by Lisa Jackson
Father Frank, who heretofore had been quiet, almost paralyzed, gathered himself, straightening his shoulders as he took a step toward the podium. “I suggest we pray again,” he said, and before anyone could argue, he bowed his head and made the sign of the cross over his vestments. In his deep baritone, he began, “Holy Father . . .”
Most of the crowd followed suit, and for the first time since the investigation into Camille Renard’s death had started, Montoya felt as if the real Frank O’Toole was finally emerging.
As the parishioners lowered their gazes, Montoya also noted that Valerie Houston and her husband weren’t in the gym, and other people he’d seen earlier were missing, though some could be in the restrooms and the office adding up the bids from the silent auction.
Brinkman was covering the office, Zaroster and two undercover cops the hallways. He, Bentz, and the two priests were keeping the crowd in the gym, but he knew around any nook or corner, in any corridor or bell tower, Father John could be lurking.
Waiting.
And there would be more victims who would suffer his deadly wrath.
While Father Frank O’Toole led the congregation in prayer.
Slade found her shoe.
Dripping wet from his mad dash outside, he raced to the north staircase, and just as a collective gasp went up from the gymnasium, he located the open door propped by a sling-backed high heel belonging to Val.
Damn!
How the hell had she opened the door? And why were the lights out? Hadn’t he told her to stay put, made her swear she’d wait for him?
Well, it figured . . .
A bad feeling stole over him, but he stopped himself from yelling out to her, sensed that there was trouble. Serious trouble.
Soaked to the skin, he kept his lock picks in his hands and noiselessly descended the stairs just as he heard the sound of sirens, screaming through the stormy night, their shrieks piercing and getting louder as emergency vehicles approached.
Good!
Get the hell here, he thought frantically as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Rather than risk the overhead lights, he found a lighter in his pocket and switched it on, the tiny flickering flame casting the gloom of the basement in shifting, uneasy shadows.
Again he heard the wail of sirens.
Get here fast! For the love of God, get the fuck here fast!
Heart trip-hammering, nervous sweat prickling her skin, Val managed to follow the beam of the flashlight as it washed across crates and cement walls. The weak beam showed in trembling blue light the cracks in the foundation, the collection of forgotten artifacts, furniture, and memorabilia as they descended even farther, through an archway and two sets of doors.
At every turn, she thought she would be discovered, and she wondered, as the temperature lowered and they walked down yet another set of stairs, where they were going.
Deeper and deeper beneath the orphanage, to a point where the corridors became tunnels, the cement of the walls changing into roughly hewn rock.
Val tamped down her fear, but as the temperature dropped, she began to sweat even more, her nerves strung as tight as piano wires, her heart beating a nervous, irregular tattoo, the pistol clutched in her fingers.
Where was Slade? Oh, God, could he please show up and bring the damned cavalry with him? Or would she have to face the killer alone, perhaps shoot a priest?
Down a narrow set of steps where the walls felt as if they were closing in on her, she followed the dim blue light. Cobwebs hung from the lowering ceiling, clinging to her hair, brushing against her face. The air smelled as if it hadn’t been fresh in decades, with dust and rot combining to form a dank odor that caused her skin to crawl. It was all she could do not to cough as they opened a final door.
“Why are we here?” Charity asked, her voice quavering with fear as it ricocheted hollowly back through the tunnels to Val.
The light had stopped moving, shining thinly against the stone walls.
“There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Oh, God, Val thought worriedly, the killer has an accomplice! She glanced over her shoulder and strained to hear, listening for any sound of another person. . . . Were there footsteps following her? Did she hear the sound of labored breathing? Had she walked into a trap? She whirled quickly, the .38 pointed into the dark, her finger sweating on the trigger.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the demon from her nightmares, the rat-eyed monster with the silvery chain. That was only Sister Ignatia. You know it. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you!
Her heart felt as if it might explode.
But no one, no thing, leaped out at her.
Swallowing her fear, Val turned back to the light and edged closer, staying in the shadows, her eyes adjusting to the weird light. She realized with sickening disgust that they’d made their way down to a tomb of sorts, where coffins were tucked into pockets cut into the stony walls, a few, old and rotting, standing on their narrow ends, propped against the dusty wall. Charity was standing in front of a single casket, the lid of which gaped, as if it had never been sealed. As if it were waiting.
It was still too dark to see the killer’s face, but she caught a glimpse of a knife, a long, sharp blade that glinted in the half-light. There was a pool of white at the madman’s feet—the once-white lace of a bridal gown.
Oh, God, no!
This psycho was going to kill Sister Charity, strangle her with a sharp garrote and squeeze the life from her as soon as he forced the nun into the damned dress.
Val had to stop this madness. She had to!
“What do you want from me?” Charity asked, glancing nervously at her captor.
“To atone for your sins—and none of that flogging you do for that old pervert Father Paul. No, I want you to admit that you’re a liar and a fraud,” the killer said, sneering, “that you’re unfit to be a bride of Christ. Just like the others.”
“Oh, Dear Father,” Charity whispered. “You know?”
“That you had a love child with Arthur Wembley?” the killer sneered.
