stoppin’ for a cheeseburger or some such?” Austin’s cheery voice boomed from the back seat of Felicity’s Jeep. “That fare on your plate didn’t seem enough for a young lad, much less a grown man.”
“I got plenty,” I told my brother-in-law with a chuckle. He had been ribbing me about my dinner selection for the better portion of the evening. I knew it was all in fun, and it seemed to be keeping him entertained. Besides, it was keeping my mind off the far less pleasant realities I was facing, and a diversion was something I desperately needed-so I played along.
“I’m still thinkin’ you would have been better served with a good steak, man,” he offered as he reached forward and gave me a good-natured jab in the side. “What was that frou-frou you ordered again?”
“Seared sea scallops with bourbon-horseradish-mustard and grilled asparagus in a balsamic vinaigrette.”
“Aye and what about that plate of cheese and such?”
“Mozzarella, red onions, and tomatoes with olive oil. It’s called a caprice salad.”
“Frou-frou, man!” he announced once again.
“Really, Austin,” Felicity piped up with her own musical laugh. Her Celtic timbre had been thoroughly reinforced by the evening spent with her brother. “Surely now you’re the only one I know who would go to a restaurant celebrated for its seafood and order a steak.”
“Aye, the menu said ‘Surf and Turf,’ didn’t it now?” he ventured. “I simply told the lass to keep the surf and bring me extra turf.”
“Aye.” My wife nodded into the rearview mirror then laid on an extra helping of her thick brogue. “Sure’n that Colleen was makin’ eyes at you too. You were just puttin’ on a show for the young lass.”
The stick shift clicked smoothly as she pushed the vehicle through a quiet intersection and accelerated along the avenue in the direction of our subdivision.
“I’m single then, aren’t I?” Austin chuckled.
“Aye, you are,” Felicity answered. “But she was a bit young then. She’d soon grow tired of an old man like yourself.”
My brother-in-law’s infectious laughter filled the interior of the Jeep as we hooked through a turn and continued down a familiar tree-lined street toward our home. A pair of short blocks later the radio’s luminescent clock displayed 10:22 p.m. As the last digit blinked itself into a three, we made the arc from the street into the driveway and followed the concrete strip to the rear of our house. The next turn to the left banked us around the back corner and brought the harsh swath of blue-white from the vehicle’s headlamps to bear on the garage door.
The Jeep screeched to a halt as Felicity less than gently applied the brakes, adding her own high-pitched yelp of surprise to the sudden noise. Austin’s retort was abruptly transformed into a deep huff as he pitched forward heavily against his seatbelt. My hands went automatically to the dash as I did the same. With my palms still planted firmly before me, I lifted my head and simply cast a mute stare through the windshield.
Overspray fogged the outline of the graffiti that graced the normally solid white overhead door. Haste had been an obvious factor to the perpetrator of the artwork as evidenced by the watery trails of the runs that had trickled from the paint. Still, a familiar and somewhat steady hand had been applied to the task. The symbols were large, even, and painstakingly clear.
Rev. 21:8
I blinked hard and glanced at the clock on the dash. It read 10:23 p.m. I looked back at the garage door, in some way hoping that I had been momentarily affected by a small mass hallucination.
It still read Rev. 21:8
“Call nine-one-one,” I mouthed as I began to fumble with the catch on my seatbelt, my voice the barest trace of a whisper.
“What?” Felicity croaked.
“Call nine-one-one,” I repeated, forcing the prickly lump of fear in my throat to stand aside and allow the words to pass. “And get out of here.”
The catch popped, and I nervously wrestled my way out of the harness. The rhizome of fear in my throat had spread its invasive roots outward, making my hands tremble and my dinner become a cinder block resting uncomfortably in the deep well of my intestines. I shouldered the door open and shakily poured myself out onto the drive.
“You aren’t staying here by yourself!” Felicity admonished in a frightened tone. “What if he’s still here?”
“That’s exactly why I want you out of here,” I shot back.
