by David Archer
That’s not easy when you’re driving a rare classic car, though. I heard a siren and glanced in the rearview mirror, just in time to see a squad car come fishtailing around a corner behind me.
I couldn’t let a cop follow me to where I was going, so I had to lose him. I thought about where I was going and an alternate route, then dropped the shifter to second gear and drifted around the next corner to the right. I immediately took a left into an alley and shot through it, coming out on the next side street before the squad car even made it to the corner I had turned.
I went back to the street I had been on and stopped, looking back the way I had come. There was no sign of the squad car, so I eased the clutch out and turned the corner. My phone said I had three minutes left, and I knew I would make it with half a minute to spare.
Hamilton was in an old hotel, just as Danny had said. Beside it, abandoned and in disrepair, was an old drive-in restaurant. I whipped the car into its parking lot and around behind the building, shut it down, and jumped out. I jogged to the front of the Hamilton building, reached around behind and grabbed the grip of my Kimber, and yanked the door open.
The woman who was sitting at the reception desk looked up at me, and her eyes told me that she knew exactly who I was. This was undoubtedly Danny’s female accomplice, and I fought back the urge to draw my pistol and put a bullet through her forehead.
“Where is he?” I asked menacingly, letting her see the gun in my hand.
She smirked. “He’s waiting for you upstairs. You might want to leave that down here, though. He really doesn’t like having guns pointed at him, but I think you found that out the hard way.”
I took a step toward her, but she suddenly pointed a pistol of her own my way. “Just go upstairs,” she said. “You mess with me, he blows up the lady you left behind.”
I snarled at her, but turned toward the stairs.
THIRTY-TWO
As soon as I started up the stairs, that woman ditched out the front door. I didn’t know if that was part of Danny’s plan or not, but at least I would have a few minutes with nobody ready to sneak up behind me.
From the look of the stairs, I would guess that the building had been originally constructed sometime in the early part of the last century. The walls were old plaster, and it was cracked and falling off in some places. The stairs were wooden and worn down by what had probably been many thousands of feet going up and down the over the years.
All she had said was upstairs, but I had no idea just where Danny might be waiting. I made my way to the second floor, keeping my gun out ahead of me, and started going from room to room. Most of them were locked, and there was no sign of Danny Kendall. A part of me figured he would be on the top floor, but there was just no way to be sure.
Looking at these rooms, I was sure that this was where Marsha and Angie had been held. Each of the rooms had its own bathroom, and the doors were old, solid oak. I found a couple of rooms that had padlocks hanging on the outside, but they were open. I would guess those were where Danny had held his captives.
When I was sure there was no one on the second floor, I went back to the stairs and started up to the third. Looking up through the stairwell, it appeared to me that there were five floors. The third floor was just as empty as the second, and the rooms were in even worse repair. There was mold growing on some of the plastic, so I assumed that weather was getting in around some of the old windows.
It took me only about ten minutes to clear each floor, and I worried for a moment that Danny might not even know I was there, yet. I shook it off, because if he was capable of watching me in my office, he undoubtedly had some sort of system set up here, as well. When I got to the fourth floor and saw a video camera, I knew I was right.
The video camera made me wonder if Danny was on that floor.
“Danny? It’s Cassie. Why don’t you come on out and play?”
There was no answer, so I started looking through the rooms, being a bit more cautious than I had on the lower floors. Once again, I found no sign of him, so I went back to the stairs and started up one more time.
“That’s far enough,” Danny yelled. I was halfway up the last flight of stairs, and froze. “Put your gun down on the stairs, then come on up.”
“Are you out of your freaking mind?” I yelled back. “I don’t think so!”
“Oh, relax,” he said. “I’m not going to shoot you. Just put it down and come on up here, there’s something up here you need to see.”
The back of my neck did its thing, and I carefully, slowly bent down and laid the Kimber on the step next to my foot. If there was something up there he felt I needed to see, I was terrified that it was someone else in danger.
“Okay,” I yelled. “I put it down. I’m coming up.”
I kept my hands out in plain sight as I walked up the last eight steps. By then, I could see Danny standing in the hallway. He was holding a short automatic weapon, but the barrel was pointing down at the floor. He watched me coming toward him, and I was struck by the fact that he had an almost friendly-looking smile on his face.
And then it hit me that he really did look a lot like Mike, if the light was right and if I looked at his eyes. His eyes were so similar that I felt a massive shiver of fear, and I’ll confess that I almost turned and ran down the stairs.
It was only the thought that he might have hostages that kept me from doing so. I made the last step and was on the floor with him, when he motioned for me to follow and turned his back to me. I almost dived back down the stairs for my gun, but he glanced over his shoulder to be sure I was coming. I lowered my hands and walked toward him.
“What is it I need to see, Danny?” I asked. “I thought we were just going to bring this to an end.”
“We are,” he said. “The only question is how. We’ll get to that in a few minutes, though. Right now, I need you to see something.”
