The phone rang as she slipped under the covers.
“Hi. It’s me,” said a soft voice.
Lisl recognized it immediately. She wondered at the rush of warmth that surged through her.
“Hello, Rafe.”
“I escaped Doctor Rogers’s place and got home, but I’m still kind of wired. Feel like talking?”
Yeah, she did. She felt like talking all night. Which they damn near did.
Before hanging up, he asked her if they could have lunch together tomorrow. Lisl hesitated—she was faculty, after all, and he was a grad student—but only for a second. She was feeling more alive tonight than she had in years, and now an opportunity to extend that feeling was being offered to her. Why turn it down?
“Sure,” she said. “As long as they don’t have bowls of pretzels sitting around.”
His laugh was music. “You’re on!”
5
The man in the white shirt and pants hung up the phone and leaned back on the white sofa in the white living room of his condominium town house. He smiled and traced letters in the air. His fingertip left trails of depthless black as it moved: L … I … S … L.
“Contact,” he said in barely a whisper.
He rose and walked to his back door, glided down the pair of steps to his backyard, and stood barefoot in the moist grass. He smiled again as he gazed up at the wheeling constellations in the moonless sky. Then he spread his arms straight out, level with the ground, palms down.
Slowly, he began to rise.
6
Everett Sanders jerked upright in his bed and stared at the window.
He’d never been a good sleeper and tonight had been just like all the rest: a series of catnaps interspersed with periods of wakefulness. He’d been lying here with only a sheet covering him, tilting on the cusp of a doze, when he thought he saw a face appear at his window.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Nothing. The window was empty. Nothing there but the screen, nothing moving but the drapes swaying gracefully in the breeze.
Nothing there at all. But then, how could a face have been there? His apartment was on the third floor.
He lay back and wondered if it had been a dream or a hallucination. He’d hallucinated years ago. He didn’t want to go through that again.
Everett Sanders rolled onto his side and searched for sleep. But he remained facing the window, opening his eyes every so often to check if the face was back. Of course it wouldn’t be. He knew that.
But it had seemed so real. So real …
7
Will Ryerson awoke sweating. At first he thought it might be another of his nightmares, but he couldn’t remember dreaming. As he lay there in the dark he had a strange, uneasy sensation that he was being watched. He got up and went to the window but saw no one outside. No movement. No sound except the crickets.
Yet the sensation persisted.
Slipping into an old pair of loafers, Will grabbed a flashlight, turned on the yard lights, and went out to the front yard. He stood there in his undershirt and boxers and trained the flashlight beam into the dark recesses of the tree-lined lot. Somebody was out there. He was sure of it.
Why? Why would someone be watching him? He was sure no one knew about him. If someone did, they’d surely turn him in. So who was out there?
He sighed. Maybe no one after all. Maybe just his paranoia getting the best of him. But why tonight? Why now, after all these years?
The phone call. That had to be it. Days ago, but it must have sent his subconscious into overdrive. He was beginning to feel the effects tonight.
As he turned to go back inside, he glanced up and froze.
Far above him, a white cross floated against the stars.
It was moving, drifting toward the south. As Will squinted upward, it appeared less like a cross and more like a man—a man all in white, floating in mid-air with his arms spread.
Will felt his saliva dry up as his palms began to sweat. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be happening. A nightmare—this was the nightmare. But after his real-life nightmare experience in New York, he knew the rules of reason and sanity were not constant. Sometimes they broke down. And then anything could happen.
Far above, the man-cross drifted over the trees and vanished from sight.
Trembling with dread, Will hurried back inside the house.
THE BOY
at six months
Oh, Jimmy—what’s wrong with you?
Carol Stevens stared down at her sleeping son and wanted to cry. Lying prone in his crib, pudgy arms and legs spread wide, round-faced with soft pink cheeks, wisps of dark hair clinging to his scalp, he was the picture of innocence. She studied the delicate venules in his closed eyelids and thought how beautiful he was.
As long as those eyelids stayed closed.
When they were open he was different. The innocence disappeared—the child disappeared. The eyes were old. They didn’t move like the eyes of other infants, roving, trying to take in everything at once because everything was so new. Jimmy’s eyes stared, they studied, they … penetrated. It was unnerving to have him watch you.
And Jimmy never smiled or laughed, never cooed or gurgled or blew bubbles. He did vocalize, though. Not random baby noises, but patterned sounds, as if he were trying to get his untrained vocal cords to function. Since his birth, his grandfather Jonah would sit here in the nursery with the door closed and talk to him in a low voice. Carol had listened at the door a number of times but could never quite make out what he was saying. But she was sure from the length of the sentences and the cadence of his speech that it wasn’t baby talk.
Carol turned away from the crib and wandered to the window where she looked out on the Ouachita Mountains. Jonah had brought them here to rural Arkansas to hide until the baby was born. She’d followed his lead, too frightened by the madness she’d left behind to do anything else.
If only Jim were alive. He’d know how to handle this. He’d be able to step back and decide what to do about his son. But Jim had been dead a little over a year now, and Carol could not be cold and logical and rational about little Jimmy. He was their son, their flesh and blood, all she had left of Jim. She loved him as much as she feared him.