“Aye, Rowan,” Austin voiced as he untangled himself from his own safety harness and began tilting the passenger seat forward to create a path of egress. “She’s right. You can’t be stayin’ here by yourself with a madman runnin’ about. I’m comin’ with you then!”
“No, Austin,” I quickly objected. “I want you to stay with Felicity.”
“But Rowan man, you can’t…”
“I’m serious,” I asserted as I cut him off. “If he’s still here I’ll deal with it. I need to know that Felicity is safe, and I want you with her in case something happens!”
“I’m not leaving you here!” my wife objected.
“Don’t argue, Felicity!” I ordered as I was pushing the door shut. “Just call nine-one-one and get away from here NOW!”
My voice was hard and demanding. Fear of what I might be about to face sharpened it. Fear of any harm coming to my wife honed it beyond to a razor’s edge. I had never used such a tone with Felicity before. I caught the look that creased her face just before her own fear obscured it from view. I knew then that she understood why I was asking her to do this. She didn’t want to leave, but she knew that she had no choice.
Gears meshed violently as she jammed the vehicle into reverse and stepped on the gas. The Jeep’s engine roared up from idle and propelled them backwards around the corner and out along the driveway. I listened as the rout faded then began anew with a squeal of tires against damp asphalt.
I stood alone in the darkness, steeled momentarily by the knowledge that Felicity was safely away. My heart was rattling in my chest as it turned somersaults, using my diaphragm as a trampoline and my lungs as tumbling mats. Irregular breaths pulsed hard out of my mouth, condensing in moist clouds before my face. I struggled to avoid hyperventilating.
My legs were stiff and heavy with near terror as I slowly turned to face the back of my house. Darkness still shrouded me, and I looked up above the door leading into our sun porch. The floodlights on the outdoor sentry appeared to still be intact but remained obstinately unlit. The motion sensor should have snapped them to life the minute we had rounded the corner, but it hadn’t.
I searched my memories from earlier in the evening, but my thoughts were cloudy, and anything but the here and now was obscured by a thick fog of fear. I suddenly couldn’t remember if it had been Felicity or I that had locked the back door and set the alarm. I didn’t know if the outdoor light had been inadvertently shut off or purposely disabled in some less than obvious fashion. I knew only that I was standing in the dark, paralyzed. Frozen in place by horrifying thoughts I couldn’t escape.
I fought to seek a ground, feeling like a coward as my hands continued to vibrate in time with my anxiety. Taking in a deep lungful of the gelid night air, I held it for a pair of heartbeats then allowed its escape in a measured stream. I found no calm waiting for me as I had hoped. I had only my resolve.
Pressing myself to move, I covered the short distance to the deck in a fraction of a minute that presented itself to my addled senses as at least a full hour. Carefully, I climbed the shallow flight of stairs and made my way toward the sun porch. I glanced quickly around to see if anyone was hiding in the shadows, only to discover that the night itself was one enormous shadow, and I was standing in the middle of it. As I turned and took a cautious step, I unknowingly brushed against an arm of a pinwheel squirrel feeder. With the delicate balance of the partially eaten ears of feed corn suddenly disturbed, the assembly rotated with a timid squeak and dull thump as the heavier cob swung downward. As the feed laden arms assumed their new positions, the lowest of the four slapped against the back of my shoulder with a thud. I leapt forward with a yelp and spun, nearly stumbling over my own feet as I tensed. The corncob continued to swing gently as it settled in toward stillness.
My unseen attacker now identified, I breathed a short sigh of relief then turned and took the last few steps to the porch door.
My bladder felt weak, and the caustic acid of panic was brewing in my stomach. My hand was trembling uncontrollably as I reached for the handle and wrapped my fingers around the chilled metal. Summoning whatever courage I could find hiding behind the towering levies of abject terror, I twisted my wrist.
Locked.
The panic subsided slightly at the discovery, and I let my sweat covered palm fall away. Apparently the lock had not been tampered with, and the rear of the house was still secure. Now, since I didn’t carry a key to the back door, my only course of action would be to enter the house from the front.
