What Doesn’t Kill Her (32 page)

Kelley said, “I’ve got to use a key card to get us in.”

She nodded.

“You’re not next of kin, but I’ve cleared you.”

“Thank you.”

“Ms. Rivera… Jordan. He’s in pretty rough shape. Are you prepared for that?”

She had seen her family slaughtered, and then been raped. What
wasn’t
she prepared for?

“I am,” she said.

Kelley passed the key card over a black plate and the doors swung open.

At right, a semicircular counter enclosed the nurses’ work station—eight desks, currently occupied by five nurses. Opposite were eight glassed-in areas—the patients’ rooms. Six were occupied, the first five with apparently slumbering patients. The sixth of the occupied rooms, at the far end, was Mark’s. A nurse was in with him.

Other than a towel across his loins, he was uncovered and naked, except for the bandages, which seemed to be everywhere, particularly on his upper torso; he had a cast on his right leg to the knee and a huge gauze pad wrapped around his left thigh, stained pink. A skullcap-like head dressing was bloodstained and, most distressing of all, he was on a ventilator. His eyes were closed. But for the beep of his heart monitor, he might have been dead.

“Two minutes,” the nurse said, and stepped out.

Kelley put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t even mind it.

He said, “There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Mark’s in trouble. In a coma. That machine is the only thing keeping him alive.… I’ll give you some privacy.”

Kelley stepped out where the nurse waited.

Jordan was able to keep her face impassive, not a twitch, barely a blink, but could not stop the tears. They flowed down her cheeks like rain down a statue. She swallowed, rubbed the moisture away with a sleeve, then moved closer. She touched Mark’s hand, and it couldn’t have felt colder if it had been a corpse’s. His fingers—scraped and bandaged—were icy. She choked, emotion backing up, its acrid puke burning her throat.

She leaned near him. “Mark? There are two things I need to tell you. Can you hear me?”

His eyelids seemed to rustle, but it was probably just a spasm. He couldn’t hear her, could he? But maybe he could.…

“First,” she said, whispering in his ear, “I love you.”

Another spasm.

“Second,” she said, “I am going to kill his ass.”

Such imbeciles, these police. All day long, they troop in and out of my house, carting out box after box of what they think is evidence, when it’s not worth its weight in scrap. Yet all along, I am right next door, watching them. Never once do they glance in my direction, at the second-floor window where I stand on lookout.

Fat chance of them finding anything. After disposing of Detective Pryor, I wiped the house down for prints, not that mine were on file anywhere. And I removed anything that might carry DNA, like a toothbrush or hairbrush. But the blood by the fireplace I left for them—they would initially think it was mine. And when it turned out to be Pryor’s, they could only wonder if I were victim, too, or perpetrator.

Did they imagine I wouldn’t know that this day was coming? Phillip Traynor is nothing more than a character I portrayed, a costume I threw on. Like Kenneth Simon before him, and Bradley Slavens before that. Shed one identity, then slip into a new one. As Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name?”
This
is what is in a name, friend William—a little thought and rendering that-which-is-Caesar’s, which is to say hard cold cash.

My next identity, Isaiah Mentor, owns the house I’m standing in. I like that name—it’s closer to my Jewish roots (I hadn’t lied about that to Pryor), and—like “Traynor”—“Mentor” suggests my role as one who teaches, who gives lessons.

So handy owning the house next door to the Traynor home. Or should I say how handy that Isaiah Mentor owns it… yet
another
identity the fools won’t be able to track. So-called computer whizzes like Levi Mills—bring them on! How nice it’s been, having a vacant house between me and my neighbors. Considering my calling, a little privacy is appreciated.

All I will take with me from this life is my laptop and my family photos, including the nice little one of my once handsome face, before that sinner bashed me with that shovel.

Oh, and that sinner who smashed my face? In all honesty, that was my fault. I was arrogant and God made me pay for my hubris. Never again. Now, I am more careful. I plan ahead. Still, who would imagine that a sodomite raising a child with another sodomite could have the presence of mind to fight back? I thought I’d hit him perfectly hard enough, but when I turned to lift the unconscious form of his “partner” (intending to bury him alive in the hole I’d dug in their cellar), the unregenerate faker grabbed my shovel and smashed
me
with it! Fortunately, through my pain and the blood in my eyes, I was able to dispatch both sodomites (with the gun that would eventually be left behind with that Gregory couple) and crawl out of there and make my way to an emergency room.

That was where I first spun the story about the man on the bridge who struck me and stole my dog. The dog was the touch that made anyone who heard the story believe it. I would call them sentimental fools, but I admit sentimentality is a weakness of my own—like keeping the family photos I snap after every lesson (stored on my laptop for perusing at my pleasure).

Unfortunately, the Mentor identity must be discarded before it really begins. I will jump to another identity, already waiting, everything in place, everything prepared, in Seattle. My fondness for Cleveland is overridden by the necessity of survival. To stay, I would need to remove not just those on the “team” but everyone in the entire support group (sinners all, but such an ambitious program). Seems I have interacted too much with too many to stay much longer.

The only burden of this bold geographic move is my emotional tie to this city, because the monetary aspect is no burden. While every lesson I teach has a purpose, a good number profit me as well. God helps those who… surely you know the rest. Those drug dealers in the Bronx, for example, made a hefty cash donation to help pay for their sins. They also left behind large quantities of the poison they sell. The cash and the drugs alike all came back to Cleveland, packed in gym bags, riding beneath the simpering, sinning little girls in Havoc’s charge.

