Crisscross rj-8

by F. Paul Wilson

  The world changing into a place hospitable to those creatures he'd fought down in Florida… he didn't want to picture that.

  "Okay, then. At Brady's current rate of pillar planting, when do you think he'll be done?"

  "In about a year. Perhaps less."

  Jack closed his eyes. A year… his child would be here by then. Neither the baby nor Gia nor Vicky would have a future if Brady succeeded.

  And then the solution struck him. So obvious…

  "We'll dig them up! I'll put an excavating crew together and we'll yank them out faster than Brady can bury them. We'll make his…" Herta was shaking her head. "No? Why not?"

  "Once they are inserted into the ground, the damage is done. It's too late. Digging them up will accomplish nothing."

  Damn. He'd thought he was onto something.

  "That's why you want the Dormentalist Church, as you said, destroyed… damaged, crippled, driven to its knees."

  She nodded.

  Jack rubbed his jaw. "Destroying it… that's a tall order. It's everywhere, in just about every country. But crippling it… that might be possible. Let's say Brady gets kicked out of the driver's seat. What will that do?"

  "It won't stop Opus Omega—his High Council will carry on without him—but it will slow it down. And that will buy us some time."

  "For what?"

  She shrugged. "Time for the Ally to realize the extent of the threat to its interests here. Time for the Adversary to make a mistake—he's not infallible, you know. He's made mistakes before. And he's eager, so eager for his promised moment. After millennia of struggle, his time is almost within reach, and he's impatient. That may work to our advantage."

  "I think we may just get that extra time."

  Her eyes brightened. "You do? How? Why?"

  "If things go the way I've planned, Mr. Luther Brady should be doing a perp walk sooner rather than later."

  "A perp…?"

  "Just keep watching your TV." Jack stood and noticed Anya's skin flap still folded in his hand. He held it up. "What do I do with this?"

  "It was meant for you to keep. Don't you want it?"

  "It's not exactly something I care to frame and hang over my bed. Why don't you take it. You know, as a reminder of Anya."

  Herta rose and began unbuttoning her blouse. "I need no reminder."

  "What—?" Jack said, startled and embarrassed. "What are you doing? Wait a second here."

  Her twisted fingers moved more nimbly than perhaps they should have, considering her swollen knuckles.

  She glanced up at him. "A second or two is all this will take."

  As she undid the bottom button she turned away toward the picture window and let the back of her blouse drop to her waist.

  Jack gasped. "Holy—!"

  "There is nothing holy about this, I assure you."

  He stared at her damaged skin, at the array of cigarette burn-sized scars and the lines crisscrossing between them. Except for one fresh wound, slowly oozing red to the left of her spine, her back was an exact copy of Anya's.

  "What's going on here?"

  "It is a map of my pain," she said over her shoulder.

  "That's just what Anya said. She called it a map of the Adversary's efforts to destroy her. Why?"

  "Because he cannot win if I am still alive."

  As crazy as that sounded, Jack took it at face value.

  "But who are you?"

  "Your mother."

  Jack fought an urge to scream and kept his voice low. "Not that again. Look—"

  "No. You look. Look more closely at my back."

  "If you mean that fresh wound, I see it." Realization clubbed him. "The pillar out in Pennsylvania! You mean, every time Brady and his gang buries one of those pillars—"

  "I feel it. I bleed."

  Jack sat again. "I don't understand."

  "You do not need to. But look closely and tell me if you see any other difference."

  Jack stared and noticed something else Anya hadn't had: a deep de-pression in the small of her back, big enough for, say, two of Jack's fingers. He reached toward it, then snatched his hand back.

  Herta backed toward him. "Go ahead. Touch it. It's healed now."

  Jack felt a touch of queasiness. "No, I don't think—"

  "Place your fingers in the wound. It will not bite you."

  Jack reached out again and slid his forefinger to the first joint into the depression. It was deep; he could feel nothing against his fingertip. He eased his finger farther in, to the second knuckle. And still nothing against his fingertip.

