Chosen (30 page)

It was three o’clock in the morning. Unafraid of being detected, he leaned nonchalantly against a red maple tree and stared at the house. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

The moon, stark in the black cloudless sky, was incapable of dispelling the darkness that dressed the dwelling as it gazed indifferently down on the tract houses in the town of Paradise, Illinois.

But he didn’t need moonlight, or the feeble light from the sparsely populated streetlamps, to know that he was at the right place.

He had been so sure the last time, so certain that they were finally dead, that they had not eluded the justice only he was capable of meting out.

But they
had
escaped. And had run to this nothing house, this nothing street, this anonymous, middle-America neighborhood that held no special interest to anyone but the inhabitants.

And him.

Oh, yes, he was very interested in Mr. and Mrs. Nondescript. They could paint on friendly, trustworthy, and solicitous faces, but he knew them, knew their hearts and their murderous souls.

Baby killers.

His smile became a reality as, with an intake of breath, he shifted away from the shelter of the tree. In two strides, he was across the sidewalk to stand at the edge of the walkway that led to the front porch.

Every detail of this house was locked into his memory. He had driven by during the day, making sure he could find it in the dark. His confidence was absolute: the baby killers were inside. Still alive, still pretending to conform to the society that harbored them.

To the right of the front door, an indistinct shadow he knew to be a double bench swing hung from large chains bolted into the crossbeam of the porch. More shadows clung to the left of the walkway; yellow and orange chrysanthemums. The shadows to the right were rose bushes—red, pink, and yellow. He also knew that dandelions were scattered across the poorly manicured lawn which was beginning to creep across the concrete walkway.

He took a few steps, and a breeze struck the left side of his face. He scowled. Strange for this time of year, a wind from the north. And stranger yet, this time of the morning.

The wind became more brisk. Leaves in the trees shivered as the air softly sighed through the branches. The rose bushes swayed gracefully, first to the right then to the left, while the chrysanthemums bent unnaturally in the opposite direction ... left then right. Back and forth, right then left, left then right, back and...

Something hit his shoe. Momentarily he took his eyes off the house and the moving flowers to glance down at the ground. What he saw made his heart beat quicken. Small pebbles skittered on the walkway, playing follow-the-leader in a circle around his feet.

And then he felt the universe
shift
. There was just no other word for it. The house still stood before him, the shadows still where they had been a moment before. But he sensed a wrongness in everything around him.

The air grew heavy with a combination of odors that were recognizable and repulsive. There was the throat-clogging bite of burnt popcorn, the nauseous stench of animal waste, the acrid odor of body sweat—and maybe the sulfurous stink of rotten eggs? But there was something even darker beneath the obvious smells ... something putrefied, almost sweet.

The odors intensified. The grass on either side of the walkway trembled. He heard the groan of the porch swing as it began to move forward then back, slowly at first, then faster. The air thickened. It suddenly became more difficult to breath.

A shadow materialized on the steps leading to the porch. The corners of his mouth drew up in a wide smile that never reached his eyes. The tune he hummed ceaselessly picked up in tempo as he took another step.

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
...

And now here they were, face to face, in suburban Chicago. The fricative wind hammered his body, tearing at his clothes. Debris in the form of rocks, glass, twigs, and dirt abraded his skin, opening a gash above his right eye, scoring deep scratches through his pants and shirt to cause bleeding on his legs and arms.

Heat seared his face. He laughed when his mind filled with a vision of himself at the end of a noose, dying from strangulation, yet still in tremendous pain.

Through his chaotic thoughts, Mariah understood the madness that had created the monster, recognizing it for what it was. And she hesitated.

Reason decreed that he should be brought to trial, to be sentenced for the murders he had committed, for the suffering he had caused so many families. But would he? She ground her teeth in frustration as she envisioned Gregory Sinclair living out the rest of his life at the expense of the taxpayers, coddled by psychiatrists in their futile attempt to cure him, protected by a society full of bleeding hearts that pitied his circumstances—they who would believe he had been punished enough by the physical loss of his children and the mental loss of his wife.

Even worse: would he be set free on some legal technicality? No justice for the families who had lost their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. The mockery of justice would be for this man who had refused the help he needed when he needed it, to now get the help he could no longer use.