When she turned she saw that Jimmy was awake, sitting in the crib, staring at her with those cold eyes that had started out blue but then darkened to brown. He spoke to her in a baby’s voice, high and soft. The words were garbled but clear enough to be understood. She had no doubt about what he said:
“I’m hungry, woman. Bring me something to eat.”
Carol screamed and fled the nursery.
FOUR
Manhattan
1
“Letter for you, Sarge,” said Potts, waving the envelope in the air from the far side of the squad room.
Detective Sergeant Renaldo Augustino, reed thin with a ruddy complexion and a generous nose, glanced up from his cluttered desk. His dark hair was combed straight back from his receding hairline. He took a final drag on his cigarette and jammed it into the crowded ashtray to his right.
“The mail came a couple of hours ago,” he told Potts. “Where you been hiding it?”
“It’s not regular mail. Came over from the One-twelve.”
Great. Probably another late notice for dues to a PBA local he no longer belonged to. He’d been transferred to Midtown North years ago and they still hadn’t got the message.
“Chuck it out.”
“Could be a bill of some sort, Renny.”
“That’s what I figured. I don’t even want to see the damn thing. Just—”
“A phone bill.”
That brought Renny up short. “Local?”
“No. Southern Bell.”
His heart suddenly thudding in his chest, Renny was out of his chair and across the squad room so fast he frightened Potts.
“Give me that.”
He snatched the envelope and strode back to his desk.
“What gives?” said Sa
m Lang, leaning over Renny’s desk, slurping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
They’d been partners for a couple of years now. Sam was lots younger, mid-forties, balding and overweight. Everything Sam wore was rumpled, tie included.
As Renny sped through the text, he felt the old anger rekindling.
“It’s him! And he’s up to his old tricks!”
Puzzled creases formed in Sam’s doughy brow.
“Who?”
“A killer. Name of Ryan. Nobody you’d know.” He scanned the letter again. “Any idea where Pendleton, North Carolina, is?”
“Somewhere between Virginia and South Carolina, I imagine.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Renny seemed to remember something about a big university there. No matter. He could find out easily enough.
A long time ago … the kid, Danny Gordon … left for dead by some sicko bastard. Renny had been assigned to the case. Since then he’d seen a lot of gut-wrenching things in his years on the force. When you spent your nights turning over rocks in a city the size of New York, you got used to the slimy things that crawled out. But never anything like that boy and what had been done to him. It had grabbed Renny by the throat and never let go. Still hadn’t.
His mind leapt back across the years, images flashed before his eyes. The white, pain-racked little face, the hoarse screams that wouldn’t stop, and other horrors. And the priest. So horrified, so shattered, so lost, so convincing in the lies he told. Renny had fallen for those lies, had allowed himself to believe, to get sucked into that bastard’s trap. He’d come to like the priest, to trust him, to think of him as an ally in the search for Danny’s mutilator.
You worked me beautifully, you son of a bitch. Played me like a maestro.
Renny knew he was being hard on himself. The fact that he had once been an orphan like Danny Gordon, growing up in the same orphanage as Danny, raised a Catholic with endless respect for priests, all of that had made him an easy mark for that slimy Jesuit’s lies.
Until it had become clear that Danny Gordon was not going to die, and the priest had acted in desperation to save his worthless guilty hide.
And then, in one night, the whole case had gone to hell. As a direct result of that, Renny had lost his rank. An indirect result of the whole mess had been the end of his marriage.
Joanne was long gone now. When the Danny Gordon case fell apart and Renny’s career took a dive, he took it out on everybody within earshot. Joanne had been around the most so she bore the brunt of his rage and frustration and growing obsession with bringing the killer to justice. She took as much as she could—two years’ worth. Then she folded. She packed up and left. Renny didn’t blame her. He knew he’d been impossible to live with. Still was, he was sure. He blamed himself. And he blamed Danny Gordon’s killer. He added the Augustino marriage to the list of the killer’s victims.
One more thing I owe you for, you bastard.
But what was really going on here? Now. Today. Had the killer priest he’d been chasing forever finally surfaced, or was this just a coincidence? He couldn’t tell for sure. And he wanted it so bad, he didn’t trust his own judgment.
He decided on a second opinion.
He placed a call to Columbia University and arranged to meet Dr. Nicholas Quinn in half an hour. At Leon’s, Midtown North’s watering hole.
2
Dr. Nick arrived just as Renny was downing the last of his second scotch. Not bad time, considering the guy had to come all the way from Morningside Heights. They shook hands—they didn’t see each other often enough to forgo that formality—and moved to a table. Renny carried his third scotch along, Nick brought an eight-ounce draft.
Renny savored the dark and the quiet, not minding the mixed odors of stale smoke and spilled beer. Not often you could have a quiet drink or three in Leon’s. But in forty-five minutes, when the first shift ended, look out. Most all of Midtown North would be here, three deep at the bar.
“So, Nick,” Renny said. “What’re you up to?”
“Particle physics,” the younger man said. “You really want to hear?”
“Not really. How’s the love life?”
Nick sipped his beer. “I love my work.”