I turned to head in that direction and was immediately blinded by a stringent beam of light that I would later discover had emanated from the business end of a ridiculously powerful Mag-Lite.
A voice barked angrily in the darkness, “POLICE! DON’T MOVE AND KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”
Flicking tufts of fur could be seen hanging just below the exposed rafters of our living room ceiling. Dickens, Emily, and Salinger each had taken a position on the wooden beams to watch the proceedings below as police officers and crime scene technicians went in and out of the house. Every now and then, one of the felines would dip a whiskered face down alongside its perch and inspect the goings on in the dining room. It was obvious that they weren’t at all pleased with the intrusion into their territory.
The dogs had been far worse in that regard until they had been temporarily banished to the bedroom. At least they had finally given up on the incessant barking.
“Go ahead, Ben,” I told my friend. “Yell or something.”
“What for?” he asked in a dull monotone.
“Because that’s what you do,” I answered. “It’s how you deal with people who screw up. I screwed up.”
He had arrived hot on the heels of the uniformed Briarwood officers who had been first on the scene. They were in the process of verifying my ID when his van fishtailed to a halt in front of my house, a magnetic bubble light on the corner of its roof casting evenly spaced red flickers across the faces of my neighbors homes.
Now, as we spoke, the Crime Scene Unit was gathering what little evidence they could from my defaced garage door. A thorough inspection of the house had revealed nothing to indicate that the perpetrator of the painting ever made it inside, or even tried to for that matter.
“I’m not gonna yell,” he replied with a tired sigh. “I’ve discovered it doesn’t do any good with you. You aren’t scared of me.”
I didn’t say anything else. I simply took a sip of my coffee then held the cup cradled in my hands. Felicity and Austin had returned and were positioned around the dining room table with me. They remained silent as well.
When Felicity had returned, she jumped from the Jeep and hit the ground in full motion the moment she saw me standing in the driveway with Ben and the other officers. She slammed into me with all the force her petite frame could muster while running in a long, far less than billowing, wool skirt. She had clenched her arms around me, and the very first thing she said was, “For as long as you live Rowan Linden Gant you NEVER ask me to do something like that again, or I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”
I knew she meant it.
Ben leaned against the wall then neatly folded his arms across his chest and eyed me calmly. “So what exactly were ya’ plannin’ ta’ do if that asshole had been in the house?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted with an embarrassed shrug.
“Good plan.” He added a raised eyebrow and quick nod of his head to underscore the sarcastic statement.
“I know… I screwed up.”
“Yeah, ya’ did,” he agreed. “You started by gettin’ here before eleven, which I specifically told ya’ not ta’ do. Both of ya’. If you’d just stuck ta’ the damn schedule, I woulda been here already. Now other than that, ya’ did great right up until you got outta the Jeep.”
“Yeah. I know,” I conceded.
“You entered a potentially dangerous scene unarmed and completely unprepared. It’s beyond me what ya’ were thinkin’.”
“I was thinking this guy needs to be stopped.”
“Yeah, I can agree with that. But just how did ya’ think you were gonna do it?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”
“Jeez, Rowan,” he exclaimed. “Whatever’s got ya’ all outta whack on the hocus-pocus stuff must be affectin’ your judgment too. What ya’ did was just plain stupid!”
My friend fell silent and studied me from across the room. I wasn’t sure what was going through his mind, but the glassy shimmer in his eyes told me that he was wrestling with something that was going to involve a serious decision.
“You’d do it again, wouldn’t ya’?” he finally asked.
I pondered the question with a frown and after a moment doled out the truth, “Given the circumstances, yes, I probably would.”
“Storm?” A deeply timbered voice vied for attention from the kitchen doorway.
“Yeah, Murv, whatcha got?” Ben turned to the head crime scene technician.
“A lot of nothin’,” the man drawled. “No prints, no fibers, no nothin’. Looks like whoever it was just did the spray job and beat feet… And they apparently did that entirely on solid ground ‘cause there’s not a fresh imprint in the snow anywhere around this house.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that.”
