by Lee Child
And he is what you made him.
He hopes you’re proud.
But right now he just hopes you’re ready. That he’s ready. He’s dreamed of this so often down the years between then and now that he feels suddenly unprepared, naked in the dark.
Shivering, he’s a seven-year-old boy again, with all the majesty fresh ripped out of him, howling as he’s punished for truth, punished for faith.
Punished for believing, when you told him you would take very special care of him indeed.
He’s punished himself and those around him ever since. Lived a life stripped to base essentials, where “refinement” means cut with stuff that’s only going to kill you slow.
Lost.
And now he’s found you again, and he thinks, if he does this right, he may find himself again too.
He hears the footsteps, familiar even loaded by the drag and stagger of the years. He folds his hand tighter around the knife, takes in the sodden air, feels the pulse-beat in his fingertips.
Feels alive.
It’s a privilege only one of you can share.
Attuned, he sees your figure sway into the open mouth of the alley, hesitating at the unexpected gloom. A stumble, a smothered curse, but he knows you won’t play it safe. You never have. Going the longer way around will take time, and you’re loath to be away from your latest pet project, whoever that might be.
He wonders if he will be in time to save them—not from what’s been but from what’s to come—even as he steps out of the recess, a wraith in the shadows, the knife unsheathed now and eager for the bite.
At the last moment you hear his lunge of breath and you begin to turn. Too slow.
He is on you, fast with the lust of it, strong with the manifestation of his own fear. His hand grasps your forehead, tilting your head back for the sacrifice. Is it instinct that tries to force your chin under, or do you know what’s coming?
Too slow.
He can smell soap overlaying sweat and tobacco, the garlic of your last meal. Garlic that failed to keep this vampire at bay.
The knife, sharp as a butcher’s blade, makes a first pass across your stringy throat. It slips so easily through the skin that for a moment he almost believes you are the demon of his childhood nightmares, to be slain by no mortal hand.
Then he remembers a laughing boast—that the first cut is for free.
The second cut, though, is all for himself.
He goes in deep, hacks blind through muscle, tube, and sinew, glances across bone. The blood that gushes outward now is hot, so hot he can almost hear it sizzle.
Your legs run out on you. Shock puts you down and sheer disbelief keeps you there. He steps back, hollowed out by the skill, watches your eyes as the realization finally sets in. Your heart still pumps but you are dead, even if you don’t know it yet.
He expected a fierce joy. He feels only silence.
He turns his back, not waiting for your feeble struggles to subside, and walks away. At the mouth of the alley he drops the knife into a drain, and walks away.
The rain starts up again, like it’s been waiting, like it’s been holding its breath.
THE RAIN CLEANSES him. His feet take him past the gang tags, the articulation of alienation that forms the melody of his daily life, to the crumbling church. Not the same church, but another very like it. They have all become one to him—a place of undue reverence. A place where he was found and lost, and maybe found again.
A penance. And now a place of twisted sanctuary.
Approaching the altar, he makes jerky obeisance, slides into the second row. The wood is polished smooth by long passage of the tired and the hopeful. And the building smells of incense and velvet, wax dripped on silver, and the pages of old books lined with dusty words.
Still damp from the rain, he finds no warmth here.
Still restless from the act, he finds no comfort.
He wonders if he was expecting to.
You first came upon him sitting alone like this, all those years ago, scuffed and crying, pockets emptied and pride stolen. You comforted him then. He remembers a pathetic gratitude. Salvation.
The blood rises fast in him. His hands are clasped as if for prayer, the knuckles straining to release a plethora of fury and regret.
There was no release then. He had nowhere to take it other than the river, was so close to letting go when strangers wrestled him, a child demented, from the railing’s edge. They were shocked at his vehemence, his determination.
They brought him back to you.
And you smiled as you told him suicide was the gravest sin. That he would go straight to the depths of hell, where he would be raped by every demon up to Lucifer himself.
So he chose to live rather than die, although it seemed to him that there was little to choose between one and the other.
LYING JUMBLED IN the alley, the truth of what’s done finally descends on you, soft as snow.
You see the lights of passing cars, buttoned tight, oblivious. Flashes of colored sound made distant by the glass wall of your dysphonia. Out of reach. Out of touch.
You are nearly out of time.
But still you grip to the coattails of life with the stubborn savagery that is your nature. Logic tells you that you should already be dead, that somehow the blade has missed the vital vessels. You have gotten away with too much to believe you will not get away with this, if you want it badly enough.
After all, by will and nerve you have survived exposure, excoriation, excommunication.
Someone will come.
A stranger, a Samaritan. Someone who doesn’t know you well enough to step over your body and move along through.
If he doesn’t come back to finish you first.
Only a fatalist would believe this is some random act of violence, but not knowing who scratches at the back of your mind. There have been too many likely candidates to narrow it down.
You are troubled that he did not speak. You expected the bitter spill of self-righteous self-pity. Of blame.
