by Jonas Saul
“And the cops that lined both sides of those pews,” Parkman added, a hint of anger in his voice. “After all they did for Sarah in her short life, let’s not forget her sacrifice she made for those cops.”
“I guess she got her wish.”
“What wish was that?” Parkman asked.
“To be redeemed.”
“That was one of the last things she said. But if cleaning the slate for her meant death, then she’s a twisted girl because I’d rather her be alive and angry at me than dead.”
“Be careful what you wish for. Sarah angry at you isn’t a pretty thought.”
The attempt at humor didn’t go over well. They both looked at the church as the Los Angeles Fire Department battled the flames that had a life of their own, as if fueled by Hell itself.
“You two okay?” Hirst walked up to them. He saw the fresh blood on Parkman. “Hey guys,” he said to the paramedics still talking on the side. “You gonna do something about that?”
“He won’t let us take him to the hospital.”
Hirst turned to Parkman. “Why not? There’s no way anyone will be walking through that church until morning. Go get stitched up, rest for the evening and come back. I’ll authorize a personal walkthrough of the crime scene as soon as it’s deemed safe.”
One of the paramedics stepped in front of Parkman with a piece of paper and a pen.
“Excuse me, sir. If you won’t come to the hospital and let us do our job, I have to ask you to sign this form acknowledging that you denied our help.”
Parkman pushed the paper aside. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go with you. But on one condition.”
“What’s that, sir?”
Parkman turned to Aaron. “Any news on Sarah is called in to me first.”
Aaron nodded. “Of course.”
Parkman allowed the paramedics to lift him inside the ambulance. Moments later, they pulled away.
Parkman whispered a prayer for Sarah as he wept all the way to the hospital.
Chapter 39
Aaron later joined Parkman at the hospital where they were offered two beds in their own room for the night. Sleep had been elusive. The last time Aaron checked the clock it had been after three in the morning.
He snapped awake. 7:34 a.m.
No one had called his cell.
He jumped out of bed, used the bathroom and stepped into the hall to call Hirst. “Anything new?”
“Nothing. Fire marshals and investigators are about to begin their walkthrough of the burned out remains, but that’s it.”
“She didn’t turn up anywhere, hand waving in the air, shouting something like, ‘I’m okay’?”
“No.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll rouse Parkman. We’ll come down.”
“Okay. And I’ve got something I want you two to look at.”
“What?”
“It was something Sarah said before she forced me into the church.”
“What’d she say?”
“When you get here. Nothing will change between now and then.”
“Okay.”
Half an hour later, Parkman and Aaron were in a taxi on their way to the remains of the church. They rode in silence.
The fire department had blocked the area around the burned-out building. Aaron got the driver to maneuver as close as he could. Hirst started toward them.
The blackened skeletal remains of support beams were all that was left of Sarah’s grave. Where sections of the stone walls still stood, he saw her strength in life. And where the roof was gone, leaving only ashes in its wake, he envisioned his heart, in ashes, burned and empty after having known and loved Sarah.
“Why?” he mumbled under his breath, her loss not completely registering yet.
“Why?” Parkman nodded beside him, looking like he came off the set of The Walking Dead.
The taxi pulled away as Hirst walked up.
“What did you want to tell us?” Aaron asked Hirst.
“It’s about what Sarah said before she entered the church.”
“What did she say?”
“That she didn’t believe this was about Catholicism.”
“What could she mean by that? What’d she think this was about?”
“She didn’t say exactly.”
“And?” Aaron frowned. “What have you learned? Found any bodies? Uncovered some random truth?”
“Aaron,” Parkman said softly. “Easy. This wasn’t his fault.”
“I know.” Aaron looked at the ground. “I’m just angry.”
“Understandably.” Hirst patted Aaron’s shoulder. “Across the street in that building,” Hirst pointed, “there’s an empty apartment on the third floor. The sniper was set up in there. We found bullet casings, an empty coffee cup, and the gun he used.”
“Was there a name on the lease?” Aaron asked. “Who was it rented to?”
“A man named Mike, last name, Myers, like the actor. But we think it’s Michael as in Father Michael Adams.”
“Wasn’t Mike Myers the name of the killer in the movie Halloween?”
Parkman asked, “Any physical trace of him there? Anything that’ll lead us to where he might be?”
