John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice

by Michael Lister

  Father Thomas slapped Tammy hard across the face.

  As if a feral animal, Tammy’s free hand clawed at Father Thomas, scraping skin from his face before he could back out of her reach.

  Spreading her legs even further apart, Tammy put her free hand inside herself and said, “Come back. I like it rough.” She then clinched her fist and began to hit herself.

  Father Thomas grabbed her arm and attempted to restrain it, but she swatted him across the room. He hit the wall next to the door and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

  For a long moment, Father Thomas didn’t move, but when the bed began to bang around, he slowly looked up.

  And then I saw something that changed everything. With Father Thomas still on the floor, the shadow of a person crossed over part of Tammy and the bed.

  I stopped the tape and rewound it.

  Replaying the section, and seeing the shadow again, I said aloud, “Someone else was in the room.”

  “I was,” a demented little boy hissed behind me.

  I turned, but there was no one there, and I regretted it the moment I did.

  Reminding myself to ignore the voice and concentrate on what I was doing, I turned back around toward the camera. No matter what the voice was—real or imagined, in my mind or in the room—I knew the best thing to do was give it no place.

  Had someone come in during the exorcism? Was it a person? Steve was the first to leave the table after Tammy. Why wouldn’t Father Thomas have mentioned that someone else was in the room?

  Maybe he didn’t know. He was across the room and had yet to look in this direction. He seemed very shaken up. Maybe he’d never seen the person.

  I restarted the tape, but there wasn’t much left to see. In less than a minute, the tape was stopped, which only confirmed someone else was there, because Father Thomas was still across the room on the floor.

  I stumbled outside the cabin and stood in the cold darkness.

  I shook my head and confessed to God and the wondrous, mysterious universe she had given birth to, “I’m an arrogant and ignorant man. Quick to speak, slow to learn. I’ve spoken of things I don’t understand. ‘I place my hand over my mouth.’”

  The last part was a line from the book of Job. I didn’t literally cover my mouth.

  I wasn’t sure what I had just witnessed was demonic, but I had never before experienced anything like it, and I was tempted to try to figure it out, to use deductive reasoning and investigative techniques to solve the mystery, but quickly decided not to, not to apply logic to something so illogical, not to try to figure it out, not to investigate, not to respond in the same tired ways I always did.

  Some mysteries can be solved. Others cannot. When it comes to the truly great mysteries of existence, what we deal with is not vague unknowns, but specific unknowables.

  I realized how dismissive I had been. Being so sure I could figure it out if I just put my mind to it. Trusting too much rationality and deductive reasoning.

  I had to talk to Father Thomas, even if it meant waking him up. There were things I had to say, things that wouldn’t wait. There were also things I needed to ask him, such as what happened after the camera was turned off, why it was turned off, and who had done it.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  “I owe you an apology,” I said to Father Thomas.

  I had found him in his study, dozing in a high-back chair by the fireplace. He asked if there was any word of Kathryn and told me he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he knew she was safely back in her bed.

  “For what?”

  “I’ve seen the tape,” I said.

  “So now you believe?”

  His tone was harsh and condescending and I realized how difficult it was going to be to talk to him. I had hoped to have a conversation about what I had experienced, to exchange thoughts and ideas, but I realized that wasn’t going to happen. He was responding out of ego, feeling vindicated. A good conversation, a true sharing of souls, requires openness and humility—something a defensive, no-room-for-doubt religious stance doesn’t allow. It was a shame though, a real missed opportunity. To me, faith and devotion is far richer when mixed with a good dose of honest agnosticism—something people like Father Thomas seemed not to have.

  “I shouldn’t’ve taken it so lightly,” I said. “Not even allowing for the possibility that what happened could be inexplicable. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I can’t judge. As I’m sure you saw, I was unprepared for what happened. It completely caught me by surprise. Not just that there was a manifestation, but that it happened so quickly.”

  “It did seem pretty fast.”

  “It was as if all the demon really wanted to do was destroy me,” he said. “Like an ambush. It was just hiding. Waiting to pounce.”

  I nodded. “Maybe it was.”

  The night was nearly over. It would be morning soon, and through his window I could see that the moonlit lake was perfectly still, its smooth surface a mirror image of the sparsely star-sprinkled sky above it. Still in a state of awe and wonderment, I breathed in deeply, held it, then let it out very slowly.

  “I was easy prey,” he said. “Should’ve been ready. What I did was stupid and I should’ve known better.”

  “Well—”

  “She’d be alive and free from her torment if I hadn’t been so derelict in my duty. I cost her her life. There’s no justification for my negligence. I can hardly live with it, but I absolutely cannot live with people thinking I raped and murdered that troubled little girl.”

  I nodded my understanding.

  The dying fire popped, sparks flying out onto the red brick, its flickering flame sending pulsating light dancing on the spines of his colorful books.

