The Avenger (33 page)

She flinched at his crude language and he laughed. "And I may do that yet. But you're such a perfect specimen I couldn't resist offering you as the penultimate sacrifice."

Forcing calm she didn't feel, she summoned the courage to fight Howard in a way that might give her an advantage. "You'll never do it, Howard," she jeered. "You didn't rape the other victims. You don't have the balls."

He ground his mouth into hers, his teeth cutting, his tongue trying to push through her tightly-closed lips. Then he released her abruptly. "Maybe we'll do both." He smiled and pinched her cheek viciously. In a flash his manner changed from the vicious would-be rapist to the mild-manner professor. "Now, wouldn't that be fun?"

Although she didn't see the hand that held the syringe, she should've anticipated it. Right before she lost consciousness again, the prick of the needle told her what he'd done.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Jack left the Blazer at the foot of an inclined wooded area off the highway, and hiked on foot the rest of the way. The Blazer could've made it up the narrow dirt road, but he didn't want the engine to alert his prey.

When he arrived at the clearing, the trunk of the sedan was partially open. He nudged it with the tip of his knife blade, and it swung smoothly upward without resistance. He ducked his head into the empty trunk and inhaled deeply.

Beneath the Olivia-scent and the fetid animal-scent, his heightened faculties imbibed the faint residue of an unfamiliar smell, the odor of incipient life, the human zygote. The implication drew him back from the trunk's gaping maw. It wasn't possible for Olivia to be pregnant, his human mind insisted. But the beast growled, a deep guttural sound low in its throat, a warning call to the predator, the animal's protection in defense of its young.

He turned around slowly, his cat-like vision scanning the woods for signs of them.

That way, he decided, and crouching low, followed the scent of Olivia and the enemy. The sunken footsteps in the moist dirt and the small, lighter prints indicated two people – a heavier person and a lightweight one – running fast.

Less than a quarter mile down the overgrown path, he glimpsed what looked like the front of an abandoned church rising like Hawthorne's seven-gabled house some hundred yards off a narrow, paved road. But that was not where the enemy had accessed the building.

An empty parking area, overgrown with weeds pushing up through the cracks and crannies of cement, stretched in front of the edifice. The entire erection looked like a giant dollhouse, tossed into the wilderness and forgotten, only to be taken over by the encroaching forest.

Jack padded carefully around the perimeter, sniffing cautiously, seeking the strongest scent left by the killer. He nosed his way around to the side of the building where a short flight of concrete steps led below the ground level. A basement.

When he jiggled the knob, it turned beneath his hand. Unlocked, though a barred door wouldn't have stopped him. As he stole inside, he found himself among a series of pipes and storage cages, dust and cobwebs and general clutter. A set of wooden steps in the corner wound upward. Even from the outside entrance he could hear the clear sound of footsteps above him.

#

She was naked.

The pungent odor of incense filled the room where Olivia lay on her back, her head cushioned by some soft material, her legs straight out, and her arms crossed over her breasts. The dim room was lighted by dozens of candles that cast eerie shadows on the walls. The vaulted ceiling stretched far above her head and domed in a set of paneled religious carvings.

She lay naked inside a church.

"You're awake." The disembodied voice echoed off the walls. A figure rose up from the floor to her right.

A priest, she thought at first, even though she knew. Not a priest, but Howard dressed in a priest's double-breasted black cassock and white clerical collar. He came closer and peered at her curiously. She shifted to cover her nakedness and realized that her legs and arms were immobile. She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. She blinked her eyes rapidly and tried to open her mouth.

Was she dead already?

No, he'd given her something. Something in addition to the initial pinch of the needle. Some kind of drug that affected her muscles and rendered her helpless. Panic as strong as a tidal wave smashed over her. He'd paralyzed her! Her respiratory system would shut down and she'd die. She gulped in a series of harsh gasps. Sweet air filled her lungs and fury settled in her mind.

