The Fifth Angel Read online

  He fired again and again. Flame flickered from the barrel of the Glock. Time began to crawl. He kept missing! And with each moment, Pollard got farther and farther away. Jack was acutely aware that he was running out of bullets.

  Panic crept in, and then on his next shot Pollard spilled to the ground. Jack jumped down the steps and ran toward him. Pollard was in the grass now, its waving tips betraying him in the faint yellow light. He was crawling faster than most men could walk. Jack caught him and fired his gun into the middle of Pollard’s back. Pollard stopped and then started again, then turned on Jack like a wild animal.

  Jack fired again, this time striking Pollard squarely in the face. He aimed and pulled the trigger one more time. Nothing happened. Jack backed away and dropped to his knees, fighting back the urge to retch. After a time, he rose and took a few steps back toward Pollard. He had more bullets, but they were in the car. He took out his penlight and saw there was no need to worry. The last shot had exited through the back of Pollard’s skull, leaving a massive jagged crater in its wake.

  Jack tucked away his light and the gun and scoured the trampled grass looking for the shell casings. His limbs were filled with lead. He forced himself to walk back to the trailer. The girl. She lay bound, looking up at him glassy-eyed and whimpering pitifully from her place in the mud.

  “Oh, no,” Jack said, a new surge of emotion bursting forth from his core. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I won’t hurt you.”

  He crouched over the girl and pulled her light trembling form tightly to his chest. She was sobbing uncontrollably beneath the tape. Jack shook his head and stroked her muddy hair. Tears began to course down his cheeks.

  “No,” he said, “don’t. It’s okay. You’re all right. I won’t hurt you. You’re all right now.”

  Jack held her for a time that seemed eternal, gulping down his own bile and whispering softly to her. He rocked her until he realized she had either fallen asleep or more likely relapsed into some drug-induced state. Jack lifted himself and the girl off the step. His paternal instincts told him she was better off sleeping in her bonds than enduring the trauma of their removal. He stepped inside the trailer, his flat-soled shoes smearing the blood from Pollard’s arm across the floor as he searched for the light switch. He found it and then lay the girl down on a couch. It was worn but clean looking, and over its back lay an afghan fastidiously folded in the manner of a grandmother. Jack pulled the blanket free and covered the girl.

  He then set to work scouring the area for the rest of his shell casings. The mindless task gave him the opportunity to consider what should be done. The safest thing would be to leave the girl and call the police from a pay phone, but Jack wasn’t going to do that. When she awoke, it would be someplace safe and warm, not alone the way his own daughter must have been in the prison of a filthy fishing shack, not bound and gagged and wondering if the dark angel who had delivered her was nothing more than a dream. So where could he take her?

  The answer came to Jack as he extracted the seventeenth and final shell casing from the mud beneath the steps. He stuffed the bag of brass casings into his pocket and went back into the trailer to retrieve the unconscious girl. She was an easy burden at first, but by the time he reached his rental car Jack’s back was aching from the strain. He denied himself the relief of setting her down until he could put her in the backseat of the black Town Car.

  Free from her extra weight, Jack nimbly stripped off his outer layer of clothes on the spot and stuffed them along with the casings into a garbage bag he’d taken from the trunk. Finally he returned the pistol and holster to their metal case, shut the trunk, and got behind the wheel. He stopped briefly to dispose of the garbage bag in a Dumpster behind a darkened pharmacy, then made his way through town, driving cautiously and heading for the Bennington Emergency Medical Center.

  Jack pulled up outside the sandy colored single-story building and watched. He felt his agitation double. There was nothing to see. The glass double doors leading to the inside were frosted white. Outside, there was no sign of life. The girl stirred in the backseat and Jack felt a bolt of panic. His plan was predicated on her unconscious state. But after a gentle groan she turned over and dropped off again with only her head visible beneath the soft covering.

