by Tim Stevens
*
The colonel was resident at the base, and although he was off duty he came on the line within five minutes. Venn and Teller sat round a phone in one of the side offices.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “How may I help?”
“We’re interested in a soldier named Franklin Douglas Gray,” said Teller. “He served at Fort Irvington from 2005 till 2009.”
“Yes,” said Masterson, after a moment’s pause. “Sergeant Gray.”
“Tell us about him.”
“A good soldier,” said Masterson. “Solid. In fact, more than that. His career was on the up. He’d have made officer one day, probably sooner rather than later.”
“So why’d he leave?” asked Venn.
“That’s the strange thing,” said Masterson. “Nobody really knows why. He just announced one day that he didn’t think a career in the military was what he wanted to pursue. We had words with him, of course. Strong words. The Army had invested a lot of time and effort in him, because we had no reason to believe he would just up and leave. But he was steadfast: he was going to quit.”
“Did he have problems?” said Teller. “Hangups, financial worries, anything like that?”
“Not that anyone could tell,” said Masterson. “I can dig out his psychological profile if you like, but from memory I can’t recall anything unusual. Fairly popular with the other men. A disciplined soldier, so there were no issues with insubordination.”
“Did he know Dale Fincher?” said Venn.
Masterson seemed to have been anticipating the question. He said immediately: “They were quartered together for much of the time. I don’t think they were particular friends – as I said before, Fincher didn’t really have friends as such – but there was no obvious animosity between them.”
“What happened to him afterward? Gray?” asked Venn.
“Nobody knows,” Masterson said. “I was curious as to what he’d do, but I didn’t keep a close track of him. He spoke vaguely about traveling abroad, seeing Europe. He left a forwarding address for his correspondence, but it was a Post Office box, so we assumed that meant he didn’t have a fixed place to stay and he was going to up sticks and move out. I always figured he’d get bored, have a change of heart and come running back to the Army. But he never did, and it’s been almost six years now, so I guess he never will.”
“What about family?” said Venn.
“I’ll need to check that,” Masterson said. “No, just a minute - I remember now. We tried to contact them at the time he left. Unofficially, you understand. Just to see if they could shed any light on why he’d decided to quit. Sergeant Gray never knew who his father was, and his mother had died from cancer a few years earlier. But there was a younger sister. We talked to her. She hadn’t had a lot of contact with him, ever since they were teenagers, so she wasn’t much help.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” said Teller, after a glance at Venn to see if he had any more questions. “You’ve been a great help, as before.”
“May I ask why you’ve become interested in Sergeant Gray?” said Masterson.
“I can’t divulge a lot of details, Colonel, other than to say that there may be a connection between Gray and Fincher’s murder, and the rest of the killings,” said Teller. “Naturally, I’d be grateful if you keep this confidential.”
“Of course.”
“But if anything occurs to you that might help us, anything you or your staff think of, however trivial it might seem... please call.”
Masterson assured them that he would.
The call ended.
Teller and Venn looked at one another.
Teller said, “This sister. She’s the woman. Gray’s accomplice.”
“If she is,” said Venn, “we won’t be able to find her. But it’s worth trying.”
Eyeing him curiously, Teller said, “You got a better strategy?”
Venn said: “We’ve got to put Gray’s face out there. On every lamppost, every shop window. On every damn milk carton, if we have to.”
“I agree,” said Teller.
“But we’ve also got to let it be known that we were wrong before.”
Teller did a double take. “What?”
“About the woman,” said Venn. His restlessness suddenly found itself channeled, as if lightning had struck a conductor and was concentrating itself intensely down its length. He stood up.
“The woman?” Teller looked utterly perplexed. “But we’ve just heard about his sister -”
“We have to make out there’s no woman involved. That we got that part wrong. Our only suspect is Franklin Gray.” As the idea coalesced in Venn’s head, he focussed on it, hard. Drove everything else out of his mind. Because if he didn’t, he’d have to face the nagging, reedy voice of his conscience.
