Soultaker

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After wasting perhaps fifteen minutes debating how he should dispose of the bodies stinking up his garage, Raymond Slater realized the only sensible course of action was to do nothing. There was no reason to spend hours digging more big holes in his backyard. No point in carting both bodies out to some remote backwoods spot for dumping. It would only make him feel grubby, like the kind of banal serial killers he’d seen on A &E true crime shows. Besides, he would almost certainly be dead himself by the end of the day. He wouldn’t be around to sweat police inquiries.

He slammed shut the trunk of his Lexus, sealing off forever the sight of Cindy’s horribly mutilated body. He covered Penelope’s corpse with a tarp and shoved it under the Lexus.

Good enough.

Someone would discover the bodies in the coming days. And not just the bodies here in the garage. The authorities would find the mound of freshly turned earth in his backyard. They would dig up Patricia. He would be branded a psychotic murderer by the media. His daughter would spend the rest of her life hating him and cursing his name. But that would be fine. At least she would be alive. He no longer really believed hitmen would be dispatched to her university the instant he deviated from Lamia’s instructions for the day.

Two reasons.

For one thing, this was the day of the Harvest. The day when he was to call for a special assembly of all students at two P.M.

Except that he had gone against her will.

He wouldn’t be there to call that special assembly. Hours had passed. It was early afternoon now. He suspected Lamia would have a fallback plan in place. Someone else in the school’s administrative staff would summon the students to the auditorium at two.

But he hadn’t done it, by God.

That was something, at least.

The other thing was the deal clincher. The thing that mattered to him more than anything else. Josefina. She was out of it now. She would be okay regardless of what happened in Rockville this afternoon. He knew this because he’d talked to her only moments earlier. Seated behind the wheel of Patricia’s Jaguar, he stared at the cell phone in his right hand and resisted the urge to hit redial. He badly wanted to hear his only child’s voice one more time, even though it would mean again interrupting the impromptu adventure she’d set out on this morning. Turned out she wasn’t even at the school, having blown off the day’s classes to head up to Niagara Falls with her boyfriend. They wouldn’t return until the next day. And by then it would all be over. She was safe. That knowledge alone was enough to make the decision for him. He flipped the cell phone shut and dropped it in the cup holder. Josefina Slater had talked to her father for the last time.

Let her have one last good day, he thought. I owe her that much. One more carefree day of youth in the company of a cute boy. This will be my gift to you, Jo. My very last gift.

If he called her again, his voice might crack.

She would sense something was wrong.

So, no. It wasn’t an option.

As he drove to the school, Raymond gripped the Jag’s steering wheel and cried quietly for a few moments. It was over fast. He wouldn’t allow himself the fleeting comfort of an emotional surrender. Time was running out. The hour of truth was almost at hand. He wiped the tears from his eyes and stared through the windshield. Soon he was parked at the far edge of the staff parking lot at Rockville High School. The school day was still in full swing, so the lot was mostly full. The auditorium was over on the other side of the main building. The lot on that side was packed tight with student-owned vehicles. His immediate problem was figuring out how to get from here to there without having to walk all the way around the school in full view of anyone who might be looking through any of the many classroom windows. The sight of the school’s principal crossing the school grounds would not alarm the vast majority of potential witnesses. Most would not even be aware of his absence today. But there was a strong chance that at least a few of those prying eyes would belong to members of Lamia’s insidious cult. He couldn’t risk being intercepted before he had a chance to take his shot (literally) at putting an end to Lamia’s evil scheme.

So he was stuck.

He thumped the steering wheel. “Damn it all. What do I do? Christ, what do I do?”

He sat there stewing in frustration a while longer, intensely aware of the seconds and minutes ticking by, time rushing forward in a relentless tide toward the appointed hour. The forceful knock on the window made him gasp and jump in his seat. Flashing memories of this morning’s disastrous encounter with Cindy Wells zipped through his head. His head snapped to the left and he saw the face of Carter Brown, a member of the school’s security staff, peering down at him. Brown’s expression was neutral, but Raymond nonetheless glimpsed a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

Raymond’s heart raced.

He felt paralyzed, temporarily incapable of logical thought or action. It was very much the way he’d felt when Penelope had come bursting into his garage. The security guard’s eyes narrowed and his features fell into a jowly frown. Instinct guided Raymond’s hand to the power-window button. He pressed the switch and the window whirred down.

