A Cruel Season for Dying (49 page)

He had known that she was, when the key was not in its place and the knob had turned in his hand. He had seen her almost immediately
when he went in, bound and gagged on the sofa, her notes scattered on the rug. Her eyes trying to warn him. But the force
of it had hardly registered before the sudden hiss. The gas hitting him full as he’d turned.

He awoke on the sofa, naked and bound. Not gagged. But there was no one else coming for him to warn. No one else on the floor
to hear him. No one on any floor who could hear him, thanks to the building’s construction.

Willie was now on the love seat, which had been pushed across the room. He could see only a small part of her. Could discern
some bit of motion. He prayed she was still unharmed.

A man stood near him, nude like himself. His fingers, dipped in ash, were busy writing letters on the wall. On the coffee
table syringes were neatly arranged.

He had never been afraid to die. Indeed, he had always felt a kind of unacknowledged eagerness that made him physically fearless.
What he felt most now was anger for his carelessness. And what it meant for Willie. Lack of food and sleep was not an excuse,
nor was the alcohol. These were decisions that he’d made. The sort of bad choices from which he never learned.

Discovering what he had tonight had proved a hollow triumph. Obviously, the killer had long ago discovered him. Had he not
sensed a lingering presence in this apartment only last night, but ignored the warning? He had a morbid curiosity as to just
how and why he’d been targeted as a victim. But he would hardly give the satisfaction of asking.

As if he’d sensed this, the killer turned to him now. He walked to the sofa and knelt down, taking his head in his hands.
The grip was not cruel, but strong. Resistance futile. The man bent down, his eyes inches from Darius’s own. “An interesting
face,” he said, letting go. Then, as if in answer to his question, “Your light fills this room.”

Darius threw his head toward Willie, letting go his resolution not to speak. “And her light?” If there were any chance at
all for him or Willie, it was to keep this bastard talking. Buy them a little time.

The man’s glance had followed his. “Dr. French is not one of the Fallen.”

“You mean she’s not a fallen angel.”

The killer smiled. “Completely human.”

“So there’s no need for you to hurt her?”

“She’ll wake up in a little while with nothing worse than a headache.”

“And you’ll let her go?”

The smile became brighter. “What happens to her is up to you … if we’re successful.”

He ignored the ambiguity. “Let her go first,” he said. “Once I know she’s safe, I’ll do whatever you want.”

The man rose to his feet. “You still see only the shells,” he said, “… body bags. But you’ll understand soon. I promise.”
He reached for the plate of ash, began to draw.

Darius looked down at the pattern taking form on his chest. “Were you the one whose heart stopped … in the car accident?”

The question worked to catch the man off guard. He rocked back on his heels. “Yes.” He was smiling again. “That was the moment
of my awakening. …You know a lot,” he said. He made a larger circle in ash around the smaller center. “But you know nothing.”
He stared into his eyes.

His own temper flared. “Goddamn you.”

Laughter. “He already has.”

The world was cold outside her window. Hanae could feel the chill beating like a bird at the glass, could imagine the snow.
The phone was still in her hand. She returned it to its cradle and leaned back into the pillows on her bed. She had enjoyed
talking to Vicky for as long as the call had lasted. Now it felt like nothing at all had been said, that the bonds between
them had only further loosened.

And the restlessness that had prompted the call had not at all decreased. She picked up the phone again, dialing Willie’s
number. The machine answered with Dr. Jamili’s voice, inviting her to leave a message. Willie was no doubt still at work,
as consumed with this case as Jimmy. She did not want to disturb her friend at the office.

She hung up the phone. It seemed she had been fidgeting since yesterday, attempting to fill the hours since Jimmy had left
with household chores. With books and music. Nothing held her attention. She might have tried again to work the clay, but
she did not want to think about the bust. Or her call from Adrian Lovett.

But she had thought about it all day. His wanting to give her a present. She had not known what to say. She had felt a guilty
awkwardness, the shame for allowing that kiss. She could avoid class next Monday, only a week before Christmas. But she must
not be a coward. She must face Adrian and make it clear in the kindest way that there could be nothing between them.

She got up from the bed and went into the kitchen to fix the meal she did not want, hoping that Jimmy would call tonight,
wondering what he might be doing at this moment.

A few days ago she had been at the point of telling him about the baby when the call had come about the priest’s suicide.
A sad death. But at least it had seemed the investigation was over, that she need be patient but a few days more. Jimmy would
be winding down the task force, would at last be free of the pressures that had claimed so much of his attention.

But that had all changed with yesterday’s press conference. She had listened to it on TV. She had realized from the moment
that the woman reporter spoke about the locket that the case was not over at all and
that her husband would be held responsible for what must seem incompetence.

A few hours later, Jimmy had come home, saying little as he packed for Baltimore. She had stood in the door of their bedroom
as he’d moved to and from the closet, willing him to share with her something of what he was feeling. She longed for words,
though the tenor of his silence was completely comprehensible. They were not to acknowledge that he could be hurt. She was
not to bear any part of his burden. Such a hateful strength.

