The Thieves of Heaven (56 page)

Mary was in a drug-induced sleep. The medication kept not only the pain at bay but her consciousness as well. Her face had gone pale, bloated from the treatments, her hair a faded memory of its former brilliance. She was withering before Jeannie’s eyes; the doctor couldn’t give any estimate on how long she had, but it wasn’t much. Jeannie knew Mary’s greatest fear: she was terrified to die alone. If Michael wasn’t here to honor her friend’s last wish, she would. Jeannie left the kids with her sister and wouldn’t leave until Michael’s return, no matter how long.

She had checked with the hotel that Paul had named. Her fear escalated when she was transferred to an over-inquisitive policeman whose line of questioning frightened her. Did she know who her husband was traveling with? Something about gunshots and dead bodies. Did she know where he’d gone? The questions scared her into slamming down the phone. They were supposed to be back by now, that’s what Paul had told her. He’d be in and out, promise. As the wife of a policeman, a life she knew so well, she blocked the thoughts from her mind. Mary needed her now.

Mary’s heart rate began to climb, the beep of the heart monitor quickened. She started to stir, legs twitching, head pressing back in the pillow. Jeannie saw the rapid eye movement: Mary was dreaming. Mary started to moan, incoherent at first. The sweat began on her brow and spread out from there.

It was a nightmare. And Jeannie knew Mary’s nightmares; she had shared her fears with her best friend too often. They always revolved around Michael, his going back to crime and paying the price horribly with his life as Mary helplessly bore witness. Jeannie knew the only way the nightmares ended was when Mary bolted out of the bed, frightened into reality. Jeannie leaned in, taking a moist washcloth, dabbing her forehead. “Shhh,” she whispered as if to a child, “it’s OK, I’m here for you.” She cursed the drugs for imprisoning her friend in her nightmare world.

Mary’s body stiffened. Gently, Jeannie took her hand. Her feeling of helplessness grew. She could do nothing to ease her friend’s suffering. Mary’s head swung side to side as if trying to outrun whatever was haunting her mind. She was trapped in a realm she couldn’t escape. Mary had told her that the dream never played through to its conclusion; she always broke out to consciousness at the last moment, to reality, mercifully released from the terror. Tonight, however, Mary would have no choice other than to live the nightmare through, seeing it play out to its devastating conclusion.

Jeannie’s life had been linked to Michael and Mary’s for years; now, she felt herself crumbling with them. Mary was dying, Michael was in trouble, and now Paul was missing. She loved her husband for his gruffness, the way he lived for his kids, the way he had morals others had abandoned decades ago. She hoped against hope that Paul and Michael were safe but somehow knew that whatever they had to face was still before them.

She watched as Mary’s vitals climbed, her body spasming, the sheets soaked in sweat; her dream was cresting.
Please make it
. Jeannie prayed for them all.

The front door to the mansion swung open. A loud beeping in one-second increments came from somewhere inside.

“Can we hurry it up?” Simon whispered.

“Relax. I’ve got sixty seconds.”

“Fifty-eight now.”

Michael stepped into the foyer; all lights were out, the house was as dark as dark could be. He flipped on his penlight, opened up the mahogany closet near the doorway, and whipped out his knife. He threw aside the vast collection of coats, revealing a smooth white security box, and stared at the readout: counting down from forty-five in glowing red lights. There was no keypad, only a magnetic card-swipe slot. And Michael had no card. “OK,” Michael said.

“OK, what?” Simon called, over his shoulder.

Michael paused, exhaling a great gasp of air. He had thirty-eight seconds. “See, this is—”

“Don’t explain.” Simon cut him off. The last thing they needed was a local police drive-by. Twenty-one dead bodies would be hard to hide and even harder to explain. The place would swarm with law enforcement, leaving them no way out.

Michael focused, stuck his penlight in his mouth, twirled his knife, and slid it behind the alarm panel. He pried off the cover and stared. The host of wires looked more like a plate of spaghetti than a security system. Twenty-nine seconds. The beeps were now coming in double-time.

He pulled from his pocket a pair of wires with alligator clips. He thumbed through the twenty-odd wires searching—there was never really a blue wire and a red wire—this system was coded, each color bearing an individual number that matched to a codex. The odds on finding the correct wires were three hundred and eighty to one. Unfortunately, they were a little short on time. Nineteen seconds. The beeps sounded like a drumroll now. Michael just stared, lost in thought.

“Uh, not that we are in a hurry or anything,” Simon reminded him. There was a hint of nerves in his voice.

Nine seconds. If only he had an hour…maybe he could crack this. And then he found his solution. He traced out the wires to the timing display, following their jumble of a run through the box to a small black chip. He clamped on one of the alligators. Four seconds.

“We don’t have all day.” Simon’s stress was worse now than when he was under fire.

“Actually”—Michael paused as he clipped on the other alligator clip—“we do.”

The readout flashed and where it had previously read two seconds, it now counted down from ten hours. “When you can’t reset the alarm, reset the clock,” Michael explained, with a sigh of relief.

He led Simon into the heart of the mansion. As they moved deeper into the house past the entrance hall and library, faint light filtered in from the side rooms and stairwells. It wasn’t much but it allowed them to avoid using their flashlights. Michael wasted no time staring into the various rooms; everything carried a different meaning this time. Before he’d felt wonder and amazement at the vast wealth possessed by the man who owned these rooms, but now…he felt nothing but disgust.

They finally reached the enormous old wooden door. It stood slightly ajar. Michael wrapped his hand around the large black iron handle. The screech of the hinges as they protested were worse than any alarm. Simon spun about, gun at the ready, braced for someone to come running at the sound.