The CSU tech shrugged. “Got samples of the paint for the lab, not that I’m expecting much.”
“Great, thanks,” Ben told him. “Why don’t you and your team go ahead and wrap it up.”
“Will do.”
“Austin?” Ben directed himself at my brother-in-law.
“Aye?”
“Can you hang out for a bit and keep Felicity company?”
“Aye, no problem that.”
“Good. Come on, Rowan, let’s you an’ me take a walk.”
“This,” Ben told me, “is a Glock Seventeen.”
We were standing on the street at the back of his decrepit looking Chevrolet van. The doors were splayed open, and he had just withdrawn his large hand from a gym bag. In his palm was a sturdy black holster filled with the handgun he was now describing.
“Austrian designed, mounted on a lightweight, high impact plastic frame,” he continued as he unsnapped the holster and withdrew the firearm. “Magazine releases here.”
He held the pistol out into the glow of the streetlamp with the muzzle pointed at the ground and displayed the grip to me. Using his thumb he pressed the release and slid the magazine out with his other hand.
“Ben…” I started to object as I realized where this was heading.
“Shut up and learn.” He cut me off succinctly and then began indicating points on the weapon with his index finger. “Sights are here and here. This is a semi-automatic, and the firing pin is fully enclosed here, so there’s no hammer like on your revolver. The slide is spring-loaded and it’s actuated each time you fire, so keep your thumb down and out of its way, or it’ll take a chunk outta it. Guaranteed. There’s a safety here. You depress it automatically when ya’ squeeze the trigger, so the only thing it’s good for is keepin’ it from firin’ if ya’ drop it. Follow me so far?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“This is a high capacity magazine.” He held up the oblong rectangle for me to view. “It holds seventeen nine-millimeter rounds.” He turned the magazine at an angle to display the blue nosed bullets it carried. “These are Glaser Safety Slugs. They’re eighty-grain rounds with number twelve shot suspended in Teflon gel. They’re specifically designed to frag on impact and not ricochet. This does two things. One, ya’ don’t send a wild round through the wall and kill your neighbor. Two, they make a very nasty mess of soft targets. If you hit ‘im you’ll fuck ‘im up. Guaranteed.”
He turned the magazine back on its side and made a show of sliding it into the bottom of the grip. “Mag goes here, just slide it in till it locks.” The telltale snap of the catch taking hold punctuated his instruction. “Pull the slide back, let it go, and it’s ready to rock.”
Ben jacked the metal slide on the weapon backwards as he stated the instruction then released it. With a quick mechanical snap and a metallic ping, a shell was extracted from the magazine and chambered. He lifted the Glock and continued his demonstration.
“Hold it firmly, cup your left hand and press the knuckles of your right hand into your left palm. Extend your arms and pull back with your left while pressin’ forward with your right. Use equal pressure and ya’ get a stable firin’ position. No stupid TV bullshit or anything. Hold it upright and use both hands. Sight down the barrel just like you would with your revolver and squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it.
“If it misfires or jams, don’t panic. Just turn it on its side and repeat what I just showed you. Just rack it and return to the firing position. Got it?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
Ben carefully slid the sidearm back into the nylon holster and snapped the loop over the grip before handing it to me. “I want that on your belt at all times. Any questions?”
I could smell the pungent odor of solvent and light oil wafting from the handgun as I hefted it. It had obviously been very recently cleaned. This told me that Ben hadn’t made this decision on the spur of the moment as I had originally believed. There had been serious thought involved, and he had intended to arm me even before the incident tonight. Still, I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with the idea.
“Are you sure I need this, Ben? We’ve got the Ruger in the house.” I referred to the. 357 magnum revolver Ben had convinced us to purchase some years ago for the purpose of home protection. At that time, he had put both Felicity and I through a much less abbreviated version of what he had just finished.
