City of Heretics (29 page)

The first one got him in the groin, shredding his cowboy jeans and tearing away a good chunk of him. He dropped his gun, screaming, and the second shot took off the top of his head, throwing blood and brains all over the gravel behind him.

Crowe dropped down again, half-expecting more bullets, but the parking lot was suddenly quiet. No Welling or Murke.

His ears rang, and raw adrenalin still roared through him. He waited five seconds, ten. Nothing.

Wills lay on his back in the gravel. Crowe stood up warily, gun still ready, and made his way over.

Wills’ eyes were still open, his chest still moving up and down. Crowe crouched next to him, said, “How the hell did you find me here?”

Wills laughed weakly. Blood bubbled on his lips. “Stupid fuck,” he croaked. “You left a… left a goddamn pamphlet. Stupid fuck…”

He pointed weakly at his coat pocket. Crowe reached in, fingers closing on crumpled paper, pulled it out.

The pamphlet about the Society of Christ the Fisher. The one he’d crumpled and tossed away in his motel room, back in Memphis.

Crowe sighed, tossed it over his shoulder.

Wills said, “You… you’re under arrest, Crowe.”  And he laughed again, even weaker. Crowe shook his head, chuckled.

“Ah, well,” Wills said. “I reckon that ain’t… gonna work out after all.”

“No, Wills, I reckon not.”

“At least tell me… what the fuck is goin’ on here?”

He died before Crowe could answer. Eyes closed, head rolled over to the left, chest stopped moving. The question still on his lips.

Crowe stood up.

From the trunk of the BMW, Vitower was still wailing and carrying on. Crowe was amazed by that; not a single bullet had penetrated the trunk, apparently.

So there were two of them alive—no, four. Welling and Murke were still around somewhere, and that wouldn’t stand.

Fortunately, Crowe had a damn good idea where they’d gone to.

There was no shortage of things lying around that could be used to kill people; Crowe took the shotgun, which still had two shells in it, and Wills’ .357, along with his last speed loader, and made his way across the road and into the woods, headed in the rough direction of the church.

It was getting colder, but he barely felt it now. He moved fast through the woods, bare feet dead to pain now and crunching dead leaves stiff with frost. Dead bare branches struck his face. Two or three times he tripped, just like before, but this time he never fell, just kept moving.

Just as he was starting to think he’d veered too far off course, he saw the side of the church through the trees. He crouched down, shotgun ready, and crept slowly forward.

Welling and Murke were on the narrow steps leading to the front double doors. Welling was fumbling with a set of keys, trying to get it unlocked. “He’ll be coming after us,” he was telling Murke. “He’s got it bad for you, Peter. We’re gonna have to—damnit!”

He’d dropped the keys. They clattered on the concrete steps and he reached down for them. Still doing the faithful pet thing, Murke bent first and scooped them up.

“Here you go, Mr. Welling,” he said, and Crowe was surprised at the lightness, the almost adolescent quality, of his voice.

Welling took the keys and again began working at the lock. He said, “There’s another gun in the office. I’m going to—“

Crowe came out of the woods, cocked the shotgun and fired.

That tell-tale
ka-shunk
gave them all the heads up they needed. At the sound of it, both men dropped. Welling went straight down, Murke dove off the steps. The blast pock-marked the double doors and shattered the lock that Welling had been trying to open.

The door swung in, and Welling, unhurt, dove inside the church. Murke rolled to his feet like a gymnast, charged at Crowe. He had a Bowie knife in his right hand.

Crowe cocked the shotgun again, started to pull the trigger, but Murke barreled into him and the shot went wild, into the sky. Both of them hit the hard dirt between the trees and the church parking lot.

On top, Murke tried to slash with the knife. He had his left hand around Crowe’s throat, pushing him down. Crowe blocked the knife with the barrel of the shotgun, and then slammed the butt into Murke’s head. Murke seemed to barely notice it. Crowe hit him with it again, and Murke brought the knife down hard.

Crowe pushed up hard enough to throw his aim off. The knife went into the dirt by Crowe’s head. He pounded Murke in the ear with his right fist, pushed the shotgun butt against Murke’s throat, trying to gain traction. Murke grunted as the butt grinded against his Adam’s apple, and Crowe hit him again with his right, three, four times in the ear.