  “You think once Steve sees the tape, he’ll clear me and the investigation will end?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “The tape doesn’t show everything,” I said, “and it raises as many questions as it answers.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought for sure it would clear up everything. What doesn’t it show?”

  “The tape is stopped right after Tammy knocks you into the wall. You’re still on the floor when it’s turned off.”

  His eyes grew wide in alarm and looked genuinely fearful. “Turned off?”

  “Someone came in and turned it off,” I said. “Who was it?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “You don’t know who came in? You didn’t see anyone?”

  He hesitated, seeming to calculate too much for someone telling the truth. “No one came in during the exorcism.”

  “You had to think about it a little too long.”

  “I wanted to be sure,” he said.

  “Normally when someone hesitates that much and sounds the way you do, they’re lying.”

  “You sayin’ I’m lyin’?” he asked, trying hard to sound offended, but lacking conviction.

  “I’m asking.”

  “Well, I’m tellin’ you. No one came in during the ritual. At least not that I saw. But I was banged up pretty good and maybe I didn’t see them.”

  It was possible. He was preoccupied and he had just been nearly knocked out, but something didn’t feel right. Maybe he was just nervous or shaken up or naive or worried about Kathryn, but he seemed to be lying.

  “Why would someone turn off the camcorder?” I asked.

  Shaking his head, a perplexed look filling his face, he said, “I have no idea.”

  “How much longer were you in the cabin after she knocked you into the wall?”

  He looked off into the distance, squinting to see something that wasn’t there. “It’s hard to say. It seems so timeless during it, but I’d say around half an hour or more.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “That’s a lot we don’t have.”

  “And every bit of it further confirmation that what I’m sayin’ is true. Tammy was killed by demonic forces, and my greatest fear is that they�
�re now inside someone else at St. Ann’s waiting to hurt or kill another child of God.”

  The fire popped again, sending an explosion of embers into the air with the smoke rising up the chimney, which in turn set off an explosion in my mind.

  Jumping up, I dug the phone out of my pocket.

  “What is it?” Father Thomas said. “Where are you going?”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “What time is the demolition of the mill?” I asked.

  I was talking to Steve on my cell as I ran toward my truck.

  “About an hour,” he said. “Some of my guys are working crowd control. Why?”

  “I could be way off on this, but I’d rather be wrong than—”

  “What is it?”

  “If they want to kill Kathryn, what better way to do it than in the destruction of the mill? They’ve already gotten rid of the only two guys connecting them to the criminal activity we know about. If they had Cole abduct her and tie her up at the mill, then killed him and Russ, they’d—”

  “Wouldn’t they just kill her?” he said. “Even if they were going to try to destroy the body during the explosion?”

  I reached my truck and climbed inside as the first hint of false dawn illuminated the horizon.

  “Maybe,” I said, pressing the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I started the truck. “But what if they have Cole and Russ tie her up and she escapes or is discovered before the explosion, she points the finger at them, but they’re already dead—supposedly killed each other.”

  “Why would they want to kill her?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Why take her at all?”

  “Well, if they do want her dead, what you’re saying makes sense,” he said. “We’ve got to search the mill before—”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  Bouncing down the dirt road toward the highway without a seatbelt on, holding the phone between my shoulder and the side of my head while having to shift, I dropped the phone several times.

  “John,” he said, “I’m over an hour away. I’ll never make it in time.”

  “Can you get the demolition delayed?”

  “I can try. It’ll be hard by phone. Plus, if you’re right about what they’re doing…”

  “How many officers do you have at the site?” I asked.

  When I reached the highway, I slowed just enough to make sure there was nothing coming, then floored it, slinging dirt onto the road, my tires screeching on the pavement.

  “Not many,” he said. “And they won’t be much help. It’s a crossing guard and school resource officer.”

  I thought about it, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m gonna start making calls now,” he said. “I’ll try to get the demolition pushed back first. At certain spots on the way I’m not gonna have coverage. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but it’ll be too late. If she’s there, you’ve got to find her.”

  A large crowd had gathered to see the last of the mill go the way of the paper market, imploding at the dawning of a new day. They lined both sides of the highway, the first of the sun cresting over the tree tops glinting off their cars.

  I had hoped to drive down the road beside the marina like I had before and sneak into the back of the mill through the same hole in the fence, but I could tell immediately that wasn’t going to be possible because of the crowd and the roadblocks.

  Parking in the lot of a closed drugstore in town, I ran as fast as I could toward the site. By the time I reached the first roadblock, I was breathing heavily and my side was beginning to hurt. Still, I couldn’t help smiling a little when I saw that the officer standing guard was the same one I had encountered at the entrance of the marina the morning Tommy’s body was found.

  He held his hands up the moment he saw me.

  “I’ve got to get in there,” I said, bending forward slightly and gasping for breath.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I learned my lesson. Chief said if I ever did something like that again, I’d be doing this my entire career.”