  Jack couldn't bring himself to push farther. He withdrew and leaned closer to see if he could get an idea of how deep it was. Maybe then—

  He jerked his head back. "Jesus Christ!"

  "He had nothing to do with this either."

  Had he seen what he'd thought he'd seen? No. Not possible.

  But then, "not possible" had lost all meaning some time ago.

  Jack peered again into the opening. He saw a scar-lined tunnel and, at its far end, light. Daylight. A circle of blue sky and distant buildings.

  Christ, he was looking at the Queens waterfront on the East River, viewing it through a hole that ran clear through Herta's body. Jack backed away and leaned to his right, looking past Herta at a wider view of the same scene through the picture window. It was as if Herta had been run through with a spear and the wound hadn't closed—it had healed along the walls of its circumference, yes, but left an open tunnel through her body.

  "What—what did that?"

  "Anya's passing," Herta said, pulling her blouse back up over her shoulders.

  "That must have been—"

  "It was beyond anything I have ever experienced. Far beyond the agony each pillar inflicts."

  Jack spoke slowly, feeling his way along. "Why should these pillars wound you? Who are you?"

  "I've told you: I'm you're—"

  "Please don't say 'mother' again."

  "Then I shall say nothing, for that is the truth."

  He tried another tack. "If every pillar wounds you, I can see why you want Brady stopped. But if he finishes the Opus, that in a way benefits you too. I mean, no more pain from new pillars."

  Herta nodded and turned as she finished rebuttoning her blouse. She fixed him with her dark eyes.

  "Yes, I suppose that is true about no more pain. Because I will be dead. The whole purpose of Opus Omega is to kill me."

  14

  The interrogation room was silent, breathless while Luther Brady stared at the photos and felt as if his bones were dissolving.

  This couldn't be! These photos… him with the two boys from last night. At least he thought it was last night. He didn't hire the same boys every time and couldn't make out their faces. But yes! That was the mask he'd used last night. He rotated through a series of them for variety. But last night or last month didn't matter. The very existence of these photos was a horror, but even worse, they were in the hands of the police.

  How? Who?

  Petrovich! He'd delivered the boys as usual. This time he must have stayed around and shot these! The greedy little shit! He—

  But how did they wind up with this Richard Cordova they were talking about? And who had used his pistol to kill him?

  "Wh… wh…" His dry tongue seemed unable to form words.

  "Fakes," Barry said in a dismissive wave of his hands. "Very obvious fakes. I'm no computer whiz, but even I know what can be done with Adobe Photoshop. They've even put a mask on the guy in these photos! Give me a break, will you? The whole thing is ludicrous!"

  "Where…" Finally Luther could speak. "Where did you get these?"

  Holusha tapped the center photo. "We found them under the cushion of the victim's desk chair. The chair where he was killed." The finger moved to a brown stain along the edge of the photo. "That's some of his blood that leaked around the cushion."

  "You must believe me," Luther said, leaning forward and covering the photos with his hand
s. He didn't want anyone, especially Barry, looking at them. But he had to convince these detectives. "I did not kill that man! I swear it! I am being framed for something I did not do!"

  Young hadn't broken his relentless stare. "Why would someone want to do that, Mr. Brady?"

  "The Dormentalist Church has more than its share of enemies," Barry said. "Mr. Brady is the Church's spiritual leader, its public face. If this plot to disgrace and discredit him succeeds, the Church will suffer irreparable damage."

  "Well, then," Young said, "the solution is very simple. If you weren't at Mr. Cordova's house last night, Mr. Brady, where were you?"

  With those boys!

  But he couldn't admit that. And what good would it do? He'd never allowed any of the boys to see his face. Not even Petrovich knew what he looked like.

  "I was in my cabin upstate."

  "Can anyone vouch for your presence there?"

  "I… no, I was there alone. I go there every Sunday evening to escape the pressures of the Church and the city so that I can commune with my xelton."

