He studied the bottle of Gordon’s and contemplated polishing it off. The stale air of the attic had left him a little queasy, so instead he decided to close his eyes for just a few minutes.
A deep and unwanted sleep came quickly, and within mere seconds he was embraced in the cold fingers of a nightmare. He was one of many altar boys, walking solemnly down the church aisle, clutching the altar bell, which swung back and forth but made no sound. In the pews, the parishioners turned their faces to the procession, but when Czarcik looked at them, their eyes turned black and rolled back into their heads. Father Dyer stood naked on the altar in all his glory. Where his crotch should have been was only a black void. Whenever Czarcik stared at it, it lost shape, becoming less and less defined.
The altar boys continued down the aisles, doubled back around the pews, and then joined Dyer on the altar. Czarcik was between two boys he didn’t recognize, packed in so tightly he could barely breathe. He looked out into the audience, hoping for a friendly face. In the first row, a woman dressed in Puritan garb nursed a large crow as if it were a baby. The bird pecked at her, blood mixing with milk and forming a viscous pink liquid that trickled down her engorged breast. She smiled serenely and nodded at Czarcik, trying to give him the comfort he sought.
Suddenly, swarming masses of a strange animal seemed to materialize from every conceivable space on the altar. They were smooth like eels, their movement serpentine. They had no features—their anterior and posterior were identical—but somehow made horrible hissing sounds as tiny tufts of coarse hair sprouted from their damp coat. Frenzied children dashed up from the pews and collected them like candy before tearing them to shreds with their teeth.
The young Czarcik wanted desperately to close his eyes, but when he tried, his lids were gone. He could feel the muscles trying to work, twitching futilely. In an instant Czarcik found himself nailed to the spot no less efficiently than his Lord and Savior had been to the cross. The boy pissed his pants. The creatures slithered over, as if attracted by the smell, splashing around aimlessly in the urine.
A giant creature reached out and placed its hands on the shoulders of young Czarcik, like a coach strategizing with a star player. It opened its mouth impossibly wide, snakelike, and moved its gaping jaws toward—
Someone was tapping him on the head. Not in church. Not in dreamland. Not fifty years ago. He opened his eyes to find Father Dyer standing in front of him. The priest offered him a mug with steam coming off the top.
Czarcik realized how exhausted he must have been. Under normal circumstances, even if he had been sleeping, he wouldn’t have let someone get so close. His subconscious mind would have awakened him. Some watchdog he was. Father Dyer didn’t say anything. He probably assumed that Czarcik had wanted to catch a few winks.
“It’s coffee. Black. I assumed that’s how you like it,” Father Dyer said.
Czarcik sat up. He frowned as he accepted the mug, trying to hide just how badly he wanted that first sip of the hot, bitter liquid. “What time is it?”
“A little past eight. I usually rise pretty early, and you looked . . . frankly dead. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”
Czarcik felt sick being the object of Dyer’s compassion. Nevertheless, he wiped the sleep from his eyes and took a sip of the coffee. He felt groggy, as if he had slept far longer than he actually had. “Has anybody come by this morning?” he asked.
Dyer held back a chuckle and shook his head. “Every time you ask me that, Detective, the answer is always the same.”
Czarcik allowed himself another sip of the coffee, got up off the couch, and walked over to the living room window. The curtains almost disintegrated in his hand as he pulled them back. He looked out the window onto the porch. Empty. The front lawn and sidewalk were also deserted. Just an ordinary lazy morning. He thought about walking outside, maybe taking a stroll up and down the street, but deep down he knew it was unnecessary.
As he turned away from the window, planning to return to the couch and plot his next move, he nearly bowled over Father Dyer. The priest was only inches from his face. The proximity was vaguely threatening, and Czarcik was about to order him to move away when he noticed a thin line of drool trickling down Dyer’s lower lip. His eyes were unfocused; he was looking not at Czarcik, but through him.