“They’re dusting for prints. We only found the apartment two hours ago. What we’ve got so far is he used a microphone from across the street to blast his voice inside the church. He fired on us and watched as the church blew up.”
“Which means he wasn’t in the church. He escaped.”
Hirst nodded. “That’s right. But we’ll catch up with him sooner or later.”
“Or I will,” Aaron said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“No, we don’t need a male version of Sarah running around L.A.”
“What else do you have?” Parkman asked. “Or can we walk through the ruins now?”
“We’ve got tax records, deeds, and everything else we could find with Father Adams’ name on it.” Hirst grinned. It was the first time Aaron had seen the man grin like that. “Guess what we found.”
“No time,” Aaron said, the idea of humor lost on him. “Just tell us.”
“According to tax records, Father Adams and his brother have been writing off building materials to the tune of a million dollars each.”
“Building materials? For what? A new church?”
Hirst shook his head in an exaggerated way. “No. We think they’re building a new luxury home somewhere to go with the Rolls Royce he bought last year.”
“Rolls Royce? Don’t they go for a couple hundred grand or something?”
“At least.”
“On a priest’s salary?” Aaron said. “Shit, I might have found a new calling.”
Hirst was shaking his head again. “He doesn’t make that much.”
“So what’s Adams been up to? Embezzling from the church?”
“Bingo.” Hirst smacked a fist into his palm. “Over the past year, Father Adams had been under internal investigation for theft from the church. And guess which four churches under Father Adams had declared money missing?”
“The same four that recently had a priest killed,” Parkman said. “He was silencing his opposition, like he tried to do with us.”
“Bingo again.”
“So where are all these building supplies?” Aaron asked. “What was he building?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re working on it.”
A man in a suit jacket wearing a fireman’s badge stepped up to Hirst. “You guys can walk through now. Just be careful and we’re not responsible for injuries. Not everything is cleared out yet, but that’ll take days before they can even get started.”
“Any bodies yet?” Aaron asked.
The man shook his head. “None.”
“Then there’s still hope.”
“Come on, I’ll escort you around.”
Aaron grabbed Parkman’s arm. “Let’s go say goodbye. Then find Adams and punch his ticket to Hell.”
Chapter 40
In
side the church, nothing resembled the beauty it once was. Various sections of the four walls were still standing, but that was it. The wooden pews were gone, replaced by a blackened floor with random mounds of burned debris. The large crucifix near the front was gone. Chunks of stone from the walls lay scattered about.
“The floor seems to have held up,” the fire investigator said as he walked them toward the center. “This one was modeled after Italian Catholic churches. We had the city send over the plans before we started trampling around.”
Aaron tried to imagine where he was when he stepped outside yesterday. Where had Sarah been? When she locked them out, where could she have gone? He turned and surveyed the wall to where the back door had been. Somewhere between these two spots was where they would find Sarah’s remains. Slowed by a broken foot there was no way she could be anywhere else.
Parkman and the investigator had walked ahead. Aaron turned and followed, a glumness falling over him. What was life all about if you loved and lived and then the best ones were taken away from you? If life was about lessons, then what the hell was death about?
Sarah was needed. Sarah had a purpose. She was helping humanity and had almost died several times. Why now? And why didn’t Vivian step in?
Aaron looked skyward and raised a fist.
“This is on you, Vivian.”
The blue sky above him didn’t respond. It was Parkman’s voice that made him jump.
“Over here!” Parkman called from beside a pile of soot-covered junk.
“What’d you find?” Aaron called back.
“Help move this shit out of the way.”
“Parkman, what are you doing?”
Aaron started over to see what had riled up Parkman. Other investigators took notice and headed Parkman’s way, too.
Hirst was moving a large stone out of the way when Aaron got to Parkman’s side.
“What’s going on, guys?” Aaron asked.
“Stairs,” Parkman said.
“To what?”
“The crypt.”
Those two words were like a punch in the stomach. Of course. The crypt. Sarah had a lot of experience with crypts from her time in Italy years ago when she was hunting Armond Stuart, a human trafficker. Aaron had heard the stories about Esztergom and the crypts in Hungary, too.
Before getting his hopes up, he looked at how far the opening of the crypt was to where Sarah would have likely been when the explosions started. With two good feet and a running chance, she might have made it to the crypt, but probably not. Especially not with a broken foot.
“She couldn’t have made it this far, Parkman. I don’t want to be a naysayer, but by the time she locked the front door, there was no way she had the time to run down into the crypt.”
