“How good are you feeling now?”
She looked away without answering.
“Lisl, it’s false self-esteem when you have to look down on someone else before you can feel good about yourself. Real self-esteem comes from within.”
Lisl’s face hardened for an instant, then crumbled.
“You’re right,” she sobbed. “You’ve been right all along, haven’t you?”
Bill took her in his arms and held her like a crying child. Poor Lisl. She’d been dragged into hell and hadn’t known it. But even worse was the hell she had caused Everett Sanders.
After a moment she straightened.
“Will you help me find Ev?”
“Yes. But first I want to see if I can find out something about Rafe.”
“There’s no time.”
“This will only take a minute.” He started the Impala and threw it into gear. “Just get me to your computer.”
He drove over to the Math building and parked in front. Lisl led him to her office. While she was lighting up her terminal for him, he unplugged her desk phone and looked for a place to put it. All the other offices on the floor were locked up tight. As he held the phone in his sweaty hands, his anger grew. He didn’t have time for this. He opened the window and tossed it out. He watched it bounce and roll on the grass three stories below, then turned and found Lisl staring at him.
“Will? Are you all right?”
“I haven’t been all right for a long time.” He pointed to the computer. “Are we ready to go?”
“All set.”
He took her seat and checked for emails. With Lisl hanging over his shoulder, he found a new message to Ignatius.
TO IGNATIUS:
NOT MUCH AVAILABLE ON THE MAN IN QUESTION YET BUT PROBABLY A PHONY. EXISTS IN ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER BUT NOT IN YEARBOOKS. NOT THE WORST OF IT. WAS DOODLING WITH HIS NAME AND NOTICED IT’S AN ANAGRAM OF SARA LOM. IS THAT WHY YOU WANTED HIM CHECKED OUT?
EL COMEDO
“‘Checked out’?” Lisl said, straightening up behind him. “You were having Rafe investigated?”
But Bill barely heard her. He couldn’t have answered her anyway. His mouth had gone dry. Spicules of ice were crystallizing in each cell of his body, freezing him in position as he stared at the screen.
… Losmara … an anagram of Sara Lom …
He transposed the letters in his mind. Yes. He could see it now. How come he hadn’t seen it before?
He felt as if a vast abyss were opening before him, taunting him, beckoning, offering him all the answers to everything he wanted to know … and to more that he never wanted to know.
Good God, this didn’t make any sense! Rafe was related to Sara—no denying the family resemblance once he’d picked up on it. But why was he using an anagram of his sister’s name? No—not Rafe’s sister. The real Sara Lom had disappeared. Rafe’s sister had appropriated her name. Which made it logical to assume that Rafe was a fake as well. But why? In God’s name, why?
Lisl’s words echoed his thoughts.
“What’s going on, Will?”
“I don’t know, Lisl. But I’m pretty sure of one thing: Rafe Losmara is not who he says he is.”
“You mean he’s an impostor? That’s impossible! You can’t get into a graduate program at Darnell without high GRE’s and some pretty impressive letters of recommendation.”
“What about that kid who faked his way into Harvard not to long ago. Harvard—not a state school. You said he’s a whiz with computers, didn’t you? These big state universities have twenty- to forty-thousand students enrolled at a time. They use computers to keep track of them. I don’t know how he did it. He might have used a phony transcript to transfer in as a senior, attended a few key classes and wowed a few key faculty members, got into the computer and created an impressive academic record, and he was set: In the space of nine months—one academic year—he’s created a completely bogus identity with a three-point-nine grade point and glowing letters of recommendation.”
“But this is all supposition. You’ve got no proof!”
“True. But I know it in my gut. Because I know someone else who was fooled by a scam very much like this one.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“Will, you’re talking crazy. Why would he go to all this trouble to create a false identity? And what’s this anagram business in that message?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
“So am I!” She picked up her bag and turned toward the door. “I’m going over to Rafe’s right now and—”
“What about Ev?”
She stopped. Her shoulders slumped.