Before Czarcik could ask him what was wrong, Dyer collapsed forward. Czarcik didn’t catch him, but his body blunted the fall, and the priest slid down the detective’s body until the man’s upper torso was resting against Czarcik’s lower legs.
“What the hell?” Czarcik said, annoyed, and pushed the priest onto the floor.
As soon as he exerted just that small amount of energy, his head swam. Everything in front of him went blurry. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them, but his vision wouldn’t stabilize. His throat was dry, but when he tried to generate some moisture, it felt as if somebody were rubbing sandpaper up and down his esophagus.
He staggered toward the kitchen, needing to draw himself a glass of water, until he realized his legs weren’t working properly. Like rubber, he thought. As he dropped to one knee, he noticed Dyer lying on the floor. But he couldn’t understand, or remember, what the priest was doing there.
The floor seemed to rise up to meet his face. Then his skull smashed into the wood. He saw stars, then darkness.
Once Czarcik came to, he felt the sensation of something hard against his lips.
He lowered his eyes and could barely make out the rim of a ceramic mug. “Drink it,” a familiar voice said, just out of his field of vision. “It’s only water.”
Czarcik didn’t care whether it was strychnine, urine, or whatever liquid had recently incapacitated him; he had never felt so parched. He gulped it down greedily as the hand holding the mug tilted it without spilling a drop. “I’ll get you some more,” the voice promised. “It’s good for you. I just don’t want you to drink too much too quickly and get sick.”
With the help of the water, Czarcik’s body was already starting to metabolize the drug. His vision was clearing up, and he was starting to feel more alert.
He was still in Dyer’s living room. Although the curtains had been drawn and the room was dark, there was enough ambient light for him to make out his surroundings.
Across the room, Father Dyer was tied to a kitchen chair. This was no rush job. His arms were lashed to the chair’s wooden armrests at both his wrists and his elbows. Both his ankles were tied tightly to the chair’s legs. Unless he was a superhero, and the chair his jetpack, the priest wasn’t going anywhere.
As Czarcik stared at him, he didn’t see Dyer but mental images of Judge Robertson’s body and the chicken tied around Marisol Fernandez’s neck.
It was then that Czarcik realized that he, too, was tied to a chair, but not as securely as Dyer. The rope had some give, as if the person who tied him had tried not to cause him undue discomfort.
The ropes restraining Dyer, on the other hand, cut deeply into his flesh, so deep they were hard to see with the skin folding back over them.
But that wasn’t the main reason the priest was moaning in pain.
TWENTY-SIX
Father Dyer was naked from the waist down.
There was a metal, uninsulated wire between his legs. From there it snaked underneath the chair where it then was attached to some contraption that reminded Czarcik of a large fishing reel.
As a student of the more gruesome aspects of history, Czarcik was all too familiar with the favorite tortures of Middle Eastern despots and corrupt South American regimes. But since the wire didn’t appear to be connected to a power source, Czarcik couldn’t imagine its purpose.
Daniel returned to the living room carrying a large glass of water. He had washed out his hair dye, and Czarcik realized that this was the first time he had seen the man in person without makeup or a disguise.
He was handsome, no doubt. Classically good looking, at least more so than Czarcik himself. It was easy to see how Chloe had fallen
for him.
Again he brought the water to Czarcik’s lips and helped him drink. “Take it slow, Detective. Time and water. The safest way to eliminate the chloral hydrate.”
Czarcik finished the entire glass without stopping to take a single breath. As he was gulping down the water, he noticed that Daniel was wearing latex gloves.
Apparently, Daniel could tell what he was thinking. “You’re right, Detective. At this point, I don’t really need them. But it’s less about leaving prints than, well . . .” He smiled shyly. Almost embarrassed. “I’m a little bit of a germaphobe, and just being in this place, with this”—he cocked his head toward Dyer—“this thing. It gives me the willies.” He took away the empty glass and placed it on the coffee table. “Besides, I think I need gloves for what I’m about to do to him.”
Czarcik jerked his head toward the priest. The chair shifted. “Let that piece of shit go, Daniel. We both know you’ve made your point.”
