End of Days

by Frank Lauria

  “I want a head start. There’s no reason to make it easy for them.”

  Easy for who? Chicago wondered. But before he could ask, the cops started to arrive, flashlights bobbing in the gloom.

  In a way, Jericho turned out to be right. The police swarmed over the tracks, trampling any other evidence that might have fallen. Jericho stood to the side while the paramedics loaded the wounded man onto a stretcher. The shooter rolled his eyes and spotted Jericho. He tried to speak, but only guttural barks came from his lips.

  Jericho moved away from the bustling officers, to where Chicago stood, smoking a cigarette. Jericho took out the matchbook and studied it intently. He looked at Chicago and shrugged. “All the best clues come from the perp’s pocket.”

  Chicago nudged him and jerked his head. Jericho looked up and saw Detective Marge Francis approaching. She was frowning at some papers in her hand and shaking her head.

  “Marge don’t look too happy with our statements,” Chicago warned.

  “Should have killed him,” Jericho said sadly. “Less paperwork.”

  Detective Marge Francis was an attractive redhead on the good side of forty. But police work aged one quickly. There were blue shadows around her eyes and tension webbed her creamy skin. As she approached the two men she unconsciously brushed back her hair. She had worked with Jericho when he was on the force, and she still hadn’t gotten over him.

  “Detective,” Chicago greeted.

  “Bobby,” she said briskly. “Hey, Jer, been a while.”

  Jericho gave her a tight smile. “Yeah. How are you, Marge?”

  “Can’t complain. You?”

  He shrugged. As usual, he gave the police nothing.

  “Nice day to jump out of a helicopter?” she suggested.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Yeah, well, listen … there’s something I gotta ask you.”

  Her casual tone alerted Jericho.

  “What’s that?” he said guardedly.

  “You, uh, still drinking?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Chicago said indignantly.

  “I was just reading his statement.” She looked at Jericho. “You said the guy spoke to you.”

  “That’s right. So what?”

  “Jer—the guy has no tongue.”

  Confusion and disbelief collided in his brain. He gaped at her, unable to comprehend.

  Marge gave him a maternal smile and patted his shoulder. “Listen, what do you say I leave out that detail right now?” she whispered. “No big deal, right?”

  Jericho stiffened. She was patronizing him, like some errant outpatient.

  “You saying I imagined it?”

  Marge threw up her hands and walked away. “No, Jer…” she intoned with exaggerated patience. “… I’m just saying.”

  Jericho’s confusion spilled over into anger. “I saved a life today,” he called after her. “What did you do?”

  “Let it go, man. Let it go,” Chicago muttered.

  Jericho fingered the matchbook he’d taken from the shooter.

  “I know what I heard,” he said under his breath.

  * * *

  Mullin’s Bar was tucked away between Little India on East 6th Street, and the Ukrainian neighborhood on 7th. It had a jukebox that still took quarters, a cigarette machine that stocked unfiltered brands, and the tin walls were dotted with flyspecked photos of by-gone athletes.

  Jericho liked the place immediately. Chicago yearned for something more upscale like Odeon. But this was business.

  After a brief conversation with the bartender, Jericho had what he wanted. On the way outside, he explained his deductive technique to Chicago.

  “A drunk hangs out at a neighborhood bar … he passes out enough times … and people know where he lives from carrying him home,” Jericho said with grim humor. “This is something I know.”

  “It’s nice to be an expert on something,” Chicago agreed.

  “It took years of research.”

  Chicago wasn’t laughing. He knew his partner was hanging by a thread, despite his heroics that morning. If anything, Jericho was too reckless for a professional. Maybe too reckless for a partner, Chicago speculated morosely. Nothing worse on this job than a death wish.

  Chicago shook off his doubts. When push came to shove there was nobody he’d rather have at his back. Bottom line—Jericho was the best.

  The Big Cat had been the best in the SEALs. The best on the police SWAT team. And now he was the number-one security expert in the country. Maybe the planet, Chicago speculated.

