by Michael Beck
"The girls were probably Smith's thing. Remember, he was the one who abducted the Gilliam girl. Bailey might have just got off on the killing. Or perhaps that was his thing: he loved boys and hated girls, so took it out on these teenagers."
"Why didn't Father Bailey draw pictures of the male victims? I don't know. Perhaps he got off on just the kids."
"Tan, we're talking about your worst category of sick fucks here. Who knows why they do what they do? Hell, they probably go around before breakfast killing the neighbor's cats and dogs for something to do. These guys are evil, Tan. Evil. You know more than me. Evil needs no reason. It just needs opportunity."
CHAPTER 72
"You promise you'll be nice, Uncle Mark?" Lucy said.
"When am I ever not nice?"
Lucy just looked at me.
"Okay, I'll be nice. Can I watch now?"
She actually thought about it for several seconds before nodding. I would have been insulted if I didn't know how well Lucy knew me. She threw her tennis bag over her shoulder and we walked from the school parking lot towards the tennis courts. Eight hard courts were situated next to the school sports fields. Behind them was Granfield College, a brown-brick, two-story building in the shape of the letter H.
"Anyway, how come you're playing at a school?"
"There are too many matches to play at the tennis center so they use Granfield College's courts to get through the draw quicker."
"Hey, Lucy!" An athletic looking girl with dark hair and skin was waving at Lucy.
"Hey, Gina," said Lucy.
"Do you want to have a warm-up hit?"
"Sure." Lucy opened her bag and flipped through the racquets inside.
I could never get over how many racquets these kids carried in their bags. Who needs five tennis racquets to play a match? Is it likely they are all going to break? My mom, I remembered, used the one racquet for twenty years.
Gina knelt on the grass next to Lucy. "Is that--?" she whispered.
Lucy flicked me a glance. "Ah huh."
"I heard what happened when you played Andjela. I'm playing Lela first," said Gina. "You know what a bitch she is. Can I borrow him?"
Both girls giggled. I sighed. This was going to be a long afternoon.
"I'm going to find a seat. Call me if you need anything," I said in an effort to maintain my dignity.
"Can you fill my water bottle?" said Lucy.
"Sure."
I took her water bottle and walked up the grass embankment. A gardener was criss-crossing his way across the sports field on a ride-on mower. I walked across the school quadrangle and began filling Lucy's water bottle at the water fountain in front of a low, gray building. A sign above the doors said, 8th GRADE LOCKERS. Above the drinking fountains was a bulletin board holding junior football, lacrosse and basketball training lists. Things had changed since I was at school. I saw badminton and table tennis squad lists. Even a casting call for Pirates Of Penzance.
I screwed the water bottle lid on and was heading back toward the tennis courts when I stopped. Another list suddenly leapt out at me. It was a list of perhaps a dozen student names. But it was not the names that grabbed my attention. It was the heading: 8th GRADE LUNCHTIME DETENTION LIST.
The throaty roar of the ride-on mower grew louder and the pungent, sweet smell of damp, cut grass filled my nostrils. The gardener, a young fellow with a wispy red beard, nodded at me as he drove past ten yards away from me. I turned and watched him, mesmerized.
"Son of a bitch," I whispered.
CHAPTER 73
CUPID
He had to laugh. It had all been so easy. The police had bought it hook line and sinker. He had laughed so hard he almost peed his pants when he read in the papers that Harry Smith was helping the police with their enquiries into the Cupid killings.
Cupid? He loved the attention he was getting but he hated that name. Cupid was a soft, romantic cherub. He wasn't Cupid. He was a relentless, unforgiving destructive force. He was Samael. The angel of death. He had been infatuated with Samael ever since he first read about him as a young boy. As one of God's archangels he was believed to be both evil and good. Samael the Destroyer.
Just like he had become. Yes, he killed the just and the good. But he also took the evil and the wanton.
Samael. The angel of death.
