Silent Mercy (44 page)
“Just watching the captain calms me.”
Maggie smiled at him. “This is nothing. They’re predicting six-foot swells later this week.”
“Where are you able to put us off?”
“You know Penikese?” she asked me.
“I haven’t been in years.”
“It’s pretty uninhabitable. A few primitive buildings the school maintains, but they’re completely shut down ’cause next weekend is Easter. I picked a teacher up about two weeks ago. There’s a jetty on the eastern end. If the rip doesn’t smash me up on it, it’s the best place to let you go.”
“Can you try for something a little more optimistic?” Mike asked.
Maggie flashed a big, pretty smile. “Hey, I can be as upbeat as the next guy, but there’s not much hope on Penikese. You sure you don’t want me to wait for you?”
Mike was clutching the rim of the life preserver that was mounted on the wall behind his bench. “What I’d really like you to do is play Paul Revere for us. Hightail it back to base and raise an armada for me. Come back with any able-bodied seamen you can find. You’ll get extra credit if they bring weapons.”
“That’s a deal, Detective,” she said. “We’re half a mile out. You get ready to offload.”
I stood up and steadied myself by holding on to the metal rails above my head. The color had drained from Mike’s face. I thought he was going to be sick.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he said. “I’m good.”
“Do you have any flashlights we can use?” I asked Maggie.
“Sure. Lift up the top of that bench.”
I removed two from her supply stash. “And this length of rope?”
“Go for it,” Maggie said. “It’s likely to be slippery on the rocks, so watch your step.”
She had killed the engine and was maneuvering the boat along the end of the jetty. She stepped to the side and tossed another rope around a rotting wooden upright that once must have been part of a pier to hold us in place long enough to disembark.
I stuffed one flashlight in my rear pocket and hoisted myself up on the gunwale of the sturdy boat. Mike slowly got to his feet, and while I wrapped the rope I had taken around my waist, he stepped off onto the large, moss-covered rocks of the jetty.
“Thanks a million, Maggie.”
“I’ll be back,” she said softly. “I promise. You watch yourselves, will you?”
“You keep your half of the deal and we’ll keep ours. See you later.” I pushed against the stern of the boat with one leg and waved her off.
The wind howled across the barren landscape. Scrubby trees bent and blew, and the spray from the waves dashing against the jetty drenched the calves of my jeans.
Mike started to walk toward land, taking deep breaths and being careful to step on the flattest rocks.
If either of us thought that moonlight might break through the mist to guide us onto the island, we were greatly mistaken. Our flashlights stayed lodged in our pockets. We were both unwilling to attract Zukov’s attention, hoping he hadn’t seen the lights of the boat.
The breaking of the waves was the only sound I could hear as we made our way forward, single file, and stepped at last on the hard earth of the desolate outpost.
“You recognize anything, Coop?” Mike said in a whisper.
I shook my head in the negative.
“Anywhere to hide?”
“A few wooden school buildings. Really small. We’re talking only ten or twelve kids here at any one time, living dorm-style, and a couple of teachers. I don’t know what’s left standing.”
A gull screeched as it flew overhead and I ducked at the sound, though it was nowhere near me.
“Stay close,” Mike said. “I’m flying blind, but let’s get going.”
I was on his heels as we started along the shoreline. We had only gone about twenty yards when the night sky was pierced by a bloodcurdling scream.
Mike reached back for my hand and squeezed it. “He’s made us, Coop. He’s putting on a show for our benefit.”
“You really think he saw us land?”
“He wants an audience for his next silencing, kid. That wasn’t one of your Penikese ghosts.”
“I know that, Mike.”
It was the voice of Chastity Grant, who’d been carried to this pitiful island to be tortured and killed.
FIFTY-ONE
“WE
have to show ourselves,” I said to Mike. “He’ll go on torturing her until we do.”
have to show ourselves,” I said to Mike. “He’ll go on torturing her until we do.”
“Correction, Coop. I’ll show myself. You’ll be my fogenshrouded second, okay? You’ll hang back until we know the lay of the land.”
There was no point challenging his machismo until we knew what Fyodor Zukov was doing to his prey.
“Where did it sound like her scream was coming from?”
Chat’s cry had resonated around us like a thunderclap, carrying its mournful wail high above the open space of the small island.
“Everywhere,” Mike said. “What’s the shoreline like?”
“At low tide like this, there’s a spit of sand—well, sand and rocks—that rings the place.”
“That’s how we’ll start, on the perimeter.”
I was tempted to take off my driving moccasins, which were soaked through, and go barefoot in the sand. But I knew that the stony, unforgiving landscape of Penikese would make me regret doing that before too long.
We moved fast, going northwest along a crescent beach. Waves lapped the sand, and beyond that steady sound, there was none of the noise I hoped to hear—no boats circling nearby, nobody looking for a spot to land his craft and aid us.
“What’s on top of that rise?” Mike asked, coming to the end of the short beach.
“There’s a pond up there. I’d expect it to be all dried up this time of year. It’s kind of like a mud hole, so let’s avoid it.”
Another fifty yards and I could see that the low cliffs that once faced westward had eroded and were nothing more than sand dunes.
“There, Mike. We can probably climb over those.”
The terrain slowed us down. Our feet sunk into the wet beach-front as crabs scampered away from the dead fish that had washed up in our path.
Each leg felt heavier as I pulled up, step after step, to go forward. Then, as I mounted the rising dunes, the dry sand crumbled beneath my moccasins and filled them like an hourglass turned upside down.
Mike had reached the top before I did. He waited for me to pull up beside him. We were still sheathed in silence and could only see a few feet ahead.
“What’s that?” he asked, and pointed.
A low picket fence—maybe two feet high, painted dark green, as it always had been—was just ahead of us.
