Damnable
CHAPTER 22
LUCAS SHERMAN WIPED THE SWEAT FROM HIS BROW ON the back of his heavy work glove. The pause prompted him to remove his safety glasses and rub his eyes, first with the gloves, then without them.
“Boss, I don’t mean to complain, but I gotta get some sleep.”
Valentine turned from the stained glass and surveyed the interior of the church from the chancel. “You’re an atheist, Lucas. You’ll sleep when you’re dead. Why would you want to now?”
With an audible sigh, Sherman slid the thick clear plastic stems of the glasses back over his ears. He slipped the gloves back on, his gaze aimed near his feet.
“There’s not that much left for you to do,” Valentine added. “You can rest for a while after you finish that section. In fact, I’ll insist you do.”
Sherman leaned against the push bar of the groove cutter and glanced around. “The priests are gonna freak when they see this.”
“This isn’t a Catholic church, Lucas. No priests. And, for the time being, I’m the leaseholder. I can do what I want.”
“But isn’t that chick a nun?” He jerked his thumb to a far corner. The young blonde woman in her habit was crouched in a cage barely large enough to fit her. “I thought nuns were Catholic.”
“She is. This church isn’t.”
Sherman half shrugged, half nodded. His eyes wandered back to the hard floor. His lips silently mouthed the word Whatever.
“It’s called being ecumenical, Lucas. It is not important you understand. I have my reasons.”
“I’m sure you do, Boss.”
“The faster you get back to work, the sooner you get to rest.”
The groove cutter came alive, vibrating violently. The business end of it sent shards and chunks of marble flying as he pushed it, spitting them in every direction.
Why was he always doing that? Sherman wondered. He’d never told Valentine he was an atheist. Never even thought of himself that way. He just didn’t think there was a Heaven or Hell. God, he wasn’t sure about. The devil? Who knew? And who cared? But he definitely believed in freaks and monsters. He’d seen plenty in his time. Hell, in a way, he was one of them.
The machine rattled his arms, numbing them. Desecrating a church might be fun another time, but not this way. This was work.
The outline he was following curved sharply. He disengaged the blade and repositioned the cutter to begin a new groove perpendicular to the one he just finished. This one had to form a half circle. What a pain in the ass. Valentine and his fucked-up rules. No guns. What kind of a fruit doesn’t let his muscle carry a gun?
Sherman lifted his eyes as he pushed on the bar. There she was, cuffed, bound, and gagged. He would be glad when this was all finished, because then he’d be able to take care of the cop. Valentine hadn’t spelled it out yet, but he knew the cop would be a loose end. Sherman supposed he was, also, but that didn’t bother him.
Valentine needed him for stuff like this. Who else was there? Deborah? Those other freaky women? Talk about weird. Even if they did have some creepy-ass abilities, he doubted Valentine could trust them.
Plus, those charms of theirs didn’t work on him. One of the many wonderful benefits of that treatment the state administered.
There was no one else, he concluded. So for now, he was safe. All he had to do was go about his business, and then, when the time was right, he’d take that skinny shit’s money—he had to have a safe he kept in that penthouse with a few hundred grand stashed away—and beat him to death. Maybe feed his heart to that fucked-up creature he made.
Until then, he’d just keep working. Working and, assuming the fucker ever let him, sleeping.
IT TOOK HATCHER ALMOST TWENTY MINUTES TO GET TO Fred’s apartment building. He took the steps two and three at a time and arrived at the unit slightly winded. The door was a sliver ajar. He pushed it open with a slow hand.
Susan was sitting on a chair, her face contorted in a painful sob. She was looking down at Fred’s body.
The thing about the dead that stuck out to Hatcher was that they never looked peaceful. Not before the mortician got a hold of them. He’d seen his fair share, rifle wounds, stab wounds, shrapnel wounds, wet work. One thing they had in common is how they seemed frozen in the act of dying, a pantomime of that final moment of resignation. Their bodies were always in uncomfortable-looking positions, even when lying flat on their back. Nobody lies on the floor like a dead person does, not using an arm for a pillow, not lying on one side. The dead he’d come across hadn’t simply drifted off; they’d vacated bodies that looked like they had been fighting to stay alive. In his mind, death equated to eternal discomfort. A restless state, endured in perpetuity.
Perhaps those who died in bed—people who passed by nonviolent means—were different. But he couldn’t recall ever seeing someone who’d died that way. Not even his father, he realized.
Fred was no exception. He looked like someone who’d just taken a bad fall, wrenched his back, and couldn’t get up. His spine was slightly arched, his head bent to one side. His eyes seemed unfocused, with one slanting slightly inward. One arm was resting across his belly, the other palm up on the floor.