“Oh, God … Ev. How could I forget about Ev?” She turned her tortured face to him. “What’s the matter with me?”
“You’re being torn into little pieces, that’s what’s the matter.” Bill rose and put an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll straighten out the rest of it soon. But first we’ve got to find Sanders. Right?”
She nodded without looking at him. “Right.”
“Okay. Here’s my idea. You start at the north end of Conway Street, I’ll start at the south. We’ll check every bar along the way and meet somewhere in the middle. If we haven’t found him, we’ll start moving in other directions.” He gave her shoulders one final squeeze. “Don’t worry. Together we’ll find him.”
He walked her out to her car and saw her off on her way to Conway Street. As he hurried to his own car, he congratulated himself on becoming such a smooth liar. For he had no intention of looking for Everett Sanders now. Later, yes. But right now he was heading for Parkview Condos.
As he drove, Bill began to sweat. A rank fear-sweat. It poured out of him. He was heading for a showdown with a man who was linked to the woman who’d called herself Sara Lom, the woman Bill had thought he’d never find, the woman who’d mutilated Danny Gordon and left him for Bill to find.
But she’d done more than mutilate the child. She’d left him alive yet placed him beyond the reach of any medical science known to man.
And that was what terrified Bill now, what made the darkness seem to press against the windows of his car. He was heading toward the unknown. Sara and Rafe—or whoever they really were—were linked to something hideous, something unnatural, maybe supernatural. He could almost believe they were linked to Satan himself—but he didn’t believe in Satan. He’d found it difficult to believe in much of anything anymore. But if inhuman evil could be embodied in one being, that being was the woman he’d known as Sara. And by blood or something else, Rafe was related to her.
But he couldn’t allow himself to be afraid. He couldn’t hesitate for an instant in his confrontation with Rafe. He wished he had a gun—something to cow Rafe into telling him what he wanted to know. But he’d have to do it all on his own. And for that he’d need ice in his nerves and fire in his blood.
So he thought about The Atrocity—that cursed Christmas Eve and what Sara had done to Danny, and about the agonies Danny had suffered during the ensuing week.
And very soon the fear vanished. By the time he screeched to a halt before Rafe’s condo it had become a blistering rage.
The Maserati sat in the driveway; the big living room windows were lit. No hesitation, no second thoughts. Bill raced up the steps, didn’t knock, slammed against the door, and burst in.
“Losmara! Where are you, Losmara?”
“Right here,” said a calm, soft voice from the right.
Bill found Rafe sitting on the white sofa in his white living room. He was dressed in the white slacks and soft white shirt he’d worn at the Christmas party. Bill stood over him and pointed a finger in his face.
“Who the hell are you?”
Rafe didn’t even flinch. His right leg was crossed over his left, his arms were spread like wings, resting along the tops the cushions. He looked Bill straight in the eyes and spoke calmly.
“You know very well who I am.”
“No. You�
�re a phony. You and your sister. Both sickos playing sicko games. But it’s going to stop. And you’re going to tell me how I can find your sister.”
“I have no sister. I’m an only child.”
Bill felt the fury surging higher within him. He wanted to grab Rafe’s throat and rattle him like a rag doll. And maybe he would. But not yet. Not yet.
“Cut the shit. Whatever the game was, it’s up. I’ve found you out. ‘Losmara’ … ‘Sara Lom’—they’re word games. You’re not pulling something here with Lisl like your sister pulled with Danny and me back in New York. I’m stopping it here and now.”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Still no sign of alarm, no emotion at all. He hadn’t even asked Bill to leave. “And what do you believe I’m ‘pulling’ with Lisl?”
“You’re destroying her, corrupting everything that’s good and decent in her.”
A smile. “I’m destroying nothing, corrupting nothing. I’ve done nothing to Lisl. I’ve merely offered options. Any choices she’s made are wholly her own.”
“Sure. I’ve heard your options: something bad or something worse.”
