Judgement and Wrath

30

Rink came back within the hour, looking more morose than ever. He had dark mud on his boots and spattered up the backs of his jeans. There were even droplets of mud sticking to his black T-shirt and on his face and forearms.

'Almost ended up in the swamp with the goddamn car,' he announced. And then he smiled, and it was good to see. It was the first ray of light through the cloud that had been hanging over his head since the news about his mother's illness.

He was holding his mobile phone cupped in his left hand.

'You've heard something?'

'Yeah,' Rink glanced round the room, taking in Harvey and Marianne, noting that they too wore expectant faces. 'Doctors have stabilised my mom and she's feeling much better. Must be; she's been giving my father a hard time for trying to pull me away from my work.'

I went over and held my friend.

'Thanks, Joe,' he said. It's not often he uses my given name; only in moments of tenderness like this. It means a lot.

Harvey came over too. He hugged Rink and they said their bit to each other.

Marianne didn't know what to do. She just sat down on the bed and put her elbows on her knees and smiled up at Rink. My friend, not the shy and retiring type around young women, went over and sat down next to her. Patted her on the knee and said, 'OK, Marianne. Now we can get on and sort out your problems.'

Marianne bobbed her head. Smiled sadly. Then she asked, 'Is your mom ill?'

'Yeah,' Rink didn't expound, but he didn't have to. The gravity of the situation must have been clear in our reaction to the good news.

'And she's all the way across the country?'

'Yeah.'

Tears welled in Marianne's eyes with the confirmation that there was still good in the world. Here were three men ready to put their own lives at risk for her, to push aside their own needs and desires to see to her safety. 'Thanks, Rink,' she whispered. Then lifting her head, she looked at me and Harvey. 'Thanks to you all.'

'Don't worry about it,' Rink spoke for all of us. He patted her on the knee again, then stood up smoothly and nodded at the door to the bathroom. Steam still pervaded the space beyond the open door. He indicated his muddy arms. 'Unless you've used all the goddamn hot water?' he said in mock anger.

Marianne smiled again, this time not so sadly.

'Marianne's safe for now.' Looking across at Harvey and receiving a nod of confirmation, I continued, 'Harvey can take her to the safe house. It's time you got on that plane, buddy.'

Rink shook his head.

'You aren't going to miss anything, Rink. Catch the red-eye out of Miami. You can be there and back again in a few hours. Go on. Go see your mother and father.'

'You sure?' he asked. All three of us made shooing motions, which got us a smile. 'Best get that shower then, huh?'

Meanwhile Harvey had been industrious with the computer.

'Hunter. Come take a look at this.'

He had the CNN news site on the screen.

It showed a story about the mysterious slaying of a young family. Nathaniel and Caitlin Moore, and their eight-year-old daughter, Cassandra, had been murdered in their home in the suburbs of Miami.

Yes, it was sad. A terrible reality in today's world where a family can be wiped off the face of the earth to appease one man's sick fantasy. It was exactly this kind of story that made me do the things I did.

'What're you getting at, Harvey?'

'You said the shooter used a Beretta 90-two,' Harvey said.

I remembered looking down the barrel and thinking how there was no way to avoid the 9 mm bullet headed my way. In that moment of epiphany I'd identified the gun. 'Yeah,' I agreed. 'This murderer used a Beretta, as well? Popular gun.'

'Taken singly, it wouldn't mean anything.' He tapped the screen. 'But a witness also saw a tall man with long white hair leaving the house in the early hours. Sounds like your shooter, doesn't it?'

More interested now, I leaned down, placing my hands flat on the bed to get a clearer look at the screen.

'Then there's this.' Harvey highlighted a block of text in the story so I could better read it.

' ''The thunders of judgement and wrath are numbered," ' I read out loud. 'Written in Cassandra's blood on the living room wall. Jesus!'

'Sounds like your usual whacked-out religious freak,' Harvey agreed. 'Until I did a search on those words.'

He brought up another site he'd been holding in a bank along the bottom of the screen. A History of Enochian Ritual was emblazoned across the page.

'Black magic?'

'Goetic magic,' Harvey corrected. 'Something taken from a grimoire written hundreds of years ago by an Elizabethan astrologer named Dr John Dee.'

I'd heard of John Dee. He was the court astrologer to the first Queen Elizabeth. Purportedly he was also her top spymaster, and something of a legend among the security community. He went by the code number of 007; maybe there was no coincidence when Ian Fleming was developing his fictional James Bond character.

'I think I know where this is going now,' I said to Harvey.

He pressed a few more keys. A page came on the screen and there were the same words the murderer of the Moore family had scrawled on a wall in an eight-year-old child's blood:

The thunders of judgement and wrath are numbered.

'It's a quote from the Book of Enoch,' Harvey pointed out. 'A line from the Bornless Ritual. Something referred to as a "Calling of the Aethyr". All mumbo-jumbo bullshit, I agree. But translated it refers to the summoning of a dark angel.'

'Dantalion,' I said.

Harvey's fingers tapped keys yet again, bringing up another link. A table full of weird symbols next to names and descriptions. Dantalion was eighth down.

'Shit,' I hissed.

'Shit about sums it up,' Harvey said. 'This guy's one crazy motherfucker.'

'But why kill a family? What have the Moores got to do with this?'

Throughout our discourse, Marianne had kept her thoughts to herself. But at the mention of the family name, I heard her croak. She stood up slowly and came to stand at my shoulder as she stared at the screen.