The police and Bailey had seen him in all his glory and didn't even know it, the fools. The idiots probably thought the angel in Bailey's cellar was just any angel.
It wasn't. It was him. Samael. Of course, he wasn't foolish enough to give the painting his facial likeness. But the eyes, oh yes, the eyes were all his.
And now the police believed that Harry Smith was capable of the tapestry of death he had woven over the years? Harry Smith? That dumb klutz! When they were altar boys together, Smith couldn't even pour the altar wine into a glass without spilling half of it. He couldn't plan his way out of a wet, paper bag, and the police thought he could commit eighteen perfect murders?
Samael didn't know who was dumber. The police or Smith. And all he'd had to do was take a snow-globe from that bitch Bridgette Giles' bedroom, put a tiny spot of her blood on the bottom of it, wrap it in Christmas paper and send it to Smith. The sheer, brilliant simplicity of it still amazed him.
Since he was a child people had always underestimated him. If they knew what he had done, they would be amazed. Especially all those teachers, with their impossible tests and rules, trying to make him look like an idiot. He remembered how they'd whispered behind his back, as if he was a simpleton and couldn't understand what they were saying.
Oh, how he would like to show them who was the smart one now.
And then they kicked him out of school because he hit that bitch, Susie Hanlon. She had fooled him, because early on he had thought her prettiness was more than skin deep. It wasn't until he asked her out and she laughed at him that he saw her for what she really was.
Evil.
She was the one who had started calling him Smelly-Maly and soon that was all he ever heard. Smelly-Maly. No one would sit next to him, students laughed and held their noses when he went past.
It took him five years, but he'd made her pay. Guess who was smelly then? She was his first bitch. Taking her had been a big risk but well worth it. After that, he made sure there was no tie between him and any of the bitches.
The great thing about his plan was that he never had to get rid of any of the bitches. Father Bailey did it for him!
Samael laughed again, and had to stop painting for a moment or he'd have smudged his work. Every time he thought about the web of clues he'd left for the dimwitted police, he couldn't help but smile. The beauty and irony of it was breathtaking.
Father Bailey, that wandering-fingered, cane-wielding bastard was getting paid back in spades. He still had nightmares of Bailey and that cane. Every week, for as long as he could remember, when Bailey visited Mother he was caned for doing something bad.
He remembered all the times he had sat in the pitch blackness of the Sorry-Room, hearing the clickety-click sound of Father Bailey running his cane along the banisters as he slowly made his way up the stairs. Even now, the innocuous clicking sound of a peg on the spokes of a child's bike made him gag until he had the sour taste of vomit in the back of his throat.
Mother had always said that he was bad and that God had forsaken him. She was wrong.
Samael still remembered the exact, precise moment God came to him. He had been sitting in the back pew at Sunday mass one morning in 1998. An altar boy he had never seen before, a dark-haired, dark-skinned kid with big brown, soulful eyes, carried the chalice of wine to Father Bailey. He'd heard Mrs. Robertson, who was sitting next to him, lean over and whisper to Mr. Robertson, "Who's that altar boy, Rodney?"
"He's an orphan from Mexico. I heard that Father Bailey is trying to find him a home. His name's Jesus Fernandez."
"Who's he staying with?" said Mrs. Robinson.
"With Father Bailey at the conven
t."
And there it was.
The whole awe-inspiring, delicious plan appeared, fully mapped out before him, a gift from God. To one of his angels. Samael.
Samael was so excited he couldn't wait so, that very night, he had quietly sneaked into Father Bailey's house at the convent. It was child's play, as he had a key to the front gate and Bailey's front door, stolen when he was an altar boy. For years he had been pilfering money and small items from Bailey. Even then the priest's memory was failing, and he'd never seemed aware that things were disappearing.
He had slipped through the house via the kitchen and quietly opened Bailey's bedroom door. As soon as he heard that Jesus Fernandez was staying with Bailey, he knew. How many times had he heard the sounds from the confessional?