An oval puddle of blood spread out across the tile from beneath his head. His neck was cut from one side to the other, just above his Adam’s apple.
“He called and asked me to come back, said there was something he wanted to give me. I was glad he did. I wanted to thank him. In person. I thought maybe I could give him some money, for helping me.” Susan paused to sob. “Something to show my gratitude.”
Hatcher knelt next to the body. He briefly contemplated checking for a pulse, but realized it would be futile.
“Did you see anything? Hear anything?”
“No.” She started crying more forcefully as she spoke. Her words came out like poignant lyrics to a sad song. “The door was unlocked . . . I just opened it and found him like this.”
“Police?”
Tears dropped to the floor as she shook her head. “I started to, then I remembered how he told me that if anything were to happen, that I was to get in touch with you. He made sure I had your number.”
His number. Somebody else seemed to have it, too. Hatcher stared at the dull eyes that already seemed to be cloudy. Sorry, pal, he thought. I’m the one to blame. You just picked the wrong guy to help out.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she added. “Also . . .”
“What?”
“I—I think the police may have had something to do with this.”
Hatcher stood, looking into her eyes, willing her to look back at him. “Why do you say that?”
“Because when he called me he told me Detective Reynolds was on his way up, but that he’d be gone by the time I got here. He sounded very nervous. Like he was trying to keep calm about it.”
Reynolds.
“I asked him which one was Reynolds, if he was one of the ones at Garrett’s office, and he said no. But I think he was wrong, I think he was there. The one with the red hair.”
Amy. Maloney had been right to be worried. She and Reynolds had gone off together, and now they were both unaccounted for. But Wright was the one he knew was being held. Reynolds had to be involved. The little apple-pie-looking creep.
“I was scared,” Susan said. “So I called you.”
“It’s okay,” Hatcher said. “You did the right thing. When he called, did he say what he wanted to give you?”
“No. This seems like it’s all my fault.”
“That’s just survivor guilt, Susan. This had nothing to do with you.” Hatcher wished he could believe that about himself. This actually was his fault, he had no doubt. “Can you think of anything else he told you?”
“Nothing. He just told me to come back, that he had something to show me.”
Nodding again, Hatcher surveyed the room. No obvious signs of a struggle. And there was no shortage of things that could break. The room looked like an air traffic control tower, so many computer monitors and electronic display screens around. One monitor on a corner desk caught his eye. A UFO was bouncing off the edges of the black screen, crisscrossing it in diagonals. A screen saver. Hatcher found a keyboard tray where a drawer normally would be. The moving image disappeared when he tapped the space bar, replaced by icons and a wallpaper that took a few seconds to populate the screen. The wallpaper was a photo of a tree and a fence with a slope of grass. A street was in the foreground. There was something familiar about the scene. It took him a moment, but Hatcher realized it was a picture from Dallas. The grassy knoll.
He slid the mouse and clicked on the Internet icon. The front page of a website called TrustNoOne appeared. A clearinghouse for conspiracy theories, from the looks of it. Hatcher clicked on the drop arrow next to the web address box. Nothing. Hatcher realized he shouldn’t be surprised. He imagined paranoiacs like Fred didn’t leave web trails.
“What are you looking for?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know. Anything.” He straightened up and swept the room again. As he did, the sight of her standing next to Fred’s corpse hit him.
Had he been entertaining the notion Susan may have killed Fred, or been in league with whomever did, the way she stood there would have struck it from his mind once and for all. No one was that good an actress. She looked a wreck. Not physically, like he was sure he did, but emotionally. Her shoulders weaved as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She was biting at the back of her thumbnail, her other arm wrapped around her torso, hugging herself. The press of her arm against her loose blouse showed her pregnancy. His dead brother’s child. He found it ironic that after finding out Garrett may have been at most a half sibling, he finally started to think of him as a brother.
His thoughts formed a silent but sharp rebuke, and he reminded himself that not everyone was as numb about these kinds of things as he was. What kind of a guy lets a traumatized woman stand there staring at a bloody body? A pregnant woman, no less. One who was practically a relation.
“You should go,” he said. “You don’t need to stay here. Like I said before, get out of town. Take a taxi, go far. Philly, maybe. Take a train from there. Pay in cash. Do you have plenty of cash?”
“Yes. How long should I stay gone?”
“Until it’s safe.”
“When will that be?”
Maybe never. “Soon, I hope.”
“Will you call me? When it’s safe?”
“Yes.”
“Where should I go?”