The voice that was telling him he was about to do something completely reckless. Something that he’d never be able to live with if he put a foot wrong.
Teller had remained seated, a slight sag to his shoulders. Venn suddenly felt a stab of sympathy for the guy. In all of this, in Venn’s concern for Harmony and his anger at the possibility that Rickenbacker had shot her, he hadn’t paused to consider that Rickenbacker was Teller’s partner, and his friend, and that the man was probably feeling pretty rotten about the whole thing. About the notion first of all that she might be a serial killer, and second, that she was now in the custody of the actual killer, and was unlikely to survive.
Now Teller stood up. “Joe, you’re not making any sense.”
Venn said: “I’ve got a plan. Listen...”
Chapter 26
The snow began to fall at the exact moment Sally-Jo raised her open arms to the heavens.
She wasn’t religious, and never had been. But if ever there was a sign from something out there, something greater than her and the billions of other human beings in this scurrying, deluded little world... well, this was it.
She climbed the slope of the field in four quick strides and walked down the middle of the road, basking, exulting in the flurry of white from above. This was snow. Not the sleety drizzle which had teased the city over the past few weeks. Not a brief burst of precipitation to be followed by a further period of waiting. The pregnant, swollen skies had finally reached the point of no return.
A change in the weather. Unambiguous, and lasting.
Just like Sally-Jo’s life had changed. Had ended, sacrificed in the act of birthing her new life.
Rickenbacker had understood. Deep down, in her gut. Her soul.
The understanding had been in her eyes.
Sally-Jo had driven up through and beyond Harlem, across the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey. She wasn’t familiar with the lay of the land but she was looking for a spot with two characteristics. It had to be relatively remote. And she had to be able to walk back to New York City, even if it took several hours in the freezing cold.
She found herself among fields before too long, and turned off down a rambling road which plunged deep into the countryside.
Beside her, Special Agent Rickenbacker moaned and stirred from time to time. But she never woke, even when Sally-Jo waved her hand unexpectedly before her face. She was fairly confident the woman wasn’t bluffing this time.
During the trip, Sally-Jo never turned on the radio. She didn’t need to hear the news reports, hear how the entire New York Police Department was looking for a Chevy Camaro containing an FBI kidnap victim, and a serial killer.
A cop killer.
Learning she was the target of a citywide, and possibly nationwide, manhunt would only freak her out, and cause her to waver. Now, of all times, she needed to keep her mind on the goal at hand.
After what seemed like tens of miles of driving but was probably a lot less than that, Sally-Jo pulled over to the side of the road.
It was little more than a track by now, a rough and bumpy stretch of byway with a tarmac so cracked and pitted it was almost made of hard-baked dirt. To the left was a dip toward a
ramshackle gate, which looked like it was hanging off its hinges.
She turned the Camaro toward the gate and got out and opened it, finding it unlocked, and drove through. A hedgerow hid the car from the road.
Rickenbacker came round after a full ten minutes of coaxing and coercion, during which Sally-Jo rubbed the knuckles of her fist against the woman’s breastbone just like doctors did when they were trying to gauge the level of a patient’s consciousness. At first Rickenbacker merely groaned. Then she started to bring her hands up in a vague, aimless gesture of protest.
When those hands gripped Sally-Jo’s wrists, however feebly, she knew the woman was close to full wakefulness.
She put her mouth to Rickenbacker’s ear and whispered: “Can you hear me?”
Rickenbacker’s eyes fluttered a couple of times. Then snapped open.
She stared around, her gaze taking in her surrounding in utter bewilderment, before they settled on Sally-Jo’s.
Already, there was comprehension there. She was quick to grasp, and to recall, Sally-Jo realized. Might that mean she was quick to understand, too?
