Silent Mercy (45 page)
“Priests and ministers are linked to the person of the incarnate Christ. The Father begets the Son.” Fyodor Zukov was raving now. “The priest presides at the altar and says what Christ said, does what Christ did. In that moment and in that ministry, he
is
Christ. And Jesus Christ was a
man
.”
is
Christ. And Jesus Christ was a
man
.”
Mike was using the distraction of this maniacal sermon to edge himself forward.
“Tell her the truth, Ms. Cooper,” Zukov said, switching gears to a soft whisper of a voice. “No one will find any of us here. Not in time.”
Somehow, while he’d been ranting, Zukov caught Mike’s movement, and swung suddenly around, kicking his right leg up in a wide arc that took dead aim at Mike’s head.
I screamed and Mike ducked, but the martial-arts training combined with the grace and balance of Zukov’s circus artistry was in full display.
“How’s your sambo?” Mike called out, taunting the devil himself.
It looked like Zukov was waiting for Mike to lead him to the gun before he struck a deadly blow with the sharp point of the bullhook.
“I fight for Christ, Detective. That’s why you’ll be so easy to kill.”
“If you thought the Reverend Portland would be your decoy, Fyodor,” I said, hoping to get his attention, “you were wrong.”
He looked away from Mike and up at me, surprised that we knew as much as we did.
“It’s Oksana who told us about you,” I said, starting to walk around the base of the foundation. I wanted to know how Fyodor thought he would get himself out of this deep hole. “Oksana who told us about your time at Penikese.”
“Oksana would never give me up!” he shouted.
I had sidetracked him completely from his two captives. He was enraged by his sister’s betrayal, baying at me as I continued to prowl above him.
Three-quarters of the way around the rectangular ditch I came upon his solution. Zukov had tied a strip of aerial silk—a bright blue length of fabric, the color of the piece that had been found on Naomi’s body—to the base of a huge boulder a few feet away from the hole. He had secured the other end of it to a corner of one of the cement blocks. He would be able to lift himself out with very little effort, after he disposed of Chastity Grant.
“How else do you think we knew about Penikese?” I asked, stepping over the silk and continuing to stalk the perimeter. “How else would we know you’d been banished here, sent away to school instead of jail?”
Zukov was following my movements, ready to take out his unhappiness about Oksana on me, or whoever was closest to him. It gave Mike the chance to continue his crawl. It allowed me time to think about what action to take.
“Doesn’t matter that you can’t call her from here. She’s in jail. She was locked up as an accessory to murder tonight.”
“You’re lying!” he screamed at me.
“I don’t have any reason to lie, Fyodor. Oksana was arrested when the train stopped in Providence. Would you have silenced her too? Is that your plan? To silence anyone who has offended you?”
“I’d never hurt Oksana. Those who need to be silenced are the ones who offend God!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Pariahs and outcasts, is that it?”
Mike was sitting up now, his back against the wall. I guessed he was close to his gun, ready to take on Zukov, although ten feet of darkness separated them and I knew he couldn’t see a human target clearly in the blackness of the hole.
“And lepers, right?” Mike added.
Zukov spun on a dime. He was ready to charge at Mike.
“Don’t you know doctors can treat your condition?” I called out to him. “The doctors at Bellevue can help you. You don’t have to die, Fyodor.”
He turned again to look at me, wondering, I thought, whether I was worth chasing down.
Now it was Mike speaking. “The Gospel According to Mark. ‘And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ ”
Fyodor Zukov seemed transfixed as Mike recited text from the gospel.
“‘And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.’ ”
“Don’t mock me, Detective. It’s too late for that too. Don’t you dare mock me.”
Zukov extended his arm with the bullhook, aiming for Mike’s head. But Mike dodged the sharp tip and came up with the gun in his right hand. He fired once and I heard the bullet ricochet off the wall.
Zukov laughed and readied his weapon, like a javelin, for another charge at Mike, who had braced himself against the foundation as he tried to get to his feet.
The killer lunged again. The tip of his weapon dug into the wall, catching the sleeve of Mike’s jacket and pinning him in place, just as his foot caught Mike directly in the gut.
“Coop!” he called out from the darkened pit. “Hang tough. Catch this and you’re out of here.”
Mike pitched something out of the hole. In the few seconds the object was airborne, I realized it had to be the Glock. He couldn’t loosen his arm sleeve from the bullhook to take aim, but he had flipped the light pistol up over his head in my direction. Mike knew he was no match for Zukov’s killer instincts, and ridding himself of the deadly weapon would eliminate giving it up to the skilled fighter.
There was no way for me to grab the Glock as it sailed over my head like a small missile. It must have landed on nearby rocks, clattering against them as it dropped.
“Run, Coop!” he shouted at me again.
“No, Mike. No. I’m not going,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong. “You’re trapped.”
It sounded as though Zukov had kicked again. There was a loud thud and an ungodly sound from Mike’s throat.
“Get the gun and shoot this bastard, will you?”
“Are you pinned to the wall?”
“No more,” he said, sounding weak and exhausted. He must have ripped his jacket loose from the point of the bullhook. “Beat it.”
Then I heard the resurgence of Chat Grant’s desperate sobs, and the beginnings of a fistfight between Mike and Zukov. I knew I had no choice but to find the loaded gun and use it.
FIFTY-THREE
I
beamed the flashlight down the slope behind me.
beamed the flashlight down the slope behind me.
There was a dense tangle of brush and shrubs, and about ten feet beyond that, something flat that looked like a granite step. It was the only visible surface that would have produced the noise made when the gun fell to the ground.