The rank smell floated up from the stone recesses, instantly assaulting their senses, reigniting Michael’s fear. Simon took point, his pistol waist-high as they were swallowed by the darkness. They left their flashlights off so as not to make an easy target, but at the expense of traveling the two hundred feet down blind with nothing but slippery stone and a splintered handrail to guide them. Deeper into the earth they traveled, down the moss-covered stairs. Michael couldn’t help remembering the parallels between this place and the lowermost cells of the German prison: an intangible menace hung in the air of both.

They hit the bottom step, coming out onto the hard-packed dirt floor. There was no more handrail to lead them as they searched for direction. They stood there momentarily, the inky blackness like a mask over their eyes, the smell running to something south of decay.

“How about some light—” Michael started to say before Simon tackled him violently to the ground.

The shot came out of nowhere, an explosive crack stabbing their ears as it echoed off the damp stone walls. They hunkered down, unsure of their bearings or the location of the guard they never expected to find here.

“I’m going to roll right. Try to draw his fire,” Simon whispered from the darkness.

“Gee, thanks.”

Simon silently scooted away, leaving Michael alone in the place that had caused him such nightmares.
Draw his fire. Great.

He crept back up several steps, groping along the wall for a shelf. His fingers sunk into an area six feet up, where the mortar had grown soft. Quietly, he dug in with his knife, clearing a recess, then he jammed the butt of his penlight in. It was high and away as a target—the same trick he used with Simon in the graveyard. It was all a matter of perspective, sleight of hand, magic; make them see what you want them to see.

Ducking low, he reached up, flicking on the penlight, its naked, narrow glow falling upon the host of immoral artifacts. He kept his body out of the light’s wash but before he could take a step, gunfire exploded again. Five shots in rapid succession, seemingly from all directions.

The flashlight shattered. Suffocating darkness descended. The silence that followed was maddening. And there was no sign of Simon. A faint scratching came from deeper within the hold. Drawing on what memory he could conjure up, Michael edged into the room. He held his Glock before him, heading in the direction of the soft, scratching sounds. They seemed to be low and near the ground, nails against stone. With each step, a new sound emerged from the blackness. A slow gurgling wheeze, like someone trying to breathe through a shallow puddle, was right in front of him. Michael swiftly crouched. Leading with his gun, he poked the darkness. An arm’s length in front of him the barrel abutted something soft, frail. The breaths were shallow and weak. Michael searched about, felt a head, and rested his gun on the ground. His fingers kept exploring: the hair was fine, almost brittle; the skin, paper thin. A hand clutched Michael’s shoulder from behind, startling him. The priest flipped on his flashlight and found Michael crouched down next to the body of a man, well past ninety.

Michael glanced up. “He was just an old man.”

Simon lowered his pistol. “Who is he?”

“Charles…Finster’s butler” was all Michael could say as the elderly man let out his final, shallow breath.

Simon stood over the corpse, blessed himself, and said a quick prayer for the dead. The irony wasn’t lost on Michael that Simon was rendering last rites to someone he had just murdered.

They stepped away, walking deeper into the gallery. The shadows hung heavy, the musty stench of decay everywhere. As he shined his light across the room, Simon was stunned by what he saw. A mother screamed in anguish as she clutched her blood-soaked children. A warlord disemboweled those who cowered in surrender. Tapestries glorified death; canvases depicted decaying bodies, their souls crying out for release; mankind ruthlessly subjugated by evil. Thousands of pieces of art, each more terrible than the one before. It was as if he had crossed into Hell itself.

The thought entered Simon’s mind that before they left this hole in the world it all must be destroyed. This was not art; this was something far worse than anything he had ever seen or imagined. No eye should ever be cast upon this collection again; these horrific pieces had all been created by man, not by evil gods or Satan. These were wrought by the hands of artists possessed by thoughts Simon could never comprehend.

“Hurry up!” Michael insisted as he continued through the gallery. He stole a quick glance at the light licking up the walls; the dark rock tinged with a natural rust gave the sense of blood dripping downward. The stalactites, barely visible in the ceiling, hung like daggers ready to fall upon them. “I’m not staying in here any longer than I have to.”

Simon tore himself away and followed, but was drawn back by the last painting in the lineup. It rested up ahead, near the door, propped up against a stack of others. Four feet high and wide, it stood out among the rest, incongruous in its presence. The one shining piece of light among the darkness. The beautifully rendered Gates of Heaven. Simon stared at it reverently, reminded that there was always hope, no matter how grave the situation. And he was reminded…

Finster wasn’t concerned about gaining a soul here or there, he wanted it all, he wanted the land from whence he was cast out before time began. Simon seethed, gaining new focus, and charged down the corridor.

Michael stood at the key-chamber door; the gleaming wood was ebony, polished to a high oily sheen, six feet high, the low sill compelling you to duck. He made easy work of the ancient lock, and grabbed the rusted iron ring for a handle. As Michael pulled the creaking door open, Simon shined in his light.

Upon the central stone pedestal in the small crypt, the two keys sat upon a blood-red pillow, looking as plain and harmless as they did on the day Michael stole them. The simple carved box that had held them was set aside on a stone shelf next to hundreds of candles, most burned down to their nubs. Michael felt a surge of hope. For the first time, he was close to righting the wrong that so endangered his wife.

The two men stood on either side of the pedestal; the room was so confined, their backs nearly touched the walls. Michael looked about the pedestal, checking for alarms or traps, running his fingertips along the stone base and wood column, up to and then under the red pillow. All clear. As he stood, a slight flashing caught his eye. He looked at Simon and then at the cell phone at his waist. The tiny green message light was blinking. Simon flipped it open, the display glowed:
1 message, 19 missed calls
.
No signal
. Busch was the only one with the number.