“Where are you now?” I demanded.
“Aren’t you listening?” he said. “At the top deck. So get climbing. There are 897 steps. Average time for runners, before they closed the stairway to the general public, used to be, oh, I think about twenty minutes. I’m a fair man. So I’ll give you twenty-five.”
I started sprinting up the stairs, huffing and puffing. I cursed the day back in New York that I had stopped my workouts.
Push, push, push, I was telling myself now. I stripped my suit coat off and dumped it in the stairwell and kept charging upward.
A third of the way up, already winded, I met two EMTs and four cops stationed in the stairwell. They checked my ID as I checked my watch. I told them every minute counted. One of them called on his radio. Then he nodded to me. “Good luck, sir,” he said. “That federal attorney up there is trying to keep her calm until you get there. Sorry about the stairs. Elevator is usually closed to the public ever since the East Coast earthquake.”
“Where is she?”
“The top level. The observation deck. Somebody smashed the triple-thick window glass, which we thought was impossible. The US attorney happened to be up there, thank goodness, and said she was ready to jump. He caught her by a rope. I guess one of the safety lines left behind when they repaired the top after the quake.”
That last bit was an ice pick right into my heart. Zaduck was already framing it as attempted suicide. A perverse trick. Whatever was happening up there, I knew that if I didn’t make it in time, she would die a terrifying death. Zaduck had to be under complete demonic control. Heather’s death was unthinkable but a win for the other side. Roars of victory from hell.
I took to the stairs again, glancing at the watch, feeling the sweat soaking through my shirt and pouring down my face. Exhaustion was taking over. I tried to take two steps at a time but tripped and smashed my face on the concrete steps before picking myself up and starting again.
I passed two more EMTs in the stairway. Then two more cops after that, who didn’t stop me but cheered me on instead.
I had tried to keep track of the steps. Was I at 800 or 810? I was losing track. But I didn’t care. At that moment, nothing mattered except rescuing Heather. I couldn’t bear the thought of her hurtling down from the top of the monument.
But as I stumbled up the stairs, I had another thought. And it horrified me. Not about the demons who had taken hold of Vance Zaduck or about the evil that he and his twisted cohorts were practicing across the globe as they captured young girls—grist for their grotesque Internet mill, Chicken Fox Videos.
No. It was about me.
Was I the cause of this? All because I had insisted on pursuing the Jason Forester case? Pride? Arrogance? Indictment after indictment flooded my brain. I could practically hear the coarse whisper of my accuser, tormenting me.
Finally I yelled to that chief of horror, “Get behind me.” And then, in bursts of breathless cries, I called out to Christ, my Redeemer. For help. For strength. To rescue my daughter.
I was nearing the observation deck. Just seconds away. Just a few more feet. And then I would meet this demon face-to-face.
67
I was about to rush onto the interior observation deck. Before that, I had only one thing left to do. I punched three numbers into my disposable cell phone and dropped it in my shirt pocket.
On that top deck, Vance Zaduck was alone, leaning against the wall, waiting for me. In Zaduck’s hand was the end of a rope. He was holding it delicately between his thumb and index finger. As if it were nothing. As if it were a mere string. The rope was pulled taut and threaded through the open window, just large enough for a person to squeeze through. There was something outside on the other end of the rope, out of my sight. I had only seconds to size things up.
Broken glass scattered on the floor. The metal window frame twisted by an inhuman power, yet only half-wrenched from its place in the square marble opening. I could feel the wind gusting though the open window. The Potomac River was in the distance, shimmering in the fading daylight. Heather was nowhere to be seen.
As I faced him, I announced myself loudly. “Here I am, Zaduck. Top of the Washington Monument. Just like you asked. Now it’s your turn. Where’s my daughter?”
When the answer came, it was what I had dreaded. And even though it was no surprise, I had vainly hoped against it.
“She’s at the end of her rope,” Vance said and tittered like an adolescent at his own sick humor.
