Mounds of dirt, the size and shape of graves, roughly dug and filled.
Four that she could see, though there might be more.
‘Seven altogether, Ms Plain,’ Reaper said. ‘A lamb in one, a man from Chopmist in another. But the one I regard as the true first lies in the third grave. A nun.’
The unsolved church-linked disappearances.
‘I didn’t find her in a church or even a convent. She was walking all alone along a quiet road while I was out one early evening in the gardener’s truck. She seemed to have been placed there for me, and the Messenger took care of the rest.’ He paused. ‘The camera, Ms Plain, please. To record my confession.’
She fumbled for it, going through the motions mechanically, unsure if the settings would cope with the candlelight, or if the equipment was even working at all, and she remembered now that Nemesis had hot-swapped batteries a couple of times in the camera and gizmo, but even if it had ceased working, it seemed to comfort her just a little to have the camera back in her hands.
Who was the messenger? she wondered, but stayed silent.
‘I brought her here, ended her life, buried her. It was swift for her, but for me, it was overwhelming. The boy had been long gone, but at those times I sometimes think the man was absent too, sucked into a vacuum while a stranger inhabited my skull—’ He coughed once, then went on. ‘I’m not claiming that it lived there independent of me – that would be nonsensical and dishonest. I’ve fed it over time, encouraged it, if you will.’
‘If we untie Pike,’ Liza said, her voice hoarse, ‘it might help you.’
‘The next was a woman from Foster,’ Reaper went on. ‘The Messenger and I were more organized that time. She’d been preparing the high altar in her church for Thanksgiving Eve. I’ve already told you how I planned my missions, made sure I’d have enough time to get back to Garthville. And the more lucrative I made things for my helper, the more he ensured my safe return to bed.’
‘Was he the messenger?’ Liza dared to ask. ‘This gardener?’
Reaper’s brittle laugh triggered another bout of coughing. ‘No, as I told you, he was just a man who liked what I brought him. Not always from churches. Have I mentioned that I stole from the Shiloh Inn?’
‘Your father’s place.’
‘John Tilden’s place.’ His voice had grown sandpaper rough. ‘It amused me to be able to do that. I came a few times while he and wife number three were sleeping. They slept very soundly. Hard work, wine and whiskey. I stole cash, which the gardener appreciated most.’
‘Was that when you found Alice Millicent’s ribbon?’ Liza said.
Reaper nodded absently. ‘It was a young man next, an organist at a church in Nooseneck. His death was slower.’ He shifted, tiring, leant on his cane, then pushed on. ‘Then another woman from Primrose. I think she was a rector. She really wanted to die at the end.’
Liza looked past him again at the mounds, a little more strength returning to her, because the one worthwhile thing she could do for all those victims was to make sure they were found and their murderer identified. Which meant that, with no way of knowing if she’d been transmitting, she had to get out.
‘Then the gardener got sick and I was stuck for a long time until he came back, and I got out again and found a man working in a church near Harmony. And then my good friend, the gardener, died.’ Reaper smiled. ‘Our partnership had lasted longer than many marriages.’ He shrugged. ‘And finally, as you can see for yourself, we have the once-Reverend Thomas Pike.’
Liza didn’t allow herself to look back at the man on the cross.
‘You said they let you out after they knew you were dying,’ she said. ‘Why not before? You were sharp enough to buy the gardener, do all that research. Couldn’t you have persuaded them that you were sane, safe to release after so many years?’
‘Maybe I didn’t want to,’ Reaper said. ‘Until I was ready.’
‘For this?’ Liza said.
Reaper took a moment. ‘Pike was more afraid than any of them had been. Especially after he realized who I was. I’ve kept him alive, which is very cruel, of course, but I wanted him to suffer, to understand what he’d done to the boy and, if you follow that line of thought, to these others too.’ He paused. ‘I’d considered bringing Reverend Keenan down here for my confession, but I knew he’d have tried to absolve me and I have no interest in that. You kept on asking about Pike, Ms Plain. I felt it only right to show you.’