The tune in Gregory’s head reached a crescendo, the pain causing his eyes to turn bloodshot and his nose to bleed. The shadowy figure brightened and began to take on substance. His eyes widened but his trademark grin never wavered. Mariah Carpenter was no longer a vision. His worst nightmare was as solid as the ground he stood on.

Then Sinclair laughed, a chuckle wet with derision and rancor.

“I’m honored. At last I am in the presence of the great goody-two-shoes who finds abducted children,” he said. “How delightful. Where’s your white steed, your shining halo, your angel’s wings?

“You’re nothing but a silly disappointment. You had the unprecedented opportunity to destroy those depraved child molesters, and what did you do? Nothing. They’ll all be back on the street after the court slaps them on the wrists.

“But the Canadian ... Malchelosse? Finally, I thought, surely she’s not going to let him get away with it. I would have split his head right down the middle, or maybe given him an aneurism. But you? You gave him a fucking
headache
.”

Mariah was speechless. She had never been in the presence of anything so evil, so deranged. His words hammered at her head, stabbing at her heart. She realized it was the insanity that had not only given his latent psychic talents the ability to block her from invading his mind, but also to peruse her memories. And he had found her civility, her humanity, a joke.

His voice sounded oily, hoarse with derision. “Then you got another shot. Everett Hinckley. I was so sure you had learned from your previous mistake and was going to rip his heart out. You wanted to, I know you did. But nature intervened at the last moment with that miserable turd of a blood clot. Saved you from proving again that you’re nothing but chicken shit.

“You’re pathetic, pitiful, nothing but a goddamn punk.” The more Gregory talked, the cockier he became. “And to think for a minute that I was actually afraid of you.

“And your last embarrassment: Anthony Santatoro. He
really
pissed you off. You wanted his death in the worst way. And you were soooo close. I felt that righteous rage building inside you. Even though he was ten times worse than all the child molesters put together, you still let him live.”

He threw his head back theatrically and laughed before taking a step in her direction. “I’ll never stand trial, you fucking bitch. I’m a rich man and can afford the sleaziest lawyers money can buy. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing will bring back the twenty-four people I killed. If the Cooleys had just stayed dead, I wouldn’t have needed to keep hunting them down.

“Just step aside, loser, and let me make it twenty-six. You don’t have the guts to stop me.” He grinned, his eyes as dead as a corpse.

Her stomach churned with acidic bile. Everything he said was the truth. Ingrained morality and a predilection toward obeying authority had stopped her from doing what she had really wanted to do.

He took another step toward her, his eyes locked onto hers. In the dark of the early morning, with her mind clouded with doubts, Mariah never saw his hand slide into his pocket.

Between one heartbeat and the next, he thumbed the stopper off the tube of ricin and threw the entire contents into Mariah’s face.

When Mariah Carpenter found Zaphiel Engle, a
Healing
did not take place. Something in her body changed, but it was never apparent. However, his
Finding
brought with it something that was beyond anything psychic she could do.

It had to do with her subconscious, located in what used to be called the reptilian brain. This part of the limbic system awakens when self-protective instincts need to be primed.

The average person’s subconscious is only a few hundred milliseconds ahead of their conscious processes. However, between the
Visitation
and the second injection of the alien substance, Mariah’s subconscious brain was now thousands of milliseconds ahead.

It had come into play only once: the day Damion Lazote aimed his Colt at her and fired. Fully activated, her subconscious had enlisted her psychic powers and deflected the bullet over her head.

Mariah’s subconscious saw the powder leave the vial and, before it hit her face, acted on its own. A great burst of air came from her lungs—and the entire contents of the vial of ricin powder blew back into Sinclair’s face.

Gregory Sinclair had overplayed his hand. His taunts, thrown in her face along with the poison, caused something atavistic and primal to twist her heart with a rage that would not be denied.

Mariah Carpenter was beyond forgiveness, beyond mercy, beyond what she had fought so hard to hold on to ...her humanity. She heard the words of the man who had come to her, who had injected her with God only knew what, and had joined his soul to hers:

There comes to you a test of your might. A decision you will make based on who you are and what you have become
—
and what you are becoming. If your choice be not the correct one, the hope to fulfill an ancient Prophecy dies. Ask me not: I cannot divulge further
.

If this was the test of her humanity, she would fail miserably.

Pent up violence, hidden beneath a thin veneer of civility, erupted. Its seduction became her universe.

