Chapter Twenty-one

Saint Francis Xavier was a graceful granite and limestone structure smiling down over the low buildings of Park Slope like a kindly uncle. The stone looked as though it had recently been cleaned; even in the feeble February sun, Lee had to squint against the glare. The elegant vaulted ceiling loomed above him as he walked past tall stained-glass windows of unusual beauty. The light cascaded onto the stone floor, magnified as it sliced through cut-glass figures of saints and apostles, sinners and deities, in their flowing vermillion and sapphire robes. In happier times, he would have stopped to study them, but he continued walking, his footsteps clicking rhythmically on the polished floor.

The heavy marble altar was magnificent, its splendor only serving to heighten the gloom he felt as he approached it. The CSI team was already there, moving about the church with their usual efficiency, dusting for prints, scanning the pews for any stray scrap of evidence. He approached the little group around the pulpit. Chuck Morton was there, still wearing his overcoat, which was cream colored and looked pricey. Chuck's wife, Susan, had a knack for buying clothes that weren't expensive but looked like they were.

When Chuck heard Lee approach, he looked up.

"Thanks for coming out on such short notice."

Lee looked at the body draped over the altar.

The victim in this attack was eerily similar to the one at Fordham-young, with dark curly hair and a decidedly Irish look about her. This time, however, the crime scene showed evidence of a frenzied attack. Several hymnals had been ripped from their racks in the front choir loft surrounding the altar and lay scattered about, their pages ripped and spattered with blood. A large blue and white flower vase lay a few feet from the victim's body, broken in two, its contents strewn over the thick carpet covering the floor of the altar. Yellow roses-ironic, Lee thought, since they were the symbol for friendship.

But what he couldn't take his eyes off were the words carved into her chest.

Hallowed be thy name.

The cuts were deeper than last time, the slashes cruder-the e e in in Hallowed Hallowed bisecting her right nipple so deeply that it had almost come off. There was more blood, too- bisecting her right nipple so deeply that it had almost come off. There was more blood, too-a lot more blood. He thought about what the pathologist at the morgue had said about postmortem injuries-and these injuries did not appear to be postmortem. He turned away, sickened.

Hallowed be thy name.

The phrase circled his brain rhythmically, mockingly. Hal-low-ed be thy na... Hal-low-ed be thy na...

"Jesus," Lee muttered. He had another horrifying thought. The Slasher was only two lines into the prayer-not even a quarter of the way through it.

"It's him-it's the same guy," Chuck sighed, coming up to stand next to him. "You were right about one thing: he isn't going to stop."

"And there was less than a week between these two killings," Lee pointed out. "The last time he waited a month, but this time-well, he's either more driven, more confident, or both. What do you have on the victim so far?"

Chuck looked down at the girl. "Poor kid. Name's Annie O'Donnell." He indicated a nearby detective interviewing a middle-aged Hispanic man in a drab green uniform, who appeared to be distraught. "Even the janitor recognized her-said she attended this church. Apparently she's fairly quiet, but he says he has an eye for pretty girls." Chuck glanced over at the man. "He's not...is he?" he asked.

"Too old, wrong race. The Slasher is younger, and probably white. Interracial sex crimes aren't unknown, but they're rare, and this guy seems to be a preferential killer."

"Meaning-?"

"He targets a specific kind of victim."

"Yeah, okay," Chuck said, with a glance at the technicians quietly dusting for prints, gathering and bagging evidence. "The CSI team is doing what it can, but I wouldn't expect much."

"No," Lee agreed. "If he covered his tracks last time, he will this time too. He knows what he's doing. On the other hand, this time there is evidence of a struggle, so it's always possible-"

"Lee," said Chuck, "do you think that John Nelson would consider..."

"What?"

"Well, you guys are pretty close, right? So I thought maybe you could ask him if he would-if he would like to consult?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I mean, no offense, but we could really use all the help we can get, right?"

"Sure," Lee said. "When it comes to criminal psychology, he's the guy. There isn't anyone better outside of Quantico."

The detective who had been talking to the janitor had finished with him, and walked over to where Lee and Chuck stood. He carried a small notebook, an essential tool for any detective, and was dressed in the usual "uniform": a tan raincoat over a somber suit, black shoes, dark socks. Lee wondered why the man was dressed this way on a Saturday afternoon. It seemed a little out of the ordinary on a weekend, but maybe he was already on duty when the call came in.

Chuck made the introductions. "Detective Florette, this is Lee Campbell. Lee, this is Detective Clyde Florette, Brooklyn SVU." SVU was short for Special Victims Unit, which dealt exclusively with sex crimes.