“Anywhere.” Flashes of concern peppered his thoughts, worries about cell phones being tracked, credit cards, ATM withdrawals. No, he thought. This wasn’t a movie. A rich guy, some spooky chicks, a bad cop, some muscle, but not some enormous government conspiracy. And even if it were, the government should be so competent. He knew better.
But still.
“Go somewhere out of the way. Use cash whenever possible. And buy one of those TracFones Garrett was using. Check your voice mail from it. I’ll leave a message and a number if it’s safe. Use your head.”
Hatcher paused, contemplating his own words. Cell phones. He glanced at the body, then moved toward it. Taking a knee, he patted Fred down. He reached into the dead man’s front pants pocket and removed a phone.
“What is it?”
He opened the phone and pushed the send button. A list of numbers appeared. The last call was an outgoing number. Susan’s, he gathered. Twenty-two minutes prior to that was an incoming call. He didn’t recognize the number, but he guessed it was Reynolds’s. Sloppy of him. He may have been a cop, but he wasn’t a pro. He hadn’t thought things through. Hatcher struggled to assess the implications of that. Why wouldn’t a cop think of that?
“Hatcher?”
“Nothing,” he said. He slid the phone into his pocket. “Just checking his calls.”
Because it seemed like the thing to do, he walked her down to the street and waited with her while she hailed a cab. Dawn was breaking. The streets were still empty, but shadows were being infiltrated by the blue gray glow of morning.
The first cab they saw pulled right over. Susan kissed him on the cheek and hugged him tightly as he held the rear door open. His brother had good taste. She really was beautiful.
“You’re not a Carnate, are you?”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
She held his gaze for several beats. “Why don’t you come with me? With Brian gone, there’s plenty of money. I can hire lawyers, cash in everything. You can protect me.” She placed a hand on her belly and lowered her eyes. “Protect us.”
“That’s a tempting offer. But I just can’t.”
“I didn’t mean to imply . . . I wasn’t saying you and me, you know—”
“I know.” Under different circumstances, it would have been comical. He hadn’t shaved in days. His clothes were filthy and in tatters. Dirt and dried blood lined the creases of his skin. She was soft and clean and smelled like some kind of succulent flower. He didn’t even want to think what he smelled like.
But what she said hadn’t surprised him. He was her only tie to Garrett. She would do anything to hold on to a piece of him. Girlfriends of fallen soldiers often became involved with returning members of their unit. Or brothers.
“It’s just, this baby is your niece or nephew. That makes us family.”
“I suppose it does.”
She tried to smile, but her eyes were sorrowful, seemed to push down on the corners of her mouth. Sighing, she slid into the cab. “Don’t get yourself killed . . . Jacob.”
He shut the door and slapped the roof of the taxi a couple of times. When it was almost out of sight he said, “Nobody lives forever.”
The hushed words had barely passed his lips when he thought of Wright. He moved quickly back toward the building. One innocent person was already dead because of him, one person who had trusted him, who had tried to help him. He wasn’t about to let it become two.
DESPITE NOT REALLY EXPECTING TO FIND ANYTHING, WITHIN a few minutes Hatcher discovered something Fred left for him. His primary reason for returning had been to wipe everything he’d touched. After a short debate on his way up the staircase, he’d decided he still didn’t completely trust Maloney, so calling him was out. Given that, he also decided he didn’t need to be connected to the scene of a homicide. Zero residual presence seemed to be in order. The obvious problem would be fingerprints.
As he was finishing up, relatively certain he had retraced his steps accurately, a whirring, rumbling noise caught his attention. It was coming from a cabinet beneath the computer. Inside was a printer. It had quieted down, sat there dormant, a single green light signaling its readiness. He assumed what he’d heard was an automated adjustment, the realigning of print heads.
On top of the printer, where the printed pages eject, was the research Fred had done for him. He saw the name Valentine on some of the pages, the word Carnate on at least one other. He folded the thin stack and shoved it as far into his pocket as it would go, then finished wiping down everything he had touched. He paused over Fred’s body before leaving, heard himself whisper the words “I’m sorry,” then moved cautiously but hastily down the staircase and out of the building, trying to beat the early risers.
He hailed a cab a few blocks later, something he once again found much more challenging without Susan next to him. Getting a cab from the hospital had been easy—even if the driver had given him the fish eye—because they were lined up near one entrance. But now it was just him waving an arm, and the drivers were being discriminating. He didn’t blame them, but that didn’t stop him from cursing more than a few who’d shut off their duty lights and drove past.