He added, “Don’t worry. It’s tied firmly around her ankle. But just to show you I’m not that diabolical, after the drugs I added to her coffee, she’s been napping peacefully.”
Then a sound. A voice. A few seconds later, the voice again. Then louder. It was Heather screaming outside.
“I believe your little darling has awakened,” Zaduck said.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I yelled.
“Oh? Well, simplest scenario—I let go and your daughter takes a thrill ride to ground level. And about my getting away with things . . . When the police come up here, I think I can sell this situation very convincingly.”
He took a step toward me, his supernatural power so great that he was still delicately pinching the rope between his fingers even with Heather dangling at the other end. “So tell me the truth. You want to see what is inside, don’t you? You’re curious. The kind of demon that can drive a powerful man like me to create an extraordinary enterprise. Meeting the deepest needs of men around the world who want the pleasure of something very, very special. Admit it, Trevor. You want to see the face of the thing that is unspeakable to you. Perhaps because you fear that you will see a power greater than your puny God.”
“This is about you and me, Zaduck, not Heather. Bring her in. Then you can toss me out that window if that’s what you want.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A failure in life, yet a hero in death. No, I don’t think I’ll give you the pleasure. Besides, I already gave you a chance to get out of town. Tried to tell you on that Metro ride. Made a special effort. But no, you had to stay, didn’t you.”
It was horrifically clear.
He said, “You didn’t really think I was going to a birthday party for my niece, did you? I don’t even have a niece or a sister.” He laughed. “Uh-oh,” he said in a mocking voice, “Trevor Black didn’t do his homework.”
“So this is a game after all, isn’t it?”
“At last. Now you’re getting it. Yes, yes. A game. Here’s the final score: I win. You lose.”
I shouted, “The kidnapping of girls. Perverted abuse. And when they become inconvenient to control as slaves, dumping them in a bayou somewhere or in a shallow grave. That’s no game. God help you, Vance, you’re demonic. Depraved.”
“Depraved. That old legal term. Good for you. Thinking like a lawyer. But you ought to try my new skill set. Thinking like a demon. Nothing like it. And please . . . do me a favor: don’t bring God into this.”
“Too late. He’s already here. And because he’s God, he wins. The forces inside you, they’re doomed.” I began to plead with him. “But believe me, there’s still hope for you. Redemption is right here. All you have to do—”
Zaduck bellowed back with a sound that was unlike anything human. His voice was changing. Rumbling. A volcano ready to erupt. Like the groaning of things breaking and shifting deep in the earth.
“Your talk is nothing! It’s nauseating. Nietzsche was right. Power and the will to use it is everything. Like when I walked into Jason Forester’s office with perfect timing. Then showed him my power. My true self. That’s all it took. The weakling’s heart burst wide-open. Fulfilling our prophecy in the FedEx letter. That makes me just like God, doesn’t it? That’s why I can control anyone. Men like Larry Rudabow. Get them to butcher those gullible idiots, Paul Pullmen and Henry Bosant. Especially Pullmen. Such beautiful bones. I prefer the delicate bones of the hand, by the way. Which is why I have been able to run a global Internet ph
enomenon that even the DOJ can’t figure out. It all comes down to smart power. Constanzo came close. But he was clumsy. And stupid. I, on the other hand . . . I am the perfection of that power.”
Something was happening to Zaduck physically. As Zaduck began to morph, he was no longer just a man. A furnace had opened up from within, and though he had the outline of a man, his form was filled with a glimmering, smoldering fire, like the color of a lava flow vomiting from a volcano. As if he were a man who had been set on fire from the inside.
The fire monster roared, “Now you will see my power.”
“You have no real power.”
“No?” he screamed back. “Then take the test. I dare you.”
I braced myself. “Test?”
