The Fifth Angel Read online

  The road went another half mile before the next turnoff. He turned around and went back, pulling off the road at the crest of a hill where he could see the driveway. He took his backpack from the backseat and began to examine its contents: rope, duct tape, some rags, a Baby Ruth bar, a bottle of water, a flashlight, and a survival knife. He took the knife out of its sheath. The serrated edge was sharp enough to cut bone. He dragged the blade lightly over his arm and watched the black nubs of hair topple and gather along the silver edge.

  When the sun finally dropped behind the distant mountains, it turned suddenly chilly. He removed his sunglasses and looked at the purple ring around his eye in the rearview mirror. He put on a black North Face jacket, then started the truck. He drove down the hill and a little way into the driveway with the headlights off before stopping between two thick trees. This way, the fat bastard couldn’t escape.

  He got out, shouldered the pack, and set off carefully up the drive. The going wasn’t easy, especially in the fading light. Rocks and mud made for tough footing. He trudged on, wary.

  He rounded a bend and stopped. Something was wrong. He could feel it. By the time the gunshot registered in his brain, he was already halfway to the ground. It felt like someone had hit him in the arm with a baseball bat. He toppled off the road into a shallow ditch lined with deep ferns. He lay still. A whooping war cry came from not too far away, breaking the silence of the woods.

  He opened his eyes without stirring. Another whoop went up and he saw where it had come from. The fat bastard was climbing down out of a tree with his rifle in one hand. When fatty disappeared from sight, he crawled behind a tree and wrestled frantically with the backpack. His left arm felt numb, but his hand worked enough to help his right find the knife. He drew it from its sheath and held it by his side, crouching and peering around the bole of the tree. It was almost dark.

  Sticks snapped and leaves rattled. Fatty came breaking through the underbrush like a buffalo, out onto the dirt road. The fat shit jogged toward the ferns and stumbled over a rock, falling to the ground, the rifle clattering on the stones.

  CHAPTER 80

  Wheeler sprang from behind his tree like a panther, striking knife-first. A thudding filled the air as the knife pumped up and down, into his fat carcass like the needle of a sewing machine. A mist of blood filled the air, specking his face and hands. He pumped and he pumped and he pumped.

  Fatty came to life, tossing him aside, sending an unbelievable shock of pain up his arm. By the time he could collect himself, the fat bastard had crawled away into the brush. He was rattling around in there, moaning, helpless.

  Wheeler rose slowly to his feet and staggered back to his truck. He examined the gunshot wound. The bullet had gone clean through his forearm, and it felt like it had broken the bone. That fat fuck! He took one of the rags that were supposed to go into a child’s mouth and wrapped it around his arm before binding it down tight with the tape.

  In four-wheel drive he set off up the dirt driveway. When he got to where he’d been shot, he stopped to listen. The fat bastard was still moaning out there, but it didn’t sound like he would be giving Wheeler any more trouble. He grinned and went on. When he got to the cabin it was dark, but the lights were on. Welcome.

  Still grinning to himself, he got out of the truck with the backpack in hand. He wasn’t going to kill them here. That would be too easy. He wanted the bitch to know he had them. He might send pieces. He skipped up the front steps and knocked on the door.

  “Children,” he said, calling out cheerily, “it’s Uncle Charlieee. Children? Be good now, and open up the door. Uncle Charlie is here. He has kitties for you . . .”

  He stopped and listened to the sound of his voice echo through the woods. The waterfalls hissed in the background.

  “I said I’m here to get you!” he screamed, and then laughed at the echo.

  “Open,” he said, kicking the door, “up.”

  He kicked and kicked, his anger building, and then the door broke. He searched through the first floor, calling out to them, talking nice, sometimes screaming. Nothing there. He went up the narrow stairs and rifled through the bedrooms and their closets. Nothing. But he knew they were there. He could feel them. He could smell them.

  “Bad, bad, children,” he said, raising his voice above the clump of his feet on the plywood stairs. “Bad children to hide. If you come out, Uncle Charlie will be nice.”