  “He’s the one who sent me. He was going to call you guys, but he must have lost reception on his way.”

  “Good one,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “I don’t have time for this. We think someone might be inside one of the buildings. I’m going in, you go see if you can get them to delay the detonation.”

  He hesitated a moment, but shook his head. “If the chief’s on his way, he can do it when he gets here.”

  “He won’t make it in time.”

  He smiled and nodded as if that confirmed I was lying.

  “Call him,” I said.

  He hesitated again, squinted as he considered me a moment, then lifted his radio. He asked if any of the other officers had heard from Steve. They hadn’t. He then pulled his cell phone off the clip on his belt and punched in a number I assumed was Steve’s.

  While we waited, I glanced at my watch. We had less than half an hour.

  “No answer,” he said. “You’re just gonna have to wait.”

  “Okay,” I said, lifting my hands in a placating gesture.

  He relaxed slightly, and as he did, I made my move.

  Closing the distance between us in one big step, I came up with the little .38, which I pointed beneath his chin as I pinned him to the side of the car.

  “Chief Taylor will straighten all this out once he gets here,” I said, “but I can’t wait that long to go in.”

  As I spoke, I reached down and unsnapped his holster and withdrew his gun.

  “I’m not going to hurt you or anybody else. Just have a seat in your car until the chief gets here.”

  I opened the back door of his patrol car and shoved him inside, then pocketing both guns, ran down the road between the mill and the new marina, trying not to think about the ramifications of what I had just done or what I was about to do.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The back of the mill was farther away than it looked, and by the time I reached it and crawled through the fence, I was gasping heavily, my side felt like it would split open, and I had a little less than twenty minutes left.

  I felt like my heart might explode, but I kept running, my eyes scanning each area as I whipped my head around to search it. I figured that if she was here, it was far more likely that she was inside one of the buildings than out, but I still searched beneath the various networks of pipes as I ran between the buildings.

  The first structure I entered was an old, rusted metal storage building with broken windowpanes and a missing door on one end. Except for a couple of huge rolls of paper, the building was empty. It was a waste of time, but I checked behind them anyway.

  I entered the largest of the buildings next, running beside a row of large pipes, looking beneath the enormous vats and the long conveyor belts. It was huge, probably more than an acre, and I was again amazed at how much machinery had been left. It would be easy to miss a small area where she could be hidden.

  I started calling her, yelling her name as loud as I could. It reverberated off the concrete and metal and got lost in the open space of the three-story building. After a few moments, I stopped and waited, but there was no response. Eventually, I climbed up onto the metal catwalk and looked down into the vats, barrels, and drums, and all along the soiled concrete floor.

  From the high vantage point, I could see the massive amounts of explosives running along the walls, wired to the support beams of the ceiling and to the larger pieces of equipment. It was at that moment I fully realized the situation I was in. This building or the entire plant could explode at any moment. I could be spending my very last minutes on earth looking for someone who probably wasn’t even here.

  When I came out of the building, light-headed from sleep deprivation and too much oxygen, I looked at my watch and realized there was no way I could do even a cursory search of the entire facility. I had less than ten minutes, and the business offices in the front would take longer than that.

 
I would have to narrow down my remaining search to the most likely places. I just had no idea what those were. For a moment, I was so at a loss, so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the facility, that I froze. Just stood there. Unable to think. Unable to move.

  Was this how I was going to die? Standing still, waiting for the bang?

  When the first sound and vibration came, I jumped. By the time the second one occurred, I realized it was my cell. Ripping it out of my pocket, I shouted into it.

  “You find her?” Steve asked.

  “No,” I said. “You get them to delay the demolition?”

  “I couldn’t get through to the right person before,” he said. “I just got service back. Where are you?”

  I told him.

  “You’ve got to get out of there,” he said. “Hopefully she’s not in there, but either way you’ve got to get out now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell your men not to shoot me. I had to assault one to get in.”

  I hung up with no intention of leaving and glanced at my watch. I had a little under five minutes, probably not even enough time to get out safely.

  I had to go, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t leave knowing she might be here—knowing it was my fault if she was and that I could do something about it.

  I paused for a moment and prayed for help—something I rarely did during an investigation. I routinely prayed for the victims, occasionally for the perpetrators, often for wisdom and insight, but rarely for actual help. I guess I believed that God left these things largely up to us—if not, my time would be better spent locked away somewhere praying instead of investigating. Now, I was desperate, at the end of my abilities, and quickly running out of time. So I prayed.

  And God answered.

  I couldn’t explain what happened. Didn’t even begin to understand it. But I knew a spiritual impression when I had one. And I had one.

  I quickly ran over to the large pipes rising out of the ground. Finding a door, I forced it and entered an underground service tunnel. It was dark and dank, and my shoes splashed water as I ran along the sidewalk, crouched beneath the pipes.