Daniel recoiled, feigning surprise at Czarcik’s request. “Made my point? Come on, Detective. Must we continue this charade? We both know I have no point to make. That’s why you find me so infuriating.” He jacked his thumb at the priest. “And why I’m so dangerous to monsters like this. I’m not a product of some childhood trauma, whom you could stop if only you could get me to come to terms with my past. I don’t have some psychosis that you can address with rational thought nor religious delusions to which you can appeal through the vagaries of faith. No, unfortunately for you—and him, and all of them—I just have an insatiable urge to punish those who deserve it. And because of my condition, my death sentence, all the usual barriers preventing me from doing what I know to be just have been removed.”
“But who are you to decide? To play God?”
Daniel laughed long and hard, not the laugh of a crazy man but of a perfectly sane one who had just heard something extraordinarily funny. “Oh, bravo, Detective. Bravo. That was a good one.”
“You can still save your soul, my son,” Father Dyer blurted out, deciding this was an appropriate time to chime in.
Daniel and Czarcik turned to the priest in perfect synchronicity. “Shut up!”
Father Dyer became silent. Decades of plying his sordid trade had left him with the ability to read people, and he could tell, almost intuitively, that he was not going to be able to convince his tormentor of anything. Nor did it seem as if his self-proclaimed protector was going to be much help. And although he was clearly the focus of whatever was about to happen, he couldn’t help but feel that his presence was in some way incidental. These two men were engaged in a game whose rules he didn’t understand.
Czarcik spoke first. “You’re right, Daniel. He deserves to die. He’s not even human. So do it. Kill him. But why not include me while you’re at it? Why not just kill me too? You have no compunction about murder. Why force me to take part in all this nonsense?”
Daniel considered the question, realizing Czarcik deserved a legitimate response.
“Well, I could pretend it’s because of Chloe,” he said finally. “No man likes to see his wife in the arms of another. But I realize she’s not going to be celibate forever. Even if it happened a little faster than I thought.” He considered Czarcik. “The truth is . . . I’m allowing you to be a part of this because, well, we both know you enjoy it.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Don’t feel compelled to protest too much. All of us are virtually powerless to change our natures. We can pretend anything we want, but in the end, we are who we are.” Daniel motioned to the priest but continued talking to Czarcik. “Now what separates you and me from him, from that, is that our sense of right and wrong—moral and immoral—is stronger than our basest urges. We may think, but we don’t act. It’s the difference between madmen and, well, men.”
“Look at me, Daniel,” Czarcik demanded, making a show of straining against the ropes. “You call this my decision? I’m tied up like a pig to the slaughter.”
Daniel smiled. “Let’s call it a gift, Detective. My gift to you. Now you have the luxury of telling yourself that there was nothing you could do. You were incapacitated. Forced to watch. This you can convince yourself of. At the very least, when this is all over, your colleagues will buy it.”
“You fucking hypocrite,” Czarcik spat, visibly angry and not caring if it showed. “You may talk a good game, but I’ve seen your work. Seen how much painstaking care went into it. You can justify it any way you want, but I know you like it too.”
Daniel took a few steps toward Czarcik until he was standing directly in front of him. “That’s where you’re wrong, Detective.” He leaned down until he was only inches from Czarcik’s face, their noses practically touching. “I fucking love it.”
He spoke the last two words with such a dramatic flourish that he looked like an overacting silent movie star.
Czarcik wondered how much of this transformation from mild-mannered husband to serial killer was nothing more than a physiological effect of the tumor. How much of it was from the knowledge that he was in fact dying? How much was a repressed bloodlust given life by a convenient excuse? And how relevant were any of the reasons for his behavior, other than the fact that Czarcik’s one job was to bring Daniel to justice?
Leaving Czarcik with spittle on his face, Daniel walked over to his current prize.
He stood in front of the priest as Dyer averted his eyes. He dropped to one knee and reached underneath the priest’s chair. “How many children did you have, you son of a bitch?” Daniel asked, before turning the handle of the contraption in a clockwise rotation.
