Czarcik strained against the ropes. Daniel wasn’t paying attention, his focus exclusively on Dyer.
“Tell me something, Father. And answer me honestly, or there will be consequences. Do you understand me?”
Father Dyer nodded. His face was the color of meat gone bad.
“Do you even believe in Hell?” Daniel asked.
Father Dyer took his time, then shook his head.
“Thank you for your honesty. This is something we have in common; I don’t either. I believe that once I release you from your mortal coil, you’re simply going to cease to exist. That’s why I need to make the little time you have left hell on earth.”
Underneath his chair, the pool of blood was rapidly expanding.
“Stop it, now!”
The outrage in Czarcik’s voice surprised Daniel. At worst, he’d pegged the detective as being apathetic toward his methods; at best, tacitly supportive. He was even more surprised when Czarcik hurled himself—well, more like lurched—forward.
What is he thinking? Daniel wondered. Czarcik hadn’t managed to free a single appendage. For all his trouble, he found himself facedown, still tied to the chair, with most of his weight borne by his knees and forehead.
Daniel looked down at the upturned man, impressed at his determination. “Jesus, Detective.” Czarcik ignored him and rolled himself into the nearby coffee table. Daniel watched with a combination of curiosity and pity. When he couldn’t bear to witness Czarcik’s struggle any longer, he bent down and lifted up the chair. The detective was heavier than he thought, strong and muscular. He righted him next to the coffee table. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Czarcik was breathing deeply, trying to catch his breath. “There’s no reason for you to keep me here. But if you insist on it, I’m going to do my job and try to stop you.”
Daniel laughed. “You are indefatigable, my friend. But please, don’t try that again. It’s futile, and I don’t want you knocking out a tooth. Or worse.”
Czarcik nodded, but the moment Daniel turned his attention back to Father Dyer, he started vigorously rubbing the rope binding his wrists against the sharp corner of the coffee table. It was like he was back in Boy Scouts, trying to make a fire with a pair of dry sticks.
Czarcik could tell Dyer didn’t have much time left. He watched as Daniel gave the handle another twist. The priest grew paler by the second.
The rope tied around Czarcik’s wrist was beginning to give. He didn’t know how many strands he had sliced through, or how many were left, but the tension was different. He could feel it.
Daniel grabbed hold of the snake handle like a man possessed, ready for the priest to finally meet his end.
At the very moment the priest went silent forever, his soul surely at the gates of Hell, Czarcik cut through the ropes.
He tried to time his dive perfectly with the exact moment he untied his ankles. But those ropes were tighter than he’d imagined, and he tripped forward. As he was falling, he reached for Daniel, who was transfixed by the priest, whose internal organs were now outside his body.
Czarcik reached for Daniel, his fingertips brushing him.
And then everything again went black.
It was his phone that jostled him awake. It was on the floor, right in the middle of a pool of Father Dyer’s blood.
His cheek was on the ground, the wood underneath it warm. He opened his top eye, the one farthest from the floor, and saw Father Dyer staring right back at him. Pupils dilated. Coal-black soul now gone.
Czarcik groaned and reached behind his head. Felt the egg-shaped protrusion. Took his hand away, looked at it, and was surprised not to find blood. Whatever had knocked him out hadn’t broken the skin. But his head hurt like hell. It felt like a bad hangover times twenty.
Again the phone rang. He knew he should answer it. Didn’t want to. He was in no condition to talk. Finally, the caller gave up.
The only thing Czarcik wanted to do was go back to sleep. Slip back into that blissful state of unconsciousness.
But instead, he forced himself up into a sitting position. He swooned. The room tilted forty-five degrees, and his stomach was in his throat. He turned away from the priest before vomiting all over the floor. Mild concussion, he told himself. Nothing to do but rest. After all, as a high school tailback, he had suffered far worse and been trotted right back onto the field after a whiff of smelling salts.