The fire investigator looked forlorn at Aaron, as if to say that he felt bad for the false hope Parkman exuded. “Yeah,” he said. “Consider the intensity of the fire, too. That kind of fire needs a ton of oxygen. Any oxygen down in the crypt would’ve been sucked up and used. It would’ve made it hard to breathe, not to mention the water from the fire trucks. That would’ve collected down there. In this kind of fire, if it wasn’t the smoke, or the fire, the water would drown you.”
Parkman tossed a charred piece of wood aside and stopped to examine the fire investigator.
“Sarah’s a survivor. She’s immortal, like a fucking vampire. If she could find a way to survive down there among the dead, she would. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that she has to stay trapped a little longer because no one believed she could do it. My guess is she’s going to be seriously pissed when we get to her and she’s going to want a glass of whiskey and a bed. So, are you going to help me clear these stairs or are we going to keep debating her tenacity?”
The investigator grabbed a piece of stone and tossed it aside. He worked without looking at Parkman or responding to his last question.
Aaron got in on it and worked beside Parkman, who was doing very little because of his injuries. Hirst and a few of the fire guys began organizing the debris in piles, keeping it away from the opening of the crypt as the three men made their way to the bottom of the stairs.
“Anyone got a flashlight?” Parkman asked. “We’re almost through.”
A long black mag light was handed down to him. Aaron and the investigator heaved a large piece of wall aside and Parkman stepped into the clearing. Then Aaron jumped down to join him.
“Over here,” Aaron said. “Shine the light this way.”
They walked the interior of the crypt until they got to an area where the ground sloped downward. The floor’s stones were damp and wet from the fire hoses. Moving slowly in a grid formation, they scoured the crypt’s cavernous area.
Drainage grates were built into the floor in case of flooding. Two of them had standing water at their edges.
That’s why the water isn’t thigh high down here.
Aaron was losing any hope Parkman might have instilled as each section of the crypt, each corner, was empty.
“In that corner at the back. More debris.”
As he said it, he realized debris wouldn’t have come this far inside the crypt.
Parkman swung the flashlight in the direction Aaron pointed and they both gasped.
Sarah lay sprawled on the stone floor, her body a mask of black and red. Her clothes were burnt in spots. Her long hair had been singed in places. Under the glow of the flashlight, Aaron was close enough to see her eyebrows were missing.
“Sarah,” he gasped, his voice caught in his throat as he ran over and dropped to his knees. He touched her neck for a pulse, then shuddered and made a guttural sound.
Parkman set the flashlight down keeping it aimed at Sarah, and scurried away. On the other side of the cavernous room, Parkman shouted up for an ambulance.
“We’ve got a survivor down here!” he yelled.
The words coming from Parkman were so sweet for Aaron to hear, he could almost taste them.
Sarah’s pulse was solid. She was alive. She was asleep, no doubt completely exhausted.
But how did she do it? How could she pull this off?
“That’s impossible,” the investigator yelled back. “Is this a joke?”
“I’m going to fucking kill you if I have to come up there,” Parkman yelled back. “Get me paramedics and oxygen down here, yesterday.” He paused. “Hirst?”
“Yeah?”
“Sarah’s alive.”
Aaron could barely hear what Hirst said, but it sounded like a bewildered, “Holy shit.”
“I know. But we need help.”
“I’m on it. We’ll have help down to you in minutes.”
Sarah stirred under Aaron’s hand.
“Baby, you’re okay now,” he whispered.
She coughed.
Aaron teared up. He couldn’t believe it.
She coughed harder, then winced in pain.
He rubbed her back as she tried unsuccessfully to get her lungs under control.
“Oxygen!” Parkman yelled from the base of the stairs. “Now!” he yelled louder. “Toss me a tank.”
“You’re okay, Sarah.” Aaron touched her forehead. “You’re going to make it.”
Under the flashlight’s glow, Sarah tried to open her eyes but failed.
“Aaron?” Her voice was raspy.
“Right here, baby.”
“Did we catch … the bastard?”
“Not yet.”
She coughed. “I need a vacation.”
“Agreed. Time for a break.”
“Hurry the fuck up!” Parkman yelled again.
“Parkman?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah, baby, he’s getting oxygen for you.”
“Yeah … could use some of that.” She offered a half smile.
“Just rest. Don’t talk. Breathe slowly. It’s coming.”