The drugs I sold to the big sinners who sell that evil stuff to smaller sinners, their joint unwitting contributions benefitting my cause. The Lord provides. If the sinners want to poison themselves, who am I to stand in their way? Didn’t the Almighty give us all free will?

The Bronx lesson was not the only time God provided largesse for me, His devoted, sharp instrument. I work hard, and God shares His bounty with me. His grace is available to any of His children, but they are so blind. So very blind.

Sometimes I can only smile at the thought of myself, God’s Instrument, sitting unsuspected in the midst of sinners, sinners so wrapped up in their greed and lust they don’t see His vengeance biding its time in their midst.

My only sin has been underestimating the imbecility of the police, and young Mark Pryor is such a prime example. How could he settle upon that buffoon Havoc as his suspect? Hadn’t I handed him Stuart Carlyle on a platter, just as Herod gave Salome the head of John the Baptist? Stealing Carlyle’s pistol, using it several times, finally killing the abortion nurse’s sister and brother-in-law and leaving it there, and
still
Pryor and the rest of them fail to make the connection. If I hadn’t manipulated the sodomite Mills to feed them Carlyle’s name, the morons might
never
have taken the bait.

I joined the support group to be close to Jordan, God’s Reward to Me, and then became a part of their “team” to stay even closer, not just closer to her but all of them, feeding them information favorable to my position. They were sluggish with sin and needed my help.

So many steps ahead of the police am I that it is almost embarrassing—take, for example, the two they have left in a patrol car in front of my old home. When the time comes, and it will very soon, the simple fools will be eliminated without even knowing they were ever in danger.

For now, they can wait. And I will wait.

Until she comes to me.

Even before her release from the madhouse, I knew she would come to me one day. It is His will. Ongoing media coverage of my Strongsville lesson made mention of Jordan’s release, and I knew that the Violent Crime Support Group at St. Dimpna’s would be her next stop. So I enrolled, too, and she looked even more
magnificent than she had on that great night when I repaired her family and we consummated our union in the Holy Church of my mission, and I spared her life so she could spread the news of my teachings.

But she had disappointed me in that. She never spoke of me. To anyone. For ten years, she never spoke at all. So she still needs my teaching, my mentoring.

Yes, the greatest reward for any teacher is a worthy pupil! Yet she has tried my patience, my Jordan. Upon her release, she all but ran into the arms of that callow Pryor—perhaps she could not overcome the frailties of her mixed-race birth. That she would speak with him in a public place, like a wanton hussy—after having lain with me!

Unthinkable.

Further schooling will repair that. She will be reminded that she is bound to one who is truly God’s Instrument. She will be shown the way. She will finally learn the lesson that I gave the night I repaired her family.

The boy Levi had not interpreted my message either. Despite the clear lesson that his abortion-loving parents (Planned Parenthood indeed!) had been taught, he failed to learn and fell into the abomination of lying with men. Raised by sinners, he might seem to have had little chance of receiving true learning. But that is why God gave us free will.

It’s so simple!

The sodomite’s computer with the damning evidence lies at the bottom of the Cuyahoga, next to his cell phone. The eye, the eye that lured him into sinful practices with other men, I burned in the incinerator in the basement. It will offend God no more.

Can there be any doubt that God is my copilot when He sends that foolish boy Pryor to my door? I returned at the very moment that the young detective put the pieces together, but now
he
is in pieces. Still, this was a lesson for me to learn: time for Traynor to disappear, for Mentor to exist briefly like a flickering flame, and then a new identity, half a continent away, will begin schooling anew.

Night is descending now. Time. My time. Time to go to work. I walk down the stairs—they creak with age.

I have the framed photo of myself in my pocket; I need to return it to the mantel.

Outside, after exiting out back, I creep along the side of the house and peek around the corner. The two officers in the car are looking away. God’s grace, watching over me. I will deal with them later. I walk to the rear of my old house. The fool police have locked it. I unlock it. Obviously, they don’t know I’m expecting a guest.

She will come tonight. She will come and she will finally learn the error of her ways.

And at last my devotion to the Lord, and to her, will be rewarded, and she will be mine.

Hallelujah.

When Jordan rolled down 38th on her Vespa, she was not surprised to see a police car in front of Phillip’s house. The street was dark and quiet, and the streetlamp nearest the Traynor place was out. She cruised on by, the two uniformed officers not even glancing her way, one slumped and apparently sleeping on the job.

So much for police protection.

She turned at the corner, then took a left into the alley, following it all the way to the far end of the block. No cops back here. She tooled her scooter around back to Phillip’s garage and parked it in the shadows against one wall, out of sight.

Behind the old, well-maintained two-story house, the only sounds were a rustle of wind in trees and the rumble of distant traffic. She crept up the narrow sidewalk to the back of the house. The lights were all out, no sounds from within.

There wouldn’t be—Phillip Traynor was gone, either a murderer on the run or the victim of one. David considered the latter a feasible notion, but Jordan was convinced Phillip was her intruder. She hadn’t recognized him, thanks to a little hair dye, contact lenses, and that damaged face. She smiled. Someone else had given him his own medicine, in one instance anyway.

She would do much better.

In her left hand was a small flashlight, in her right the mugger’s commandeered switchblade, but before she used it, she would break as many of his bones as her homemade martial arts training would allow. He was old. She was young. She would prevail.

Not that there was much if any chance he’d still be inside this house. This was merely where she would begin. The police had searched the place, and boxed up and carted off anything they thought might be evidence. But they might have missed something, and anyway, she
knew
Phillip, or at least the construct of Phillip that the madman had presented, and she might see something, understand something, that the police had missed on their first pass.