The Prophet (22 page)

Andrew jerked the Yukon into a parking lot between a small Mexican restaurant and a dilapidated, graffiti-covered building. It might have once been a convenience or liquor store. Marcus couldn’t tell for sure. There was fire damage on the roof, and the windows were boarded up. As they pulled in, a couple of gangbangers heading for the Mexican restaurant gave them a look as though they were in the wrong place.
Carry On Wayward Son
by Kansas was on the radio, but Andrew switched it off.

“I like that song,” Marcus said.

Andrew’s breathing was quick and agitated as he seethed in the driver’s seat. After a moment’s silence, he said, “What is going on with you? I can’t keep doing this.”

“What do you want me to say? I just feel like I’m on edge all the time. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe. I feel like my head’s going to explode. I’m losing control of everything.”

“Then suck it up and get a grip on yourself. I’m sick of babysitting you.”

Silence stretched in the car. The wind was picking up. It blew the snow from the top of the run-down building and dropped it onto their windshield. Andrew said, “What’s really bothering you? The truth.”

Marcus released a deep breath. “How many people do you think I’ve killed?”

“You know, one time when I was in high school, this veteran came in to speak to our history class. He had fought in Vietnam, and we were doing a unit on the war. He told us about his experiences and then opened it up for questions. Being a stupid kid, I asked him if he had ever killed anyone while he was over there. His answer has stuck with me to this day. He told me that he would rather focus on the people that he had saved. And that’s exactly what you need to do. You can’t let guilt consume you for no good reason.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, it is. You’re just making it complicated.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Enlighten me.”

Marcus watched the snowflakes roll lazily over the windshield. People walked by with their collars and hoods pulled up against the wind. He watched them as they passed and wondered where each of them was going. Their worlds seemed so alien to him. What did the normal people do? What did they feel?

“I don’t feel guilty about killing any of them, Andrew. Not at all. In fact, there’s a part of me that liked it. There’s a part of me that’s no different than Ackerman. And with every squeeze of that trigger, it gets just a little easier. My heart grows a little colder. The world gets a little darker. And I worry that one day I’ll cross some threshold and something in my head will just snap. It’s in me, clawing to get out. And it’s getting worse.”

Inside the workshop behind his home, Schofield paced back and forth across the concrete floor. His mind was a tornado of conflicting emotions. He considered turning himself in. He contemplated suicide. He thought of his mother. Maybe she had been right all along. Maybe he had been damned from birth. Maybe he truly was an abomination. The world would probably have been a better place if she’d succeeded in killing him before he reached adulthood.

He sat down at a small wooden desk that he had purchased from an auction at an old church. At one time, it might have been the pastor’s. It had heavy oak drawers with locks on them. Schofield retrieved his laptop from the third drawer down and brought up the camera feed from the home of the woman he had chosen to be the next sacrifice. She was standing at her stove, preparing a meal. She poured something into a boiling pot of water. He couldn’t make it out from his vantage point, but it looked liked pasta.

He needed her, and he was supposed to take her that evening. But if he gave her to the Prophet and his suspicions were correct . . .

The thought was too terrible to even be considered. He closed the laptop and sat at the desk staring out the window for a few moments. The day had been overcast, and now the sun was abandoning the world.

He stood to head back into the house, but something caught his eye as he looked out the window. Their property bordered a small wooded area, and a white-haired man stood just before the edge of the treeline where the manicured lawn gave way to weeds. He was talking with someone. Schofield moved closer to the window to get a better look and realized that the second person was his son, Benjamin.

Rushing out of the shed, he quickly closed the distance between himself and his son. Benjamin wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “What’s going on here?”

His neighbor ran a hand through his long white hair and replied with the thick Irish brogue that always grated on Schofield’s nerves. “Hello, Harrison. I was just talking with young Ben about something that I found out in the woods. But now that you’re here, I’ll let you handle it.”

As he walked away, the old man slapped Schofield on the shoulder. Schofield’s angry stare burned holes in his neighbor’s back. Someday he would be strong enough to deal with the old man once and for all.