The ritual began, as the clouds scudded over the darkening moon and eventually obscured it entirely. Sally-Jo had bound Rickenbacker’s wrists behind her with plastic ties before starting to rouse her, and had secured her ankles similarly. She’d tilted the passenger seat so that the woman was a few degrees shy of lying completely supine. And she’d closed her mouth with the ball gag from her rucksack.
Rickenbacker looked at the first photos, of Frank, before and during and after, and Sally-Jo saw that she immediately understood. Sooner even than Dale had.
It boded well.
Then Sally-Jo showed her the photo of herself. The nude one.
At first, Rickenbacker looked puzzled. Her eyes flashed to Sally-Jo’s and back to the picture.
Comprehension came like the sun breaking over a horizon.
Last of all, Sally-Jo showed her a succession of pictures. She held up a flashlight in one hand to illuminate them, as she’d done with the others. She wasn’t taking any chances this time. A mosque. A Catholic cathedral. A Methodist church. A Hindu temple.
Just to make absolutely sure, she held up two pictures side by side. The last one, of the Hindu sacred place, and the one she’d shown previously of her, Sally-Jo, completely naked and with her arms spread wide, a beatific look on her face.
Rickenbacker’s hard eyes burned with a fire that wasn’t just anger, and defiance. It was a raging storm of understanding, and regret at how late she’d come to this point. Sally-Jo almost felt sorry for her. For a cop, who’d been trying to piece together the intricate mystery of what had gone on, it must be devastating to find the solution just at the point where it was too late to do anything useful with the knowledge.
Frank wasn’t there, but Sally-Jo suddenly heard his voice in her head.
“Make sure. Make absolutely sure she understands.”
And then: “Ask her. Let her answer you.”
Sally-Jo thought about it. They were miles from anywhere. The last sign of human habitation had been a gas station, three or four miles back. If she took the woman’s gag off, she might scream, but it was unlikely that anybody would hear her, at this hour of the night and in a field in rural New Jersey.
She reached round and undid the ties of the gag and pulled it away.
Rickenbacker coughed and retched and gasped. The corners of her mouth stretched into angry red welts where the gag had cut into the skin.
Sally-Jo said, “Do you understand?”
“The woman’s tongue snaked out as if testing that her lips were still there. She nodded.
“Say it,” said Sally-Jo. “Explain it.”
It took Rickenbacker several attempts to find her voice, much less the words to express herself. Her tone was low and hoarse. “The body is a temple.”
“Correct.”
“One which must not be defiled.”
“Yes.” Sally-Jo leaned her face in so close to Rickenbacker’s own that she could feel the heat of her breath. She knew she was risking the woman springing a surprise attack, biting or headbutting her. But she could deal with that. Getting close, hearing the words, was so much more important.
When Rickenbacker fell silent, Sally-Jo prompted with a soft murmur: “Yes?”
“You’re punishing people who have violated the temple.”
The bliss that flooded through Sally-Jo’s veins was purer, more ecstatic, than any drug. She felt herself lifted up, soaring above the car, above the sky itself.
Brought abruptly down to earth by a sudden thought, she hissed: “And you understand why you have to die?”
For an instant the woman’s gaze faltered. Then the penny dropped. She said, “The smoking.”
Sally-Jo closed her eyes.
She’d done it. She’d achieved her goal.
Frank would be delighted.
She opened her eyes, and her lips moved. “Yes.”
She’d seen Rickenbacker at the press conference on TV. The woman’s right hand had kept returning to her mouth, then dropping away. She’d heard her voice, roughened by something chemical. Unnatural.
And then, later on, the footage had shown the press mobbing the two FBI agents outside the police headquarters. The man, Teller, had fielded the questions as he’d pushed his way through the crowds. But Rickenbacker, off to one side, looking surly and annoyed, had fired up a cigarette.
Rickenbacker was watching her closely. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t plead.
Sally-Jo brought out the icepick.