Brown tugged at his broad black belt, raised his sagging gray uniform jeans. “Afternoon, Mr. Slater. Any kind of problem here? Saw you banging on that steering wheel and got a mite worried.”

Raymond forced a smile. It was difficult and he was sure the expression was just a grotesque parody of mirth. “No problem. I, uh…just realized I left something I need at home. My, uh…”

He trailed off because he realized Brown was looking past him now, at the long white box on the passenger seat.

The box containing the Mossberg pump-action shotgun.

The box clearly labeled MOSSBERG, adorned with a picture of a Mossberg pump-action shotgun.

Hell.

Brown’s eyes flicked from the box back to Raymond’s face. They locked gazes for a moment that seemed to last years. Then Brown reached for the radio clipped to his belt. Raymond’s stomach did a slow, agonizing roll as he realized there was only one way out of this. He reached into his coat, pulled out the Glock, and aimed it at Brown’s large belly.

Brown’s thumb froze on the radio’s talk button.

“Listen to me carefully, Brown.”

Brown’s jowls trembled as he swallowed a lump in his throat. His face reddened. A sudden sheen of sweat glistened at his brow. He managed a single terse nod. “Okay.”

“Put the radio back on your belt.”

Brown did as ordered. More sweat rolled off him. His face flushed a deeper shade of scarlet. The poor man had to be scared out of his wits. In all his years on the job-and he’d been at Rockville longer than Raymond-he’d probably never had a gun aimed at him. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Raymond couldn’t have the man collapsing out here in the open. And he couldn’t allow himself to feel sympathy for him. He was just a man doing his job. But it didn’t matter. He was in the way.

“Open the door behind me. Get in the back.”

Brown’s lower lip trembled. “You’re not going to…kill me…are you?”

Raymond forced another of those fake smiles, hoping this one would be more convincing than the last. “Of course not. I just need to talk to you. I need your help, Brown. I’m not here to commit a crime. I’m here to stop one.”

Brown still didn’t look convinced, but he was too frightened to do anything other than what he’d been told. Raymond tracked him with the barrel of the Glock as he reached for the door behind Raymond, opened it, and slung his considerable weight inside. The Jaguar bounced slightly as his butt hit the seat.

Raymond twisted in his seat and aimed the gun through the gap between the front seats. “Close that door.”

Brown stared at the gun. The door stayed open. He looked at Raymond. “You can’t stop her.”

Raymond sighed.

Until now he’d harbored a small shred of hope. Hope that he could convince Brown of the threat facing Rockville’s students. That he could talk the man into helping him put a stop to it. But she’d gotten to him first, and probably long ago. It was a smart move on her part. Probably every member of the security staff had been corrupted. It would make things harder than he’d already expected.

“I’m sorry, Brown.”

He leaned through the gap between the seats and plunged the Glock’s barrel deep into the man’s big belly. Terror spurred Brown into action. A meaty fist arced toward Raymond’s head, made contact with his jaw at the same instant his finger squeezed the trigger. The blow sent him crashing against the dashboard. His head wobbled and the gun slipped from his fingers, landing on the Mossberg box. Everything went gray for a few moments. Panic gripped him when everything snapped back into focus.

He groped for the fallen Glock.

He had to stop Brown before he could raise the alarm.

But Brown wasn’t going anywhere. He was dead, his body slumped forward on the backseat. Blood leaked from the hole in his gut. Raymond glanced around, expecting to see other members of the security staff bearing down on the Jag. But there was no one in sight. He hoped Brown’s soft belly had muffled the sound of the blast. Maybe it had. His ears were ringing, but that could be attributed to having his bell rung by Carter Brown as the man’s last mortal act.

A renewed sense of urgency got him moving again.

He could hear the seconds ticking away in his head again, loud and resonant like the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

He reached between the seats and shoved Brown’s corpse aside, then crawled into the back and pulled the door shut. He didn’t spare the body a glance as he returned to the front seat. Three people had died today at his hands, either directly or, in the case of Cindy Wells, indirectly.

He chose to think of these deaths as necessary sacrifices.

God’s way of steeling him for the greater violence to come.

He started the Jaguar, put the car in gear, and headed toward the other side of the school.

It was 12:30.