She should have been terrified, devastated by the wild glee filling her with the desire to annihilate this man. She should have been appalled at what she was about to do: losing herself to the deceptive rightness.

Although fully aware of the consequences, Mariah Carpenter no longer cared. Maybe in time she would come to regret this impulsive decision. But not now. And there was no one here to talk her down, to infuse reason into this cauldron of roiling emotions.

Now was the time to relinquish the tight control she always tried to maintain;

Now was the time to give over to the power she continually thwarted in the name of decency and compassion;

Now was the time to devour the forbidden fruit and get tossed out of the garden of human kindness.

Mariah was tired of the deceptions necessary to assure people that she was still benign, still intent solely on goodness—in essence, still human, still one of them. She scintillated as heat surged through her body. She vibrated, holding back just enough to make the sweet release last longer.

The individual before her would pay for the horrific deeds he had committed. And yes, right or wrong, she would be his judge and jury.

From one heartbeat to the next, the powder he had released, every grain, every atom, hit him in the face. He gasped, inhaling particles forcefully into his lungs. He began to cough violently as his lungs rapidly filled with fluid. What didn’t become trapped in his lungs flew into his eyes which immediately burst blood vessels in the sclerotic layers. His brain felt like it was on fire.

As he gasped for air, he saw her eyes through a blinding haze. Retribution blazed therein. Never before had he been so frightened. Gone was his assuredness of her timidity, her weakness. Gone was the fixed smile that had been plastered on his face for all the years he had been the circus clown.

He fell to his knees, clutching his chest and, for the first time since the death of his children, his eyes lost the glare of mental illness.

She gazed down at the human wreck before her, sympathy for him no longer possible. And as the light dimmed and his eyes glazed over, she made her final pronouncement, her voice low and hot.

“I am not your worst nightmare, Gregory Sinclair. I am your
last
nightmare.”

Gabriel Winters felt like he balanced precariously on a high wire as he waited for the San Francisco FBI Bureau Chief, Samuel Feliciano, to consider the information he had just received. Winters knew what must be going on in the chief’s mind; the evidence of internal turmoil was obvious on the normally expressionless face.

Feliciano now stood at the windows, fists jammed into his pockets, staring out at the deepening twilight. Craig Osterman, Winters’ immediate supervisor, shifted slightly besides Winters, unable to maintain the statue-like pose of his subordinate. He was there as a courtesy only. The chain of command must be upheld, even though the information presented to Osterman, and the decision necessary, was way over his head.

Winters breathed evenly, his mind reliving the extraordinary events of the previous day.

He had dismissed all the agents on duty. One had fallen asleep on the couch behind him and one had gone upstairs to the spare bedroom to get a few hours’ sleep. The other two were sent home.

He would have wished Raphael gone also, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen without a scene. His gut told him that something extreme was going to happen. Maybe it was better that he had a witness.

When the lavender light began to swirl around Mariah, he actually relaxed. Whatever was going to happen had finally begun. When the light deepened to purple, his heart rate accelerated slightly.

But when a sudden flash of intense blue light appeared directly in front of her, he was totally unprepared. Without conscious thought, one hand went to the sliding glass door handle, the other moving toward his gun as he prepared to leave the safety of the house and brave the maelstrom of debris swirling around the woman. It was only Raphael’s hand on his arm that brought him back to reality, to the uselessness of the gesture of protection.

Something moved inside that blinding light, of that he was sure. He saw Mariah lean into it and for the first time in his life, Gabriel Winters experienced deep, gut-wrenching fear. His mind balked as he tried to find reason and logic for what he was witnessing.

No more than a few minutes passed when the blue light faded, and Mariah was once again alone. But if he thought that he was through being shocked, he was mistaken.

The purple light deepened until it was nearly black. And then, Mariah Carpenter disappeared. “Winked out” came to his mind. Solid as the house he stood in one minute, gone the next.

His heart beat erratically as he heard Raphael say, “What the fuck....?” He was thunderstruck, unable to wrap his logical, rational mind around what happened. The two men stared at each other. Gabriel recovered his equilibrium first.

Into the silence that seemed to stretch over a wide chasm, he heard his voice say, “Well, it looks like our lady has developed a new trick.”