With some time to kill until his appointment with Stephen Solomon, Attorney at Law, he needed a place he could think. This posed a slight dilemma. He pulled out his cell phone, had to double-check to make sure it was his and not Fred’s, and retrieved the picture message of Wright. He was pretty certain it was taken at Deborah’s apartment, given what he could see. He was also pretty certain whoever sent it expected he would know that. Going there would be a sucker’s play.
His best guess was, he was being tested. To see whether he would follow directions. Whether he would do as he was told. That made the decision easier. He told the driver to take him to the New York Public Library.
But that begged the question. Who really did send the picture? The easy answer was Valentine, but he wondered whether he could be sure. Anyone could sign a text message and say they were whoever they wanted to be. The Carnates—one of them, at least—told him Demetrius Valentine was up to something sinister and that Valentine was his brother. Half of that had more or less been confirmed, but how could he be sure the Carnates weren’t lying about the other part? They were so hard to read, their faces like masks, their bodily control almost unnatural. For all he knew, they could be setting Valentine up.
No. Something told him that wasn’t the case. He recalled seeing Solomon the day he met Wright at the precinct—the lawyer who got Sherman off. The Carnates said Valentine was behind the string of missing prostitutes. Wright had said he was a high-priced mouthpiece. That fit with Valentine. It also explained how Sherman could afford him.
Valentine and Sherman. It did fit.
And Valentine was looking like he really was his brother. Hatcher was still having a problem with that one.
Then there was Deborah. If Soliya had been telling the truth, Deborah was also involved. That would mean the picture of Wright being taken at her place made sense. Sort of. Deborah knew Hatcher had been there. Unless someone was simply trying to make him think these things.
Simple, he told himself. Keep it simple. The simple answers were usually the correct ones. And the simple answer—if anything about this could be considered simple anymore—was that Valentine was behind it and Deborah was working with him.
And Reynolds.
Hatcher wasn’t sure what to make of Reynolds. Maloney seemed to imply he was dirty, but was he ready to trust Maloney? No, he decided. But he did trust Susan, and she’d said Fred told her Reynolds was on his way. Of course, he knew he had no real reason to trust Susan, but experience had taught him you can’t accomplish anything if you trust no one. If he was going to be that way, he might as well take the next step and question whether Wright herself might be involved, playing the role of captive for his benefit. There was a fine line between being distrustful and walking around with tinfoil headwear.
The taxi dropped Hatcher off on Fifth Avenue near Fortieth. He found a nearby shop serving breakfast sandwiches and ordered two. He inhaled them in just a few bites, washed them down with a large glass of orange juice. Then he made his way back to the library.
Feeling the food and OJ churning agreeably in his stomach, he hurried up the enormous staircase. Two lions guarded the steps, famous landmarks that reminded him of his childhood. He’d learned about them once on a field trip. The pair were nicknamed Patience and Fortitude by the wife of some long-ago mayor. He figured he could sure use some of both, but he doubted they were sharing.
Near the entrance, he remembered he was still carrying a large dagger strapped to his calf. He slowed down and stiffened his gait, trying to keep the pants leg from bulging. A pair of security guards gave him dirty looks as he passed, but no one stopped him.
The interior smelled like must and furniture polish and scents he couldn’t quite place. It reminded Hatcher of an old house, where smoke had staked claims on the upholstery, and aging wood created a pleasant background scent of decay.
The library was enormous, and proud of it. Sprawling marble floors and vaulted ceilings, elaborate stonework and ornate bay windows. Majestic staircases curving to unseen destinations. A castle for books, conceived when the written word was king.
Hatcher made his way to the main reading room and took a seat at one of the myriad large wooden tables serried in rows that appeared to extend for at least a couple of city blocks. Sinking into the chair, he felt small, relatively impotent. He couldn’t think of a feeling more appropriate for the situation.
He unfolded the printouts he’d taken from Fred’s apartment and started to read. It quickly became obvious that Demetrius Valentine wasn’t just rich, he was uber rich. An article from the Wall Street Journal recounted how he’d developed an Internet meta-search engine, how he sold it for millions, how he demanded and got tens of thousands of stock options as part of the deal, and how he cashed those out during the height of the dot-com bubble before turning around and shorting industry stocks in a bold prediction of the coming bust. Mr. Valentine was purported to be a billionaire, perhaps a multibillionaire.
The piece also described him as a private man who gave a lot of money to charities, especially churches. The writer referred to him as “the orphan of two high-profile atheists, who seemed to be atoning for the perceived sins of his parents.”
Parents, Hatcher thought. One of them, Hatcher’s father. A high-profile atheist. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Two more articles on Valentine were in the stack, one that focused on an unprecedented act of charity involving Grace Trinity Church. Leasing the aging main church for two years while he gave it a full renovation, its first in a half century, and paying enough on the lease for the church to rent temporary space with enough left over to establish a large scholarship fund for orphans.