Rafe shrugged. “That’s a matter of opinion. But you forget there was always the option of choosing neither. I’ve never forced a thing on Lisl.”
“You were dealing from a loaded deck!”
“I have no intention of wasting my time debating you. But let me point out that one inescapable fact remains: Everything Lisl’s done has been of her own free will. I pointed out certain paths to her, but it was she who chose to set out upon them. Never once did I threaten her—with anything. I did not make her choices; she did. The responsibility for anything she’s done lies with her.”
Bill’s rage was nearing critical mass.
“She was vulnerable! You took advantage of her weaknesses, knocked down her defenses, twisted her up in knots. Then you put that vial of alcohol in her hand in Everett Sanders’s apartment. That was like giving her a loaded gun.”
“But she’s an adult, not a child. And she knew what she was doing when she pulled the trigger. Your outrage is misdirected, my friend. You should be shouting at Lisl.”
That did it. Bill grabbed the front of Rafe’s shirt and yanked him out of the chair.
“I’m not your friend! Now I want some answers and I want them now!”
The phone began to ring. That long, protracted ring. The sound so startled Bill that he released Rafe’s shirt.
Immediately Rafe stepped over to the phone and lifted the receiver. He listened for a second, then turned and extended it toward Bill.
“It’s for you, Father Ryan.”
Bill stumbled back. Danny Gordon’s pleas echoed faintly from the receiver.
“Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease…!”
But breaking through the horror was the realization that Rafe had called him Father Ryan.
“You know?”
“Of course.”
“But how?”
“Does it matter? I think it’s more important that you answer little Danny. He wants you to come help him.”
“He’s dead, you bastard!”
Bill was about to leap at Rafe but the younger man’s condescending smile and slow shake of his head stopped him cold.
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
“Of course he is!”
The infuriating smile continued through another slow shake of the head.
“You may have buried him … but he didn’t die.”
Bill knew it couldn’t be true. He’s lying! He’s got to be lying! But he had to ask.
“If he’s still alive, where is he?”
Rafe’s smile broadened. “Right where you left him.”
Bill’s knees threatened to buckle but he locked them straight. Still, he swayed. He could barely hear his own voice over the roaring in his ears.
“No!”
“Oh, yes. Oh, most certainly yes. For decades he’s been lying in the bottom of that hole you dug for him in St. Ann’s Cemetery. Waiting for you. Hating you.”
Bill stared at Rafe. No reason in the world to believe a single word from this … this creature’s mouth, yet somehow he believed this.
Because in the darkest corners of his soul, within the most obscure convolutions of his brain, in the deepest crevices of his heart had always lurked the faintest suspicion that he had been duped, fooled by the force that controlled Danny’s fate into committing The Atrocity of burying Danny alive in the hope of ending his pain.
Martin Spano’s words that night came back to him now …
Don’t do it. An Evil power is at work here. It’s using you! I was used once—I know how it is. Stop now, before it’s too late!
When Bill would awaken sweating and palpitating in the darkness of his bedroom, it was the memory of that final night that haunted him. But laced through it was the unspeakable possibility that Danny might not have died in that hole. Bill had never faced that fear, but now he had no choice.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
No! It’s impossible!
Impossible … but the impossible had been true when Danny had remained alive and in torment, a bottomless pit for the transfusions and medications being pumped into him. So the impossible could be true now.
He opened his eyes and looked at Rafe.
“Goddammit, who are you. What are you?”
Rafe smiled and suddenly the lights began to dim.
“I’d dearly love to show you. But it doesn’t serve my purpose at the moment. However, I will grant you a brief glimpse.”
The room grew darker and colder, as if some hidden vortex were sucking all the heat and light from the air. And then the black swooped in, a darkness so perfect that Bill’s nervous system screamed as direction went awry, as up and down lost all meaning. But this was not a quiet darkness, not a simple absence of light; this was a devouring of light. A living blackness, a slithering, shuffling, shambling, hungry blackness, ravenous not for his flesh but for his soul, his essence, his very being. As Bill dropped to his knees and hugged the floor, digging his fingers into the pile to keep from tumbling toward the ceiling, a noxious grave-born odor seeped into his nostrils, caressed his tongue—sour, acrid, moist, carrying a hint of putrescence—gagging him.