The son of a bitch! For months, he'd worked alongside her, used his slick, cloying manners and arrogant airs to fool her. And all the while, he'd been on a murderous spree, leaving all those helpless victims in the wake of his insanity.

She slanted him a look from the corner of her eye. No, she amended, Howard wasn't insane. She took in the costume he wore, his sacrilegious posture as a priest, a holy man of the clergy. Howard was driven by religious mania, not madness. By sexual perversion, not lunacy.

Olivia realized now that the maniacal glint of his eyes, the twisted leer of his lips had always been there, but gone unnoticed. He believed he was a holy avenger punishing sinners for their evil deeds and using ancient modes of execution.

What had Jack said? For a serial killer, it was all about sex. Howard wanted to have sexual power over her, not mete out punishment for her sins. She saw the dichotomy that he wrestled with. Needing to rape her and wanting to offer her as a religious sacrifice. Coveting both, but realizing he'd have to choose one or the other.

Howard's lips moved minimally in a face set in carved stone. "Feeling the effects of my little drug concoction, are you, my dear?"

His eyes ran up and down her body, and she felt the arrows of a thousand stings against her flesh, the humiliation of every one of his victims. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat muscles remained locked.

"Never mind," he chortled, "the effect is short-lived. You'll be chattering like a jaybird in a few moments."

Indeed, a moment later she felt the numbness receding, the particular tingling that meant the return of feeling. But how to handle him now that he seemed practically giddy with anticipation?

When her speech returned, Olivia wet her parched lips. "Would you please cover me up?" She forced herself to remain civil, and mildly subservient. Her anger would only make matters worse as it had before.

He hesitated, brows lifted. "Of course, my dear." He reached behind him for a pristine white cloth – a surplice, she thought – unfolded it, and draped it across her body. The brief surge of gratitude she felt for the man who'd kidnapped and drugged her annoyed the hell out of her.

Howard loomed over her. If all her muscles had been working properly she could've clawed his face. Spat at him. As it was, she could only muster up a frown. "What are you ... " Her voice cracked like a rusty pipe and she tried again. "What are you going to do?"

"Something holy." He swept one hand around the spacious room. Then he dipped his fingers in a small stainless bowl she hadn't noticed resting beside the platform on which she lay.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,"
he intoned, his solemn voice echoing in the vast room.

"What's happening?" The oily moistness of his fingers touched her forehead, her chest, and her shoulders. Anointed oil. Was he baptizing her? She gazed into the face hovering over her and knew she was looking into the face of moral and psychic aberration.

"I'm giving you a new name. Henceforth and forever, you will be known by this name. When God calls you up into his sacred presence, this is the name He will use." He closed his eyes and tilted his head backwards, raising both hands and uttering the phrase.
"Deo volente. Deo volente. Deo volente."

God willing. God willing. God willing.
Repeated three times representing the Holy Trinity, she realized.

"Introib ad altare Dei."
He uttered what sounded like random words cobbled together as gibberish until she recognized disconnected words from the opening phrase of a Catholic mass.

I shall go to the altar of God.

Her head and neck now mobile, Olivia glanced around her to confirm that she indeed lay on an altar, its faux marble hard beneath her hips and shoulders.

"Magnificat anima meas Dominum,"
he intoned.

Her best hope for survival lay in pretending to accommodate Howard's religious fervor. She repeated his last words in English,
"My soul does magnify the Lord."

A look of surprise crossed his face.
"Deus vobiscum." God be with you.
His lack of proficiency in Latin was clear now. Howard used only common Latin phrases, apparently all that he knew, with only vague understanding of their applications.

Trance-like, he pulled the white cloth down to her waist and placed the flat of his hand on her chest, nestled between her breasts. As she felt the return of sensation to the rest of her body, she twisted her head. At some point he'd unbuttoned the bottom of the thirty-three fastenings of the cassock. The robe fell open to show his nakedness and the undeniable evidence of his arousal.

And the unmistakable point of the knife in his other hand. A bulge in the left full pocket that could mean another weapon.

