The Book of Fate

20

The left front tire dove into the pothole at full speed, slicing through the puddle of melted snow and unleashing a jarring punch that shook the black SUV. With a twist of the steering wheel, the car jerked to the right. A second punch pummeled the car. The Roman cursed to himself. D.C. roads were bad enough. But southeast Washington was always the worst.

Flicking on his wipers, he brushed a light dust of snow from the windshield and made a sharp left onto Malcolm X Avenue. The burned-out cars, overpiled trash cans, and boarded-up buildings told him this wasn’t a neighborhood to be lost in. Fortunately, he knew exactly where he was going.

Within a mile, the car bucked to a halt at the light where Malcolm X intersected with Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The Roman couldn’t help but grin to himself. For eight years, he’d relied a great deal on peaceful coexistence. But now, with Boyle’s reappearance… with Wes as a witness… even with O’Shea and Micah closing in… sometimes there was no choice left but the tough one.

It was no different eight years ago when they first approached Nico. Of course, not all three of them were there. For safety, only one went. Naturally, Nico was hesitant — even belligerent. No one likes seeing his family attacked. But that’s when Nico was shown the proof: the records from his mother’s stay in the hospital.

“What’s this?” Nico had asked, scanning the sheet of paper filled with room numbers and delivery times. The single word Dinner was handwritten across the top.

“It’s the hospital’s meal delivery log,” Number Three explained. “From the day your mother died.”

Sure enough, Nico saw his mother’s name. Hadrian, Mary. And her old room number. Room 913. And even what she ordered. Meat loaf. But what confused him was the handwritten notation in the column marked Attempted Delivery. On the sheet, every patient had a different delivery time: 6:03 p.m… 6:09 p.m… 6:12 p.m… Except for Nico’s mom, where it simply said patient deceased.

Nico looked up, clearly confused. “I don’t understand. This is from her final Sunday… from the day she died?”

“Not exactly,” he told him. “Look at the date in the corner. September 16th, right?” As Nico nodded, he quickly explained, “September 16th was a Saturday, Nico. According to these records, your mom died on a Saturday.”

“No,” Nico insisted. “She died Sunday. Sunday, September 17th. I remember, I was— We were in church.” Staring down at the meal delivery log, he added, “How could this happen?”

“No, Nico. The real question is, why would someone do that?”

Nico shook his head furiously. “No, there’s no way. We were in church. In the second row. I remember my father coming in and—”

Nico froze.

“That’s the great thing about church, isn’t it, Nico? When the whole town’s packed into the pews and watching your concerned father praying with his two young kids… it really is the perfect alibi.”

“Wait… you’re saying my dad killed my—”

“What was it, three years since she’d lapsed into that coma? Three years with no mom. No one running the house. Every day — all those prayers and visits — her illness consuming your lives.”

“He’d never do that! He loved her!”

“He loved you more, Nico. You’d already lost three years of your childhood. That’s why he did it. For you. He did it for you.”

“B-But the doctors… wouldn’t the coroner…?”

“Dr. Albie Morales — the neurologist who pronounced her dead — is the worshipful master in charge of your father’s Masonic Lodge. Coroner Turner Sinclair — who filed the rest of the paperwork — is the deacon of that same Lodge. That’s what Masons do, Nico. That’s what they’ve done throughout histor—”

“You’re lying!” Nico exploded, cupping his hands over his ears. “Please be lying!”

“He did it for you, Nico.”

Nico was rocking fast — forward and back — as his tears rained down in thick drops to the sheet of paper that held his mother’s final dinner order. “When she died… that was… she died for my sins! Not his!” he wailed like a ten-year-old boy, his entire belief system shattered. “She was supposed to die for my sins!”

And that’s when The Three knew they had him.

Of course, that’s also why they picked him in the first place. It wasn’t difficult. With The Roman’s access to military files, they focused on the records of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, which housed two of the army’s top sniper schools. Add the words dishonorable discharge and psychological problems, and the list narrowed quickly. Nico was actually third. But when they did some more digging — when they saw his religious devotion and found his father’s group affiliation — Nico went right to the top of the list.

From there, all they had to do was find him. Since all transitional housing and homeless shelters receiving government funds must submit the names of those using the facility, that part was easy. Then they had to prove he could be controlled. That’s why they took him back to his dad’s mobile home. And gave him the gun. And told him that there was only one way to set his mother’s spirit free.

During sniper training, Nico was taught to shoot between heartbeats to reduce barrel motion. Standing over his father, who was sobbing for mercy on the peeling linoleum floor, Nico pulled the trigger without hesitation.

And The Three realized they had their man.

All thanks to nothing more than a single sheet of paper with a fake hospital meal log.

As the traffic light blinked green, The Roman turned left and slammed the gas, sending his back wheels spinning and bits of slush spraying through the air. The car fishtailed on the never-plowed road, then quickly settled under The Roman’s tight grip. He’d put in far too much time to lose control now.

In the distance, the old storefronts and buildings gave way to rusted black metal gates that fenced in the wide-open grounds and were supposed to make the neighborhood feel safer. But with twenty-two patients escaping in the last year, most neighbors understood that the gates weren’t exactly living up to their expectations.

Ignoring the chapel and another towering brick building just beyond the gates, The Roman made a sharp right and stayed focused on the small guardhouse right inside the main entrance. It’d been almost eight years since the last time he was here. And as he rolled down his window and saw the peeling paint on the black and yellow gate arm, he realized nothing had changed, including the security procedures.

“Welcome to St. Elizabeths,” a guard with winter-grizzled lips said. “Visitor or delivery?”

“Visitor,” The Roman replied, flashing a Secret Service badge and never breaking eye contact. Like every agent before him, when Roland Egen first joined the Service, he didn’t start in Protective Operations. With the Service’s authority over financial crimes, he first spent five years investigating counterfeit rings and computer crime in the Houston field office. From there, he got his first protective assignment, assessing threats for the Intelligence Division, and from there — thanks to his flair for criminal investigations — he rose through the ranks in the Pretoria and Rome offices. It was raw determination that helped him claw his way up through the Secret Service hierarchy to his current position as deputy assistant director of Protective Operations. But it was in his after-hours work as The Roman where he reaped his best rewards. “I’m here for Nicholas Hadrian.”

“Nico’s in trouble, huh?” the guard asked. “Funny, he always says someone’s coming. For once, he’s actually right.”

“Yeah,” The Roman said, glancing up at the tiny cross on the roof of the old brick chapel in the distance. “Pretty damn hysterical.”