by Linda Barlow
Fletcher wasn’t sure whether Annie knew about the passage. Most of the workmen didn’t. The ones who were used to climbing high on the structure and doing their intricate work dozens of feet off the ground, buffeted by wind and seeming incredibly brave, were the same guys who wouldn’t be caught dead underground. Foundation men were a helluva lot different from roofers. And the foundation guys had finished up and left the site many long months ago.
There was no sign of cops on the far side of the dark hulk of the cathedral. It should be an easy matter to break in to the youth center building. He was quiet, though, because he knew that the Reverend Acker often spent the night. She had a room up on the second floor.
He raised a window on the dark side of the first floor and entered. Smart, he thought. Lock the doors and leave the windows unlatched.
With the aid of a narrow-beam flashlight, he found the stairs to the basement. When he reached the bottom, he stopped short, sniffing the air. His nose was very sensitive. He got a whiff of what he was certain was Annie’s perfume. He shook his head in confusion. Wasn’t it the same scent he thought he’d faintly detected in his trailer last night?
Had she been down here tonight? Had she been in his trailer last night?
The thought transfixed him. The door to the trailer had been unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in.
Fletcher followed the elusive smell to a small, dark room at the rear of the basement. There was a bed in the room and a dresser and a small table lamp. The bed was neatly made. The scent was definitely there, combined with the scents of several other people. Someone had been in this room. Recently.
He stared at the bed and thought, I could bring Annie here. Annie. I’ll capture her in the cathedral, then bring her back through the tunnel to this room, this bed. It’ll be more comfortable for both of us.
He briefly imagined what he would do to her on that bed. He felt himself harden and his mouth go dry.
He turned and left the room, flexing his muscles as he walked. He opened the cracked wooden door to the cold passageway and shone the flashlight ahead of him. He thought he saw a quick movement at the far end and beamed his light on the spot. Nothing. Probably just rats.
The tunnel was old and crumbling. Probably not very safe. On the other hand, it had lasted through several earthquakes. There was a smell in here too, and not a pleasant one—it was dank and musty. He was glad when he reached the other end.
He entered the cathedral through its northeast foundation. He wasn’t being particularly quiet, but over the noise he made as he climbed over the construction rubble, he heard a choked-off sound. A voice. A female voice.
Annie? The perfume? Was she here already, waiting for him? Had she come to his trailer because she wanted him?
He followed the sound into the semicircular apse that would soon be transformed to the Lady Chapel. There was a pile of bricks by the opening to the area and, in the dark, he stumbled on them.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked sharply, sounding both weepy and frightened.
Annie? His blood beat in sudden excitement.
He jerked his flashlight up. As he peered into the chapel, the dim beam revealed a woman—a girl, really. Her hair was fair and so long that it nearly brushed her hips. She was clad in something dark and flowing, a cloak perhaps, and her face as she turned toward the light was lovely. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. She was in the Lady Chapel, and she looked almost like the Lady Herself….
Then she moved and a soft sob issued from her throat. Silvery tears glistened as they rolled down the girl’s perfect cheeks.
“Mi amore?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
Mi amorel? “Hey, who are you?” Fletcher said.
At the unfamiliar voice, the look in the girl’s eyes changed to one of panic. She gave him a firm shove—which momentarily surprised him. Then she whipped by him, leaping over the bricks at the entrance to The Lady Chapel and fled.
He rushed out after her, but the girl was fast. He saw a swirl of her blue cloak whip around the corner. Shit! She was getting away!
And yet he felt almost reluctant to follow her. As if she might not be real, but a spirit. Jeez. Working in this place was making him superstitious.
She had to be that girl Annie had been talking about. The one who had been in the cathedral the night after the murder. The one Annie had neglected to tell the cops about.
Paolina.
He could hear her scurrying ahead of him. There was all sorts of construction debris on the floor, and the cathedral was dark. He heard a crash and the girl cried out. Yes! She had stumbled over something and fallen.
She was scrambling to her feet when he grabbed her. She clawed at him, her eyes wild. He twisted her arm up behind her until she gasped and went limp.
“You Paolina?” he asked roughly.
She nodded, blinking up at him, terrified.
Fletcher felt the power rush through him. That was the way Annie would look up at him.
But—something weird was going on here. What the hell was a young girl, a teenager, doing in the construction site late at night? And not just once but twice?
“Mi amore,” she’d said. Were she and her lover using the unfinished cathedral as a trysting place? But her lover was on the run from the cops. It was her lover they suspected of murdering Giuseppe Brindesi. What kind of fool would come back to the place where he’d committed a murder in order to meet his lover?
Unless he’d never left…
Shit!
The cops were searching all over the fucking city for the kid. But Vico was here, hiding in the foundation, somewhere in the basements or the crawl space.
The kid had worked construction here, so he knew the place. He must have explored around until he’d found a nice little hidey-hole for himself. And the girlfriend probably sneaked in every night—just the same way Fletcher had—bringing him food and water and her pert little ass and breasts.
He’d found the kid Annie was looking for. Or at least he was about to find him. The girl would lead him to Vico, and pretty damn fast, if she knew what was good for her.