See what you made me do, old man.
Killing you without triumph is pointless.
But the face… you don’t remember the face. You are not good with the faces of men, although it’s different with the boys. Unformed and mobile, fresh. You have never forgotten one of your boys.
Your special boys.
It tore your heart out to have them taken away from you. To be taken away from them. But they underestimated the number, and few came forward to be counted.
They called it shame.
You call it love.
Maybe that is the reason you are lying here, bleeding out into a rain-drummed puddle smeared with oil, in an alley, in the dark, alone.
Maybe he loves you too much to see you with anyone else.
HE IS ON his knees when the cops come for him. They shuffle into the church snapping the rain from their topcoats, muting radio traffic, hats awkward between their fingers. Like they’ve seen too much to believe in the solace of this place. Like they’re embarrassed by their own lack of devotion.
For a moment panic clenches in him and he teeters on the cusp of relief and outright despair. He should have anticipated this.
He rises, crosses himself—a reflex of muscle memory—and turns to them with empty hands.
The cops don’t need to speak. Their faces speak for them. It is not the first time they have come for him like this. Not here. He doesn’t stop long enough to pull on a coat before they hustle him out, through the slanted rain to the black-and-white angled by the curb, lights still turning lazily.
The ride is short. The cops exchange muttered words in the front seat. He reads questions in their gaze reflected from glass and mirrors but has nothing to say. This is the place of his choosing, and they cannot understand the choice.
He stares out through the streaked side window at the passing night, at the tawdry glitz of hidden desperation.
The rain comes down with relentless fervor. Water begins to pil
e up in the gutters, flash-flooding debris toward the storm drains. If only sins were as easily swept clean away.
The car slews to a halt beside two others just outside the crime tape. The lights zigzag in and out of sync with more urgency than the men around them.
Hope plucks at him.
The cops step out; one opens his door. They lift the tape to duck inside the perimeter, though there is nobody to keep at bay. Violence is too common here to draw a crowd in this rain.
A detective intercepts them with a doubtful glance, hunched into the weather. He has a day’s tired stubble above his collar, and a tired suit beneath his overcoat.
“This him?”
One of the cops nods. “All yours.”
“Let’s go.” The detective steps back with a spread arm, an open invitation tinged with mocking—for what he is, for what he represents.
“Wallet was still in the vic’s hip pocket—how we knew he was one of yours,” the detective says as they walk toward the alley. “But we would have made him sooner or later.”
The detective waits for a response, for a simple curiosity that’s not forthcoming.
“I do what needs to be done.”
The detective shrugs. “Sure you do. For the sinners as much as the saints, huh?”
“That’s always been the way of it.”
“Sure.” The detective’s face bulges, bones pressing against his skin as if engorged. “This guy’s a convicted pederast. He fucks boys—kids. The younger the better. And he was a priest when they sent him down. A goddamn priest.”
“He’ll be judged.”
They reach the throat of the alley and the detective stops, as if to go farther will leave him open to contamination.
“Well, I’d say he’s had his earthly judgment.” And if the voice is ice, the eyes are fire. “All that’s left for him is the fucking divine.”
ADRIFT IN YOUR own circle of confusion, you catch only snatches of words you recognize but can no longer comprehend.
“… amazed he’s lasted this long…”
“… nothing more we can do…”
“… had it coming…”
And you’re colder than the sea, locked inside a faltering body and a breaking mind, locked into a tumult of regret and the terror of going to meet a vengeful Maker.
The medics rise, retreat, leaving the clutter of their futile effort strewn around you.
You want to cry for them not to leave you, not to let you die alone, but you lie muted by the blade, stilled by the approaching darkness. Darker than the alley, darker than the earth. The devil prowls the shadows, waiting without tolerance, watching with lascivious eyes. Soon he will engulf you, rip apart your body even as your last breath decays, and devour a soul already rotten.
Unless…
“… he’s here…”
Your eyes flutter closed.
Thank God.
It takes effort to open them again, to see the priest approaching. The medics have moved back a respectful distance, clustering with the detective at the mouth of the alley, superfluous. The priest bends over you.
You prepare yourself for Penance, Anointing, Viaticum. He’ll hear no spoken confession from your lips, but absolution assuming contrition surely must be granted.
You prepare yourself for a ritual worn with consoling familiarity. One you carried out often enough, back in a former life.
But as the priest bends low, you catch sight of his face, and this man’s face you do remember, from behind the blade all the way back to his boyhood.
He was a special boy, all right.
Your first temptation on the path of sin.
And now your last.
The fear writhes in you, but he touches your forehead with a gentle finger and when he speaks, his voice is gentle too.
“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace…”
Impatient, your mind runs on ahead:
… and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
But the expectation is not fulfilled. The essential words do not follow.