“Just declare it. So simple. Declare Christ to be a coward for not taking the challenge our master gave him in the desert. When he refused to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple. Didn’t you ever wonder what he was afraid of? Maybe that those angels might not save him. So, Trevor, it’s your turn. Call him a fool for preaching love. Use your brain, man. Love? We live in a universe full of exploding supernovas and burning stars, where power and energy and survival is all that there is. A planet in a constant state of war. Disasters. Starvation. Where parents kill their children. And husbands and wives slay each other. Just admit the folly and futility of your Jesus, and everything will be fine.”
I shook my head. I knew, God help me, that I couldn’t deny the Savior who had saved me. My legs weakened. I pleaded for him not to do it, while I inched toward him.
But the fire monster in front of me burst into a hideous cackle. “No matter. I’ll still finish it.”
“What?” I yelled back.
“The test of your phony faith. Giving your daughter, Heather, the chance that your Christ refused to take.”
“Chance?”
“To survive the fall, of course. It’s only five hundred feet to the ground.”
I pleaded in the name of Christ for him to show mercy. To spare my daughter. But the creature roared at me, “You worm. Now you’ll watch my power over life and death.”
He opened his hand and let go. I saw the rope and its knotted end vanish from his fingers and fly through the open window. I heard a distant scream from Heather as Zaduck stepped in front of the window and blocked my view.
I rushed wildly toward the window, but my enemy blasted me backward to the floor with a gesture of his hand. I leaped to my feet, horrified.
The monster shouted, “Don’t worry. Your turn is next, going through that window after her. I’ll tell the police you overpowered me and I couldn’t stop you from your own suicide. People already know you’re crazy. After all, you see demons.”
Crushed with grief, I rushed to the window again, and again with one movement of his hand, he tossed me back. The fire creature howled, “And because Vance Zaduck is so cyber-smart, I’ve even created a ‘suicide note’ in an e-mail sent to you from Heather, right here on your own cell phone.” He held up my smartphone and moved slightly to the side, which gave me a view of the window that had been smashed open.
That was when I saw it. A blinding light in the window like a hundred suns. I shielded my eyes. Then a shape in the light. Holding the end of the rope and reaching down, wrapping it securely around the twisted metal of the window frame. The rope was holding fast.
An instant later, the figure of light was no longer there. I started breathing again.
But the creature inside of Vance didn’t see it, any of it. The fire monster was looking straight at me, waiting to see my despair. Thinking that my God had abandoned me and waiting for me to collapse in agony.
I shouted my response in a voice crushed with emotion: “When I am weak, that is when his power is perfected in me.”
The monster roared. I shouted it again.
He roared louder, stepping toward me. “This is just the beginning of my vengeance.”
“No, it isn’t,” I cried. “It is finished.”
The fire monster recoiled at the words.
And then the sound of feet. A lot of them.
Police, with service pistols aimed, rushing onto the observation deck.
No more fire monster standing before me, but instead Vance Zaduck, looking cool and collected.
Zaduck said, “Thank goodness you’re here. I didn’t know how long I could hold on to the rope for that poor girl. But her crazy father here tried to . . .”
Vance reached toward the end of the rope that was caught in the bent window frame, a final attempt to make it look plausible, but he never got there. Three officers wrestled him to the ground first.
Two men from the rescue squad gingerly hoisted Heather up by the rope that was still knotted around her ankle, up to the window, through the opening, and into the room. She was shaking and crying hysterically and couldn’t catch her breath. As soon as her feet touched the floor, Heather rushed into my arms.
Vance cried out to the police that they had it all wrong.
“No,” I said as I clutched Heather, who was weeping loudly, shaking, and holding me tight. “They have it perfectly right. And so does that 911 operator.” I pulled out the cell from my pocket and spoke into it. “This is Trevor Black. Thank you for hanging on. Are you still there?”
“Yes, sir,” she responded. “Is your daughter safe?”
After assuring her that Heather was in my arms, I asked, “Did you catch the conversation?”