  Holusha snickered. "Your xelton or whatever it is looks an awful lot like a couple of teenage boys."

  "No one to verify your presence at the cabin last night?" Young said.

  "No."

  "I didn't think so." Young withdrew some folded papers from his inner coat pocket. "I have here a warrant for your arrest."

  As he handed it to Barry, Holusha pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

  "Luther Brady," Young said, "I'm arresting you for the murder of Richard Cordova. I know your attorney is already present but I'm going to read you your rights anyway: You have the right to remain silent…"

  The rest of the words faded into the roaring in Luther's ears. He'd heard them on TV so many times he knew them by heart. But never in his darkest nightmare had he imagined that someone would be reciting Miranda to him…

  He glanced at Barry, who'd grown awfully silent, and saw him staring at the photos.

  "Barry…?"

  The attorney looked up at him and shook his head. He seemed to have receded to the far side of the room.

  "You need more help than I can give you, Luther. You need a criminal attorney. A good one. I'll start making some calls right away."

  "Barry, you've got to keep these photos from the public. They're fakes, Barry." He turned to Young and Holusha. "I swear they're fakes, and I beg of you, don't let word of them get out. Once something like this gets around, you're forever marked. Even after you've been proven innocent—which I will be, I assure you—you never lose the taint."

  "We'll do what we can," Young said. "We're more interested in the murder right now."

  Luther fought to keep his knees from buckling as he felt the cuffs snap around his wrists. Yesterday he'd been on top of the world, the Opus Omega all but completed.

  Now he was being arrested for murder and his life was swirling down the toilet.

  How? How had this happened?

  15

  Jack nodded to Esteban as he walked through the lobby and out to the sidewalk.

  Beekman Place was quiet, as usual, but not as quiet as Herta had been when Jack tried to squeeze more information out of her. The Opus Omega was designed to kill her? What the hell?

  Why? How? She wouldn't say.

  Who was she that Rasalom and the Otherness wanted her dead? Beyond her usual I-am-your-mother line, she wouldn't say.

  What she did say was that she was tired and he should go. They'd talk another day.

  He walked uptown toward Gia's. Vicky would be in school, but he hoped Gia was home. He needed a dose of sanity.

  TUESDAY

  1

  The news broke overnight.

  When Jack awoke he flipped on MSNBC. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because the channel had had Brady on as a guest so many times. But Imus in the Morning was playing—who was the genius who'd dreamed up broadcasting a radio program on TV?—so he switched around until he saw Brady's face.

  It was a photo and the voiceover was going on about how everyone was shocked—shocked!—that Luther Brady had been arrested for murder. Then they switched to a live feed from outside the Bronx House of Detention for Men where Brady had spent the night. A pretty, blond news face was standing on the curb while a hundred or so protesters shouted and waved signs behind her.

  After some prefatory remarks she motioned a young woman onto the screen. Jack recognized the eternally cheery Christy from the temple. Only today she wasn't cheery. She stood there in her gray, high-collared jacket with the braided front, tears streaming down her cheeks as she blubbered about the injustice of it all. That a wonderful man like Luther Brady, who'd bettered so many lives the world over, should be accused of murder, it just… it just wasn't fair!

  "Fairer than you'll ever guess, my dear," Jack muttered.

  Next the blond reporter brought on another familiar face—the Aryan poster boy, Atoor. In contrast to Christy's grief, Atoor was angry. Color flared in his scrubbed cheeks as he denounced the police, the DA, and the city itself.

  "It's a witch hunt! It's religious persecution! We all know that the old-time entrenched religions call the shots in this town, and obviously they've decided that Dormentalism is becoming too popular for its own good. So the solution is to trump up charges against the head of our Church and throw him in jail. What next? Burning him at the stake?"

  Jack applauded. "Well said, young man! Well said! But let's not burn him at the stake yet."

  If the Penn cops were earning their pay, there'd be lots more shit raining on the Dormentalist roof real soon.