It had not been luck that he'd missed that dubious honor. Bailey only fancied handsome boys. And if there was one thing he hadn't been as a kid, it was handsome. He had been fat, with greasy hair and terrible acne. To top it off he smelled.
Susie Hanlon had been right about that. But she didn't know what he was going to become. That night was the beginning of his metamorphosis. From fat, whiny loser to lean, beautiful, avenging angel. To Samael.
He had walked in and stood next to the bed, looking down at the sleeping figures. Then, with the knife from the kitchen, he had sliced open the throat of the smaller one.
There was hardly any sound. But there was a lot of blood. He slipped the knife into Bailey's hand, which closed automatically around it. Then he hid in the closet, being careful to leave the door open a fraction. He didn't want to miss any of the fun.
When Bailey woke he had to cover his mouth to stifle his laughter. Bailey's wailing, his moaning, was truly fantastic. The look of horror on his face was truly priceless. It was perfect payback for all those beatings Bailey had inflicted on him.
Almost.
He only regretted that he hadn't thought to bring a camera to record it so he could watch it again.
Bailey, after he got over his pitiful whining, did what he had expected. He hid the body. What did surprise him was where Bailey buried it. In his cellar.
When he checked the cellar out later, Samael was quite pleased. It was large and there was plenty of room for additions.
Mother had told him all about Father Bailey's family. That was one advantage of having a gossipy, heartless windbag for a mother. She liked to talk. So he learned all about the priest's Familial Alzheimer's, how his father died and the horror it held for him. Mother had always said God worked in mysterious ways, and he guessed she was right.
Two weeks later he left Susie Hanlon in the cellar and the bloody knife in Bailey's kitchen. The sniveling, sadistic coward thought he had had another of his blackouts and buried her for me. The first step on his path was complete.
The only problem was Tanner. He had hoped that the trail of evidence he had left at Bailey's place would throw him off the scent. But he'd seen the look in Tanner's eyes as he watched Bailey drive away from the church.
He didn't like it. Not one little bit. He saw that same obsessed expression every time he looked in a mirror.
For one insane moment he had contemplated running over Tanner with his ride-on mower. But sanity had prevailed and he had driven around him. He had even doffed his cap as he drove past, not that Tanner had noticed. That was the great thing about being a gardener.
Or a priest. No one ever noticed you. You became invisible. You could get away with anything if no one saw you.
CHAPTER 74
Malcolm Fox was the fifth altar boy Bear and I had visited and he was a gardener. Not a lot to pin eighteen murders on someone but it was a start. That, I reasoned, was how he found the female victims. As a groundskeeper at the schools the girls attended, he could have simply got their names from the detention lists on the bulletin boards. Even if he didn't work at all of the victims' schools it would have been a simple task for him to get a detention list.
I climbed out of my Beetle and stood staring at the school in Queens that Malcolm Fox had attended. It was a Catholic school, with beautiful, old gothic buildings surrounded by meticulously cared-for lawns. But that was not what grabbed my attention.
What sucked the air out of my lungs was what stood above the main doorway. Looking down, with a small smile on its face, was a life-size statue of an angel. Underneath were the words "Our Lord of Angels School."
I stopped at the doorway and stared up at the statue. Male, with a strong, muscular body, it gazed down with an almost benevolent expression. I don't know how long I stood there before someone nudged me.
"What are you looking at?"
A sweet little red-haired girl, dressed in a blue blazer and a white and blue striped school dress, stood next to me.
"The angel," I said.
"That's Michael."
"Who?"
"The angel. That's Michael the Archangel. He's the one that cast Lucifer out of heaven. "
"Lucifer. You mean the Devil?"
"Uh huh. The Devil, Satan, whatever you want to call him. Did you know that Lucifer was an angel too?"
"No."
We both stood looking up at Michael the Archangel.
"I didn't either," she said. "But the real strange thing is that Lucifer was created good, just like the other angels. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"
"What's that?"
"If an angel can't be good, what hope do we have."
I glanced down at the rosy-cheeked girl "How old are you?"