  He found the door to the cellar.

  “If you come out now,” he said, calling down into the darkness.

  He found the light and flicked it on.

  “But if you don’t,” he screamed as he started down the stairs, “then Uncle Charlie is going to hurt you! That’s what he’s going to do you little fucks and you asked for it now! You made me! Now he’s going to hurt you!”

  CHAPTER 81

  They rode into the darkness in total silence. Amanda worked her phone, dialing Parker’s number again and again. It went right over to voice mail and she knew he didn’t have the phone on. But she kept trying. It was all she could do. She didn’t want to ring the cabin. She didn’t want the children to come out.

  How could Wheeler have found them? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Parker was just being Parker. Maybe he hit a deer and was tracking it. Maybe he lost track of time. Maybe he was just being the jackass he’d always been.

  “Your husband took the children to hide?” Ruskin said, breaking the silence.

  “Yes,” Amanda said.

  Ruskin nodded. “I never had the chance to do that with Janet. My daughter. Do you know what happened to her?”

  Amanda bit her lip. She didn’t want this.

  “I really don’t want to talk to you,” she said.

  “She was gone for ten days,” he said. He was staring out at the road.

  The Subaru’s hood swallowed the road’s white-painted dashes whole. Amanda tightened her grip on the wheel and gave it more gas.

  “They never stop, you know,” he said, turning his head her way.

  She looked straight ahead at the road.

  “No,” he said. “They just keep doing it until they’re dead. Those are the rules. I didn’t make them. I wrote a letter once to a father whose little girl was taken from him and killed. I signed it ‘The Fifth Angel.’ Do you know why?”

  Amanda glanced at him quickly and then back at the road. She shook her head in disgust. When she looked again, he was still staring.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “It’s the fifth angel of the apocalypse,” he said. “I’m not very religious. I’m spiritual, but not really religious, but after all this, sometimes I think about things like that, you know?

  “Anyway, this man I wrote to, his daughter was killed by that Tom Conner,” he said. “And for some reason, I wanted to sign the letter that I sent him. I wanted him to know I killed Conner. I did it for him and for all the rest. I did it for all the fathers and the mothers I don’t even know. I only wish someone did it for me . . .

  “Anyway,” he said, “I found this Bible and I looked in Revelation. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but I knew there was something there, something I’d heard of. The fifth angel is the one who pours out the fifth vial of the apocalypse. He pours it out on the throne of Satan and then Satan and his followers gnaw their tongues for pain. That’s what it says.

  “I think when I found Tupp in that cottage, shot through the lungs, and he saw me there, that’s what he was doing,” Ruskin said. “I think he was gnawing his tongue. He deserved that, didn’t he? It’s different when it’s your own kids . . . isn’t it?”

  Amanda pressed her lips together tightly. Her chin wrinkled and tears began to well in her eyes.

  After a silence she said, “Why are you telling me this?”

  Ruskin cleared his throat. He spoke quietly, gently.

  “No matter how hard you rationalize it,” he said, “no matter how much they deserve it, it does something to you . . . to kill someone. It c
hanges you.”

  Amanda glanced at him again. His blue eyes glistened.

  “I don’t want you to have to do that,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to have to do that . . . I’ll do it for you.”

  “Here it is,” she said, forgetting everything he said at the sight of the dirt road. “Hang on.”

  The closer she got, the faster she went. A panicked shriek escaped from inside her when she saw the unfamiliar truck. Rocks slammed the undercarriage. Jack held on.

  Amanda smashed right into the back of the white Tahoe and they both jumped out, Jack with his shiny .45, Amanda with her flat black USP 40. Light tumbled out the broken front door of the cabin.

  “You go in the front, I’ll take the back,” Ruskin said to her. “Don’t shoot me.” Without waiting for a reply, he darted toward the side of the cabin.

  CHAPTER 82

  Wheeler had looked in every dark damp corner the cellar had, behind every broken piece of furniture, underneath every moldy rug. There was only one place they could be.