He stepped into a room toward the back of the building and I cautiously made my way up to the door. He left it open, and I looked inside to see him standing in the middle of the room with his back to me.
That isn’t what caught my attention, though.
The room was about fifteen feet wide and maybe twenty feet long, with the bathroom door on one side, just like all the others. I could see the top half of the bathroom door, but not the rest of it. The reason for that was because of the boxes that were stacked all the way around the room, leaving a space in the middle that was only about four feet wide.
Every one of the boxes was labeled “Block, Demolition, C4.” There were numbers and dates as well, but I realized I was probably looking at enough explosive to level the building, and probably a few around it.
“Danny, what the… What is all this for?”
He spun and looked to me, his face split by a maniacal smile. “What’s it for? Haven’t you ever heard of going out in a blaze of glory? I’m going to show the whole world just what that really means.”
I looked at the boxes, then looked back at his face. “So you brought me here to die with you?” I asked. “I thought you wanted me to stop you.”
“Actually, you’re the one who kept saying that,” he said. “I just didn’t argue with you. I figured, hey, if she thinks that’s what it’s all about, then she’ll just be a little more cooperative at playing the game.”
“Why do you keep calling it a game? Danny, just cut to the damn chase and tell me what this has all been about, would you?”
The smile vanished in a split second. “It’s all been about Mike,” he said. “Mike was my brother, Cassie, but he was a lot more than that, too. When we were growing up, Mike was the one who always made sure I was okay. When Mom and Dad were too busy enjoying their parties with their friends, it was Mike who made sure I got my homework done, who made sure I got a bath, who made sure I ate a decent meal before I went to bed. When we got a little older and our parents started taking trips and leaving us alone, Mike was the one who took me out and taught me to play ball, he was th
e one who taught me to drive, he was the one who did everything for me that your father is supposed to do. Because our father was just too busy.”
There was a very different quality in him, at that point. The jocularity, the friendly competitiveness, that was all gone. I was looking at a man who had lost all touch with sanity, and I knew it.
“Danny,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “I’m really sorry about Mike. You need to remember that I loved him, and I…”
He spun, then, and suddenly I was looking down the barrel of his M4.
“Shut up,” he screamed. “You shut your mouth, you lying bitch!”
“Danny, I did. When I met Mike, I thought he was the most wonderful man in the world, but that was because I didn’t know that he was sick. He wasn’t bad, Danny, he was sick, and when everything happened I tried so hard to get him to get help. I didn’t want him to die, Danny, I swear I didn’t. It was his buddy that killed him, Danny, because Mike had decided that he didn’t want me to die.”
He stared at me for several seconds, and then he slowly lowered the gun. His face went through its transformation again, as the smile slowly oozed back into place.
“You think Mike was sick?” Danny asked. “Why? Because he killed some worthless whores that nobody gave a shit about, anyway? You don’t know anything, do you realize that? You don’t know a damn thing.”
An anger started down in the pit of my stomach, and it was doing its best to crawl up to my mouth. “They were human beings, Danny, they were people. Nobody deserves to be raped and beaten and tortured and murdered. Nobody, I don’t care who they are.”
“When we were young,” he said, “we used to go to this church all the time. I don’t know if you knew it or not, but Mike could really sing. He had this beautiful voice, so we signed up for the youth choir. It was really cool, we traveled all over Texas and sang in different churches, and everywhere we went, people just raved about Mike’s fantastic voice. He got so into the church, into being a good person, that we started going out in the street to tell people about God, me and him. Mike, he always said how Jesus didn’t just go into the churches to find people; he went right out where the sinners were, because that’s where he was needed the most. Mike said that’s what he wanted to do, so we went into the worst parts of the city. We went to where the gangs hung out, and we told them about God. We went to where the druggies were, and we told them about God. Every time we went there, one or two of them would say they wanted to know more, and we’d take them to church. Sometimes, they’d even quit the gangs and the drugs and really become part of it all, you know?”
I smiled. This was a part of Mike I never would have dreamed on my own. “That’s really beautiful, Danny,” I said. “That’s…”
“But then,” he said, “then we went to where the prostitutes were. We went down to where they hung out on the street corners, and around the old motels, and we told them about God. And you know what happened? They laughed at us, Cassie. And then they teased us, and they flaunted themselves at us, and one night when we were trying so hard, when it seemed like God had abandoned us, we just couldn’t take it anymore. They wanted to show us how they lived, and we let them. We went into the motel with them, and they turned us both into men that night.”
My neck started crawling. Somehow, I knew what was going to come next.
“When it was over, when we were done, Mike said—he said, ‘they can’t live like this anymore.’ He told me that the longer they stayed the way they were, the harder it would be for them to get into heaven, so it was up to us—it was up to us to make sure they got there. We knew what we had to do, because God showed us the way. We had to go into their world so that we could enter them into ours, because when they had congress with godly men, it made them worthy to enter heaven. And all we had to do was open the door.”
I was staring at him, and my breathing was ragged. I had never dreamed that Mike’s insanity had gone back so far, or that he had dragged his brother into it with him.