Now, without the voice’s rasp, Valerie thought she recognized it; she’d heard it before. A soft voice . . .
I’m sorry, Reverend Mother, the voice had said as Sister Charity’s lips pinched in silent rebuke.
Valerie’s heart froze.
It was the same voice she’d heard in the garden at St. Marguerite’s, the same, she now realized, as the snotty little girl with the cast thirty years earlier, who had barred Cammie from the slide and said slyly, “You know what seven-seven-three-four is, don’t you? It’s hell.”
Sister Devota?
She was the killer?
A woman?
A nun?
No! That was nuts . . . too crazy . . .
As if the killer had read her mind, she sprang into action. Val, still gripping the gun, heard a frantic quick shuffling of feet, shoes sliding over the floor. A scuffle of sorts. A struggle.
No!
Val took a step forward as a woman, Sister Charity, mewled pitifully.
Then all became suddenly quiet.
Deathly quiet, the tomb feeling like death itself.
Goose bumps rose on the back of Valerie’s arms, fear wrapping cold talons over her soul.
Save her . . . you have to save her.
Slowly she crouched, glancing behind her into the inky folds of darkness, feeling as if she were about to be ambushed.
Someone coughed.
Val whipped her head toward the sound, toward the eerie wash of blue light just as a grating voice slithered from the murky dead air. “Come on out of the shadows, Valerie. Oh, yes, I know you’re there. I know you followed me. I waited for you. So come on out.”
Val’s stomach dropped. She didn’t move a muscle.
“You heard me,” Devota said, angry now. “Come out from your ridiculous hiding place. Don’t you know you can’t hide? You’re on my turf now, Val. Mine and God’s.”
Val still didn’t move. Sh
e could still get the drop on this psycho!
“Oh,” the raspy voice said, as if suddenly remembering some small detail. “And drop the gun, or I will, right here and now, in front of your eyes, slit your pathetic mother’s throat!”
Slade heard voices.
Not from the auction overhead but from the dark space in front of him, the words garbled and soft as they slid from deep in the tunnels that he’d found, a complicated series of tombs that smelled of death and decay. A place where rats scurried, pipes dripped, and he felt as if he were walking through the smoldering ashes of long-forgotten lives.
He was moving as quickly as he could, images of Val facing off with the killer filling his mind. He saw her struggling, a garrote at her neck, the strong hands of the killer twisting tighter and tighter, cutting off her air, the sharp noose cutting through her beautiful neck.
Don’t go there! Just keep moving! Save her, for Christ’s sake!
His lighter was little illumination, and he took another wrong turn, then doubled back. Breathing hard, fear sizzling through his body, he forced himself to stop and listen, his ears straining to hear over the fear pounding in his heart. The sounds of the auction had long disappeared, and here, several stories beneath the building, he moved forward.
He thought of Valerie, and his insides turned to water when he imagined losing her, that some maniac might wrap a flesh-slicing garrote around her throat and squeeze the life from her. He thought for a moment of what his life would be like without her, how empty the world would be.
No, he thought, his jaw turning to granite. He’d do anything to save her.
Anything!
God help him that he still had enough time.
CHAPTER 52
The crowd in the gymnasium was restless, but backup had arrived, the officers taking charge, EMTs on hand to help with those who were feeling ill.
Bentz, eyeing the restless throng, gave up his position to Zaroster and approached Montoya with the bad news. “There’s a door open to the basement in the north wing,” he said. “Zaroster discovered it and we’ve got a uniformed guy standing guard.”
“Why?”
“It was locked earlier. I checked with Sister Georgia, the reverend mother here.” He was fidgeting, his eyes searching the crowd, chewing gum like a fiend, feeling that something was going down. Something bad. “And we’ve got some people missing.”
“Valerie and Slade Houston?”
“And Sister Charity and Sister Devota, that I can come up with off the top of my head.” His gaze roved the crowd. “Who knows who else?”
Father John!
“Son of a bitch.”
Bentz nodded. “My thoughts exactly.”
“He’s here!” Montoya was certain of it. He had only to think of Sister Louise’s dead body stuffed into the piano . . . “Shit a brick! You think he’s got them?”
Bentz didn’t answer. But, yeah. He did. But he wasn’t going to voice it. Not yet. “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” Bentz was already heading out of the gym, cutting past people in their fancy clothes and worried expressions, hoping to get one more shot at Father Fucking John.
This time, the bastard wouldn’t survive.
Devota had lunged, grabbing Charity from behind, twisting one arm back so painfully that Charity heard her tendons popping. She’d cried out as the younger woman had drawn a knife to her throat, but she’d known her scream was useless.
Charity had tried to fight but had lost the battle before it had begun. She was sweating and scared, her heart beating so frantically she thought it might explode.
What could she do?
How could she save herself?
How could she save her daughter?
Oh, Sweet Mother Mary, why had she spent her life holding on to her lies, spinning more, compromising her soul?
Devota had barked out a threat: “And drop the gun, or I will, right here and now, in front of your eyes, slit your pathetic mother’s throat!” and Charity’s knees had buckled.
Valerie couldn’t be here! Oh, dear Father, no, not after all the years Charity had so rabidly tried to protect her only child.