"Ten. I gotta go. Nice meeting you."
Bemused, I watched her run down the corridor and disappear into a classroom. When I was ten, the deepest thing I ever wondered about was whether I'd play football or baseball at lunchtime. I checked in at the office and followed the directions. I was outside classroom 6B when my cell vibrated.
I flipped it open. The cell was silent. "Yes, Mole?"
"I've checked the employee records of the schools the dead girls attended. Fox was hired as a casual gardener at three of them. Many of these schools hire casually and pay under the table, so he may have worked in the others, but we're unlikely to find any record."
The bell rang and noisy kids began to pour out of the classroom. I felt like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput.
"When was he at St. Mary's?"
"He was an altar boy there in 1992."
"So he would have known Harry Smith."
The flow of children slowed to a trickle. Inside the classroom a middle-aged woman with silver-flecked brown hair was collecting books from the desks. "Miss Rhinehart?"
"Yes?"
"I'm Mark Tanner. I'm a private investigator and I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about an ex-student of yours. Malcolm Fox?"
"Who has he hurt?"
"Why do you assume he's hurt someone?"
"Have you met Malcolm?"
"I think I saw him when I was a kid. We went to the same church. He was fat wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was."
"And why did you think he hurt someone?"
"Malcolm always had a lot of pent up rage."
"Why was that?"
She put a pile of books down on her desk and leaned against it. She regarded me levelly with eyes that had been catching kids out for thirty years.
"Do you mind telling me why you are investigating Malcolm?"
I studied her and decided she would tell me more if I was honest with her. "I think he's done some really bad things. Really bad. If he's allowed to go on, a lot of people are going to get hurt, some of them just kids."
"By kids, you don't happen to mean young girls, do you?"
"What makes you say that?" I said, sharply.
She sighed and contemplated the rows of empty desks, as if there was a child out there holding his hand up with the answer.
"Malcolm was finally asked to leave Our Lord of Angels because he struck a girl."
"Was he a violent student?"
"I've had worse. But with Malcolm, it wasn't just overt violenc
e. It was the way he looked at people that were mean to him, especially girls. He would look at them with such enmity. That's why it wouldn't surprise me if he had finally taken his hatred out on some girl."
"You said he had a lot of pent up rage. Why was that?"
"Have you met Malcolm's mother?"
"Briefly. She slammed the door in my face."
Miss Rhinehart smiled. "Then you might have some idea of what I'm talking about. Mrs. Fox has some very fixed ideas. She is extremely religious and very strict, almost to the point of..."
"Child abuse?"
"Never that I could prove. Malcolm often seemed in pain. At times he came to school with red welts on his arms and legs, but he said it was from working in the garden."
"Did you ever report your misgivings?"
"Yes. I told my principal and she had the parish priest look into it. He found no evidence of abuse or neglect so I guess I was wrong."
"Do you remember which priest?"
"Why our local parish priest, of course. Back then that was Father Bailey."
Talk about giving the prisoner the keys to the jail. They had made him the warden.
"How long was Fox here?"
"He only lasted two terms. I had him in grade six and then he did one term in seventh grade. Malcolm found it hard to adjust to school life. His father died when he was a baby and he was raised solely by his mother. He was home-schooled until he came here, so he hadn't developed any coping mechanisms."
"Why did he need coping mechanisms?"
"Malcolm is dyslexic. This wasn't picked up early so, when he came here, his reading and writing were only at a third-grade level. Unfortunately he had a lot of physical issues. As you said, he was fat, but he also had terrible personal hygiene. The other kids used to call him Smelly-Maly. Kids can be very cruel.
"Add that to his academic problems and you can see why he found it hard at school. But it wasn't just those things. I've had kids with worse problems than Malcolm make a go of school. There was an oddness or strangeness about Malcolm that made people uncomfortable. I sometimes wondered if the children didn't make fun of Malcolm because they thought he was an easy target. They made fun of him because they were scared of him."