It was the way, Fletcher suddenly realized. The way to get Annie to come down to the cathedral at night. She believed that Vico was innocent. She wanted to help him. If he convinced her that Vico was here, she would come. Tonight.
He’d have her right where he wanted her.
At last.
In the meantime, he had the girl, who was moaning softly and trembling with terror. Fletcher’s heart was pounding. His cock was hard. He was going to enjoy questioning her.
Chapter Thirty-seven
“I think I’ve got something.”
Matt had been at it for over two hours, while Annie and Darcy took turns guarding the door. They were working in darkness to avoid attracting attention from the security guards. The only light came from the flickering computer screen. “It’s a deleted file. I’m going to try to view it. It’ll look a little different from what you’re used to. Those are CAD formatting commands. Okay, ladies, what do you think?”
Annie and Darcy leaned over and squinted at the screen. “That’s it,” Annie said as the graphics came up. “It’s the cathedral CAD file.”
“But which version?” Matt asked.
“Jesus,” Darcy said. She sat down and stared at the structural specifications. “That son of a bitch.”
Matt looked at her. “Okay, tell us. We’re out of the area of my expertise.”
“He’s arranged for the construction of a cheaper and much lower-designed building than the one we all agreed on. The changes are in the structural framing. He’s specified far fewer connections and spaced them much farther apart. He’s changed the spacing of the columns and beams, the number of bolts, the quality of the seismic connections, everything.” She looked at Matt and Annie. “Paul McEnerney must be in on this. No way the contractor could build this without realizing what was going on. Sam and he must be in it together. They’re probably spl
itting the money they’re skimming… and if this is the design and specifications they’re using, they’re skimming a lot.”
“Let’s get a copy of this,” Matt said, sticking a fresh disk into the floppy drive.
“Let’s print it out, too,” said Annie. She turned on the plotter, and soon the blueprints came rolling out.
“What we have here,” Darcy explained, “is a cathedral that on the outside looks to be everything it was originally designed to be. But what we’re seeing is that the inner structure has been greatly weakened. Possibly to the extent that the building isn’t even safe. I’d hate to think what would happen in a major earthquake. The cathedral was originally designed to withstand a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale. But this building—the one we actually have on our construction site—would probably sustain major damage with anything over 6.0.”
Annie was stunned. Not only had it happened, it had happened on her watch. She suddenly understood why Sam Brody had appointed her project manager. It wasn’t that he thought she was competent, it was that he thought she was incompetent. She wasn’t an architect. She had no direct on-site construction experience. He had expected her not to notice, and she hadn’t.
“Outward beauty and a rotten inner core,” mused Darcy. “Tell me, folks, does that sound like anybody we know?”
“But is it proof?” Matt asked.
“We’ve got copies of both files,” said Annie. “Of course, we still have to prove that the amended one is the one McEnerney’s been using. I wonder if there’s any correspondence between them about it.”
They all jumped when Annie’s cellular phone rang. She’d brought it in from the car.
She took the phone into a corner where her conversation wouldn’t disturb Matt. It’s Fletcher,” she said a few moments later. “He says he’s knows where Vico is.”
Matt looked up from the computer screen. “If that’s true, it’s damn important.”
Annie got the details quickly, then hung up and explained them to Matt: “He thinks he’s been in the cathedral all along. Hiding out there, probably in the basement or somewhere in the crawl space under the nave. It makes sense, Matt. Fletcher says he found Paolina in there again a little while ago.”
“Jesus.” Matt pulled up a new page on the screen to get a look at the basement area of the cathedral. “It’s possible. Why didn’t we think of that?”
“It would also account for his having witnessed the murder. The cathedral wasn’t just a meeting place for the teenagers—it was Vico’s refuge.”
“So has Fletcher actually got the kid?”
“No, but he’s got Paolina. She refuses to talk to him, he says.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. “Figures.”
“I’m going over there,” Annie said.
“I’m coming with you.”
“We can’t go yet,” Darcy broke in. “What if there’s something more here? As Annie said, what we need now is some kind of correspondence that proves that Sam was in on this with the contractor.”
“You keep working on it, Darcy. This kid is an eyewitness, and I want to talk to him before the cops throw his ass in jail.”
“Matt, maybe you shouldn’t come,” Annie said. “The police might be looking to throw your ass in jail, too.”
“Hell, if they get too close, I’ll just hunker down with Vico in the crawl space. That kid is smarter than I thought.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Fletcher waited in the small room behind the high altar, which was being finished as the sacristy. In it would be kept the sacred objects for the communion service—the chalice and the plate, the candlesticks for the altar, the minister’s vestments. At the moment, the dark room was filled with construction gear and debris.
He was wired. She was coming. He was finally going to get his chance with her. And this time he wasn’t going to blow it.
He hadn’t found Vico yet, but he had taken some precautions in that regard.
The kid was hiding somewhere in the foundation, and he’d been thinking about that. He’d been considering the ways into the crawl spaces and the possible ways out.