The grunts and pounding sounds of Mike and Zukov hitting each other propelled me toward the large stone even faster. When I reached it, stood on it, and looked down, I could see it was just the top piece in a staircase of at least fifteen steps. They were dug deep into the ground, most of the lower ones covered by rotting wooden beams that framed the sides.
Now all was silent again. There was no noise coming from the old foundation and I got no answer when I called Mike’s name.
I took a few steps in, then hesitated, staring into the blackness beneath me and smelling the dank odor from within the belly of this obsolete seaside structure. Even a quick glance showed it to be more formally crafted than the old laundry building that was simply scooped out of the Penikese dirt. It must have been the remains of the mansion that my brothers had explored as kids.
I looked back over my shoulder. Of course the pit had gone quiet. Fyodor Zukov’s body was outlined against the low-hanging clouds. He had grabbed on to the strip of blue aerial silk that he’d hung between the boulder and the concrete slab from down below with his long fingers, and he was climbing out of his lair, swinging himself up with all the grace and agility of his craft, in order to come in search of Mike’s gun—and me.
“Are you there, Coop?” Mike’s voice sounded a million miles away now that the killer was poised in midair between the two of us.
I didn’t want to answer or give my position away, so I turned off the flashlight and stuffed it into my pants pocket. Maybe Zukov hadn’t seen me yet. I had already committed myself to take the steps down—most reluctantly—padding farther along in my soft moccasins, hoping not to kick any loose rocks or debris in my path.
“That’s how they punished us, Detective. Two or three nights in solitary—‘in the hole,’ as they liked to call it. Bracing winter air. Builds character, is what they told us,” Zukov said. “I played with the snakes, actually. I found them nicer to be with than most people.”
And as cold-blooded as the young delinquent too. I was halfway down the steps, feeling ahead of me with one foot for any sign of the gun.
“You tend to those wounds. I’ve got to find your friend, haven’t I?”
I froze in place. What had he done to Mike? I could barely breathe as panic seized my chest and fogged my thinking.
Fyodor Zukov was one of the few people on earth who had walked every inch of this island. If there was a crevice in which to hide, I longed to find it. But I knew that if he got the Glock before I did, Mike Chapman and Chat Grant were doomed.
Above me I could hear him tread on the brambles and branches, first moving quickly over the ground to the side of the opening. Then suddenly, with his catlike moves, he was directly above me, his arms outspread and almost hanging there, like a silent apparition.
There was no hiding from him now. He had obviously seen that the slope to the water’s edge was too covered in growth for me to maneuver through in the dark. I had to get my hands on the gun before he had me trapped in this clammy cellar.
I took the last four steps as fast as I could move, listening to Zukov’s triumphant laugh when he spotted me below him.
I looked up in horror as he launched himself from the overhead wooden beam at the top of the staircase. Gripping it tightly, he pumped his legs back and forth, throwing himself down and forward, suspended from the crossbars, coming toward me as easily as if he were sliding along a length of rope.
I crouched as he approached, fearful that he would kick me in the head with one of his long legs. As I put out my hands to balance myself on the floor, I could feel the coldness of the gun. I reached for it and secured it in my waistband, pulling myself upright with some reserve of courage I didn’t know was there.
I was running across the smooth surface of the cement flooring. There had to be a closet to hide in or some object to stow myself behind while I got the gun in position. I knew it had a spring-loaded firing pin safety, and it would be a struggle for me to remember what I had learned about the weapon from my last trip to the NYPD’s range.
Zukov had his feet on the ground and was giving chase. This subterranean space was vast and full of as many apparent dead ends as a maze at an English country manor. I passed a dozen small rooms but none had doors, so I didn’t turn to go into any of them.
In the dim light I could see a massive wall looming straight in front of me. I looked to both sides, surprised to find a narrow opening to my right, and charged through it. Another huge room opened up before me, baffling me with what its uses had been and where it would lead me.
We were on equal footing on the flat surface. I was fast, too, with long strides that were a pretty decent match for the aerialist when he was earthbound.
I raced past scores of wooden planks that had once probably served as shelving for something in this damp basement. There was broken glass all over the floor and I needed to get through this space before Zukov tried to bring me down on it.
Another turn and the darkness lightened a bit. There were no windows in this next great room, but the thick granite walls narrowed at the far end.
It looked like there was an opening to the outside—almost as wide as the room itself—that had been boarded over with plywood, and someone had punched an enormous hole through it ages ago. My eyes had adjusted to the dim interior when I’d descended the staircase minutes earlier, but now it seemed as though the foggy exterior light beyond the room was, by comparison, as bright as neon.
I beat Fyodor Zukov to the wall by a matter of seconds. We were both winded and the only noise I could hear above the sound of his heavy breathing as he tried to grab hold of me was the waves crashing against rocks very nearby.
I bent down and stuck my right leg through the hole in the plywood. Zukov tried to pull me down by the collar of my jacket, but I threw back my head and the top of his hand was impaled on the jagged edge of the splintered wood pieces that hung like stalactites. He recoiled in pain and I pressed ahead, crawling through the space to what I assumed would be freedom.
I straightened up and inhaled the briny sea air. I opened my eyes wide and closed them just as quickly. I hadn’t expected to find myself standing on a stone ledge only ten inches wide, hung out over a rocky precipice that bordered the Vineyard Sound.
Fyodor Zukov was coming out behind me. I guessed the trapeze platforms he had flown from were smaller than this ledge and higher off the ground and, like it, had no safety net. This was his territory and I needed to escape it.
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