A ghastly sound, part gurgle, part whimper, emanated from the dying man.
‘Maybe, if you show compassion now’ – she wanted to weep or maybe scream – ‘after all the terrible things that were done to you—’
‘No more,’ Reaper cut her off, his voice echoing.
Liza changed tack swiftly. ‘So who is the messenger?’
‘Just a fiction of mine,’ he answered flatly. ‘Biblical angels were messengers. He seemed real to me for a long time, but later, I knew that I’d conjured him up.’ He smiled again. ‘Protecting myself, perhaps, from the full comprehension of my own depravity.’
He stopped talking, and Liza’s heart began to pound again.
‘So that’s about it,’ he said. ‘My confession. All wrapped up.’
They both heard the sound.
Of someone coming.
Reaper raised his shotgun.
SEVENTY-FIVE
‘Hey,’ Michael called. ‘It’s Isaiah. I’m alone, Reaper.’
‘Look to your right,’ Reaper called. ‘Narrow tunnel – you’ll see candles.’
‘Be right there,’ Michael called back.
No more using his shotgun as a cane, aware that he might need it now, and that was slowing him down even more because his knee was painful as hell, not that it mattered.
Only one thing mattered now.
Getting Liza safely out.
He’d heard the last part of what Reaper had just called his ‘confession’. Enough to have raised the hairs on the back of his neck and to finally give him a true idea of what he was really dealing with.
Nothing he could have dreamed of. Definitely nothing he was equipped for.
‘Is Liza with you?’ he called now, fully aware that she was.
The pale, flickering glow was just ahead on his right.
‘I’m here,’ she called back. ‘I’m OK, but—’
She stopped too abruptly.
Reaper had stopped her.
Michael began edging closer. ‘Liza?’ he called.
‘Come and join us, Isaiah,’ Reaper’s voice answered.
Michael turned the corner, walked a little way through the tunnel toward the dim light, and saw the man on the cross.
‘Oh, good God.’ Blood draining from his face, he stared around wildly for Liza, found her to his right, eyes huge and terrified, Reaper’s gloved hand covering her mouth, his shotgun aimed at the side of her head, his cane on the ground, Liza’s camera dangling from its cable. ‘What the hell, Reaper?’ His voice was almost even. ‘Let her go.’
‘Of course.’ Reaper took his hand away. ‘I didn’t want her warning you off.’
‘What about the gun?’
Reaper moved the shotgun’s muzzle away from Liza’s head but kept the weapon firmly gripped, its stock in his right armpit, finger on the trigger.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Plain,’ Reaper said, ‘if that scared you.’
Liza took a shaky step away from him, watched him pick up his cane. ‘That’s Thomas Pike,’ she told Michael quickly. ‘Reaper’s been killing people for years. There are graves down here. He’s been confessing to me.’
Michael cast another look at the poor man on the cross, at the obscenity of it, recognized the stink all around them, had smelled it once in prison, knew it was death.
Then he looked back at Liza and shut down his own panic.
‘I came to tell you what’s happening in Saint Matthew’s,’ he said, easily, as if the evidence feet away was just a piece of fiction on a movie screen. ‘One of th
e women got sick – possible heart attack. Dr Plain says she needs to go to a hospital. Joel says that’s right, thinks we should open a door to let her out.’ Another pause. ‘I agree.’
‘So Joel’s given up?’ Reaper asked. ‘I thought he might.’
‘Only so they can get that woman to safety.’
‘Who is she?’ Liza asked. ‘The sick woman?’
‘Patty Jackson.’ Michael watched her face. ‘You know her?’
‘Not well,’ Liza said. ‘I’m glad they’re going to try to get her out.’
‘If they don’t blow themselves to hell first,’ Reaper said.
‘I told them to wait till you were back.’ Michael took a breath. ‘And I answered the phone before I came down here.’
‘I took the phone off the hook,’ Reaper said.
‘I put it back. I told the FBI about the sick woman.’