Your eyes seek his, frantic, pleading. The devil growls at your shoulder, taking shape out of the umbra, exulting as he solidifies. Closer. You feel his talons pluck at your vision, begin to pull the fetid shroud across your eyes. You are sinking.
Quickly! Finish it!
The priest bends closer still, his voice a whisper in your closing ear.
“You found me, and I was lost. Now you are lost, because I found you…”
THE MOTHER
BY ALAFAIR BURKE
Diane Light closed the file folder and added it to the heap on her desk. At nearly a foot high, the pile began to wobble. She rested her forearm on top of the tower to hold it steady.
She resisted the urge to separate that last file from the rest. It was special. It deserved to be carried into court on its own.
“Jesus, I thought I was late.” Diane heard harried footsteps rush past her office door, her coworker’s generic voice fading as he moved farther down the hallway. “Stone’s a stickler about time, you know.”
She knew.
She stole a glance at her watch as she scooped the stack of files against her chest. Two minutes until Stone would be seated at his bench, tapping the face of his own watch, eager for the deputy district attorney to start calling cases.
Judge Stone was a stickler for promptness, but he was also a stickler for facts. She’d memorized the contents of Kiley’s file, from start to finish.
TWO HOURS IN, Stone finally commented on the time. “Nice job this morning, Miss Light. You could teach your colleagues a thing or two about docket management.”
Her previously foot-high pile was now down to two inches. Three more cases. Two more before Kiley’s. And still an hour to go before Stone’s hardwired lunch alarm would sound. The strategy was working.
She rushed through the next two cases. They were easy ones: Mothers complying with conditions. Social workers report progress and recommend continued monitoring and treatment. No request for immediate disposition, Your Honor.
Forty-five minutes to go, and only one more file. The file. Kiley’s file. She called the case number and watched Kiley’s father approach the opposition table with his court-appointed counsel. Kiley’s assigned guardian ad litem stood between the two lawyers.
“Your Honor, you may recall this case. The State originally moved to terminate parental rights ten months ago, after police learned the child had been sold sexually by her parents. She was only twenty-two months old at the time.” Twenty-two months sounded much younger than two years old. Somehow it sounded even more babylike than a year and a half.
“Objection.” It came from the dad’s attorney, Lisa Hobbins.
Hobbins pretended to care about her clients, but Diane knew for a fact that last Cinco de Mayo, after too many tequila shots at Veritable Quandary, Hobbins had puked her guts out in the gutter of First Avenue, crying about the scumbag parents she represents. “Miss Light is well aware that only the mother was convicted of those charges,” Hobbins said now. “My client was estranged from his wife at the time the crimes occurred. He wanted to get clean. She didn’t. He wouldn’t have left Kiley with his wife if he’d known—”
“We dispute all of that, Your Honor. A grand jury indicted the father as well after finding probable cause for his involvement. The defendant was acquitted at trial after his wife testified about her sole responsibility, but the State’s position is that his wife, a battered woman and not estranged from her husband at all, protected Mr. Chance—”
Judge Stone held up a hand to cut her off. “The State lost at trial, Miss Light. The jury must have rejected your theory.”
“But this is a separate case, Your Honor. As an independent finder of fact, you can make a f
resh assessment—”
“So where are we now?” He didn’t try to mask the long glance at his watch.
“The mother has stipulated to a termination of parental rights, but Mr. Chance has not. The case has been continued seven times over the past ten months. At the third hearing, Judge Parker found grounds for termination but wanted assurances that Kiley would have a permanent home. The State objected to the condition and has continued to object since, but the case has been set over at each subsequent hearing pending further monitoring of the situation and while Kiley’s foster mother, Janice Miller, decided whether to enter into a legal adoption.”
Stone was rifling through the court’s file, still trying to understand the procedural posture. She didn’t want him thinking about continuances, hearings, and orders held at bay. She needed him to care about Kiley. That little girl was not just a number. She was not just the last case of the day. Maybe Diane should have called the case first. All that work. All that planning. And now she was blowing it.
“To cut to the chase, Your Honor”—she knew that was Stone’s favorite phrase—“Kiley was not an easy child to place. Adoptive parents are reluctant to take on children who have been through the kind of trauma Kiley experienced. In addition to having been subjected to repeated molestations, she was born drug affected. At the time of her parents’ arrest, she was undernourished and suffering from PTSD. But after nearly a year as a foster parent to Kiley, Miss Miller was sufficiently comfortable with Kiley’s physical and emotional progress. This was to be a hearing to finalize the termination of Mr. Chance’s parental rights with a simultaneous adoption by Miss Miller.”
“But?”
“But Miss Miller was struck and killed by a drunk driver two nights ago as she was jogging across Powell Boulevard.” Judge Stone made a tsk sound. “The State is still seeking termination of parental rights. Although counsel notes that Mr. Chance was acquitted, it cannot be ignored that one of the men who was paying for sexual contact with the child was a former cellmate of Mr. Chance. At Mr. Chance’s trial, that man testified that—”