“This one is easier ta’ conceal and no offense, white man, but Felicity is a hell of a lot better shot with that revolver than you are. This one has almost three times as many rounds, so maybe you can hit somethin’ for once, which reminds me-this gun has a little quirk. The first two rounds out of it’ll be about six inches low, but don’t worry about that. Just aim it dead-on for center mass, and keep pullin’ the trigger. When it’s empty, the breach’ll lock open.”
“Aren’t your colleagues going to wonder why I’m carrying a pistol?” I made another appeal.
“Wear a coat and don’t go through any metal detectors and they’ll never know.”
“Let me rephrase that, Ben. You know I’m not licensed to carry this.”
“Yeah, so?”
“A little technicality called breaking the law?”
“Better judged by twelve than carried by six, paleface.”
“I’m still not so sure about this…”
“Look, Row, I can’t be with ya’ twenty-four hours a day, and ta’ be honest, I just don’t trust you not to pull another stunt like ya’ did tonight.” He levered the doors on the van shut as I sidestepped out of the way. “Just indulge me. Put the damn thing on your belt and don’t let me catch ya’ without it until this is all over.”
“Okay,” I surrendered. “But I won’t guarantee that I’ll use it.”
“Trust me, Kemosabe. I hope like hell ya’ don’t ever have to make that decision. If I can help it, ya’ won’t.”
In the resulting quiet my friend pulled a pair of stubby Chateaus out of his pocket and offered one to me. He proceeded to slip his cigar out of its cellophane wrapper, and with a quick snip he trimmed the end. Borrowing his guillotine, I followed suit.
After lighting the tight roll of tobacco and giving the glowing tip a cursory inspection, he tucked it in the corner of his mouth and puffed.
“So fill me in,” he said between clenched teeth. “What’s the scoop with Rev. 21:8?”
“Book of Revelation, chapter twenty-one, verse eight,” I told him as I finished igniting my own smoke. “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers,” I stressed the word sorcerers, “and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
“Second death?”
“The proverbial afterlife, Ben. I think maybe since he couldn’t kill me tonight, he just wanted to make sure I know that I’m going to burn in hell.”
Austin was supposed to be leaving to return to Ireland the next morning and had reluctantly departed our home somewhere around one a.m.; but only after we had spent a solid hour convincing him there was nothing he could do. We still weren’t sure whether or not he was going to cancel his flight.
Neither Felicity nor I had come down from our adrenalin highs, so after a fitful try at sleep we elected to sit up with Ben.
It was 4:30 in the morning, and the deep fold of darkness had yet to lighten when he and Felicity came out the back door in search of me. My friend had been maintaining his caffeine buzz with one cup of java after another, and I was supposed to be brewing a fresh pot of the fuel. Unfortunately, somewhere in that process, time had suddenly segmented itself and fallen away from my reality. A void now occupied the space in my mind between then and now. I was barely conscious of standing coatless in the cold air, shivering as it chilled me through.
“Rowan, honey, what are you doing out here? What’s wrong?” My wife’s concerned voice was the first to meet my ears.
“Dammit, white man,” Ben’s words followed close behind. “You scared the hell outta us.”
Their voices prodded me from my catatonia, and I broke my locked gaze from the inscription gracing my garage door. As their thick words formed coherence in my sluggish brain, I slowly turned to them.
“What’re ya’ doin’ out here by yourself?” my friend pressed.
“I… I don’t know,” I stammered.
Felicity let out a sudden gasp then gently grabbed my hand and pulled my arm farther into the light.
“Awwww, Jeez! What the hell is this?” my friend exclaimed as the reason for her surprise came into full view.
I looked down at my arm.
Scattered randomly across the surface of my flesh were a half dozen small welts, each one surrounding a puckering lesion. Thin trickles of blood still wept from the puncture wounds to streak my skin. The deep pricking sensation that had been masked by my earlier blankness returned with a sharp, biting rhythm. In my mind there could only be one meaning for this torture.
“I think he might have moved to the next name on the list” was all I said.
It was late afternoon before the Major Case Squad managed to determine for an absolute certainty that Amanda Marie Stark was missing.