The blood around his BlackBerry had begun to congeal, so he plucked it out of the hardening puddle. He looked at the screen. Thirty-seven missed calls. Fourteen texts. They were all from Chloe, the last one only minutes ago. How long had he been out? he wondered.
He was just about to call her back when the phone rang again. Chloe. He hit Accept. “Hi.”
“Where the hell have you been?” She could barely conceal the panic in her voice. “I called you a hundred times. I thought you were . . . dead.” She hesitated, as if speaking the word might prove prescient.
“Not yet . . . although I feel like it.”
She sighed, the first breath she had taken since hearing his voice. “Where are you?” she asked.
Still suffering the effects of the concussion, he struggled to remember.
“Still in Tennessee?” she offered.
He closed his eyes tightly, allowing it to come back to him. The game of chicken with the high beams. Father Dyer. Daniel. Another murder. The pungent smell of blood and shit. Yes, he could remember, as much as he wished he could forget some of it. “Yes, still in Tennessee,” he answered. “Where are you?”
“Florida,” she replied. She was completely unaware of his head trauma, and consequently, how much it was affecting him. “When I couldn’t get ahold of you, I kind of freaked out. It didn’t make much sense to go to Tennessee, so I went right to the airport and bought a ticket for Miami. I landed only an hour or so ago.”
“Florida,” Czarcik repeated, as if the word was not one of the most well-known states, but a mysterious password he was forced to enunciate clearly. The pieces of his memory began to fall into place, like a game of Tetris. “Because that’s where the reform school is.”
“I knew you’d eventually end up there,” she said, finishing his thought. She paused, as if something just occurred to her. “Actually, why aren’t you already there?”
“Tennessee took longer than I anticipated.” It was all coming back to him now.
“Did something happen?” By something, she meant Daniel.
“He got what he wanted, Chloe. I couldn’t stop him. I was there the entire time, and I couldn’t do a goddamned thing.”
“Could he have killed you?” she asked.
“Many times over.”
Silence. Then she asked, “You think he’s here? In Florida?”
“I’m sure of it.”
More silence. “How soon can you be here?”
He pictured a map—Tennessee was one big state of Georgia away from Florida—and didn’t know how quickly he could get there. Especially in his condition. His head felt as if it were bouncing around a blast furnace. “I’m not sure. Let me . . . think. Get my bearings. I’ll call you back in an hour.”
“Leave your phone on,” she admonished. She had never heard him sound so uncertain. So vulnerable. It frightened her. “What should I do in the meantime?”
“Where are you now?” he asked, forgetting whether she had already told him.
“The airport bar.”
“Stay there. Have a few drinks. Once I’m on my way, I’ll call you, and we’ll make a plan.”
“OK,” she said, then waited. “Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Be careful. Please.”
He ended the call and realized that Father Dyer was still fixing him with his lifeless gaze.
“Burn in hell, you old bastard,” he said as he tried to stand up. The blood rushed to his head, and he fought back the urge to vomit again. He took a moment to steady himself against the marble table, amazed at how muc
h blood had been disgorged from the priest. If it wasn’t a full ten pints, it was close. There were also pieces of pink flesh scattered around the body that Czarcik pretended not to see. His stomach couldn’t handle it at the moment.
He walked slowly into the kitchen, aware he was probably dehydrated, and took a glass from the cabinet. But since he couldn’t remember exactly how Daniel had spiked his drink, he figured the safest thing to do was drink directly from the faucet. The water tasted tinny, but at least he knew it wasn’t tampered with. He drank until his stomach protested.
Czarcik had to get moving. He also needed a shower as badly as ever, so he made his way up the stairs to the second floor, glancing briefly at the door to the attic, through whose window he assumed Daniel had entered. Too bad The Alfred Hitchcock Hour was canceled decades ago. The last few hours would have made a particularly good episode. By the time he got to the upstairs bathroom, he was so exhausted he practically collapsed onto the toilet. He still didn’t have his legs back.