'Did you say Moore?'

I nodded to Harvey and he brought us back to the CNN screen.

Marianne's hands went to her mouth. 'Oh, dear God! Caitlin Moore was my teacher at Collinwood High School. It was Caitlin who introduced me to Bradley.'

Harvey turned off the CNN screen as Marianne dropped to the bed. Her hands worked down from her mouth and plucked at an imaginary crucifix at her throat.

'Back in 2002,' she said, her voice barely above a whisper, 'my brother Stephen was among the first Marines to be deployed to Iraq. There was a fear that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction hidden away and Stephen was one of those sent in to try to locate them.'

Uh-oh, I thought, having a feeling where this was going. Richard Dean had never mentioned having had a son. Neither had Marianne mentioned a brother before, nor that he was a soldier. Even when Rink had done a background check on Dean it hadn't come up.

'He was given inoculations to protect him from ABC warfare?' I offered, thinking back to how many times I had stood in a line baring my shoulder for a nurse or doctor with a huge syringe. Never questioning, just taking the injections as protection from the atomic, bacterial and chemical weapons that could be coming our way.

'Yes.' Marianne sucked in a ragged breath. Her next words were a little stronger. 'And it was pointless. As you know, these weapons were never found. Stephen came back from his tour sick. No one would accept that his sickness was as a result of the medication he'd been given. They still won't.

'They said it was psychosomatic. He was imagining his problems. Fatigue, a loss of feeling in his extremities, blinding headaches. It drove him to throw himself off a ten-storey building during an anti-war rally.'

'I'm sorry,' I muttered feeling awkward. 'It's a terrible thing to lose someone. Especially under those circumstances.'

'I miss him dearly. Five years have gone by and there hasn't been a day when I haven't thought about him.'

'Yet you're in love with the man responsible for his death?' I asked.

'Bradley isn't responsible. I don't blame him. Not one little bit.'

'It was medication developed by the Jorgensons that you believe caused Stephen's illness?'

Marianne nodded, then said, 'Mrs Moore was one of my teachers at school, but she was also a trained counsellor. She helped me after my brother's death. We shared common ideas on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our servicemen and women are dying needlessly and all for the wrong reasons.' She blinked, realising that I used to be one of those self-same service men, albeit with a different army, who had fought the same war as her brother. 'I'm very supportive of all our brave soldiers. I'm not against the military at all. I just wanted to do my bit to see our troops were given the respect they were due. I joined a protest group that Mrs Moore had set up to express our views.'

'You attended a meeting with the Jorgenson family?'

'Yes. That's where I first met Brad. He was very charming and he was open to our opinions. He was a good listener. We talked quite a lot afterwards.'

'And that was when you started dating?'

'Yes.'

'But your father didn't approve?'

'My father is still very angry. He hates Bradley. He blames him for Stephen's death, as much as he blames everyone else involved.'

'Maybe he has a right to hate Bradley. Your father showed me photographs of you,' I told her. 'One of you fighting off Bradley in the back of a car. It looked like he was molesting you.'

She shook her head in incredulity. 'Tell me any celebrity that hasn't had a similar photograph taken. We were just playing up to the cameras, Joe, giving the paparazzi something to get excited about. It was a prank. In hindsight it was a bad idea.'

'He showed me a police photo where you had been a victim of assault.'

Her lips pinched.

'Yes.'

'But it wasn't Bradley who beat you up?'

'No, of course not. Bradley loves me and I love him.'

Bradley had been telling the truth. Made me feel a bit of a shit.

'So who was it?' I asked. 'I thought one of his family could be involved. Petre, maybe.'

A quake ran the full length of her body. 'It was my dad.'

I'd already come to that conclusion. It was obvious, when I thought about it. I remembered our first meeting in the grimy roadhouse. As I'd walked away from the bar in Shuggie's Shack, Richard Dean had been fiddling with something that had flashed in the subdued light. Something metallic: her crucifix. He'd stuffed it into his pocket before feeding me a line of bullshit a mile wide.

'He came to Bradley's house to take me home. He accused me of betraying my brother's memory. Said I'd made myself a whore for my brother's murderers. He couldn't see that he was wrong, that Bradley was actually on our side and was prepared to cancel all contracts with the military.' Her fingers went to her throat, teasing the imaginary cross. She began to weep. 'He told me that I had betrayed our family. That my mother would be rolling in her grave. He tore my mother's necklace from my throat. When I tried to take it back he struck me. He was in a rage, and he struck me again and again. He didn't know what he was doing, he was just mad.'

'That's no excuse.'

'I forgive him,' she said. 'I still love him.'

Thinking back to when we'd first broached this subject, I'd assumed that she was referring to Bradley when she'd said similar words. She hadn't been, I saw now. She'd forgiven her father for his actions and his words. But Richard Dean hadn't forgiven anyone.

He had sent me here to take Marianne back to him under false pretences. He had another reason for sending me. I was supposed to stop Bradley coming after her. 'The balance will be paid as soon as I get the proof that Jorgenson is no longer a threat to me or any of my family,' he'd said. His meaning had been explicit. Stop him for good. Kill him.

That wasn't going to happen.

I was going to protect Bradley.

Then I would see to the problem that was Marianne's father.

Rink came out of the bathroom, whistling and scrubbing his hair with a towel.

He stopped and looked at us all.

'What did I miss?'

Where the hell do I start? I thought.

'Nothin' important,' I told him. 'Go and catch that plane, Rink.'