Benjamin still wouldn’t look at him, so he squatted down to eye level and said softly, “You can tell me anything, buddy. What is it?”

“Promise you won’t be mad?”

“I promise. You’re not in trouble.”

Benjamin pointed down at a shoebox that sat on the snowy ground next to one of the closest trees. It was a black and brown Nike box made from thick cardboard. Its lid was connected to the sides and could be folded up like a hinge. The box was closed.

“What’s that, buddy?”

Tears formed in Ben’s eyes. He looked away and didn’t speak.

Schofield stepped toward the box and stared down at it. The wind picked up, and he shivered in the cold breeze. He was only wearing a light University of Illinois sweatshirt and jeans, and hadn’t expected to be standing out in the snow. With the toe of his shoe, he flipped open the top of the shoebox.

He was shocked at what he found inside, but then he considered that he should have been expecting this. Blood coated the box’s interior. The mutilated and dissected body of a small animal rested at its center. It might once have been a cat, but he couldn’t say for sure because of the extent of the disfigurement. He had performed similar acts upon small animals that he had captured near the compound when he’d been a child.

Schofield looked back at Benjamin, and as the the wave of sadness crested, it nearly carried him off his feet. He swallowed hard. The kids had never seen him cry. Ben’s face was wet with tears. In a small and brittle voice, he said, “I’m sorry, Daddy. Mr. O’Malley said . . .”

He grabbed the boy and lifted him from the snow-covered ground, squeezing him against his chest in a loving embrace. Ben cried against his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, Benjamin. There’s nothing you could ever do that would make me love you any less.”

“Are you going to tell Mom?” Ben said, his face still buried against his father’s sweatshirt.

“No. This will be our little secret.”

Schofield squeezed the boy tighter. The cold breeze whipped against them, but he didn’t ever want to let go. He had always wondered what he would have done had he been in his mother’s position. And now he knew. No matter what any of his children did, he could never hurt them. They were his world, all that mattered, and it gave him all the more reason to find a way to fill his own hollow soul and be the best father that he could be.

They stood that way for a long few minutes, but then his wife’s voice called out from the back door of the house. “Boys, are you out here? Supper’s ready.” Her voice was growing closer as she spoke.

He put Ben down quickly, wiped the tears from his son’s cheeks, and nudged the top of the shoebox closed. “Go inside and get ready for dinner, Ben. Remember, our little secret.”

Ben ran off just as Eleanor came around the corner of Schofield’s workshop. The boy ran right past her and up to the house. Eleanor had a thin yellow cardigan pulled up around her shoulders. Her arms were tucked tight against her chest, and she was shivering from the cold. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.”

“What did Mr. O’Malley want?”

Schofield’s gaze drifted over to the old man’s house. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as theirs. It was a smaller single-story ranch covered with beige brick. It had a large glass sun room built onto the back, and a door on the side where the old man could walk directly over to their house and stick his nose into their business.

“I don’t want the kids to be around Mr. O’Malley anymore.”

“What? Why? He’s such a nice man, and the kids think of him as a grandpa.”

“I don’t like him.”

“He’s just a lonely old man.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Did something happen?”

He resisted looking down at the shoebox. “No, everything’s fine. I’ll be inside in just a few minutes.”

She didn’t seem convinced but said, “Okay, it’s chicken stir-fry. Your favorite.”

“I just have one thing to take care of, and then I’ll be right in. Don’t wait for me.”

Schofield watched his wife walk all the way back into the house, and then he headed for the garage. Once inside, he grabbed a shovel with a long fiberglass handle and a spaded end. The ground was probably frozen and would be difficult to dig. Luckily, he wouldn’t have to go too deep to dispose of his son’s handiwork.