  Jack decided to move quickly. He hurried out of the car and removed the girl as gently as he could from the backseat. As he marched across the parking lot in through the emergency doors, Jack hoisted the girl’s form up in front of his face. The doors swung open with a loud rattle, revealing a young nurse sitting behind a desk chatting with a middle-aged doctor who was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. There were no other patients to be seen.

  Jack rushed toward them, screaming.

  “Help me! She’s not breathing!”

  The nurse froze, but the doctor stood abruptly and Jack pushed the girl into his arms, spinning instantly and running back through the open doors.

  He raced to the car, jumped in, and squealed out of the lot. As he swerved around the corner, Jack stole a quick glance back. He cursed and stamped on the accelerator. The nurse had run out of the medical center. He had seen the pale glow of her face. She had seen his car.

  There was a reckless voice inside him that didn’t even care. He’d killed another monster. He only wished he could get them all.

  CHAPTER 45

  He backed the plunger away from his vein, filling the syringe with his own blood. The amber liquid swirled with angry red clouds until it all turned to Mars. He shut his eyes and he pumped the liquid joy back into his body, letting it sweep over him. Time passed. Pleasant floating, naked on an undulating wave. Everything was fine.

  Then he heard the little brat’s words. They rang like a bell.

  “You look scary.”

  Scary. He went to the mirror and looked. His limbs were thin and white like a Grecian statue, shaved clean of the disgusting black forest of hair. The way Hubble liked it.

  He toyed with his nipple rings, then lifted his arms. Only the faintest hint of stubble. Very clean. Nothing scary.

  He leaned toward the mirror. His face was sharp, but Hubble said he was beautiful. He traced a pointed fingernail across the high cheekbone, out, and down along the hatchet edge of his jaw. Eyes like tar pits. His nose, surgically reduced to the thinnest, the straightest line. The way Hubble liked.

  Hubble was gone now. The bitch. She shot him. Now it was her turn to feel pain.

  Hubble. The pointed goatee was his idea, too.

  “Moloch,” Hubble told him. “That’s you.”

  Moloch. The first angel Satan called to arms.

  He grinned at himself, still floating, hearing Hubble. Then a frown. His teeth. They were dull. The stumps of hewn trees.

  “You look scary.”

  He would give them scary. He staggered into the kitchen, his feet slapping the linoleum. A toolbox rested beside the water heater in a dusty utility closet. Hammers. Nails. A hacksaw. He grinned. Tools he could use for fun.

  A small file.

  He took it and returned to the mirror. Still naked and white and smooth, still beautiful. He pulled his top lip up and away, his red gums grinning back, angry. The white teeth sitting like harmless lumps. Like little children.

  Sharp. Sharp and scary. They didn’t even know. He’d give them scary.

  The file rasped fragments of tooth onto his tongue and dusted his lip. White flakes nestled in his black beard. A distant sensation of pain. That made him mad. He worked harder, faster, the smell of burning bone.

  He’d burn their bones. He’d make them pay for this pain. He’d give them scary. He leaned back and curled his top lip up and away. A single stalactite, wicked and dangerous. Scary.

  He went back to work. Bone dust everywhere. The pain excruciating, but somehow delicious in its distance. Time blinking with pain.

  Done.

  He smiled. Look at him now. A pumpkin smile. Two sharp points where his canines had been. Empty blackness on either side.
He stretched his mouth open wide, then let it ease back into a grin.

  “Scary,” he said.

  He would show them.

  CHAPTER 46

  Amanda stared frowning at the damp sandy gravel. Tom Conner’s body had already been taken away. A crisp breeze blew through the pine trees overhead. They swayed in the blue sky, hushing the staccato cry of a red squirrel claiming its territory. Thick white puffs of cloud drifted past, casting dark shadows on the green mountains in the distance.

  Amanda took the pictures that were handed to her and held them up in the morning sunlight, sifting through them and imagining the scene as it was first found. McGrew watched her, and so did Lieutenant Briggs. After a few moments Amanda turned to the state trooper and handed him back the photos.