Stunned, his eyes stricken, Thomas Raphael exhaled sharply. “I ... I don’t ... don’t even know what to say. This is ... beyond anything I can imagine.” Winters nodded in sympathy. He was in total agreement.

“What do we do?” Thomas nearly whispered.

“Nothing,” Winters replied. “We wait. She’ll be back.” Thomas seemed to think that over for a minute before nodding. As the reality of what she had done sank in, one prayed for her safe return: the other was envisioning the incredible possibilities this new talent engendered.

Gabriel’s musings were interrupted as the bureau chief shifted away from the window and stood before him. Osterman might as well have not been in the room.

“Okay. I don’t see any other way out of this. We’ll have to do it your way,” Feliciano said. Winters never moved. He knew the chief wasn’t through.

“Clearly, Mariah Carpenter has committed murder. And I’m no longer so sure Hinckley died naturally.” Gabriel remained still. The chief was not expecting a response.

“Bringing her to trial would become a catastrophe of events. The media won’t even have to sensationalize this. I mean, how much more fantastical could it get? While it appears to be a clear case of premeditated murder, it would be impossible for her to receive a fair trial. Where the hell would you find an impartial jury? A jury of her peers? Every faction imaginable would be weighing in on their own verdict.”

Winters remained motionless, and the chief continued. “People would be scared to death of her. Even though she’s used her extraordinary abilities for a wonderful purpose in the past, no one is going to be able to trust her again. They’re going to want her ... eliminated.”

He paused, a look of fear crossing his face. “Winters, do you think she can be controlled? I doubt we could even use the normal death penalty methods on her at this point. Tell me what you have in mind.”

Gabriel Winters was not about to tell the FBI bureau chief of his CIA affiliation. It would create a tremendous clash of government titans that the two agencies might never recover from. Instead, he said, “In all honesty, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.” He could see that Feliciano was hanging on his every word, desperate for Winters to assuage his fears.

“When she returned to the back yard, she came right to me and turned herself in, fully prepared to accept the consequences. She didn’t try to justify taking Sinclair’s life, she just flat out told me why she felt the system would fail to punish him sufficiently and give the families of his victims’ justice.

“But if you had seen the look on her face ... the sadness, the grief ... you would know she hadn’t made her decision lightly. She wasn’t cocky, or gloating, or even happy that she killed him. I would even say that she might have frightened herself.”

At least part of what he said was true. Yes, she hadn’t been arrogant or happy, but she definitely wasn’t the least bit afraid. In fact, she had been calm and rational.

He let his words sink in, and saw hope flit across Feliciano’s face. “She knows what she did was wrong, and I’m sure she took no pleasure in it. I will tell you, however, that she was very emphatic about one thing: given the same set of circumstances, she would do it again.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Winters saw Osterman nod, a movement echoed by the chief. It was what they were hoping for. While Mariah Carpenter was contrite, she had not turned rogue with the immense power that was hers. She was lucid and in control. And they chose to believe that she was greatly saddened by what she felt she did.

“Okay, here are the details,” Winters said, assuming command. “There will be great rejoicing in the local newspapers which will be picked up by all the wire services. Mariah Carpenter saved two people from dying. The list of his previous murders will become public record and everyone will be relieved that this maniac has been stopped.

“The medical examiner’s report will state, truthfully, that Sinclair swallowed enough ricin to kill ten people. Those who lost someone to this fiend will at least feel vindicated. We’ll tell the press that Mariah Carpenter found him, just like she has the children, and that she notified us. When agents surrounded him before entering the house of his intended victims, he threw the vial of ricin in his face rather than stand trial.”

Feliciano’s approval was evident as his head nodded up and down like a bobblehead doll. The FBI would still take some heat for not finding this maniac sooner, but when people read how intelligently these murders were planned, they would come to accept it.

“One more thing,” Gabriel said, smiling in anticipation of the chief’s reaction to what would be good press for the feds. “Mariah Carpenter wants to visit the families of Sinclair’s victims, to express her condolences, and apologize personally for not being able to find him sooner. It was her idea, and she’s adamant about it.”

At this point, Feliciano’s shoulders sagged with relief and he rubbed his hands together. “That’s great. Fantastic. Our Public Relations people will be all over this, her “condolence tour” so to speak. This good publicity will shunt any suspicion people will have for her complicity in Sinclair’s death.”