“Loud and clear,” the 911 operator said. “Every word. I relayed to Metro police. They’re with you now? And the suspect’s in custody?” I told her yes to both.
As Vance was led away, he announced with an eerie calm that he would be cleared and that “Trevor Black will be the one destroyed by this, you’ll see.”
All that I knew, all I cared about, was that Heather had been protected.
EPILOGUE
TEN DAYS LATER
OCRACOKE ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Heather and I walked along the gravel road that ran past the lighthouse on the left. Up ahead was the little harbor where the boats at anchor bobbed gently against the waves. The news reports had warned of a tropical storm and suggested it might turn into a hurricane.
“Did you ever experience one?”
“A hurricane?” I asked, to which she nodded. “Two of them since I moved to the island,” I said.
“Did you go inland or sit it out?”
“I stayed on the island.”
Heather took a deep breath. She seemed strong and healthy, despite the horrors of the ordeal that she had weathered in Washington.
She’d met with a psychologist and a team of counselors over the next week while we lingered in Washington. She agreed to continue talking to someone about her harrowing experience. They were concerned about PTSD. But Heather was insistent. “Take me back to your island,” she’d told me. “Please.”
I glanced at Heather during our walk past the lighthouse. She caught my smile and asked me what I was thinking.
“Just that, in a very short period of time, the two of us have had some interesting experiences together.”
She gave a little laugh. I asked why. Heather shot back, “Demons, car chases, and hanging by a rope from the Washington Monument. Is that what they mean by ‘quality time’?”
I was amazed that she could muster any humor about it. But then, I was her dad, so I still couldn’t.
We avoided talking about the details of what happened up there at the top of the Washington Monument. I wanted to let her open the discussion, not me. But even with her casual joking, I knew there was a well of dark emotions beneath the surface. I could see that despite the courage, there was pain and fear in her eyes. I would give her time before we would talk about it.
As for me, I was still haunted by the terror of what nearly happened at the monument. It came out in my dreams. Ever since the incident, those events were being replayed in my sleep, every detail. It was expected, of course. Traumatic memories, embedded in th
e mind, are powerful things. But I knew something much more powerful still. That perfect power was my hope. The substance of my certainty.
Gil Spencer called regularly to keep me up-to-date. Vance Zaduck was facing a grand jury and possible indictment on twenty-four counts, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, child pornography, and criminal racketeering. He had hired the most prestigious criminal defense firm in Washington to defend him. The case would be a legal bloodbath, and I knew that both Heather and I would be called as witnesses at trial. Yet because it might cause strategic problems equally for both the prosecution and the defense, the real evil underbelly of the case—the demonic underworld and the voodoo cult that had become Zaduck’s portal of entry into that realm—was unlikely ever to be aired in a courtroom.
The best news, though, came from Dick Valentine. Four hours after Zaduck’s arrest, the FBI searched his condo in Bethesda, Maryland, and extracted the data from his computer.
It not only revealed the secret locations where victims were being held overseas; it also detailed the routes of ships and private planes that would have moved young female sex slaves to their international destinations.
Would have but didn’t. On the Mississippi River, a police blockade, aided by the Coast Guard, caught two ships full of girls.
In Mexico, Guatemala, Denmark, Bulgaria, and Russia, agents raided barns, warehouses, and cellar dungeons, freeing hundreds of girls. One of them, a young middle schooler named Peggy Tanner, was released and returned to her New Orleans family, who had been waiting in torment until that day. It was now time for the posters about her disappearance to finally be taken down from the alleys of that city.
Attorney Morgan Canterelle called me a few days after the news broke.
There was an apologetic tone to his voice as he admitted he had “a confession of sorts” he needed to make. Knowing Morgan Canterelle, I was all ears.
He told me that in addition to being retained by Belle Sabatier to investigate the poisoning of her mother, Minerva, and representing the family of Peggy Tanner, the abducted girl, he was also private legal counsel for someone else.
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