  “The slugs were from a Glock?” she said. Despite the sun, there she could see a hint of her breath in the chilly mountain air.

  “Right,” Briggs said. “No markings.”

  “And you found no traces of anything in this entire area?” She shivered and pulled her jacket close. On the back were the yellow letters: FBI. “No shell casings, no footprints, no blood, no fibers?”

  Briggs shook his head. “Our lab people are pretty good, Agent Lee,” he said. His voice was thick like his eyebrows. Amanda would have liked him but for the obvious deference he paid to McGrew.

  Briggs was relatively young, but he already had the air of a seasoned cop. He also had the air of a climber, a political animal looking to gain favor. If Briggs hadn’t mentioned McGrew’s uncle a dozen times then he hadn’t mentioned him once. Amanda didn’t go for that. Still, his size and deportment commanded a certain degree of respect.

  “I’m sure they are,” she said.

  “They had a heavy rain the night we think he was killed,” Briggs said. “That was more than two weeks ago. We didn’t get called but just two days ago. And then, like I said, I heard about Detective McGrew’s investigation from a buddy of mine who works in the governor’s office. His uncle, the congressman, just happened to be telling the governor about Detective McGrew’s working with you folks down in Washington and . . .”

  “Is your uncle a congressman?” Amanda asked McGrew.

  Briggs’s face turned red and he looked at her uncertainly.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything. We’re lucky you called. With something like this, every day counts. Every hour.”

  Amanda knelt down again, fingering the spot where the shotgun slug had been removed.

  “Two shots were fired,” she said, almost to herself, then she looked up at Briggs. “But the other slug is definitely missing?”

  Briggs looked around at the endless swaying trees.

  “That slug could have gone anywhere. It could be down there in the lake if he shot in the air. If it was anywhere close,” he said, “I’d have it. Believe me.”

  “How many hospitals are . . . within a hundred miles?” she asked.

  Briggs looked from Amanda to McGrew and said, “The nearest medical center is in Old Forge. We checked that out already.”

  “Okay,” Amanda said, “that’s a good start. Maybe that slug is in the lake, but maybe it ended up in our man. Can you have your people find everything within a hundred miles and start checking? I could get my own agents to do it, but it would take time and I’m sure your people know the area better.”

  “I’ll get my people on it,” Briggs said. “I got the word right from the governor’s office to help any way I can.”

  “Great,” she said. “We’re looking for a blond man, medium build, straight hair and glasses. Right, McGrew?”

  “Yes,” McGrew said. He seemed foggy from driving all night. Amanda liked him that way.

  “We’ll be at that place across the street, the Seventh Lake Inn,” she said to Briggs. “I want to poke around town, talk to some of the locals. I’ll give you my cell phone number.”

  “Won’t work up here,” Briggs said.

  “Anywhere?” she asked.

  “Up on that ridge,” Briggs said. “That’s about it.”

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll check back there every two hours. If you find anything, leave me a message, please.”

  Briggs nodded and started around the side of the house for his cruiser, issuing orders as he went.

  Amanda turned to McGrew and said, “You better get some rest.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “I just need some coffee. I’m coming with you.”

  “Okay, I want to change,” she said. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt beneath her FBI windbreaker. “Let’s go get checked into the inn. You can get some coffee and we can get started. I want to talk to Mrs. Conner.”

  CHAPTER 47

  There were no framed pictures hanging on the knotty-pine wall, so Amanda laid her children’s pictures out on the small desk by the window then unpacked her things. She took a quick shower in the soft lake water and changed into a dark pantsuit, strapping on her USP 40 underneath the blazer.