  Behind the stairs was a hole in the cobblestone foundation. The pitch-black fissure bled slime down the wall. It smelled of raw damp earth. Old fruit jars reflected light from the bare bulb that hung in the middle of the cellar. They stared back at him like broken teeth.

  He moved slowly toward the opening, dropping his backpack and ducking to get under the stairs. Cobwebs, draped with filth, licked his face. He sputtered and spit and wiped his face clean.

  “Little fucks,” he said in a singsong manner. “Uncle Charlie is here.”

  He could see now that the jars had been moved. He was still. He could hear her. A sniffle. His heart raced. He lifted a jar and tossed it to the side, shattering its contents across the stone floor. The rich juicy smell of peaches filled the damp air. His nostrils flared at the hint of alcohol.

  He reached into the darkness, giggling now, giddy with delight—

  SNAP!

  Something stung his eye. He reeled back with a shriek, screaming and pawing at the pain. Blood and juice from his eye dribbled down his cheek and into his raging mouth, infuriating him further.

  He pushed back the pain and darted for the hole.

  SNAP!

  It bit into his forehead this time, burning with pain, but this time, he kept digging. He felt the cold tube of a cheap gun barrel and yanked on it hard, snatching it from the hole and throwing it out into the cellar. A BB gun. The boy was screaming now, screaming from fright. The girl cried. The excitement of it all was truly heady. His pain only made it more . . . more climactic.

  He got his hands on the boy, kicking and punching and screaming he dragged him toward the mouth of the hole, pulling him out onto the cellar floor. They wrestled momentarily and he felt a wave of dizziness wash over him when the boy kicked his broken arm. But then he righted himself and he beat him. He beat him and beat him and beat him until he was still.

  She was still crying. Crying in the dark like an unborn baby and he liked that. He crawled into the black hole and got her out. She didn’t even try to fight him, sweet thing. He found his tape and wrapped her with care, stuffing her mouth with the other rag, taping it tight. Her eyes shone wide and bright, sparkling with delicious tears.

  He cradled her in his arms and ascended the stairs. That’s when he heard the crash and saw the flash of sparks as another car smashed into his truck.

  There was a back door and he dashed for it. The shivering little bundle under his arm began to squirm, but he held her tight.

  CHAPTER 83

  Jack saw the dark shape melt into the woods. He heard the scritch-scritch of gravel beneath its feet. He started after it, cautious, silent, keeping just off the edge of the path. He became suddenly aware of the water. With each step the hissing intensified. He felt a cool mist on his face, drifting through the dark trees. He shivered. The woods opened and Jack saw him, clearly illuminated against the broad backdrop of white spray.

  Wheeler was puzzling over where to go, looking and pacing the ledge as if it were a cage. Under his arm was a bundle—no, it was a child, a little girl.

  Jack felt the familiar hatred and disgust churning within his gut. He steadied his gun. He held on. But Wheeler was moving and Jack wasn’t a good enough shot to pick him off. Without thinking, Jack stepped into the opening.

  “Stop!” he screamed, hoping the sudden sound might make him drop the girl. “Put the girl down.”

  The Colt .45 was leveled at Wheeler’s head but he immediately held the child up in front of his chin.

  “You stop,” Wheeler said. He was grinning. He hopped nimbly up onto one of the boulders balanced on the edge of the bluff.

  Jack sensed the vastness of the abyss beyond. The nasty hiss of the falls came from a long way down.

  “Drop the gun,” Wheeler said, “or I’ll throw her off.”

  Bile shot up from the pit of his stomach and Jack swallowed fast. He stepped back and dropped the gun.

  “Now come out here,” Wheeler said, grinning. “Come out here on these rocks. I’ll do it!”

  Jack moved slowly.

  “Get up there,” Wheeler said, his voice pitched with anger. Bloody spit flew from his mouth. He nodded his head toward the rocks on the opposite end of the ledge.

  Jack stepped carefully up onto the biggest rock. He felt his shoe slipping on the wet stone. He looked down and sensed a flash in front of him. His heart leapt. Had the girl gone over?