He took a few minutes to gather his strength. Then he managed to undress, get into the shower, and turn on the water as hot as he could tolerate. He refused to use the priest’s soap or shampoo, as if the man’s moral sickness could be transferred by inanimate objects. His towels were especially verboten. Czarcik simply stood in the middle of the bathroom, letting himself drip dry, aided by the light breeze from the ceiling fan.
Before leaving the house, he thought about siphoning some gas from his car, splashing it on the curtains and flammable furniture, and setting the whole place on fire. Then watching it go up in a huge conflagration, consigning the old priest’s corpse to a symbolic underworld.
But grand gestures weren’t his style.
Back in his car, Czarcik was slightly amused to find the Groucho mustache still resting on the front seat. He couldn’t believe it was less than twenty-four hours ago that he had been traipsing through backyards and dodging angry skunks. In the cold light of day, the mustache didn’t appear threatening; it appeared laughable. Nothing more than what it was: part of a dime-store costume. Even its significance was less dire. The game was almost over. Daniel could have eliminated Czarcik but had chosen to let him go. In his mind, the detective was no longer relevant. There was one final stop. One more place to mete out justice.
Czarcik pulled the Crown Vic away from the curb, into the street, and out of Father Dyer’s neighborhood. The priest would begin to rot, after which some nosey passersby would contact the police. But that could be weeks from now. There was no time for Czarcik to worry about it.
I have miles to go before I sleep, he thought to himself, wondering why that insipid poem from grammar school had popped back into his head.
TWENTY-SEVEN
1992
It was snowing lightly when Dr. Wilson Kuzma walked out of McCormick Hall, which housed his office.
The streets of Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago, were practically deserted. Most of the students were either hunkered down in their dorms or keeping warm in the nearby coffee shops and bars.
The professor pulled his wool coat tightly shut and glanced up and down the street. The neighborhood had made strides over the past few years. That still didn’t mean it was the kind of place you wanted to find yourself alone at night. But it was late, he was tired, and his car was in a parking deck only a few blocks away.
Dr. Kuzma walked underneath a crumbling concrete bridge decorated by gang graffiti and, more recently, rainbows painted by children from the local elementary school. Whenever a train crossed over, bits of colored concrete would shake loose and float down upon the passersby. An urban snowfall.
He had nearly cleared the bridge when a bum materialized from behind the last support column. The professor flinched instinctively and moved to the far side of the underpass.
“Spare a dime, mister?” The bum was well built. He didn’t look as if he had spent years on the street. He wore a thick down jacket. Expensive. If he came by it honestly, it must have been a donation. A black watch cap stopped at his eyebrows, and his face was covered in dirt.
“Not today, sorry,” Dr. Kuzma apologized.
“I said, ‘Spare a dime, mister?’”
“Look—”
The bum was pointing a gun at him. The professor could barely see the barrel poking out from inside the bum’s jacket. But there was no mistaking his posture. Or confidence. The bum knew what he was doing. This wasn’t a squirrelly meth head who had come across a weapon and hoped to make some quick cash.
“Just take my wallet, please. There’s some cash and a bunch of credit cards.” He reached slowly into the inside pocket of his coat.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, you fucking piece of shit.”
No, this was no ordinary robbery.
The bum led Dr. Kuzma to the parking deck, right over to the professor’s car. He motioned with the gun. “Give me your keys.”
“How’d you know—”
“Shut up, shut the fuck up.” He was angry, but it was a controlled rage. “I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen. You’re going to do exactly as I say. If you don’t, I’m going to kill you without thinking twice about it.” The professor shut up. “Now hand me the keys to your car.”
The bum took the keys and opened the passenger door of the professor’s Cadillac. “Get in, and put your hands on the dash. If you move them off the dash, say goodbye.” The professor slid into the seat, closed the door, and placed both hands palms down on the dashboard. The bum kept the gun trained on him the entire time, then slipped around the front of the car, opened the driver-side door, and got inside.