And then he saw the eyes, hovering before him. Huge, round, the whites like glazed porcelain, the irises crystalline black, but not nearly as black as the bottomless sinkholes into infinity at their center. From those pupils there radiated such palpable malevolence that Bill had to turn away, squeeze his eyes shut to shield himself from the beckoning madness.
And just as suddenly light flared beyond his lids. He opened his eyes. The living room was lit again. He gasped for air. What had just happened? Had he been hypnotized somehow—or was that the real Rafe?
He shook off the body-numbing horror and looked around. Rafe was gone. Bill staggered to his feet and searched from room to room, upstairs and down—Rafe was nowhere in the condo. Shouting Rafe’s name, he stumbled toward the door.
So many questions still unanswered. Who was Rafe? Was he even human? He didn’t seem to be. What was his connection to Sara? How could he possibly know about Danny?
Bill’s numbed mind could barely frame the questions, his tongue couldn’t speak them. And no one was here to answer them.
Danny … alive. It couldn’t be true, but he had to know. Because if by some unholy power Danny was still alive in that grave, Bill couldn’t allow him to stay there a moment longer.
He had to go back. Back to New York, to that cemetery. He had to know!
He ran for his car.
6
The priest almost caught Renny with his pants down—literally.
Getting into Ryan’s house had been easy. The little ranch was set back from the road and surrounded by trees. Completely shielded from its neighbors. Renny broke a pane in the back door, reached through, turned the dead-bolt knob, and he was in. When he saw all the velvet paintings on the walls, the tigers, the c
lowns, the Elvises, he thought he’d made a mistake. He couldn’t imagine the Father Ryan he’d known going for this stuff. But Will Ryerson had to be Ryan.
Renny used the first hour or so to search the place but found little of interest. Somewhere along the way he noted the absence of a phone. That bolstered his conviction that he was on target—the last time he’d seen him, the priest had been terrified of phones.
He spent most of the remainder of the day sitting around, watching TV, keeping the sound low. He even brewed himself a pot of coffee and made a sandwich from the cold cuts in the fridge. Why not? Ryan wouldn’t be needing them.
But along around five he turned off the TV and seated himself in the front room, his pistol drawn, waiting.
And waiting.
He’d already waited a third of his lifetime for this meeting. He could wait a few more minutes. But these last minutes were killing him, dragging on like slugs on sandpaper.
What’s going to happen here?
After all these years, what was he going to do when he came face to face with the priest? Renny hoped he wouldn’t blow it. He had to keep his cool, because he knew what he wanted to do: nail him to the wall and gut him, just like he’d done to that little kid. But he’d be sacrificing himself then too.
No. He’d decided to play it straight. Arrest him, take him to the state capital, and start extradition proceedings.
Prison was better than anything Renny could do to the guy. And slower. The priest would be a short-eyes to the other cons. As soon as he got to Rikers, he’d find out firsthand about the very special treatment reserved for child molesters by all those guys who practically grew up in prison.
Prison would be much slower. Hell would be a quick little picnic in the shade compared to life in prison for a short-eyes priest.
For the first time since he’d become a cop, Renny was glad New York State didn’t have the death penalty.
As the clock crept toward six and the room darkened, Renny began to get antsy. Barely a fifteen-minute drive from the campus to here. Wasn’t he coming?
And then Renny’s bladder began sending him increasingly urgent messages. Never failed when he’d had too much coffee. He went to the window and peered out at the road. No cars in sight. He chanced a quick trip to the bathroom. He was in the middle of relieving himself when he heard tires crunch to a halt on the driveway gravel. Cursing under his breath, he zipped up and rushed down the hall. As he entered the living room, he nearly collided with someone.
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