  The address the bartender gave them turned out to be an abandoned building. Chicago was ready to call it a day, but Jericho switched on his flashlight and went inside. After checking the deserted street, Chicago followed.

  He wished he hadn’t as soon as he entered. The stink of dank water and human refuse filled the narrow hall. The cracked plaster walls revealed a rusted web of leaking pipes. Roaches and rats scurried away from their flashlight beams.

  Jericho motioned Chicago toward the stairs. Coming closer, Chicago saw a faint light glowing from behind a door above them. They both beamed their flashlights up the stairway.

  Strange symbols and shapes were painted on the stairs and walls.

  “Wanna bet it’s rent controlled?” Chicago muttered.

  Ignoring him, Jericho mounted the stairs. They were made of stone and mortar that crumbled under their feet, but the big man didn’t make a sound.

  They slowly edged down the hallway, toward the dim glow. When they reached the doorway, Jericho motioned Chicago, who drew his gun and crouched in a cover position. Jericho went inside first, low and fast.

  A moment later Chicago stepped into hell’s own crash pad.

  The windows were painted black, and the floors and rickety furniture were swamped with moldy food, broken objects, and grotesque images. Their sweeping flashlights revealed a rotting mattress in one corner. Roaches rustled away from the light.

  Chicago was also anxious to leave. “Couldn’t this be considered breaking and entering?” he whispered.

  “We haven’t broken anything yet.” Jericho struck a match and lit several candles on an old-fashioned writing desk. Their pale illumination settled across the room, revealing a graveyard of mutilated, deformed religious icons.

  Disfigured Madonnas, mutilated crosses, and broken statues of angels and saints were strewn across the floor in some sort of perverse order. Chicago noticed a shiny red triangle smeared on the floor. It was sticky to the touch. Chicago’s belly turned over.

  “I don’t think this is paint,” he hissed.

  Jericho scowled and turned his attention to the walls. They were covered with drawings, all done by the same spidery hand. Pictures of angels and demons in gory combat over broken human bones and screaming skulls, religious icons and symbols, and wildly scrawled graffiti.

  “Real art buff,” Chicago murmured, examining a rendering of Hades that featured tortured souls impaled on burning spikes. “I was going to do my living room just like this, but I thought it was … too busy.”

  Jericho bent closer to read the scrawls on the wall. “‘I have seen the earth laid to waste,’ he recited slowly. ‘I have seen the horror to come. Is it a sin to wish you were never born…?’”

  The question hovered in the stifling quiet.

  Around the scrawl, were the numbers 20–7, written over and over, like a numerical frame. “Twenty … seven…” Jericho muttered.

  “Football score?” Chicago suggested. The hollow attempt at humor failed to ease his looming sense of danger.

  A large silver cross on the wall drew Jericho’s curiosity. The object was vaguely familiar. The ornately carved cross looked like a museum piece. Except for the fact that it had been hacked and twisted, and a small spike was hammered through its center. But Jericho recognized the object from a previous assignment at the Vatican. It was a papal cross, worn only by the pope.

  Just beneath the cross was
a small, dark hole. Perhaps the hammer that spiked the cross had missed a blow or two. Jericho shone his light inside.

  There was something in there.

  Chicago winced as Jericho rolled up his sleeve and pushed his hand past the cobwebs and roaches. When he pulled out his hand, he was holding a pickle jar. A pickle was still floating inside. Except it wasn’t a pickle.

  “What the hell is that?” Chicago asked in a hushed voice.

  “His tongue.”

  * * *

  Chicago was sorry he had asked. He gaped at the blackened lump of flesh floating inside the jar.

  Jericho picked up a pair of long shears from a nearby stool. “He must have cut it off himself,” he mused, regarding the jar like Yorick’s skull.

  “Why would anyone cut out their own tongue?” Chicago rasped, his voice strangled.

  Jericho looked at him as if the answer was obvious. “To keep from talking.”

  He handed the jar to Chicago and moved to an old, tilting refrigerator. Chicago quickly set the bottle down and followed.

  When Jericho opened the refrigerator door, a screeching black shadow leaped out at him. He fell back, reflexively swatting the creature aside.