Maggie’s lunch date with Ellery Rowland had gone exceedingly well. Everest was an elegant French restaurant on the fortieth floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange. Bronze sculptures created by the acclaimed Swiss artist Ivo Soldini adorned each table, and paintings by the Chicago artist Adam Siegel lined the walls. She had ordered hazelnut-crusted skate wing with brown-butter caper emulsion. She wasn’t quite sure what any of that meant, but it had been the first item on the menu beneath the heading
Main Course.
The restaurant was normally closed for lunch, but Ellery was a personal friend of the chef. The whole thing had made her feel strangely like Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman.
Rowland had been both charming and intriguing, but for some reason she couldn’t help thinking about Marcus.

We always want what we can’t have
, she supposed.

After leaving Rowland, she had returned to the hotel and started in again on compiling evidence and reports. Her afternoon as a princess was over, and it was time to get back to work. She had just opened a digital report detailing the life of Sandra Lutrell, the first victim of the Anarchist’s current spree, when someone knocked on her door. It was the last person she was expecting.

Vasques wore a cordial smile as she said, “Hello, Agent Carlisle. Have you seen Marcus? He’s not in his room and not answering his cell phone. I thought maybe he was here with you.”

Maggie kept her expression flat. She noted the way that Vasques had only asked for Marcus and not Andrew and had referred to him by his first name, not as Agent Williams. “They’re not here right now, but they’re on their way back.”

“Okay, well, just tell Marcus I came by, in case I miss him. I think I’ll just hang out in the lobby and wait.”

Fighting back an eye roll, Maggie said, “You can wait here. They shouldn’t be long.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”

“It’s fine. I’m just reviewing some evidence from the case.”

As Vasques stepped inside, Maggie could tell that the other woman was taking everything in. She glanced at the make-up and toiletry supplies laid across the black marble of the bathroom countertop. They were all perfectly organized in symmetric rows. Maggie always got a room with two beds, one for sleeping and one for organization. The articles of her clothing were folded in neat stacks atop the second bed. Vasques looked at them with a raised eyebrow. Maggie wanted to tell Vasques that she had invited her to wait in the room, not come in and psychoanalyze her host, but she bit her tongue.

Grasping for something to say, Maggie asked, “Your father worked this case, right? During the last series of murders?”

Vasques nodded. “I think he was getting close to something, but he died before he could see it through.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was a good cop and a good dad. It was just a stupid accident.”

“Car crash?”

“Fire. He fell asleep smoking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“I meant it. Have you had any hits on the hidden cameras?”

“Not yet, but it’s still early.”

The silence stretched out, and Maggie couldn’t remember feeling as awkward since her first real date in seventh grade.

It was Vasques’s turn to grasp at straws. The FBI Special Agent sat down on the corner of the bed and said, “How did you get into this line of work?”

Maggie wasn’t sure how to respond. No one within the Shepherd Organization had ever asked her such a question, and she had never dreamed of volunteering the information. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Each member of the team had some skeleton buried in the basement that was best left undisturbed. She considered lying but supposed there was no real harm in sharing a few nuggets from her past.

She sat down on the bed, propped a pillow against the headboard, and leaned back. “My younger brother was abducted by a serial killer known as ‘The Taker’. I was supposed to be watching him at the time. I learned about law enforcement while I tried to track the bastard down. Then this job found me.”

“Wow, now
I’m
sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Did they ever catch the guy?”

“No.”

“What about your brother?”

Now she remembered why none of them ever talked about things like this. “They never found him, either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

Vasques gave a little smile. “How long have you been working with Marcus?”

“We’ve been together for a little over a year.”

Vasques raised her eyebrows, and Maggie realized that her phrasing left room for interpretation. “Oh, it’s not like that. It sort of was for a while.”

“But not anymore?”

“No, not anymore.”

As Vasques nodded slowly, Maggie saw the hint of a girlish little grin at the corners of the FBI Special Agent’s mouth. Even though she had no real right to do so, she wanted to knock Vasques across the room. She pictured it. Elbow to the temple. Maybe bash her face in with the butt of her gun. She knew plenty of ways to dispose of a body.

But Maggie didn’t do any of those things. She just sat there, bobbing her head like an idiot.