‘And what did the FBI say?’ Reaper asked ironically.
‘I didn’t wait around to listen.’
Michael felt Liza’s eyes on him, looked back at her, knew she could not possibly be certain of him.
‘All right.’ Reaper nodded. ‘We’re almost done here. Just one more thing to tell you, Ms Plain, you and your public, so your camera, please.’
Michael saw the dread in her, felt the sheerest admiration as she took hold of the camera and began recording, her hands shaking.
‘They already know where to find the ribbon,’ Reaper said. ‘But John Tilden wrote notes about what he’d done in a small black leather-bound book. Including his curious need to keep the ribbon. Another kind of confession, written long ago by a guilty man perhaps trying to find a way to live with what he’d done.’ He paused. ‘Which he managed very well, it seems.’
Michael was listening now with a terrible curiosity.
‘There’s a barn,’ Reaper said, very clearly. ‘An old apple barn one mile west of Shiloh Village, near the end of Lark Road, at the tip of a track that used to lead to a farm. They’ll find a trapdoor to a tunnel, but the notebook isn’t down there. It’s up on one of the storage shelves, wedged tight in a corner. Just in case Tilden’s lawyer claims he was coerced by us.’
‘You’ve thought of everything,’ Michael said, and he’d known about the barn and the covered SUV, left there, Reaper had said, for the last one out.
‘I told you Whirlwind wouldn’t let you down, Isaiah,’ Reaper said.
‘Why Isaiah?’ Liza asked.
‘According to Reaper,’ Michael answered, ‘he was a prophet who brought messages of vengeance.’
‘Another messenger,’ she said, quietly.
‘Don’t confuse Isaiah, Ms Plain,’ Reaper said.
The pain in Michael’s knee suddenly jabbed at him and he winced, shifted his weight.
‘You’re hurt,’ Liza said.
‘It’s nothing.’ He looked at Pike. ‘I want to cut him down.’
‘There’d be no point,’ Reaper said. ‘He died just before you arrived.’
Michael looked away from the crucified man and back at Liza, saw she was close to tears, wished he could hold her, wanted to kill Reaper – but old and dying as that man claimed to be, his fingers were still locked on the trigger of his shotgun, and Liza was too close …
‘You surely don’t imagine he could have recovered, Ms Plain?’ Reaper said.
‘And do you imagine that he deserved that?’ Her anger surged again. ‘To be terrorized, tortured, subjected to this sacrilege. A priest, not even allowed last rites, you bastard.’
‘A little respect, please,’ Reaper said, coldly. ‘We’re almost done here, and then you can go, take your story, your scoop.’
‘You’re letting her go,’ Michael said. ‘That’s good.’
Reaper raised the shotgun. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I said almost done. I’m not quite finished with Ms Plain yet.’
‘What more do you want from her?’ Michael said.
SEVENTY-SIX
He wanted her, he said, to complete her assignment, to take a good look around his place, record all she could and report what she was seeing.
‘Mind you watch your step around those graves,’ he said.
Liza stared at him, nodded. ‘All right.’
‘You’ll need my flashlight,’ Reaper said.
She put out her hand, saw it was shaking again.
‘Take mine,’ Michael said.
Reaper turned the shotgun on him. ‘I want you to keep yours, Isaiah. Ms Plain, you’ll have to take mine from me, since my hands are full.’
Liza stepped close enough to tug the flashlight from his belt, then backed off, turned and made her way unsteadily to the area beyond the candles where she’d seen the mounds. There were two more graves farther back – five altogether, as he’d said – the dirt piled around them more untidily than the others; rats sniffing around, though she was past worrying about them now, because they were simply existing, doing what was needed for survival.
‘Two in that last one,’ Reaper called to her. ‘I had no strength to dig a new grave after the organist, so the rector from Primrose is lying with him. She made no objection.’
Liza used the camera, said nothing, filmed what she could, then turned back.
‘There’s no grave for Reverend Pike,’ she said.
‘He won’t need one,’ Reaper said.