  Still yowling, the black cat sprang out of the room. Chicago wished he could do the same. His heart was flailing at his ribs like a wild bird.

  Jericho peered inside the refrigerator. Another jar. This one filled with something black that moved.… A mass of flies were crawling over a sheet of paper inside the jar. Jericho reached in, took the jar, and shook it. Immediately the flies buzzed off, revealing an image on the paper.

  It was a photograph of a lovely young girl, perhaps twenty years old. She was smiling.

  Jericho handed the photograph to Chicago. “Ever see her before?”

  Chicago shook his head.

  Jericho rummaged around and found another old photograph in the writing desk. He studied it under the candlelight. It was a young priest, standing in front of St. Peter’s in Rome.

  Jericho recognized the young priest’s intense, emaciated features. It was the shooter. Except the priest he’d captured in the subway tunnel looked a thousand years older and ravaged by disease.

  How the hell did he know my name? Jericho wondered.

  “This guy’s no hit man,” he said aloud.

  “Maybe he’s an unhappy investor.” Chicago suggested impatiently. “Let’s get the hell out of here, this place is making me itch.”

  Wham! The door was suddenly kicked open, filling the room with frantic shouts. Jericho dropped into shooting position, Chicago at his side.

  “Drop it!” someone yelled.

  Jericho squinted and saw uniformed policemen at the door. He lowered his Glock. Reluctantly, Chicago did the same.

  “How the hell did you two find this place?” Detective Marge Francis asked, stepping gingerly into the filthy room.

  Jericho grinned smugly. “Lucky guess. What did you find out?”

  Detective Francis hesitated. Finally she decided to answer.

  “His name’s Thomas Aquinas. He used to be a priest.”

  “A homicidal priest … that’s a new one,” Chicago noted.

  “Yeah, well, it gets better. He studied at the Vatican. One of their alleged visionaries. Came here in ’81 to St. John’s Church uptown. Six months ago he disappeared. The priests up there said he was having a spiritual crisis.”

  Jericho shrugged. “Tell me what I don’t know.”

  Chicago nodded and looked around. “That’s one hell of a crisis.”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Jericho said slowly. “What’s a priest doing shooting at a Wall Street banker?”

  “Maybe we should ask the girl.”

  Jericho’s annoyed glare felt like a sunlamp. Too late, Chicago realized what he had said.

  Detective Francis pounced on it. “What girl?” she snapped, green eyes clamped on Chicago’s face.

  “Did I say girl…?” he said innocently. “… It’s a guy … a priest.” He glanced at Jericho. “Got to find the priest.”

  Detective Francis didn’t buy it, but there was nothing she could do. Even if she pulled them in for questioning, Jericho still had friends at headquarters. As she watched them leave, she felt a grudging admiration for Jericho’s detective skills.

  Chicago took a deep breath when they left the decrepit building. By comparison the New York air smelled like a pine forest. He pulled out the photograph Jericho had found, and stared at the carefree young blond girl smiling up at him.

  “Five million women in New York City.” Chicago sighed. “How are we going to find her without a name?”

  Jericho didn’t answer. He was still wondering how Thomas Aquinas managed to speak to him without a tongue.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The afternoon subway was sparsely populated. Christine read her book, Infinite Jest, and tried to avoid eye contact with the albino panhandler, who stood watching her fixedly. Christine peeked over the edge of her book, then looked away from the albino’s glassy pink eyes.

  The subway entered a tunnel, car lights dimming. When they went up again, Christine saw the albino man was still staring. His bleached white skin and matted pale hair seemed to radiate intensity. Finally Christine surrendered. She fished into her purse and handed the albino a dollar.

  The albino took the money, but he didn’t leave. He continued to stare as if transfixed. She glanced around. The other passengers were all looking somewhere else.

  “Hey, I gave you some money,” Christine said calmly. “Can you just move on?”

  “He’s coming for you,” the albino warned. “He’s coming for you, Christine.”