"How do you do?" Clyde Florette reached for Lee's hand. His grip was firm and assertive without being aggressive. He was the physical opposite of Detective Butts: a tall black man, slim and elegant, with slicked-back graying hair. His features were too aquiline to be conventionally handsome, with thin lips and a long nose, but with his neatly trimmed graying beard and luminous eyes, Lee guessed that women went for him, especially the ones who liked the professorial type. His voice was low and cultured, with a hint of an island lilt-from Haiti, perhaps, or Barbados.

"Captain Morton tells me that you're working on a multiple, and that this is his second victim," Florette said. "Multiple" was police shorthand for "multiple homicides," and like a lot of cop jargon, it fell stiffly on Lee's ears. It seemed to him the lingo itself was an attempt to distance cops from the things they encountered in the line of duty.

"That's right," Lee answered, "except that it's his third victim."

Detective Florette raised an eyebrow and looked at Morton.

"We haven't yet determined that," Chuck said, an edge of irritation in his voice.

"Well, whether this is his second or third," Florette went on, "he somehow managed to get in and out of here without anyone seeing him. I got zip from the janitor, likewise the chaplain, who says he was in his office for part of the afternoon." He nodded in the direction of the dead girl; a team from the medical examiner's office was bending over her. "She's only dead three, maybe four hours, according to the body temp, when the janitor found her."

Since body temperature fell one to two degrees Fahrenheit per hour after death, on average, undoubtedly one of the first things the ME team had done was to measure the girl's temperature.

Lee said, "That means he brought her in here in broad daylight, and yet no one saw him."

Florette frowned. "How could he do that? Wouldn't someone have seen him?"

Lee considered the question. "Somehow, he must have found a way to sedate her."

"For a while," Florette added. "She obviously struggled once he got her here."

"Maybe she didn't even look like a person at all," Morton suggested. "Maybe he brought her in a bag or container of some kind."

"That would make sense," Lee agreed.

"I'll do a complete sweep of the building and see if we can come up with anything," Florette said. "I also want to talk to your primary on the Bronx girl.... what's his name? Detective Butts?"

"That's right," Chuck said. "We tried to reach him, but his daughter says he took his wife to a matinee, and he's turned off his cell phone."

"Well, give him my number and tell him to call me as soon as he can."

They all looked at the dead girl, her skin already turning bluish white as the blood drained away. The carved words stood out against the pale skin. Hallowed be thy name Hallowed be thy name. The wounds were the color of dried rust.

"I suppose the brass could establish a task force on this guy, right?" Florette said.

"They might," Chuck answered.

"In that case, Detective Butts would be the primary from now on," Florette said, looking down at his polished shoes, and Lee could sense the reluctance in his voice. He understood the way the system worked, but once cops got a case, they didn't like to let go-especially when they were homicide detectives, and especially when the victim was a young girl. Lee had noticed the white knight types were drawn to police work, and often ended up in homicide. Seeing women in distress was likely to press every button they had. The fact that the women were young and attractive would just raise the stakes for the white knight cops-they wanted to come to the rescue of the princess, to kill the dragon and claim the prize.

Lee glanced at poor Annie again, lying so still in the midst of all the activity around her, as the CSI and ME teams continued with their work. This princess was dead, and there would be no prize, no hand given in marriage to the hero who tracked down this dragon.

"I'll just have to wait to see how they handle it, but I'd guess a task force is likely, yeah," Chuck said.

Florette took a deep breath and put his little notebook in his pocket. "Okay. Well, I don't have to tell you that I'd like to be on it."

"Yeah, sure," Chuck answered, "if I have anything to say about it."

Florette wandered over to speak with the CSIs on the other side of the room, and Lee took the opportunity to draw Chuck aside.

"There's something else I should tell you," Lee said.

"What's that?"

"I...I think someone took a shot at me tonight."

"What?"

Lee told Chuck about the bullet that narrowly missed him, and Chuck called the commander of the Ninth Precinct to send someone over to dig out the bullet.

"We'll do a ballistics test on it. It could give us something," Chuck said. "And you'll need protection."

"Oh, come on-" said Lee.

But Chuck cut him off. "It's not up for debate."

"Okay," Lee answered. "It doesn't really fit the profile, though. I wouldn't expect someone like this killer to be a shooter. It could be completely unrelated to the case."

He thought about mentioning the text message on his cell phone, but he saw Detective Florette heading their way and decided to wait.

Florette walked up and stood beside them, hands in his pockets. "This guy is really sick, isn't he?" he said to Lee.

"Yeah," Lee replied. "He's really sick."

"So now we've definitely got a multiple on our hands," said Chuck.

"What we have here," Lee said, "is a serial killer."

Chapter Twenty-two

Everywhere he went, he felt people were looking at him, judging him. There was no forgiveness, no redemption. He knew that as well as he knew every inch of his bedroom ceiling, having stared up at it all these years while lying on his bed, hoping that his mother wouldn't call him-no, please don't-but then she always would, asking him to kneel beside her on the hard floor, smelling the odor of floor wax and hair spray that permeated her bedroom.