  No, it was Wheeler, jumping down and snatching his gun from the ground. He was laughing now, laughing at Jack, cackling insanely. He aimed the big shiny .45 at Jack and Jack closed his eyes.

  The mist washed over him. The hissing became a whisper, filling his mind, dreamlike, carrying him away. When it came, the crack of the gunshot seemed distant. It was another world. Another place.

  CHAPTER 84

  Tears streaked down Amanda’s face. She raced upstairs, saw the mess in the bedrooms, and began to cry. The kids were already gone. She dashed back down and that’s when she noticed the open cellar door and the light it belched up from down below. She took the steps two at a time and nearly fell. Her eyes tore across the dreary space, dissecting each shadow, each heap, in nanoseconds. Then she saw Teddy under the stairs.

  “Noooo!” she cried.

  She threw herself beneath the stairs and scooped him up, cradling him, cooing and crying.

  “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head, refusing to believe he was gone.

  In a trance she stumbled, carrying him up the stairs and laid him on the kitchen table amid the bread crumbs.

  “Teddy!” she screamed. “No!”

  She pressed her ear to his chest. Nothing.

  She measured up his sternum with her fingers and laid her palms against his chest. With five quick thrusts she tried to set his heart to beating. She pinched his nose and filled his lungs, twice. She pumped again, then blew, then listened. Teddy choked and gagged, vomiting hot dogs, beans, and phlegm. He inhaled dramatically, opened his eyes, and began crying. Amanda cried out with joy, then she heard the distant shout.

  Glenda.

  She laid her battered son on the couch and covered him with a blanket, then bolted from the cabin. The shout came from the falls. She sprinted down the gravel path. A voice cried out in her head. Amanda had no gun. She’d dropped it on the cellar floor. She had to go back, but she couldn’t. There was no time. She didn’t need a gun. She could kill him with her hands.

  There he was, standing with Ruskin’s pistol in his hand, his back to her, the shiny weapon gleaming in the glow of the falls. Wheeler was laughing. Instinctively, Amanda threw herself at him with all her force, knocking him to the ground. The gun went off. She clawed his face, tearing into his eyes. He shrieked and swung the gun at her head.

  Amanda saw stars. She felt herself dropping to the ground. She sensed him rising. She reached up and grabbed his groin, clenching her fingers with every ounce of hatred she ever knew. She yanked down hard, twisting at the same time, and he came do
wn with a shrill cry. The gun clattered on the flat top of a boulder. He struck her again, violently, and tore free, diving for the gun.

  She felt a stone the size of a grapefruit beneath her. She grabbed it and went after him. He had the gun. She swung the stone with all her might, smashing his jaw, shattering teeth. The gun went off again. She swung again, connecting with his skull. She swung again and he lay still. She staggered back. Ruskin lay facedown on the ledge. A pool of blood crept out across the rock from beneath his golden hair.

  Amanda heard a muffled hysterical cry. She turned to her daughter, saw her eyes, wide with fear, and spun back around. Wheeler had risen from the boulder. He stood over them, menacing, his face a bloody pulp. With a primal shriek, Amanda shot forward and struck him in the chest. His broken face discharged a tattered scream as he plummeted a hundred feet to the rocks below.

  Amanda dropped down on her knees beside her daughter. They cried together as she released her from her sticky bonds. They cried and they kissed and they hugged each other. Then she heard something more. She looked up. Behind her stood Jack Ruskin, glasses broken, blood dripping freely from his nose.

  He smiled.

  EPILOGUE

  J ack looked around at the inside of his jail cell. He was alone.

  “Ruskin,” the guard outside his cell said. “It’s time.”

  Jack got up off the bunk, listening to the unique sound of its squeaking springs for the last time. The smell of ammonia, without the lemons, filled his nose. He wouldn’t miss that, either . . .

  It could have been much worse. He could have ended up on death row, or in a maximum-security prison for life. Here, he had been able to see the sun and the sky through a window. He had been able to use his computer, e-mail, read books, exercise. His cellmate for the past year was an accountant who had been convicted of grand larceny.