Father Dyer raised his head, like a newborn bird being fed, and screamed. Czarcik watched, too curious to take any pleasure in Dyer’s torment.
Daniel let go of the reel and stood up, fresh blood splattered all over his latex gloves. Again, as if reading Czarcik’s mind, he explained, “It’s just a commercial-grade plumbing snake. The kind that plumbers use. The outer coat is covered in metal scales for maximum flexibility. Almost like a snake, but razor sharp. In a ceramic bowl, through copper and PVC pipes, it doesn’t cause any damage. But a human being’s gastrointestinal canal is made of less sturdy stuff.”
He snapped his wrist, sending drops of blood to the floor. “As you’ve no doubt guessed, I inserted the device into our dear father’s rectum.”
Czarcik had to give Daniel credit, if not some measure of respect; he was a modern-day Hammurabi.
Father Dyer’s screams settled into a low moan.
Something was gnawing at Czarcik. It wasn’t that the man in front of him was about to meet his end in one of the most painful ways imaginable. That actually seemed fitting. What had been bothering him, almost since the beginning, was that he still didn’t know what his ultimate role was in Daniel’s grand plan.
Daniel was the enigma he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, like an ancient riddle that turned to sand through his fingers just as it was about to be solved. If Daniel had wanted Czarcik dead, he’d had ample opportunities to kill him already, not least of them twenty minutes ago when the detective was as helpless as a patient under heavy anesthesia.
Nor was Daniel someone who ostensibly relished the chase. He didn’t send taunting notes to the police or press. He had no desire to ensure his crimes lived on in infamy, like most garden-variety lunatics who wanted to be known for something. He was just an unknown angel of death, cutting a swath across the belly of the country.
This made him one of the most modestly effective serial killers in recent memory. And that is what he was—a serial killer. Despite his self-proclaimed moral superiority, in the eyes of the law, he was no different from a Berkowitz, Dahmer, or Bundy.
Czarcik was so busy psychoanalyzing their master of ceremonies it took him a moment to realize that Dyer was screaming once again.
Although Czarcik knew he was in no immediate danger, he figured he should still mount an escape plan. His hands weren’t tied particularly tightly, but they were bound in
such a way that he had no leverage or range of motion. So even if he managed to get ahold of some makeshift cutting tool, there was no way he could manipulate it properly.
What he could do was move the chair, at least a little. While he might have been tied to the chair, the chair wasn’t secured to the floor.
Unfortunately there was nothing in the immediate vicinity against which Czarcik could scrape the ropes binding his wrists. The closest piece of furniture was the couch, a few feet to his left, but that was covered in soft fabric.
Underneath Father Dyer’s chair, a puddle of blood had begun to pool.
For the first time, Father Dyer emitted not only a scream, but a word. “Mercy.” It was music to Daniel’s ears. He flicked his fingers toward the floor, shaking off some blood, and stood up.
Daniel took Dyer by the face, his thumb pressed firmly into one cheek while his other four fingers dug into the other side of the priest’s face. “How many of them begged for mercy, you fucking animal? How many of them?”
“All of them,” the priest replied quietly.
With the focus momentarily off him, Czarcik looked around desperately for the closest object that could conceivably cut through the ropes. Halfway between him and Father Dyer, just off his left knee, was a heavy marble end table with chipped edges. It was a long shot even with ample time. Plus, Czarcik didn’t think Daniel would allow him to shuffle his chair over, inch by inch, until he was close enough to try.
But Daniel was still busy with the priest. Getting worked up. “Then tell me, Father, why should I show you that which you refused to show others? Even the youngest and most vulnerable in your care.”
Czarcik could tell that Dyer was searching for the right answer. The answer that might save him. “Because you’re a righteous man. And I’m a broken old man.”
“Save me your insincere self-loathing, Father. I’m obviously not righteous, just an ordinary man doing his part to bring some sense of order to the universe. You’re a child rapist of the worst order. So you’re going to have to do better than that.”
Rain Will Come Page 24