“Did you hear me, whore?” Devota snarled, her breath hot against Charity’s ear, the thin blade at her throat, slicing into her skin, cold and wicked as it split her flesh.
Charity whimpered as she felt her warm blood begin to flow from a wound already stinging. How could this be happening? Why would Devota, the girl she’d met at St. Elsinore’s when Charity had worked there, the poor child who had broken her leg and had always walked with a limp thereafter, turn on her? How had she become this vile monster? Surely, as God would see to it, there was an ounce of reverence, of piety, of goodness still within her soul. “Devota, please . . . think of the Blessed Mother. Do not give into Satan’s calling.”
“Shut up, you old hypocrite!” Devota hissed. “What do you know? Always hiding your own sins and judging others for theirs. Your time is over, Mother,” she snarled. “You can take it up with God when you see him.” Then, to the surrounding darkness, “You! Valerie Renard! Sister of the whore! Step forward!” She wrenched Charity’s arm, and the older woman squealed in pain. She couldn’t fight—the knife blade was too sharp—and if she complied, perhaps Valerie would be saved....
But she knew better.
Weren’t Camille and Asteria proof enough of that, and probably Louise and Lucia as well? Her knees crumpled.
Devota yanked her to her feet. “I said, step forward!”
To Charity’s ultimate horror, Valerie complied. Blessed Mother of God, please, stop this madness. But she watched in terror as Valerie stepped into the cruel, frail light.
Tall and beautiful, as strong as her father had once been, Valerie leveled her gun directly at Devota’s head. “She is not my mother.”
“Of course she is! Don’t you know that this is what it’s all about? That you were the love child of this old lady and that wheezing skeleton who donated the piano?” Devota seemed amused at that. “That’s where they’ll find Louise, you know, in the piano, but no longer singing, I’m afraid. She’s sung her last solo.”
“Oh, for the love of the Holy Mother.” Charity’s worst nightmares were confirmed.
“And your dear old daddy, Wembley, used his money to pay off everyone, including Mike and Mary Brown, so that no one would know. Everyone kept the secret, just as long as the money kept flowing. Sinners, every last one of them!”
“Don’t listen to her,” Charity said, and was rewarded with another sharp tweak to her left arm. Her right was free; she could swing back and hit Devota in the face, but that would probably ensure that she would die as the knife blade found her jugular or carotid.
“But I’m not lying, am I?” Devota whispered with a kind of horrid, dark glee. “I found out the truth that you worked so hard to hide all these years . . . your secret love child.”
“Please,” Charity whispered, her head thundering, the truth hammering away at her brain, chipping at her pride and exposing her self-loathing as warm blood slid down her neck in this musty, dark tomb.
“Wasn’t too hard to do,” Devota bragged. “All I had to do was shadow the whore. She was on to something, found out about the adoption papers being altered when she worked at St. Elsinore’s. And then she came down here and verified everything she’d put together.”
“I don’t believe you! Let her go!” Valerie insisted, unflagging, her eyes directed on Devota.
“Then again, you always were dull. I remember you from the orphanage.”
Charity could feel Devota’s bitterness curdling through the dusty air. She, the unwanted one, the lame girl, the one always passed over.
Valerie took another step forward. Her voice was low. Threatening. “I said, let her go!”
“Not just yet.”
“Now.” Valerie didn’t drop the gun.
“You’re not in control,” Devota reminded her.
But Valerie, as tough as Charity had been in her own was
ted youth, didn’t back down. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, verbalizing the questions that had formed in Charity’s mind.
“God’s work,” Devota said again, with that drip of satisfaction at finally explaining herself, her mission.
It scared Charity to death.
Devota tightened her grip. “Someone has to get rid of the harlots who shame the church, who defile the order. So you see, your ‘sister, ’ she really wasn’t any blood relation to you. Oh, yeah, she looked like you, but there was nothing between you. Nothing! It was a lie. Anything that said otherwise, about how you resembled each other, was pure coincidence . . . or fantasy. People see what they want to see, you know, but Camille, she found out.”
Charity felt her captor tense at the thought of Sister Camille, as if the prettier woman had been her rival. “Everyone bought into her act, but she was dark below the surface. Pure evil.”
Val’s face, in the weird light, remained impassive.
Devota went on, almost as if the words that had been bottled up in her for years were now bubbling upward, like froth from some ruined, bitter champagne finally uncorked. “She couldn’t wait to stick it to Old Man Wembley. I followed her, witnessed the old woman, the wife, paying the blood money to Camille, and you know what she did with part of it? She gave it to that witchy little Lucia. That twit! I saw it with my own eyes, and it didn’t take too long to put two and two together.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” But Valerie was wavering, her voice not as strong.
“Of course I do!” Devota snapped, suddenly angry all over again, spittle flying as she added, “True to her nature, that Jezebel was blackmailing the Wembleys, and the missus, she wasn’t too happy about it!”
Charity couldn’t stand to hear another word. “What do you want from me?” she demanded, reeling from the mortification of her life, her secrets, being exposed—to the very daughter she’d tried to save.
She realized that she was about to lose her life, now, when she had so many sins to atone for.