Except that everybody knew that once you went down into the earth, into the underworld, you didn’t come out again. The kid liked it in there, did he? Fine, because that’s where he was going to stay.
Meanwhile, everything else was prepared. He had found several tall, thick candles and arranged them on the floor around the high altar. They bathed the area in soft yellow light. It was romantic. He hoped she would see it that way. What more romantic place could there be than the peaceful sanctuary of a church at midnight?
Fletcher hoped that Annie wouldn’t resist him too much. Fear was fine. He wanted her to be afraid. But he also wanted her submission. He was hoping that the atmosphere of the place would overwhelm her and she would know that everything in her life had been working up to this moment. Surely she would recognize that.
But if she didn’t, he was prepared. There would be no backing down, no going back. He had a duffle bag filled with supplies, including an automatic pistol he’d bought from a mail order house down South, chloroform in case she resisted (procured from a medical supply house), his Desert Commando knife, and several lengths of strong nylon climbing rope. The smooth marble altar, already completed, would make a creamy, lovely bed. Far, far better than the little one in the basement of the youth center.
He imagined Annie bound here, stretched out on her back on the altar, naked and writhing in the soft candlelight. What a magnificent sight it would be! What a luscious feast for his eyes. What a perfect sacrifice.
She was coming, and for the first time in a long time, Fletcher felt joy radiating through him.
Maybe he should kneel and give thanks.
*
“There’s a patrol car cruising up the street. You’ll have to have to wait in the car.”
“Dammit, Annie.”
“I’ll try to avoid them, obviously, but I’ve got a legal right to be on the premises. If they really are looking for you, though, they could arrest you.”
“After last time, they’re damn well not going to arrest me without a helluva lot more evidence than they have so far. It’s Sam’s word against mine, and we’ve just about got him nailed.”
“Yes, but until we do have him nailed, I think you should be extra cautious.”
“I am being extra cautious, for crissake. Look at me.”
Annie smiled. He was crouched down below the car window. This was difficult, for Matt was tall. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you too, Annie.” They both took a moment to register the fact that this was the first time they’d spoken those words—here, in a car, while trying to elude the San Francisco police.
Annie managed to squeeze into a parking spot on the far side of the youth center. After taking a careful look around, she said, “Okay, the cop car is gone. If you’re coming, come now.”
They got out of the car and ran into the shadows of the construction site. Annie led Matthew toward the south transept door.
*
When Fletcher saw Annie slip in through the south entrance, his heart lifted even higher. By the light of the candles he’d placed all over the front of the cathedral, she looked beautiful. She was dressed simply, in blue jeans and a cream-colored blouse, with her golden hair pulled back from her face and knotted at the nape of her neck. The severe hairstyle made her look virginal, untouchable. But she was here for him.
And then, right behind her, a man entered. Worse, he stepped forward rapidly and put his hand on Annie’s shoulder to stop her progress into the church. Sounds carried in the cavernous building, and Fletcher heard his sharp whisper: “What the hell are all these candles lit for? Wait a sec. I don’t like the look of this.”
Annie stood still, and the man’s arm came around her from behind, his hand passing over a breast, lingering caressing it.
Fletcher felt a hammer crash down inside his head. He recognized the man, both from
photographs and from his visit here a couple of weeks ago. Matthew Carlyle. Annie already had a man. She had a fucking billionaire.
He ducked back behind the altar. Anger hardened like a knot inside his belly. He fished inside his duffle for the Desert Commando knife, but instead his hand found the automatic. He grew instantly more peaceful when he felt the cool walnut stock slide into his palm.
Another man? No. That was not allowed.
Annie and The Other Man advanced into the building, moving slowly along the south transept aisle. They stopped for a moment beside the stone baptismal font that had just been installed to the right of the sanctuary railing. There were now two baptismal fonts in the building, one in the front and the other in the rear.
They moved toward the spot where the transept aisle intersected the main aisle—the apex of the cathedral’s huge longitudinal cross. They had to step around the scaffolding from which Giuseppe had fallen. Annie looked up at it and seemed to shiver.
She called out softly, “Jack?”
Fletcher slithered over the floor behind the altar and down the steps into the ambulatory. Crouching in the darkness, he moved rapidly in a semicircle to the left, around the high altar area to the steps of the pulpit, which curved up to the elevated pulpit behind a solid stone balustrade. He could hear them whispering just beyond him, their feet clicking on the marble-inlaid floor as they walked.
“He might be down in the basement somewhere, searching for Vico,” Annie said to The Other Man.
“If Vico has hidden here successfully for this long, I’m not sure why any of us think we can find him,” said Carlyle.
Fletcher hated his voice. So deep, so—so rich. So guilty. He was a killer. He deserved to die. Deserved to have his throat slashed and his blood poured out onto the sacred marble, like a pagan sacrifice.
Fletcher glanced down at the gun in his hand. Bad choice. Next time he would select the knife.
“Jack!” Annie called out, right beneath the pulpit, and Fletcher jumped. She sounded loud and insistent. She sounded impatient. She sounded like all the women whose voices had been giving orders, making demands. Starting with his mother, that loudmouthed bitch.