For the first time, something else came into the woman’s eyes. It wasn’t fear, because fear was a symptom somebody like her would have long ago learned to mask. Instead, it was something more primal, more reptilian.
A look that suggested a drive to survive. To preserve the organism at all cost.
“There’s help,” said Rickenbacker. “Help available for your kind. I’ve known people like you, normal people who have... regrets afterward. I can get you that help.”
Sally-Jo stared into her eyes.
Your kind.
She didn’t like that. Didn’t like it at all.
Sally-Jo didn’t bother putting the ball gag back in before she took out the branding iron and the lighter. She heated up the end, twisting it this way and that in the flame, and pressed it onto the center of Rickenbacker’s forehead.
The woman screamed, for the first time, and jarringly.
Sally-Jo finished it off with difficulty. Instead of slipping the icepick in and pressing it home smoothly, she encountered a resistance from the base of Rickenbacker’s skull which she hadn’t experienced with the others. She had to steady the head with a fist clenched in the hair at the nape of the neck and ram the pick several times before she felt the tip crack through the bone.
She pushed it upward and inward, and held it there for fifteen seconds, twenty, pulling it out at last when the woman’s jerking and writhing had dwindled to an intermittent twitch.
That was when she stepped out of the car, and raised her arms heavenward, and the beautiful snow began to fall.
Bliss.
Rapture.
Chapter 27
The call came in at twenty after one in the morning.
Venn had left the FBI office an hour ago and headed down the East Side to Revere Hospital. Beth met him on the second floor.
“Hey,” she said.
She hugged him. He returned her embrace, hard, until he realized he might be hurting her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, gazing into his face.
“Yeah, well.” He tried to glance away, but found he couldn’t. “Those are the knocks.”
He immediately wished he hadn’t said it. Beth said, “You mean those are the risks a cop takes? Yes. Don’t I know it.” But she wasn’t mad.
She’d left her ward for a few minutes to meet him, and together they rode the elevator up two floors to the post-surgery recovery unit. On the way, sh
e said, “I told you Katz was good. The surgeon. They took the first bullet out of her neck. It was lodged just behind her collar bone. As everyone’s saying, she was real lucky. It was a matter of millimetres, not even inches. No damage to major blood vessels or other structures.
“The second bullet?” asked Venn.
“That was trickier,” said Beth. “I don’t know the exact details, but it passed through her right lung and the diaphragm. That’s the sheet of muscles which separates the chest from the abdominal cavity. There was some bleeding into the abdomen, so they had to open her up and clean that out. Her lung bled like a geyser.” She glanced at him as they stepped out the elevator. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be flippant.”
“It’s okay,” said Venn. He knew doctors often used language when talking about medical matters that sounded outrageously throwaway to other people. Cops were the same.
“But as I say,” Beth continued, “Dr Katz and his team pulled her through.”
“For now,” said Venn.
“Yes.”
The nurse in charge of the ICU came bustling over as soon as she saw Venn – visiting hours were long past – but she recognized him and Beth, and nodded them through. “Don’t make it too long,” she said.
The ICU was like the deck of some futuristic spacecraft, all harsh artificial lighting and monitors and a variety of competing sounds: beeps, clicks and hisses. Venn thought of it as God’s waiting room, and shivered inwardly.
Harmony’s bed was in a corner. She was almost unrecognizable. A ventilator pumped jerkily by the side of the bed, feeding its air into a tube protruding from her throat. Her chest was swathed with dressings, and the rest of her was hidden under a thin hospital-issue bedsheet. Tubes of assorted thicknesses snaked from her arms and her chest. Below the bed, a bottle of watery blood bubbled intermittently like a witch’s caldron.
“That’s for the hemopneumothorax,” said Beth. “Blood and air in her pleural cavity. But it’s swinging nicely.”
Venn stepped in close, though he hung back a few inches as if he’d contaminate Harmony by getting too near. Her eyes were closed and covered with pads.