He had kissed her before he’d left. A real kiss that had softened her pain and kindled the hope she cherished even now, that
on his return they would yet walk backward together to the place where their paths had been one.

The cloying incense woke her. Willie smelled it before she heard the voices. As wan and feeble as the light was, it had started
pain throbbing in her head. She was lying under a blanket, still bound by tape— stiff and sore in the places where she wasn’t
numb. Whatever drug she’d been given had certainly knocked her out.

She squeezed her lids shut, resisting the urge to slip back into unconsciousness. The dull thudding in her skull had an edge
of razor sharpness that shifted as she tried to change position. She reopened her eyes slowly, letting the pain stabilize
in a tight band that anchored itself in her temples. Slowly, by degrees, she turned her head. Her arms were useless. She dug
her heels into the leather, pushing herself upward, propping herself against the love seat’s padded frame.

The killer was still in the room, bending over the sofa, yards away. The words she’d heard spoken had not been meant for her.
Her brain registered that another nude man, his wrists and ankles bound, was lying on the sofa. Registered what her mind continued
to deny, until the killer stepped away and forced her eyes to acknowledge—that Michael was the man on the sofa. She could
see his face in profile and the dark sooty circles moving on his chest with his breathing. She wondered if he knew that she
was here.

The man straightened, turning to the coffee table. For the first time she could see something of his face. It appeared an
ordinary, even
handsome, face. Composed and focused. On the wall above the sofa, foot-high letters spelled out
SAMYAZA
in ash.

She fell flat into the cushions.

I wasn’t expecting you.
The killer’s words came back to her. He’d been hiding in the apartment, even before she’d arrived, lying in wait for Michael.
Question on question crowded in her brain. Too many to sort out, and they weren’t what was important now. She did not want
to just lie here and wait for both of them to die. She fought against the restraints that bound her wrists and ankles, her
hands searching over their short range for something, anything, that she might use to cut through the tape. But there was
nothing.

She dug her heels again into the frame of the love seat, lifting herself, her head throbbing sullenly with the effort. The
killer, with a syringe in his hand, was turning back to the sofa. She saw Darius stiffen and fought reflexively against the
tape that held her wrists. She wanted to cry out, but even without the gag, any protest would be worse than ineffective. It
could only add to Michael’s pain.

The man began to speak, his voice entirely calm and reasonable. He was beginning the programming. It was the LSD that he had
injected into Darius. Terrified as she was, she could not help her fascination. She listened as the killer droned patiently
on, constructing the reality he wanted Michael to share, his belief that fallen angels were trapped in human bodies. Angels
who must be awakened.

It seemed to go on for hours, but she had no real sense of time. Darius remained quiet, and she wondered what he was feeling.
LSD could magnify every paranoid fear that floated in a subject’s brain. He had to know, as she did, that he was going to
die. The drug could only amplify that horror.

She was sunk again in the cushions, still fighting hopelessly with her bonds, when the killer’s voice changed. He had begun
a guttural chant, something vaguely Semitic. She dug in again with her feet and struggled upward. He had moved from his seat
on the rug to kneel at the end of the sofa, and taking hold of Michael’s feet, he kissed them.

The gesture was shocking.

Darius recoiled, his body writhing whitely on the sofa, but the killer crawled on top of him. She could hear the name Samyaza
repeated again and again as he inched upward, touching his lips to every part of
Michael’s body. The sensory stimulation would be magnified by the LSD. She was not surprised at Michael’s erection.

She resisted the impulse to close her eyes. What had she to give him but her witness?

The ritual went on and on, until there was no resistance—the process, hideous in its madness, intended to prepare Darius for
some imagined experience beyond death. The killer’s monologue building and building, taking it further. Explaining, as if
it were rational, what it was he expected from Michael.

Suddenly the flash came, through the fog of her fear and the pain that still throbbed in her head. She understood what it
was that the killer planned.

At last the man sat up. She watched him reach for another syringe, his grip on Darius’s arm … holding it.

“You know what this is.” He held the needle to the light. “I don’t pretend it will be pleasant…. Your heart will fight.”

Again Darius resisted, but the needle went in. His body bowed upward. She heard him gasp, continuing to struggle. But the
process, inexorable now, had begun.

Her body arced stiffly within the love seat’s frame; she watched as the killer hovered closely, monitoring Michael’s breathing.
Then another syringe, the second a small and diluted dose of potassium. Waiting … waiting … his fingers on Michael’s throat,
checking the pulse in the carotid artery. And then the third injection.

The dying did not take long. Darius’s breathing faltered, slowed to agonal. Fish blowing … one breath … two … three. None.

Something inside her stopped. She watched without real hope as the killer picked up the final syringe and plunged the needle
quickly into Michael’s arm.