“And so you killed them,” I said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and the smile that lit his face at that moment was radiant, almost beatific.
“We ushered them into heaven. They were lost sheep, and we were the shepherds. We were the ones who brought God’s grace to them, and when we bestowed it upon them, they became worthy to enter heaven.” He closed his eyes for just a second, as if relishing a special memory. “They didn’t understand, of course. They were afraid, but we understood. They fought us, but we were so much stronger. Mike said that was the way it had to be, that we had to break them, the same way the potter has to break down the clay before he can make something of it. So we broke them, and we freed them from their sin and despair. We freed them from the guilt that they felt over the lives they were living, from the fear that permeated their lives because of the dangers around them, and we freed them from the despair they felt, because they believed they had no value. We told them they were forgiven, and that God loves them, and then we sent them home.”
He jerked suddenly, like he had a quick, brief electric shock. His eyes lost the glow they held during his monologue, and the rage and anger and hate I’d seen before came back into them.
“Danny,” I said, trying to think fast, “I never knew. I didn’t realize that Mike was trying to save them…”
“You are such a liar,” he said. “You said you loved Mike, but you didn’t know anything about him. When stories of what we were doing started to get out, Mike was worried that something would happen to me. He said people wouldn’t understand what we were trying to do for them, so I had to get away. He talked me into joining the Navy, because he said God wanted to protect me, and he waited until I left for basic training before he left Texas for good. While I was serving our country, Mike went to the police academy. He told me in his letters that God showed him that this was how he would continue his work, by being a missionary to another city.”
He raised the barrel of the gun again and pointed at me. “One day he wrote to me and said he had to stop for a while, that things were getting too hot. He told me how God had led him to others who did the same kind of work, but there was danger they might get caught, so they had to stop for a while. He had to pretend that he was just a cop, put aside his real work and make himself fit in, and it was during that time that he wrote to me and said he met you. He said you were beautiful, and wonderful and that you were going to be his reward for all that he had done. I was so happy for him, because God had given him a woman that was truly worthy of such a powerful warrior for heaven.”
He took four steps toward me, so that the barrel of the gun was only inches from my face. I was rooted to the spot, certain that I was about to die and suddenly all I could think of was Dex. It dawned on me that, if Danny pulled his trigger, or if he set off the explosives around us, Dex would never know that I loved him.
“But you weren’t his reward,” Danny said. “You are the emissary of Satan, sent to destroy the greatest man who ever lived. And now, because you betrayed Mike, God sent me here to deliver your punishment, your judgment.”
I heard his words, but inside I was looking into Dex’s eyes. I was thinking of that moment in the Center of the Universe when I had finally said those words aloud, but only because I knew he couldn’t hear them.
And now, he never would.
Un-freaking-acceptable!
THIRTY-THREE
I snapped my left hand up and snatched the barrel, jerking my head hard to the left as I did so. Danny squeezed the trigger, and the bullet whizzed past my right ear, as I spun myself around and drove my right elbow into Danny’s ribs. He grunted, and I put my back against the rifle and wrenched with all my strength on the barrel. I hit his ribs with my elbow again, and threw myself forward, and the gun went off once more as it came out of his hands.
I lost my grip on it, and it clattered out into the hallway. Danny screamed and lunged at me, and I tried to turn and face him but he was too fast. He wrapped his arms around me, p
inning my own arms down to my sides as he pushed me forward toward the wall.
I knew what he was trying, to drive my face into the wall and stun me, so I kicked out with my feet and put them against the doorframe, then shoved back with everything I had. We went over backwards with me on top of him, and I heard the breath rush out of him. I brought my arms up hard and broke his grip, then rolled off of him as fast as I could.
He was down, but he wasn’t out. He was rolling the other direction, trying to get onto his knees so that he could get to his feet, and I kicked as hard as I could. I caught him in the ribs on the other side, and he gasped again. I kicked again and got him in the head, and he hunkered down.
I turned and bolted out the door, my eyes on the M4 against the opposite wall. I dived for it, but Danny was on his feet and right behind me. I caught it by the strap just as he threw his arms around my legs, but there was no way I could turn it against him. He reached for it, and I flung it as far as I could, feeling a burst of satisfaction as it went over the railing of the stairs and fell all the way to the ground floor.
I was on the floor in the hallway, and Danny was crawling up me from my legs. He had me belly down, and suddenly I felt his hands go around my neck. He started to squeeze, and I knew that I couldn’t take much of that without losing consciousness, and if I blacked out, I was dead.
He was sitting on me at that point, and he leaned down and put his face close to my good ear.
“You think you can get away from me?” he hissed. “You think you’re going to escape your judgment? I am the messenger of Almighty God, sent to deliver the punishment you deserve for what you did to my brother! You’re going to die, now, Cassie, and you’re going to die knowing that everyone you care about blames you for the things that have happened these past few days. Everyone knows, they all know it’s because of you that the judgment came to Tulsa. That is your punishment, and I am proud to be its deliverer.”