"Ave Maria,"
he whispered
. "Beata Virgo Maria."
Hail, Mary, blessed Virgin Mary.
Did he mistake her for another vestal virgin? Or did he think she was Mary, the Mother of God?

"Mater Dei,"
she spoke softly, letting the words trail from her tongue in what she hoped imitated religious rapture.
Mother of God.

"Amen,"
he answered.
So be it.
He reached both hands toward her, pulling her up from her prone position on the altar. As she sat up, the cloth clung to her loins. Putting modesty aside, running only on the instinct of survival, she stood and allowed Howard to take her left hand and escort her naked down the two steps from the altar podium to the carpeted runner that divided the congregational aisles.

"From now on, you will be called Mary – Maria – and to this name you will answer for the rest of eternity." He looked slantwise at her, a hard look that brooked no disobedience. "Do you understand this great honor, Maria?"

She inclined her head in proper servitude.
"Fiat voluntas tua."
She caught the fleeting look of confusion on Howard's face. As she'd thought, he was incapable of interpreting Latin constructions.

Hoping he wouldn't notice the cover up, she hurriedly repeated,
"Thy will be done."

"Deus vult,"
he answered.
God wills it .

As they began the interminable march down the center aisle, Howard continued, "You are with child, Maria. Gloria Deo."

Olivia jerked back, nearly pulling her hand from his light grip. Why did he suspect that? She'd just gotten her period. There was no way she was pregnant. There was no child.

She opened her mouth to say as much and clamped it shut again. If Howard thought she was pregnant, she wouldn't disillusion him. She'd play into whatever bizarre religious scenario he was acting out. Modestly she placed her right hand on her belly. Howard smiled in approbation as they continued down the aisle to the imitation statute of
Pietà,
the Mother of God holding her son's broken body.

Howard smiled beatifically, while she wondered what dark desires lay beneath the hallowed duplicity. She knew he desired her. No, he wanted to inflict pain on her, and struggled between hurting her and sacrificing her on the altar of his monstrously deluded ego.

A moment later, if he hadn't been so intently focused on her, he would've seen what Olivia glimpsed from the corner of her eye. Beside the pillared Doric column, the faint shade of something animate.

A shadow that might mean rescue.

When Olivia glanced again a few moments later, the shadow was gone, but she knew it was Jack. Suddenly embarrassed by her nakedness, she turned toward Howard.

"I should be clothed," she commanded, indicating her bare body with a sweep of her hand from head to foot.
"Agnus Dei, Mater Dei
."
The Lamb of God, the Mother of God.
She hoped he'd understand her use of the simple Latin phrases.

A flicker of hope at the possibility of rescue made her knees weak and her hands tremble. Please, God, she thought, give Jack and me another chance.

#

The gas station attendant knew the property and its exact location. While Warren shifted impatiently, the pimply-faced kid whose nametag said Wayne, seemed intent on explaining the entire history of the church and its surrounding land.

"Look," the Judge snapped, "just give us the goddamn directions."

The attendant pouted for a moment as if he'd lost a big tip and then shrugged and pointed out the road that led to the unused church.

Arriving at the turnoff a few minutes later and following the rutted asphalt road for a mile, they spotted an SUV with rental plates. It'd been pulled off to the side and leaned dangerously close to the edge of a one-foot ditch embankment.

"I recognize the vehicle. Jack's been here." Slater pulled the squad car alongside the Blazer, ran a quick check to confirm the Blazer, and jumped out. He looked around and spied another smaller dirt road that wound westward into the trees and brush. "It's his. He's gone that way." He pointed toward the dirt road.

"Why did he leave the car here?" ADA Torres asked.

"Because," Warren said grimly, "he didn't want Randolph to hear him approach." Because he's the most brilliant agent I have, he thought silently, and sick as he is, he runs on all cylinders.

While Torres placed a call for backup and Higgins clutched the medical bag, Slater started in the direction indicated by the teenager. The Sheriff drove fast on the one-lane, rutted road, clearly worried they wouldn't get there in time.