Murke weakened, finally let go of Crowe’s throat to try and get a grip on his hand—Crowe used that second to push up and throw him off.

Now Murke was on his back and Crowe was getting to his feet. The shotgun was empty. He threw it aside, plucked Murke’s knife up out of the ground. Murke saw him coming toward him with his own knife, and stark fear showed in his eyes.

The cat came out of the woods then, as if it had been following the whole time.

Its black fur was sleek with blood. The white cross on its head glowed in the darkness, reflecting the moonlight like a pale lantern. It walked right up to Crowe, calm, in no hurry. At his feet it stopped, and the glittering green eyes gazed up at him, and then at Murke.

Murke saw it too. He looked at it, sudden horror twisting his features.

Crowe grinned nastily. “Recognize it, Murke?  You recognize the cat you killed, when you were just a little tiny psychopath?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, in his weird, little kid voice. “No, no, no… that can’t be.”

The cat took a step toward him, meowed. Murke tried to scoot away from it on his back. The cat kept coming, meowing. It rubbed against his shoe, leaving a stain of blood.

Murke kept shaking his head, saying, “No, no, no,” but the cat didn’t disappear, didn’t evaporate in a puff of smoke. It just kept coming toward him, meowing.

Crowe laughed. “Your first victim, Murke. Your very first. Who’d have thought it would be the one to come back for you.”

Murke had pulled himself backwards all the way to the church steps, his eyes never leaving the Ghost Cat, his head never stopping its shaking.

The cat hissed at him, spitting blood, and Murke screamed.

Crowe took the three steps toward him, lifted him up by his coat collar, and slashed the knife across his throat. Murke gurgled, spewing blood, and was dead before Crowe even dropped him.

The Ghost Cat was already gone by the time Crowe looked around. Not a sign of it anywhere. It was as if it had never existed. Just like a cat, Crowe supposed, not sticking around to express its gratitude or anything.

But it wasn’t in his head; Murke had seen it too. Strangely, Crowe found himself thankful for that.

Welling was still in the church, but Crowe wasn’t about to go in and play games with him. He went over to the side of the building, where he’d left the gas can behind the dead shrubs. He uncapped it and began pouring.

He made his way around the entire church, making sure to splash some along the bottom of the back door and at the two windows on the side. Most of it he poured over Murke’s body, sprawled out at the bottom of the steps.

When it was empty, he tossed the can across the parking lot. It bounced two or three times before coming to rest in the gravel.

“Welling,” Crowe yelled. “Come out.”

From inside, Welling screamed back, “Come in and get me, you motherfucker!”

Not exactly language befitting a man of faith. Crowe shrugged. Truthfully, he was happy Welling wasn’t listening. At the moment, he wanted nothing more than for Welling to burn.

He reached in his pocket for the matches he’d nicked from the motel outside Murfreesboro. It took two or three tries, but he managed to get one lit, touched it to the whole book of them. He tossed the burning book at Murke’s body.

Murke went up like a bonfire, and heat blossomed out with the flames, so sudden Crowe had to take a step back, certain he was about to catch fire himself.

Within seconds, the fire had snaked around the entire church, encircling it completely, flames licking and crackling and roaring. Through the open door, Crowe could see that they hadn’t reached the inside yet, but it would only be a matter of minutes.

He stood near the bottom of the steps, as close as he could without being burned himself, and pulled out the .357. He waited.

To his surprise, Welling didn’t come running right out. The fucker was going to see it through.

The fire ate away at the church from the outside in, black smoke billowing into the night sky and the sound of the flames almost deafening. They crawled up the sides of the church, higher and higher, until the steeple on top caught fire as well. The place looked like a birthday cake that had gone horribly amiss.

Crowe could see flames on the inside now. Part of the church collapsed, timbers creaking and moaning. The windows shattered. The front doors burst into flame.

There was a loud cracking sound from the steeple, and Crowe looked up just in time to see it begin to fall sideways. It crashed down, taking out part of the roof, and monstrous flames followed it to the gravel below.

Welling finally came out, screaming. He was on fire. It had caught his hair, and he ran out the front doors, batting at his head, screeching, “Help me!  Help me!”

When he was halfway down the stairs Crowe raised the .357 and shot him in the chest twice.

It wasn’t a mercy killing. He’d have shot him anyway.