Dr. Kuzma glanced frantically around the parking garage, but it was empty. No help coming. The bum reached behind him and removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Give me your left wrist.” The professor hesitated. “It makes no difference to me if I kill you right now and toss you off the side of this garage.”
The professor took his hand off the dash and held it up. The bum snapped on the cuff. He then took the other cuff, pulled it toward the floor, and secured it to the metal bar that controlled the movement of the passenger seat. The chain on the handcuffs was short, and the professor was forced to remain hunched over.
“I can’t move.”
The bum punched him in the mouth. Even with leather gloves and little room to wind up, he managed to draw blood. The professor groaned, checked his teeth with his tongue, and went silent.
The lights of the Chicago Skyway illuminated the car more than any time since the interior light had been triggered in the parking garage.
Dr. Kuzma was curled up in the space between the seat and the dash. He turned his head to look at the driver. The bum’s eyes weren’t the rheumy eyes of an addict. They were clear, focused. And his face, while filthy, almost looked as if the dirt had been applied. Like stage makeup. Most curious of all, he didn’t smell. He didn’t have that rank stench of raw humanity that clung to those who lived on the street. In fact, if the professor closed his eyes and focused, he could almost imagine the scent of fading cologne.
He had been told not to speak, but they had been traveling for close to twenty minutes in silence. He didn’t believe the bum would kill him for trying to engage him. “Please, I have a wife and daughter.”
The bum looked at him. “You had another child?”
And then he knew. Knew why the bum didn’t move like a bum. Why he didn’t rob him. Why he didn’t smell. “Oh, God.”
As Indiana greeted them, the professor felt certain he was being taken to a specific place. The police officer, whatever his name was—Czarcik?—had no intention of killing him in the car. “You know, for someone with such an appreciation of philosophy, I’m a little disappointed,” Dr. Kuzma said.
Czarcik looked at him. The professor took this as his cue to continue.
“There are some people for whom the normal rules of society simply don’t apply.” He feigned disappointment. “I thought you might be one of them.”
Czarcik didn’t respond. “People like you and me . . . we can’t be burdened by these artificial constraints. These moral prisons that stifle our human and very normal desires.”
The officer’s mouth turned up in a slight smile. Was he reaching him? The professor continued. “The arbitrary laws of man must not be allowed—”
Czarcik’s right fist shot out like a mamba. It caught Dr. Kuzma right under his armpit, breaking two of his ribs. The professor let out a feline yelp, then commenced moaning softly.
The sound didn’t seem to bother Czarcik, who continued smiling.
Those who snidely refer to New Jersey as the “armpit of America” have never been to Gary, Indiana.
Even at this time of night, the toxic breath of the factories stained the cold lake air. Thick clouds of pollution hovered around the iron smokestacks, looking as solid as dirty ivory. There was no human activity. At least none visible from the highway. It was almost as if some ancient deity had declared this spit of lakeside real estate his personal ashtray.
Dr. Kuzma—sore, cramped, and increasingly desperate—tried another tack. “I’m a sick man. You must realize that?” Czarcik stared straight ahead. “You think a day goes by when I don’t struggle with the urge? The urge to punish myself for what I’ve done? To kill myself? Take me back. Take me back, and I’ll turn myself in. I’ll make a statement. I’ll admit to everything.”
Czarcik pulled the car off to the side of the road. “Admit to what?”
The professor swallowed hard, clearly in pain. “Admit to raping Genevieve. My daughter.”
Czarcik pressed the gun against the professor’s knee and pulled the trigger. The man fainted the moment his patella exploded into a thousand tiny fragments.
When Dr. Kuzma came to, they were no longer on the highway. The car had stopped. It was dark and cold inside. A thin layer of frost prevented him from seeing out the window.
As if reading his thoughts, Czarcik said, “We’re in the back of a paint factory that closed down years ago. This whole place is like a ghost town.”
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