“The graveyard,” I said. “Or what’s left of it.”
“There’s your plague pit, then,” Mike whispered.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Mike grabbed my arm and held a finger to his mouth to shush me. “Hear it?”
I waited for the current to draw the waves back into the bay. Then I was able to hear a noise wafting through the dense mist. A whimpering sound, muffled now, not clear and shrill like the scream that split the night sky a few minutes earlier.
Mike pointed again, toward the south end of the picket fence and started to walk in that direction. He had drawn his weapon—the Glock 19 that was the duty gun of choice for most of the NYPD.
Now he was moving at a snail’s pace, as was I behind him. He was trying to bypass every twig, every bramble that might snap when stepped on. I walked in the damp imprint of his large steps.
We inched along and seemed to be drawing closer to the whimpering woman.
Another step and Mike stood still. I looked down and saw, at the very place his toes were, a cement block—a row of them side by side, actually—then a gaping black hole ahead. It looked like a deep foundation—the only remains of an old building.
He tapped the flashlight in his rear pocket, and I pulled it out. He braced himself and held both arms straight ahead, nodding at me to shine the light into the darkened space that had been dug into the ground so very long ago.
Fyodor Zukov was directly below us, standing over the body of Chastity Grant. She was gagged now—probably after her penetrating scream—and bound as well, hands and feet. I could see the red fabric—aerial silk—that her captor had used to restrain her.
Next to her head on the dirt floor—nestled on top of a large duffel bag—was a long-handled ax, the kind of tool that had been used to sever the neck of Naomi Gersh.
Zukov was holding an implement of some kind. He had clearly been waiting for us, as Mike had expected. As soon as the light hit him, he prodded Chat in the neck with the sharp end of his stick and she emitted another ungodly sound.
“Drop it, Zukov,” Mike said. “Drop the bullhook or I shoot.”
I hadn’t recognized it as a bullhook, the vicious steel-tipped instrument used to goad elephants, the inhumane device some circus trainers favored to push and yank deep into the animal’s sensitive flesh to control its movements.
Mike took aim to fire, but Zukov’s hands—though weaker, perhaps—were still faster than Mike’s. He swiveled and raised the curved handle of his bizarre weapon, hooking it around Mike’s left ankle and dragging him over the cement block, down into the hole.
I heard Mike hit bottom with a thud. I shined the light on him and could see that the fall had dislodged the Glock from his hand.
Zukov stabbed at Mike’s back as he tried to struggle to his feet.
“I prefer to call it a shepherd’s crook,” the killer said, referring to the C-curve handle that indeed resembled the staff used by priests and bishops. How ironic that the cruel circus tool was also a symbol of Christ’s ministry. “The Gospel of John, chapter ten, verse eleven. ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.’ ”
Mike got to his knees and Zukov thrust the bullhook into his back again.
“I’m not afraid to lay down my life, Ms. Cooper, like Christ did for all of us,” Zukov said, looking up at me. He obviously knew who I was from his courtroom visit. “How about you? Are you ready to die?”
FIFTY-TWO
“GET
out of here, Coop!” Mike yelled to me. I assumed that he hadn’t gotten to his feet immediately to take on Zukov because he’d hurt his leg—maybe the ankle that had been so badly injured a year ago. “Get as far away as you can till the Coast Guard arrives.”
out of here, Coop!” Mike yelled to me. I assumed that he hadn’t gotten to his feet immediately to take on Zukov because he’d hurt his leg—maybe the ankle that had been so badly injured a year ago. “Get as far away as you can till the Coast Guard arrives.”
“They’ll be too late,” Zukov said. “Whenever it is they get here, they’ll be late.”
I was way too tired to think clearly. Running wasn’t an option. I didn’t know whether to stay where I was until the crazed killer decided which of his victims to go for first, or to lower myself into the old foundation and try to find Mike’s gun.
“You must be one of the detectives, aren’t you?” he said to Mike. “I have to hand it to you. I never thought you’d find us on Penikese. I figured I’d have some time to get to know Reverend Grant more intimately.”
Fyodor Zukov had indeed confused Faith Grant with her sister, whom she so closely resembled. Chastity may have been the black sheep of her hometown, but when she showed up at the Christmas performance of Ursula Hewitt’s play—surrounded by the other ordained women—he made the mistake of targeting her. Her changed appearance from the December evening when she had gone goth—and now the striking resemblance between the sisters with Chat’s natural hair color and style restored—had caused Zukov to kidnap the wrong sibling.
“She’s not a minister,” I said, trying to keep an eye on Zukov while using the light to look for Mike’s gun.
“You know, Ms. Cooper, she’s told me that over and over. But I’ve done my research well. I’ve been to the seminary and I’ve talked to her friends, and I don’t think I’ve made a mistake. She has offended God and she must be silenced for that.”
Now Zukov was using the long, pointed end of the bullhook to poke around for the Glock too. I could see that Mike was spread out on his belly, inching himself forward like a reptile. He must have had some sense where the pistol had landed.
“Stay as calm as you can, Chat,” I said. “Every police department in the northeast knows you’re here. Faith sent us to find you, and we’re going to get you out of here.”
“Don’t play games with me!” Zukov shouted, waving the bullhook wildly overhead. “I know who this woman is.”
I could hear her racked sobs from beneath the silk ties that covered Chat’s mouth.
“The Reverend Grant—the minister—is at her seminary in New York. Don’t make this any worse for yourself, Fyodor. You can let—”
“They’re not ministers,” he said, watching Mike carefully but yelling in my direction, as though the wind carried his message across the seas. He looked every bit the madman as he preached to me. “None of these foolish women are ministers. They should all be silenced by the church. Silenced by me, before I die.”
“The woman you’re holding is not—”
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