Silent Mercy

FIFTY-ONE

“WE have to show ourselves,” I said to Mike. “He’ll go on torturing her until we do.”

“Correction, Coop. I’ll show myself. You’ll be my fogenshrouded second, okay? You’ll hang back until we know the lay of the land.”

There was no point challenging his machismo until we knew what Fyodor Zukov was doing to his prey.

“Where did it sound like her scream was coming from?”

Chat’s cry had resonated around us like a thunderclap, carrying its mournful wail high above the open space of the small island.

“Everywhere,” Mike said. “What’s the shoreline like?”

“At low tide like this, there’s a spit of sand — well, sand and rocks — that rings the place.”

“That’s how we’ll start, on the perimeter.”

I was tempted to take off my driving moccasins, which were soaked through, and go barefoot in the sand. But I knew that the stony, unforgiving landscape of Penikese would make me regret doing that before too long.

We moved fast, going northwest along a crescent beach. Waves lapped the sand, and beyond that steady sound, there was none of the noise I hoped to hear — no boats circling nearby, nobody looking for a spot to land his craft and aid us.

“What’s on top of that rise?” Mike asked, coming to the end of the short beach.

“There’s a pond up there. I’d expect it to be all dried up this time of year. It’s kind of like a mud hole, so let’s avoid it.”

Another fifty yards and I could see that the low cliffs that once faced westward had eroded and were nothing more than sand dunes.

“There, Mike. We can probably climb over those.”

The terrain slowed us down. Our feet sunk into the wet beach-front as crabs scampered away from the dead fish that had washed up in our path.

Each leg felt heavier as I pulled up, step after step, to go forward. Then, as I mounted the rising dunes, the dry sand crumbled beneath my moccasins and filled them like an hourglass turned upside down.

Mike had reached the top before I did. He waited for me to pull up beside him. We were still sheathed in silence and could only see a few feet ahead.

“What’s that?” he asked, and pointed.

A low picket fence — maybe two feet high, painted dark green, as it always had been — was just ahead of us.

“The graveyard,” I said. “Or what’s left of it.”

“There’s your plague pit, then,” Mike whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Mike grabbed my arm and held a finger to his mouth to shush me. “Hear it?”

I waited for the current to draw the waves back into the bay. Then I was able to hear a noise wafting through the dense mist. A whimpering sound, muffled now, not clear and shrill like the scream that split the night sky a few minutes earlier.

Mike pointed again, toward the south end of the picket fence and started to walk in that direction. He had drawn his weapon — the Glock 19 that was the duty gun of choice for most of the NYPD.

Now he was moving at a snail’s pace, as was I behind him. He was trying to bypass every twig, every bramble that might snap when stepped on. I walked in the damp imprint of his large steps.

We inched along and seemed to be drawing closer to the whimpering woman.

Another step and Mike stood still. I looked down and saw, at the very place his toes were, a cement block — a row of them side by side, actually — then a gaping black hole ahead. It looked like a deep foundation — the only remains of an old building.

He tapped the flashlight in his rear pocket, and I pulled it out. He braced himself and held both arms straight ahead, nodding at me to shine the light into the darkened space that had been dug into the ground so very long ago.

Fyodor Zukov was directly below us, standing over the body of Chastity Grant. She was gagged now — probably after her penetrating scream — and bound as well, hands and feet. I could see the red fabric — aerial silk — that her captor had used to restrain her.

Next to her head on the dirt floor — nestled on top of a large duffel bag — was a long-handled ax, the kind of tool that had been used to sever the neck of Naomi Gersh.

Zukov was holding an implement of some kind. He had clearly been waiting for us, as Mike had expected. As soon as the light hit him, he prodded Chat in the neck with the sharp end of his stick and she emitted another ungodly sound.

“Drop it, Zukov,” Mike said. “Drop the bullhook or I shoot.”

I hadn’t recognized it as a bullhook, the vicious steel-tipped instrument used to goad elephants, the inhumane device some circus trainers favored to push and yank deep into the animal’s sensitive flesh to control its movements.

Mike took aim to fire, but Zukov’s hands — though weaker, perhaps — were still faster than Mike’s. He swiveled and raised the curved handle of his bizarre weapon, hooking it around Mike’s left ankle and dragging him over the cement block, down into the hole.

I heard Mike hit bottom with a thud. I shined the light on him and could see that the fall had dislodged the Glock from his hand.

Zukov stabbed at Mike’s back as he tried to struggle to his feet.

“I prefer to call it a shepherd’s crook,” the killer said, referring to the C-curve handle that indeed resembled the staff used by priests and bishops. How ironic that the cruel circus tool was also a symbol of Christ’s ministry. “The Gospel of John, chapter ten, verse eleven. ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.’ ”

Mike got to his knees and Zukov thrust the bullhook into his back again.

“I’m not afraid to lay down my life, Ms. Cooper, like Christ did for all of us,” Zukov said, looking up at me. He obviously knew who I was from his courtroom visit. “How about you? Are you ready to die?”