Saint Valentine.
Hatcher had to scan one other page almost to the bottom until he found Valentine’s name. Under a subtitle “Valentine’s Day-Job Massacre,” a tiny snippet of business gossip dated more than three years earlier mentioned that “word on Wall Street” was that Valentine’s dumping of a particular stock was not an isolated incident, and that after returning from an extended sabbatical in Africa he started liquidating most of his holdings and fired his entire staff.
Okay, Hatcher thought. The man is very wealthy, very generous, and possibly very weird. If he were to believe a certain Carnate, also quite deranged and homicidal. But he still knew next to nothing about him. Nothing that seemed helpful, at least.
The last page he came to was from a website dedicated to demonology. Hatcher hadn’t even realized there was such a thing. But there it was, apparently an entire website devoted to the discipline. The page had a black background with Gothic-looking title and text fonts. A banner ad for a horror movie ran across the top. Fred had obviously printed it out because the page contained a brief description of Carnates:
A Carnate is the female offspring of a demon and a human woman. Not much is known about these creatures. There is no mention of them in the recognized books of the Bible. A few legends trace them to Solomon, who was rumored to have enslaved demons through magic. Some demonologists have speculated that Solomon wanted to produce a race of demons that could walk the earth to guard his mines. One ancient source described Solomon as having been so enchanted by these females that he married every one he’d been responsible for creating as they came of age. Carnates are said to be sexually irresistible and, compared to people, virtually immortal. They have been vaguely linked to other types of demons, such as Sedim and Djinn, and descriptions of those beings may be references to the same creature, and vice versa. Most of the scant information there is about Carnates comes from the transcripts of a heresy trial involving an alleged Carnate presided over by Pope Benedict I. The transcripts remain sealed by the Vatican, but the diary of one priest who claimed to have read them said the accused gave testimony that Solomon had placed a curse on them for treachery, a curse that would last until the gates of Hell swallow all of humanity, though the priest did not specify precisely what that curse was. Being obsessively fond of material wealth, Carnates apparently conspired to relieve Solomon of much of his treasure, greatly angering him.
Below this description was a minimalist sketch of a shapely woman in veils. Below that were three citations to source material.
Hatcher read the paragraphs several times, unable to decide whether they provided anything useful. Assuming demons even existed—an assumption he was still resisting—determining the accuracy of the information seemed impossible. Any fool could post something on the Internet, and every fool would believe it. He supposed he could check the sources listed, but that didn’t seem to be the best use of his time, and he doubted it would yield anything more believable. Or verifiable. Despite what he had seen below ground, he wasn’t yet ready to accept ostensible myth as fact. Carnates seemed to exist, and additional background on them would be nice—especially if Deborah had indeed set him up—but his concern at the moment was Wright. All indications were that Valentine had her, and that Valentine may be pursuing some personal agenda directed at him. Right now, his gut told him he needed to find out more about Valentine. And about Valentine’s father. If for no other reason than he might have been his own father, too.
After that, he decided he could use any time he had left to do more research about Carnates. There were still hours left until 5:30.
His phone chirped as he folded the pages and stood. It took him a second to figure out which phone it was.
Hatcher answered. It was Maloney.
“Where are you?”
Hatcher glanced around. Angry eyes peered over glasses, their owners hunched over books. “Catching up on some reading.”
“You need to get down to the precinct. Now.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re wanted for questioning. You’re a suspect, about one misstep away from being a subject. It was all I could do to keep them from issuing a material witness warrant.”
Fred’s body, Hatcher thought. Somebody saw him leave, or he missed something when he cleaned up.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Them,” Maloney said.
“What?”
“We have two bodies. And an anonymous tip named you. Said you killed two men in a street fight. Said you were cut and injured during the scuffle.”
“I can’t come down there right now, Lieutenant.”
“Goddamnit, Hatcher. You can, and you will. I’m not asking. Maybe I can still straighten this out if you let me help. I’m trying to convince them you’re not a flight risk. But if a warrant gets issued, I’ll be hunting you down myself. Just for making me look bad.”
“You don’t understand, I have to be somewhere a little later. Really have to be somewhere, I mean.”
“Then the faster you get your ass over here, the better.”
Hatcher found a large clock on a far wall. He still had time. He wasn’t sure whether he could trust Maloney, but he also wasn’t sure he had a choice.
“Okay,” he said.
“And Hatcher . . . try not to leave any dead bodies along the way, for Christ’s sake.”
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