  An electric prickle crawled up her spine. “Christine? How do you know me?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

  The albino smirked obscenely. “He’s gonna fuck you. Fuck you. Can you see him? Can you see him?” He started to move off.

  “Who are you?” she repeated. “How do you know my…”

  Christine reached for the albino’s arm. It shattered like porcelain in her hand. Just then the car lights went out.

  As the subway hurtled through the tunnel, strobing lights swept the car, revealing demonic faces leering at her. The car began to violently shake and rattle. The albino man crashed to the floor and smashed into a hundred pieces … each piece bursting into flame …

  Christine screamed.

  Suddenly it was quiet. The lights blinked on as the train slowed and came to a stop. Everyone in the car seemed startled by her outburst. They were looking at her strangely. Christine glanced around the car.

  The albino had vanished.

  Embarrassed, she retrieved her book. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m sorry.”

  But they continued to stare.

  * * *

  Home sweet home. Jericho had to admit his décor compared favorably to Thomas Aquinas’s Neo-Inferno style.

  He filled his glass with vodka and downed it. The place is starting to look better already, Jericho noted, refilling his glass. He moved to the bedroom and pulled off his shirt. He stood at the mirror and dropped his Kevlar vest.

  Two large, yellow-green welts marked his massive chest where the bullets had struck. And they ached with each breath. Two aspirin, another vodka, and some sports cream lubricated his bruises. Like any good athlete, he knew how to play hurt.

  Trying to sort out the day’s events, Jericho wandered over to the window. The dark, restless sky above the city rolled with gathering thunderheads. Jericho tried to remember what Thomas Aquinas had shouted at him.

  When the thousand years are ended … When the thousand years …

  Abruptly Jericho turned and went to his closet. He reached back through the clutter and pulled out a cardboard box. He set the box on his bed and opened it. After rummaging through some books, envelopes, and old documents, he found what he was looking for. An old, leather-bound Bible.

  As Jericho lifted the Bible, he discovered a cracked music box beneath it. Imm
ediately he recognized it. It belonged to his daughter Amy. When he picked up the music box some photographs fluttered to the bed.

  A flood of emotion rushed over his brain as he studied the pictures. His daughter Amy, and Emily his wife, making sand castles at the beach. Happier days. He picked up the music box and wound the key.

  The tiny ballerina began to twirl as a tinkling melody floated through the quiet …

  * * *

  When Christine York arrived at her town house, she was exhausted.

  She locked the door behind her and hurried past the library, where she knew Mabel would be waiting for her.

  “Christine?” Mabel called as she passed. “Christine?”

  “I’ll be there in a sec…” Christine hurried upstairs to her room. She went to her phone and punched the speed dial. “Hello, is Dr. Abel in? It’s Christine York.”

  As usual Dr. Abel picked up immediately.

  “I had another one,” Christine said breathlessly.

  “How long this time?”

  “I don’t know … twenty or thirty seconds. It was pretty frightening.”

  “Christine, listen to me,” Dr. Abel said patiently. “We’ve gone over this before.”

  Actually, Dr. Abel had been Christine’s spiritual advisor ever since he had baptized her in blood in a hospital morgue.

  At the time he had been known as Father Abel, head priest of Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. Now he was Dr. Abel, prominent psychiatrist with one special patient—his unholy godchild Christine York.

  “You’re feeling stressed,” he said soothingly. “It’s perfectly natural to feel that way around the holidays. Understand … these dreams are your creation. There’s nothing real about them. You control them … they don’t control you. Take another Xanax to relieve your anxiety. Trust me…” He lowered his voice. “You’re fine.”

  Christine slowly exhaled. “You sure? Okay … okay, Xanax. I will, thank you.”

  “Another vision?”

  Christine looked up and saw her mother standing in the doorway.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Mabel Rand asked in a pained voice.

  “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Mabel gave her a rueful smile. “I’m your mother. It’s my job to worry.” It was true. Mabel had been Christine’s guardian since the moment she’d been born. Nurse Rand—her title at the time—had served as her godmother in blood. When Christine’s parents were killed in a car accident, Mabel stepped in and adopted her.