  Downstairs, there was a small gift shop just off the lobby. McGrew wasn’t there yet, so she wandered in and began to poke around. There was an imitation flintlock pistol that she knew Teddy would love. She picked it up and also a small box of red caps that he could load one at a time to make the gun pop. For Glenda she found a necklace made out of small wooden beads. In the middle hung a little hand-carved black bear. Amanda tried to roust up a feeling of satisfaction. She forced her lips up into a smile. No use.

  When she came out of the gift shop, McGrew was waiting for her. He stood, smiling his crooked smile at the young woman behind the desk.

  Amanda paid for her souvenirs.

  “What’s that?” McGrew asked.

  Amanda felt her face grow warm. She was supposed to be a professional on assignment. “Just some things,” she said. “I was waiting for you.”

  McGrew just took out his keys, shrugged, and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Mrs. Conner lived down a long oiled dirt road that ran along a power line. It was a rickety two-story place with rough-cut pine siding that had faded itself nearly white. The red tin roof had faded, too. It looked a hundred years old. The front yard was mostly sand, although a few tall sprigs of grass struggled up. Two big Dobermans were chained to a massive pine tree whose trunk had been wrapped in sheet metal to keep from being girdled by the crazed animals.

  “Fucking mutts,” McGrew said over the din and the dust.

  Amanda’s attention was drawn to movement in one of the two second-floor windows above. The old woman stood behind the glass clutching a blanket up to her with one hand and holding a bottle of whiskey in the other. She was practically naked.

  “What the fuck?” McGrew said.

  Amanda pretended not to notice. She climbed the steps and knocked on the front door. No one came. She knocked again, louder this time. Still no one came. Suddenly the old door sprang open and there she stood, without the blanket, without anything but her bottle. Her eyes were blackened from two-day-old mascara. Her face was swollen from tears.

  “Leave me the hell alone!” she yelled. “This is my home and you can’t come here like this!”

  “Mrs. Conner,” Amanda said after she found her voice, “we came to help.”

  “You came to laugh,” she said. “You came like the others. They laughed at me. They laughed at him, and him dead. But he never did it. He never did nothing. He was my son. My son. Now you leave me the hell alone.”

  The door crashed closed. The dogs snarled and bayed and sprayed their slobber.

  “Fuck,” said McGrew.

  This time Amanda barely heard him.

  Back at the inn Amanda put in a call to the county sheriff’s office in nearby Hamilton. The officer in charge of their sex offender registry hadn’t had a request for information in the last two months. They spent the afternoon canvassing the nearby towns, from Old Forge all the way up to Blue Mountain, splitting up and asking merchants and waitresses if they’d seen a blond man with
straight hair, maybe glasses, about two weeks ago, traveling alone. They were eyed with suspicion, even after they explained who they were. It seemed hopeless.

  At six o’clock they stopped at the Burketown Diner for some food. Amanda carefully wiped off her fork and knife on a paper napkin, then ate her salad. When her grilled chicken sandwich arrived, she fished it out of its sea of mayonnaise and wiped it clean, too, before cutting it into small pieces. She looked up and noticed an older man in coveralls and a dusty John Deere cap staring at her. She smiled and he smiled back.

  She went back to her food, trying not to notice the way McGrew was attacking two greasy-looking chili dogs smothered in jalapeños and onions. A paper boat of cheese fries and a root beer float stood by ready to follow them in.

  “Not planning on taking another run, I see,” she said.

  McGrew licked his fingers and with his mouth full of dog said, “No, I’m going to sleep.”

  “Good,” she said. “You’re human.”

  McGrew smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “This is all I care about, that’s all.”

  “This is it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it is. I got a girl, you know, but nothing too serious really. I’m a cop. That’s it. I want this guy.

  “I’ve had some big cases, you know,” McGrew said, straightening his back. “Big down on Long Island. I had this one case where this guy, he stabbed his wife’s boyfriend, and I was the one who found the cigarette butts where he stood around waiting for her to leave so he could stab the guy . . . The fucking guy just stood there waiting . . . But this is different. This is like silver-screen material.”