But the Master understood him, and one day, he promised, he would find Samuel a girl who would embrace him and forgive him for all his wickedness. They were so young, so innocent, soft as young birds, with smooth skin and eyes as wide as the blond meadows that surrounded his boyhood home. He often thought of that house in Iowa, the rows of cornfields stretching off into the horizon, and the feel of his father's hand in his as they headed for the barn to bring out the big green tractor.

He never really understood why his father left, except that men are evil by nature, and that they all leave sooner or later. And now there was just Queens, and the sound of trucks on the Long Island Expressway at night, and his mother's footsteps upstairs as she wandered the house like a lost soul searching for redemption. The Lord loves you, Samuel-find your salvation in Jesus The Lord loves you, Samuel-find your salvation in Jesus.

Rage bubbled up from deep inside him, boiling in his stomach and constricting his throat, choking him. Maybe it was as his mother had said, that if she had never had a child, his father would not have left. He imagined scenarios that might have been if he had never been born: his mother and father together, driving in the car with the wind blowing in the open windows, his mother laughing, her head thrown back-not that tight laugh he knew now, but a softer, happier sound, like the tinkling of wind chimes. One of the girls had laughed like that, a gentle, rolling sound, like the bubbling of a brook. He imagined making a woman laugh like that someday...a sound that she would make only for him, in response to his touch.... Women like that are sluts, Samuel-they'll corrupt you, you'll see! Women like that are sluts, Samuel-they'll corrupt you, you'll see!

He shook his head to try to erase the voices in his head, but it was no use. He was tired, so tired.... Spread out on the table in front of him was a small collection of silver and gold crosses on their delicate chains. He selected one with a tiny diamond in its center and smiled. His mother would like this one.

Chapter Twenty-three

The sad-eyed priest beckoned to him from the other side of a long, winding river. Lee longed to cross the river and be with the priest, but the current was strong and he was afraid of being sucked downstream. The priest opened his arms and smiled, and just as Lee was about to jump into the water- The phone rang. Lee pulled himself out of the world of his dream, threw off the covers, and grabbed the receiver, glad to be rid of the image of the sad-eyed priest, relieved to be in his own bedroom.

"Hello?"

"It's me." It was Chuck. "We got a hit on the girl in Queens. Some kids came forward to say they thought they knew her. They're at the station now."

"Be right there."

At the station, Lee followed Chuck and Butts down the hall to Interrogation Room Three, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, a cup of coffee in his hand.

Through the one-way glass he could see them: three East Village types, two boys and a girl. They were young, and probably even younger than Jane Doe Number Five. Two of them, the girl and one of the boys, were gothed up to the max-black leather, purple spiked hair, bloodred lipstick, their skin pierced with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in any airport. Lee counted five rings in the boy's nose alone.

The third kid was less outrageously dressed. Slim and small-boned, he wore a simple buckskin jacket over blue jeans and no makeup, and sported a single nose ring. His hair was brown and combed straight back, rather than spiked up into points like the other boy's hair, which resembled the crown on the Statue of Liberty. He looked more nervous than his companions, too, glancing at the door every few seconds, as if he expected it to open and disgorge a monster into the room.

The other boy was larger, solidly built but soft, with bits of baby fat poking out between his leather vest and metal-studded black leather pants. Judging by his pale eyebrows and lashes, Lee figured that his hair was probably naturally blond, but it was hard to tell what was hidden under all that purple dye.

His forearms showed evidence of recent wounds-not needle tracks, Lee thought, but the small slashes left after "cutting"-a process where kids would nick themselves with sharp knives, sometimes a dozen or more cuts at a time. It was fashionable among the goth crowd right now, but it reeked of despair, a desperate attempt to numb feelings more painful than physical discomfort.

He looked at the girl to see if she too was a cutter, but her arms were covered by the sleeves of her lacy black sweater. She was tall, with dyed jet-black hair. Her lipstick was the color of dried blood, and her mouth turned downward at the corners in a habitual pout. Her eyes were ringed with black eyeliner, so that she resembled a surly raccoon. Under all the makeup, Lee imagined she was probably quite pretty. She wore a hard expression, and both boys looked as though they took orders from her. The smaller boy had a sharp, intelligent face, whereas the bigger one looked to be the muscle of the organization. Beauty, brains, and brawn, he thought, watching them. There was usually a leader and followers in groups like this, and the girl was clearly the leader.

The girl was staring at a photo of Jane Doe Number Five. Pushing it away from her to the other end of the table, she frowned at her companions.

"Look, you're good with kids," Chuck said to Lee. "Why don't you handle this one?"

"Okay." Lee looked to see if Butts was feeling any resentment, but if he was, he wasn't showing it.