“Don’t worry,” Renny said. “It’s just a phase you’re going through. You’ll get over it.”
Renny smiled and looked at his companion. Dr. Nick, as he called him—or Nicholas Quinn, Ph.D., as the people at Columbia called him—was an odd-looking duck. But weren’t physicists supposed to be weird? Look at Big Bang Theory. Look at Einstein. There’d been a strange-looking guy if there ever was one. So maybe Nick had a right to look weird. From what Renny had been able to gather, Nick Quinn had an Einstein-league brain. And under all that unkempt hair, an Elephant Man skull. He also had bad skin, pale with lots of little scars, as if he’d had a severe case of acne as a teenager. And his eyes. He was wearing contacts these days, but Renny had a feeling from their wide stare and the flattened look of his eye sockets that he’d probably worn coke-bottle lenses most of his life. Fortyish or fiftyish—hard to tell—thin, a little stooped, and developing a paunch. Not surprisingly, he was single. A true nerdo from the git-go. But who knew? Maybe someday he’d find himself the perfect nerdella, and together they’d raise a family of nerdettes.
“How’s by you?” Nick said.
“Couldn’t be better, kid. Coupla years from retirement.”
Nick hoisted his beer. “Congratulations.”
Renny nodded but didn’t drink. It wasn’t good news. What the hell was he going to do with himself without the Job?
“So,” Nick said slowly, “why’d you want to see me?”
Renny smiled. “Anxious?”
“No. Curious. I’ve been calling you regularly since it happened, and for years now it’s always the same answer: nothing new. Now you call me. I know you like to keep people dangling, Mister Detective, and I’ve been dangling long enough. What’ve you got?”
Renny shrugged. “Maybe something, maybe nothing.” He pulled the letter from Southern Bell from his pocket and slid it across the table. “This came today.”
He watched Nick study it. They’d met during the Danny Gordon case. But they’d stayed in touch since. That had been Nick’s idea. After Renny had blown the Gordon case, Nick had shown up in the squad room—Renny had been working out of the 112th in Queens, then—and offered to help in any way he could. Renny had told him thanks but no thanks. The last thing he needed was a nerdy citizen getting in the way. But Nick had persisted, pulling on the common thread that linked the three of them.
Orphans. Renny, Danny Gordon, and Nick Quinn—they’d all been orphans. And they’d all spent a good part of their childhood in the St. Francis Home for Boys in Queens. Renny had lived there until he was adopted by the Augustinos. Nick had been a resident until adopted by the Quinn family, and had known the killer-priest well. That alone made Nick an asset. But on top of that, Nick was brilliant. A mind like a computer. He’d sifted through all the evidence and run it all through his brain, and had come up with a theory that was hard to refute, one that made the suspect, Father Ryan, look clean … up to a point.
What Nick’s scenario couldn’t explain was the eyewitness accounts of Father Ryan carrying Danny Gordon from the hospital and driving off with him, never to be seen again.
In anybody’s book, that was called kidnapping.
Renny felt his jaw muscles bunching even now as he thought about it. He’d liked that priest, had even thought they were friends. What a jerk he’d been. Allowed himself to be set up so the priest could pull an end run around him and leave him looking like a Grade-A asshole. An empty-handed asshole who’d let some sicko bastard snatch a child victim from right under his nose. The memory still sent icy fury howling through him like a hungry wind.
“North Carolina,” Nick said, looking up from the letter. “Think it might be him?”
“I don’t know what to think. It sort of came out of the blue.”
; “How—?”
“A long-term gain on a short-term investment, you might say.”
When Father Ryan had taken off with the boy, and seemed to have gotten away clean, Renny had put out a man-and-a-boy description of the fugitive pair, but had added a new wrinkle. Through the FBI he’d asked the East Coast phone companies to be on the lookout for complaints about a certain kind of prank phone call that Renny had come to associate with the missing priest. There’d been a fair amount of returns on that at first, and for a while Renny had thought they were zeroing in on Ryan, but just when he’d been sure they were going to run him to ground, he disappeared. Suddenly, Father Ryan was gone, vanished from the face of the earth as if he’d never existed.
Nick dropped the letter onto the table and reached for his beer.
“Amazing it was still in the company’s computer. After all the upgrades they must have done since then.”
“I’m told if you don’t erase stuff, it never goes away.”
“In some cases, yeah.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s so vague. Isn’t there some way you can talk to anyone down there?”
“Already have. Couldn’t get anything firsthand, though. It happened on the street near a bus stop. The people who’d actually listened to the phone had boarded their bus and gone home by the time the police and emergency squads had arrived. But there seemed to be a definite consensus that the call was from a child in trouble.”
Just like the other calls, Renny thought, his mind leaping back to the waiting area outside the children’s ward at Downstate. He still had nightmares about that endless week in hell, the door to Danny’s hospital room looming before him, drawing him forward, opening to reveal the horrors that lay behind it. And he remembered that phone call.
He’d been sitting there with Father Ryan, the man he had come to trust, even to admire. They were both on tenterhooks, alternately sitting and pacing, waiting for the docs to give them the latest news on Danny Gordon, when the phone rang.
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