Liza stepped carefully past Michael, to the gibbet, looked through the viewfinder up at the dead man.
Remembered his last sounds and let her tears come, felt them heat her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and created a visual record of what had been done to him, forcing herself to absorb every detail, because if the equipment failed or the light was too poor she would need later to describe the enormity of the horror, of this human being’s degradation and suffering.
Those words not nearly enough.
Hate rose in her again.
‘When you’ve finished,’ Reaper said, ‘I want you both to go. I want to be left alone. Though I hope you’ll remember, Ms Plain, my request regarding the cash.’
‘I gave you my answer.’ Liza felt Michael’s eyes on her. ‘Joel wanted his share to go to certain charities, and Luke wanted—’
‘Clearly I can’t force you now to do the right thing, just assure you again that it was tainted money before it came our way.’
‘It didn’t come your way,’ Liza said. ‘You stole it from an old man, who’s probably died by now because neither you nor Amos would lift a finger to help him.’
‘If Osborn’s dead, he won’t miss the cash,’ Reaper said. ‘And dead or alive, neither he nor his wife will be admitting to its existence, so if you leave it behind, it will be a considerable waste.’
‘What’s in your backpack?’ Michael asked suddenly.
‘All I need to ensure that I won’t be taken.’
Michael blinked, then understood. ‘Explosives?’
‘God.’ Liza felt raw fear fly through her again, remembered how carefully he’d leaned against a wall earlier, and suicide had not occurred to her, or maybe she’d blocked out the thought as she’d fended off so many other terrors.
‘So, Ms Plain, since your job here is now done, I’d say that you should get out while you still can.’ Reaper shrugged. ‘You have that choice. Leave now or stay, if you prefer.’
‘She’ll leave,’ Michael said.
‘With you,’ Liza said.
‘What for?’ he said.
‘To stay alive.’ She stared at him, saw absolute desolation in his eyes, was terrified by it, tried to fight it. ‘For my sake, if not for your own.’
‘To rot in jail? In maximum security, probably, like my grandfather – except that I deserve it.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t survive, Liza – I wouldn’t want to. And you need to forget about me. You have a future. I don’t.’
‘You can’t tell me what to forget.’ Her eyes were stinging. ‘Please, Michael.’
‘You have options too, Isaiah,’ Reaper said. ‘
You can probably still make it out, same way as the others.’
‘Get out now, Liza.’ Michael ignored Reaper. ‘Tell your story – and think about getting the cash to those charities. Do whatever you feel is right, but you need to go.’
‘And if I don’t?’ She looked at Reaper.
He twitched the shotgun toward his backpack. ‘One shell into that, and we’ll all be gone.’
‘For God’s sake, Liza.’ Michael’s eyes were fierce now. ‘Get out of here.’
She stared at him again and knew she had no real choice.
‘Tell them all I’m sorry,’ Michael said quickly. ‘Except John Tilden.’
She bit back her tears. ‘I will.’
‘Now just go,’ he said.
She took one more look and then she turned away, from the man she thought she would have loved, if life had turned out differently, and away from the monster and his suicide backpack and his macabre place.
And then she started running.
Reaper’s flashlight made it possible, the mad, terrifying sprint back through darkness, the intersecting coal-black tunnels passing in a flash now, Nemesis’s gizmo with all its evidence – stored, she prayed – banging painfully against her back, her left hand clenched around the camera, the flashlight in her right hand, its white beam swinging crazily as she ran, tripped, slipped and ran again, each breath painful. And all the while, her mind was filled with the graves and what might lie beneath the dirt, with Pike on the gibbet, the oozing branded crosses on his forehead and torso; her nose and throat still filled with the stench that she felt she would never be rid of; with Reaper and his sickness and his physical ordinariness …
With Michael, fierce-eyed, pushing her out, giving up.
No future for him if he’d come with her, he was right about that, but maybe he was doing what Reaper had suggested, maybe even now he was limping through that escape tunnel, maybe he would escape and live …
Though she doubted that.
Whirlwind Page 26