He dropped next to Murke. The flames consumed him.

Crowe stood there for a long time, watching the fire destroy the church, watching the flames blacken the two corpses. The heat felt good.

No fire engine came. No citizens showed up to see what was going on. No cops with flashing lights. Nothing. It was as if everyone expected it and no one cared.

After a while, Crowe sighed, put the gun in his pocket, and headed back through the woods to the motel.

Vitower was still in the trunk of the BMW, but he’d stopped struggling. When he saw Crowe, his eyes bulged out, but he didn’t move.

Crowe used Murke’s knife to cut the scarf off him. He pulled the ball out of Vitower’s mouth. Vitower coughed, spat, tried to suck breath.

“Easy,” Crowe said. “Breath slow or you’ll throw up.”

He gasped, tried to get his breathing under control. Crowe gave him a minute. Finally, he said, “Crowe. Jesus fucking Christ. Thank God. Thank God for you… Jesus.”  He coughed some more. Then, “Get me out of these knots. Help me. Thank God, Crowe, you saved my life. I don’t know… I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Crowe said, shot him in the head, and slammed the trunk closed.

A black wreath hung on the front door. Crowe touched it. Plastic.

He knocked and waited, knocked again, but no one answered. Inside, someone was sobbing, very quietly. Crowe tried the knob and found the door was unlocked, so he went in.

Dallas was on the sofa, her legs pulled up under her, an open bottle on the table and a half-full glass. Her dress was black and her face white and puffy, mascara smeared. She clutched a wadded-up ball of tissue in her pale hand and didn’t look up as Crowe shut the door behind him.

He’d taken two days to get back to Memphis, stopping frequently to get out of the car and stretch or think. The first night he’d pulled off in a rest stop and slept, the second night he’d actually gotten a room. He hadn’t been in any hurry to get back. The things he had to do here weren’t pressing. The cold spell had broken in the meantime, and it felt almost like spring.

But in the apartment, it was still winter. Crowe stood in the middle of the living room, looking at her, and finally her blood-shot eyes set on him. He said, “What’s going on?”

Her mouth twisted hard, as if fighting with the sounds that wanted to come out of them. She said, “He’s dead. They killed him.”

“What?”

“They killed him. They killed him. Right in his… right in his bed.”

Fresh tears streamed down her already grief-ravaged face and she looked away.

A bedroom door opened and there was Chester. He wore a rumpled black suit and his face was drawn and blank. Very softly, he said, “Crowe.”

Crowe nodded at him.

Chester motioned to follow him back into the bedroom. Crowe glanced at Dallas. She wasn’t paying any attention anymore. It was as if he’d already left the room. Crowe followed Chester. In the hall, he glanced through the open door into the other bedroom, the boy’s, and saw police tape and the mattress propped up against the wall and covered in plastic. It was black with blood.

Chester closed the door behind them, and sat heavily on the edge of his bed. Crowe stayed near the door and waited him out. He wasn’t crying, but he had been. He looked as if he was fresh-out of tears for the moment.

Crowe said, “The boy.”

Chester swallowed hard, and when he spoke his voice was raspy and weak. “They killed him. That… that church group Dallas joined. They came in the night and… and we never even heard them. Maybe it was just one guy, I don’t know. But we never even heard. We found him in the morning. In the morning.”

He looked up at Crowe. “He died all alone, Crowe. He was all alone. He must’ve been… he must’ve been so scared…”

“Chester—“

“Jesus, just a boy, all alone. Jesus. Oh God. They… they cut his throat, Crowe.”

Crowe became aware of his hands, clenching and unclenching like crazy. He tried to stop them, but couldn’t. He felt the weight of the gun in his pocket, the one he’d intended to use on Chester.

Chester said, “We found him in the morning and he was so still. He was so still, Crowe. Like a… like a doll. Oh God. My boy. My son…”

And the tears started, tears he probably thought had dried up for good. He hid his face in his hands and sobbed and Crowe waited.

After a moment, Crowe said, “Chester.”

Chester looked up, startled, as if he’d forgotten Crowe was there. And something changed in his face. Something snapped and he stood up very suddenly and hissed, “He was
my
son. You understand, Crowe? 
Mine
. I… I raised him and I loved him. He was mine. You understand?”