  With that in mind, he headed out the door for Gia's. The baby was scheduled for a follow-up ultrasound in just over an hour.

  2

  "I can't believe it!" Luther said.

  This whole situation was a horror, and it worsened at every turn.

  Bail denied … the gavel bang after those shocking words still rang through Luther's head like a slammed door.

  Arthur Fineman, the criminal attorney Barry had referred him to, didn't appear too worried. He seemed so out of place in this dingy meeting room in the detention center, like a Monet that had somehow fallen into a garbage dump. His suit looked even more expensive than Barry's, and his Rolex flashier. Considering his hourly fee, he could well afford both.

  Luther, on the other hand, felt dirty and disheveled.

  And humiliated… forced to walk a gauntlet of reporters and cameramen as he'd been led—handcuffed!—to and from the Bronx courthouse on Grand Concourse.

  "Don't worry. We'll appeal the denial of bail."

  Luther tried to contain his outrage, but some of it seeped through.

  "That's all well and good, fine for you to say, but meanwhile I'm the one who stays behind bars. Every day—every hour—that passes with me locked in here, unable to defend myself to the public, only makes it worse for my

  Church. Onl) one side of the story is getting out. I need to be free to present my side to the media."

  Fineman shifted in his seat. He was deeply tanned and combed his silver mane straight back so that it curled above his collar.

  "The DA managed to persuade the judge that you're a flight risk."

  "Then it's your job to impersuade him. I am not a flight risk. I'm innocent and that will be proven in court!"

  Flight risk… the Bronx DA had argued that since the Dormentalist Church was a globe-spanning organization, its leader might find shelter among his devoted followers anywhere in the world. Fineman had spoken of Luther's lack of criminal history, of his obvious ties to the city, even offered to surrender Luther's passport and post a two-million-dollar bond. But the judge had sided with the DA.

  Luther was convinced now that someone high up was pulling the strings in this plot against him.

  "We'll worry about that later. The first thing I want to do is have you held here pending our appeal."

  "What do you mean, 'held here'? I want you to get me outV

  "I mean that until I do get you
out, I want you here as opposed to Riker's."

  Luther's heart quailed. Riker's Island… home to some of the city's most violent criminals.

  "No… they can't."

  Fineman shook his head. "If you can't make bail or, as in your case, you're denied bail, that's where they put you."

  "You can't let them!"

  "I'll do my damnedest to prevent it."

  "That's not saying you will, that's only saying you'll try."

  Fineman leaned forward. "Mr. Brady, I'm going to be frank with you."

  A sting of alarm raced through him—this couldn't be good—but he didn't let it show.

  "I should hope so."

  "They have a good case against you. So good that my contacts in the DA's office tell me there's talk of seeking the death penalty."

  Luther squeezed his eyes shut and began again the mantra that had sustained him through the endless night in this concrete-walled sty. This cannot be happening… this cannot be happening!

  "But before the DA does that," Fineman added, "you may be offered a deal."

  Luther opened his eyes. "Deal?"

  "Yes. Let you plea to a lesser charge that—"

  "And admit I murdered a man I've never met or even heard of until after he was dead? No, absolutely not. No deals!"

  A deal meant prison, probably for most if not all his remaining years. Prison meant that his life's work, Opus Omega, would remain unfinished. Or worse, finished by someone else… someone else would claim the glory that Luther deserved.

  No. Unthinkable.

  "They'll regret this," Luther said, anger seething through his fear. "I'll put thousands—tens of thousands—in the streets outside the courthouse and outside this prison. Their voices will shake these walls and—"

  Fineman raised a hand. "I'd go easy on the protests. So far the DA hasn't mentioned those photos. If you push him too hard, he might release them. Just for spite."

  "No… no!"

  "Look, Mr. Brady. I've already put someone on the dead man, to dig up anything and everything known about him. I've got to tell you, in just a matter of hours he was able to come up with whispers about blackmail. This plays right into the DA's hands."